"Callista!" The slightly gruff voice of a woman echoed through the small apartment.

"Yes, Mother?" A younger, less husky voice answered back.

"Have you picked up my smokes yet, Callista?" The gruff voice rang out once more.

"No, Mother, I was just going." Callista Holsworth grabbed her purse and ran out of the apartment into the dank hallway of their building. She flew down the fourteen flights of stairs to the streets of Chicago. Callista grew up in that building, and knew everything there was to know about living in the "bad part" of town. She knew where to get anything she wanted, from a pack of cigarettes to a gun.

After spotting a dealer that would sell her the cigarettes, she bought them from him and ran home. She never liked to spend a very long time on the streets, for fear of being mugged or shot was always lingering in the back of her dark mind. She ran back up the fourteen flights of stairs and opened the heavy door to the apartment.

Once inside standing on the tan, shabby carpet, she could hear the noises of feet in the kitchen and chairs being scraped across the floor. She heard the familiar yelling of the two voices that she despised the most. Her mother, Arrianna, and her stepfather Hank Grisnack were fighting once again. Callista glanced at the clock propped on the mantle of the living room where the television was still blaring. It was 12:15 p.m., a time Callista knew to be Hank’s lunch break. She quietly slipped down the hall so not to disturb them, deep in their argument about the cost and the condition of their humble abode.

Callista shuffled over the paper-thin tan floor covering stained from years of being occupied. She quietly placed the white package of cigarettes on her mother’s blue and white flower-print bedspread and slipped into her own room. Callista’s room was not one of a normal sixteen-year-old. She kept her room spotless, but the walls were enough to set it apart from all other teenager’s rooms. The walls were written on, all over. The words read a plan, a simple plan, which a crazy mind must have made up. Written in red marker, they were in the Spanish language. For all the years Callista had lived within the walls of that room, she had never known how the writing had gotten there. She had never studied Spanish so she didn’t know what the words said. Though she never knew any of the Spanish language, she hardly understood the writings on the wall, but enough to know the foundation of it all. This plan was of a murder scheme, planned out and plotted to the last detail. Although Callista never completely understood what the words truly meant or why they appeared on her walls, she refused to paint over them, only because they didn’t bother her; she was somewhat intrigued by those mysterious characters.

"Callista, Baby, did you get my smokes?" Her mother interrupted her writing in her diary. She slammed the book shut.

"Yeah, Mom, they are on your bed." She responded, slightly annoyed that her mother hadn’t just looked for them before bothering her.

"Thanks, Dear. You know how I hate to go out there on those streets." She disappeared from sight, but Callista could still hear her familiar raspy breathing as she stumbled down the hall. She flipped back to where she left off in her diary and continued to scribble her innermost feelings. She had been keeping that diary for much of her life, since she was about nine years old. The book, more like a three-ring-binder, was packed with loose-leaf paper full of tiny scribbles that hardly resembled words of any kind at all. She never worried about the dairy, which she named Sari, being read, because nor her mother or father ever came farther than three feet into her room, in disturbance of the writings on the wall.

Callista rose in the morning to the loud shout of angry voices. She slipped into her too-small robe and shuffled down the narrow hall to the bathroom. Starting the water for her shower, she had to wait a few minutes to get in because the water sputtering out was a light brown color. The pipes of the old structure were not in the best condition, and had to clear out the bad water. She stepped into the still-cold water and began to wash her hair and body. Just as she began rinsing the shampoo from her hair, the water suddenly stopped.

"Mom!" She screamed. "What happened to all the water?"

"Oh, I’m sorry, Honey, I forgot you were in the shower." Her mother said, standing outside of the bathroom door. "I flushed the toilet. I know I can’t do that, I apologize." Callista went back to her shower; she was annoyed that he mother forgot the fact that the water in the apartment can only be directed to one faucet. She finished her shower and went off to school.

Although she lived very close to a bus stop, one of her friends came to pick her up. Once at her secure, private school, she felt more relaxed and easy-going. The school itself was a sanctuary for her; it was a place to get away from her mother, Hank, the apartment, and the disturbing downtown streets. She loved school as a whole; she loved her friends, the teachers, and even the work. All the fear came rushing back, though, as soon as she stepped through the doorway of the cramped dwelling. She feared her stepfather most of all. His name, Hank, described him best, meaning "ruler of the home." He was a very callous, violent man with little respect for Callista or her mother. He would strike Arrianna almost every night in their disputes, and if Callista got herself involved, she was sure to be hit also.

