Childish Semantics

Jenny, an inquisitive eight-year-old, took pride in discovering new words. From the day she learned to read, she exhausted her parents with endless questions about their meaning. This prompted a gift. An urgent gift in the form of a pocket-sized dictionary.

Although it helped, the questions remained...

***

At age seven, Jenny placed 2nd in the annual Spelling Bee at school, making mom and dad proud. She might have secured a first-place finish if she hadn’t forgotten the stupid I before E except after C rule had many exceptions. She spelled the word Conscience, incorrectly—losing to Arian Kreshnev.

Regardless, that 2nd place, bumblebee trophy left her with an acute case of the smiles.

***

With her grandma downstairs preparing to bake, Jenny prepared for her next word exercise...

Every Saturday afternoon at three 3pm, she’d set up her bedroom for a word scramble. This is where she took a large whiteboard and placed it on an easel, followed by retrieving the yellow box where she kept her magnetic, alphabet letters.

On that days' session, she'd planned to take the word, -baptized- and unscramble it into as many other words as she could, using a timer to gage her improvements.

"Um... where’s the B?" Jenny said out loud, scanning the ground.

This wasn’t normal. She always kept things organized. Almost too organized, leaving her mother wondering if she had some sort of compulsive disorder.

Never finding it, she decided to change the word to -hysteria- seeing as it was a word that closely matched her mood.

"Um... where is the H and the T?”

This time, Jenny crossed her arms, her face formed a frown, and she began to pout.

Something was very wrong…

She took the remaining letters and arranged them alphabetically, finding other missing ones in the process. A total of nine had somehow gone missing. In addition, the A, D, I, P, R, and the Y were also missing.

Had she misplaced them?

Had she loaned them out?

Or did someone steal them?...

Eight years of age was enough to know what a crime was, and this was quickly becoming the scene of one...

Nearing the brink of anger, she managed to keep her cool. Her mother constantly reminded her to stay calm, so she doesn't have an asthma attack and die. But this discovery was unacceptable! What was she to do now? First, she grabbed her inhaler in case she found something else missing...

After searching for more than a half hour, she came to a dead-end. The letters were gone. She loved those letters with all her heart. Tears were held at bay, only because she was too tired to cry...

She laid down on her bed, reaching for Lucas, her stuffed bear, and vented her frustrations until the weight of her eyelids sent her to dreamland.

***

Waking an hour later, the room was filled with the amazing smell of something baking. Her grandmother had been there keeping an eye on things while her parents visited their oldest son in college.

With a lingering feeling of despair, Jenny yawned and rolled out of bed, nudging Lucas to the ground. Whatever nana was making, she had to know...

"Hey Nana! Something smells yummy! What is it?"

"Jenny, darling... were you sleeping? Your hair is a mess! Anyway, your father's birthday is tomorrow, and I wanted to surprise him with his favorite shortbread cookies. Oh! And I forgot to tell you, I borrowed some of your letters and used them as cookie cutters to spell out Happy Birthday. Don't worry, I washed them and will put them back after they dry!"

As if someone had dumped ice water over her head, Jenny's eyes popped open, and her jaw dropped.

Relieved to know that the letters were safe, Jenny ran to Nana and gave her the biggest hug.

"Nana!... You scared me to death, but guess what? I still love you.”

***

(650 words minus this and the page breaks, lol)

The challenge: