Shoelaces 2nd chapter

Chapter 2
My mom made me go to school earlier this morning to collect all of my work from Miss. Gibson’s room. I hated going in there. It made me cry so much. Just thinking of all the good times we spent together filled up my mind with thoughts and filled my eyes with tears. I was absolutely upset.

As I was gathering the rest off my artwork, I tripped over something. It was a box of markers. A plain old regular box of markers. It must have fallen out of one of the boxes that I was unpacking. I picked it up and laid it on top of Miss. Gibson’s desk. As I stared at it I was thinking back on what she said yesterday.


The one project that inspired me the most was the Shoe Collage. Every person gets a white shoe and colors it. They put all sorts of words and pictures on it to describe themselves. And after the project was complete, my dad…

That’s it!

After school I gathered up all of my friends at the basketball court. Once everyone met there I explained what I was going to do.

“Miss. Gibson, yesterday, was talking about how the project she was going to do was inspired by the project her dad did before he left the family and ran away. The project her dad was talking about was making everyone write on white shoes. They could draw stuff about them and write words to describe themselves” I said

“So? We cant buy shoes for everyone to write on! Are you nuts! That costs money. Something we don’t have. And even if people had to get there own shoes, they wouldn’t!” Beth said

“No! Not that! What I mean is, we’ll collect shoelaces! For Miss. Gibson. Since she never got to finish the shoe project, we will for her. It will be called the Shoelaces!”

“Tamie. Wow. Great idea. I mean…. Even thought Miss. Gibson is gone, that doesn’t mean we still cant do something nice for her!” Hannah said. (Hannah is such a follower… I don’t mean to be mean or anything but she is.) shes been my best friend since 4th grade.

“Well if we are going to do this, we need a goal. Like 50 shoelaces. We’ll collect 50 shoelaces from other people.” Jack said

“Good idea Jack!” I said “But we need a goal more like…. 800?”

“WHAT? 800! HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THAT HUGE NUMBER! WE CANT GET 800 SHOELACES! Listen…!” Beth said

“Ya Tamie…. 800 is a lot”

“Miss. Gibson bought 20 boxes of markers. 40 packs in each box. That’s 800 packs of markers. And 800 reasons why we should do this. Please! You know how much I liked miss. Gibson!” I said.

“Well I’m in.” Hannah said
“I guess me too” Jack said. He put his hand out. Hannah put her hand on top of his

“Well I know I’m in” I said. I put my hand on top of Hannah’s. We all looked at Beth.

“Come on Beth! For us! Please?” I asked

“Fine” Beth said. She put her hand on top of mine. After a moment of silence we all laughed and let go.

“How did miss. Gibson die anyways?” Jack asked

“Oh… My mom said she died of heart disease in her car. She probably had an attack and that’s why she lost control of her car.”

“Oh”, I said very sadly. “ lets not talk about this now. Lets talk about the flyers and how many of them we will make. Jack, your in charge of making the flyers. Hannah, your in charge of advertising it in the school. You know, like go on the news and talk about it. Beth, since your good at organizing, once we start getting the shoelaces in, you can organize them by county, or however you want. And me? Well, Ill count all off them up. All 800 of them.


So a couple of months went by. We started getting about 20 shoelaces a week and maybe thirty if we were lucky. We only had about 120 shoelaces. One day, a news reported knocked on my door. We had this whole conversation about the project. My friends and I (a couple of weeks later) got interviewed on live T.V! A couple of days after that, we started getting twenty, thirty even FORTY shoelaces a day! After only two months, we had over one thousand shoelaces.

But guess what’s cooler? After the news interview, we started getting shoelaces with notes on them. Some had pretty designs and some said things like “Good Luck!” or “I hope this thing goes well!” We put all the 1000 shoelaces in 20 boxes. And there were 40 packages in each box

So… Once everyone stopped sending shoelaces in, all of my friends asked the school to have a place where we could put all the shoelaces in. They found the perfect spot. Miss. Gibson’s old classroom.