That night, Callista and Hank were deep in another familiar brawl with each other. Like any other normal night, Hank got out his rifle. He swung the butt at Arrianna, barely missing. An almost habitual gesture, the rifle had always remained un-loaded, the barrel never facing Arrianna, but always pointed at Hank. Callista always thought this act stupid and pointless, for Hank rarely made a connection with Arrianna. Callista never had too much thought of these nightly scuffles, for they were what she had grown up with; she was accustomed to them. She never thought she could make her dreams come true with the unknowing help of Hank on any of these nights.

"Arrianna!" Hank’s enraged voice filled the apartment one night during one of their quarrels. Hank was upset with Arrianna because he felt she had foolishly spent some of their money. Callista was watching them through a hole in the paneling of her written-on wall. She saw Hank swinging that gun butt at her mother; her mother dodging the butt and falling helplessly on the green linoleum floor. Right at that moment, when she saw her mother lying vulnerably on that floor, is when Callista Holsworth snapped. She turned away from the horrific scene to her walls. That is when she completely understood those walls. The words all came together in her mind to form the complete plan of a perfectly guiltless homicide. She knew what she had to do.

From that night on, she intently studied the actions of Hank and her mother while they fought. She realized all of Hank’s moves, including his locations, and her mother’s dodging skills. Arrianna was an exceptionally quick woman, very small and swift. She was able to dodge Hank well, to get out of his way when she knew she was in danger. Callista also realized that Hank was very careful not to point the barrel of his gun at Arrianna. He always held the rifle so that it’s barrel was pointing to his side or hefty belly. This is what influenced Callista to take action.

The next day, Callista snuck around in a pursuit for the necessary items. She snuck the bullets in the gun, and waited for her plan to be carried through. For day she prayed for a fight that night, but nothing happened. The next day, she talked to her mom.

"Hey, Mom is something wrong with you and Hank?" She asked, attempting to sound casual.

"No, Honey, nothing is wrong. In fact, everything is perfect now, since we had our first marriage counseling session. Why do you ask?" She seemed to be in her own little fantasy world, and Callista didn’t want to ruin it for her.

"No reason, Mom, I was just wondering why you two didn’t have your usual fight last night?" She said, forcing herself to act innocent.

"Well, like I said, we have been doing well. Why, you shouldn’t be surprised if Hank and I never fight again! Wouldn’t that be great?" Her mother was so happy; she couldn’t bear to make her feel bad.

"Yeah, that’s the best news I have heard in a long time, Mom!" Callista struggled gruelingly to conceal her cloak of disappointment. "I hope it works out for you two." She finished somewhat glumly. On the outside, she was trying burdensome to act happy. Inside, however, she was angry. She wanted her plan to work out, to go smoothly. That couldn’t happen if they didn’t fight ever again. Lying in bed that night, she looked around the walls of her diminutive room. The words, churning and swirling in her now twisted mind told her what to do. She climbed out of her bed, walked past the dimness of the family room where her mother and stepfather were quietly watching television, and climbed the wooden flights of stairs to the roof of the structure. If the wood of the twenty-seven flights of stairs lodged splinters into the soles of her feet, her anger and frustration masked the pain.

She stood on the edge of that roof, staring straight ahead. She heard the sounds of the night: cars, horns, televisions, factories and businesses shutting down late. She smelt the unfiltered smokiness in the air; the stench of hot-dogs from a vendor from a couple blocks down. And, standing there so high in the heavens, she felt the chill of the wind on her bare legs and neck. Her thin cotton shorts blew gently in that cold wind. None of this bothered, scared, or even seemed to effect Callista. She was a girl in her own world at this moment, oblivious to any disturbances but only focused on the intent of her standing there.

The deranged girl teetered on the edge, threatening to lose her balance and plummet to the earth below like a leaf in the breeze in the soft autumn day. That was exactly what she did; she descended to the streets like a rock from space. Then, there was a shot from a gun. The deafening "bang" sounded through the streets and ricocheted off the walls of other buildings. That bullet, the source of the blast, flew from one open window on the thirteenth floor of a run-down building. It penetrated Callista’s thin cotton pajama top and pierced her skin. Straight through, that bullet, purchased by the one it executed, slowed in the air to fall next to its one and only victim, the one that had planned it’s future a man’s skin, not her own. That is the irony of execution.

Krista Moore is a 14-year-old female who lives in a the small town of Tremont, Illinois. She attends the local High School, with friends. She wrote this story out of boredom in the beginning of this summer. She write when she has good ideas for stories, and when she feels she has nothing better to do. She hopes all who reads it likes it, her family thinks she have talent and thinks she should write for more people's enjoyment besides theirs and herselfs, so she decided to submit this one.