Cameronglenn's Novels Blog

Selza and Delthi stood on the ledge looking down at the bubbling lava of the volcano. A plume of red magma shot up from the cauldron nearly reaching their toes but the sisters had already gone through too much to wince or scream. They looked at each other, both their faces smeared with grey ash mixed with their sweat caused by the heat. Selza held the glass orb.
“We look ugly,” Delthi said.
Selza laughed a bitter guffaw at the irony.
“What is there to believe in if all we’ve believed before is a lie?” Delthi asked.
“In truth. I believe truth to be the ultimate beauty.”
Delthi smiled tersely inhaling the sulfurous rising smoke through her nose and with glassy eyes looked back down at the lava thinking there to be a hypnotic allure in the swirling red glow, and how… she searched for the word…fitting, that something so potentially destroying could come in the guise of a nature so beautiful. She then heard Selza gasp, looked back at her then followed Selza’s sight line to see what she saw: on the other side of the volcano, through the smoke stood Zhar, his face unmasked.
“We’ve seen the face of Zhar yet we still stand,” Selza said.
“Then our reach extends for as far as the Eternals,” Delthi said. “What will you do?” she then asked her sister.
Selza looked into the center of the glass orb she held cusped in her hands.

***

Before mention of it became illegal and outlawed, legend held among the ancient Greeks that the island of Valcia and its inhabitants, contained a beauty so powerful that to witness it would cause men to shake, fall to the ground overcome, to then be forever cursed to view all they had seen and would yet see as tarnished and unattractive, inferior in unfavorable comparisons. Yet because of the blasphemous beliefs of the Valicians, worshiping their god Zhar, dispenser of beauty, rather than Zeus, and believing it possible to join Zhar and his Eternals in near equal Godhood standing atop their Mount Olpous, if they proved worthy through demonstrations of beauty, talent, strength, cunning, the ancient Greeks destroyed the history of that island and its people and their gods, burning the pages of Plato where he compares the richness and spender of that civilization as above even that of Atlantis.
But that glorious lost island in the Mediterranean Sea, dominated by the mountain volcano Olpous did exists; a paradise island of thick lush vegetation and exotic wondrous animals and birds, inhabited by a people almost above human in their beauty; a people who worshiped beauty equally with their gods, for the more powerful and glorious the god, the more beautiful the god. Zhar and his Eternals ruled over the people, dwelling unseen, for their beauty held too much greatness for a commoner to behold, in their enclosed temple high in the center of the gold city Yent, where dwelled the Yet-Gods, young and noble sons and daughters of the commoners who had been selected in the Grand Auditions for Yet-God status, potential Eternals in training, living and ruling and reveling in beauty atop Mount Olpous.
The Valicians believed that the sun first hit the temple on the peaks of Mount Olpous to ask permission from the Eternals to then spill its deluded light down the mountain to the villages and farms of the commoners below; the clouds first gather at the peaks to be instructed by the Eternals on where to dispense their rain; all unsalted water first forms from the springs atop the mountain to run in rivers reaching those below. The most mighty of the Yet-Gods, usually those of tier five level, in their five tier ranking system, under the direction and permission and for the glory of the Eternals, protected the commoners from the monstrous sea beasts, which according to Valcian lore were sent by Zhar’s angry and jealous brother Thez, who had long ago been banished to the depths of the sea because of his repulsive appearance, now bent on destroying all, to lower all to his misery and hideousness. On this point of legend they didn’t have to rely on faith alone, for many had seen with their own eyes such mighty battles between the beauteous Yet-Gods and the monstrous sea beasts, which battles then became subjects of their lore and literature, songs and stories.
The Valicians culture, pride, identities, reason for being, that which gave their lives collective meaning, joy, that which they anxiously anticipated every day until, centered on two days which capped the festivities of the holiday harvest: The Grand Auditions then on the following day, The Grand Serenade. For the Grand Auditions the youth of the commoners would gather at the praise grounds where the life-like marble statues glorifying the Yet-Gods stood, by the gateway of the Coliseum, the most massive and amazing construction yet on earth, built into the left side of the base of the mountain, and go through a rigorous day of performances and pageants for various judges, the top candidates to then perform for the Eternal God Pezek (his face concealed) the consulate between the Gods and commoners. From this pool Pezek would make his decision on who to bless with Yet-God status, the winner, usually one but sometimes two, to sit with him the next day at The Grand Serenade, and after the final performance be lifted up with him to be introduced to the new lavish life of glory, beauty, power, in the gold city Yent atop Mount Olpous.
For The Grand Serenade, the Yet-Gods themselves descended down the mountain to bless and enthrall the people with demonstrations of their beauty, power, talents, through songs, dances, sea-beast battle reenactments, speeches, acting, or just by the grace and literal light of their presence, in honor of Zhar and the Eternals, and for the entertainment, delight, enlightenment and betterment of the commoners they all ruled. The Grand Serenade was supposed to take precedence over any other day, but secretly, many parents whose children fit under the qualifications, between ages thirteen and eighteen, held more excitement and anticipation for the Grand Auditions, for all held the dream and desire that their son or daughter would be raised to Yet-God glory, with the potential even to become an Eternal, worshiped forever, with understanding and control over all the universe, with no beauty or knowledge denied them.
However, a caveat to being a Yet-God is that if one lucky (qualified by beauty and talents of course, yet still all selections had an element of good fortune and luck associated with them, many believed) chosen for Yet-God status failed to impress or disappointed, a Yet-God would be banished to the forgotten swamps, cursed to live in the pain and embarrassment of dejection, banishment and ridicule forever, lower than even the commoners.
Before the pages of the history of Valcia were burned, the last chapters contained the account of two young daughters of Rhan, Delthi and her younger sister Selza, who brought about, knowing or unknowing it is debatable, for good or bad it is open for interpretation, the beginning of the end of Valcia.

Chapter Two

Delthi, one year old, sat on the stone floor in the corner of the small stone room holding and occasionally putting in her mouth a red ball as her mother struggled in the labor of childbirth which had started in the afternoon and continued into the deepness of the night. Her mother screamed and then so did Delthi’s father Rhan whose fingers had been intertwined with his wife’s. Then in the room lit only by two burning sticks and the moon and star shine let in through the open windows came the cries of the newborn, loud enough that by the help of the warm breeze even the gods atop Mount Olpous may have heard her. The delivery nurse held the half washed baby up for Rhan to look at.
“Such lungs,” Rhan said, impressed. “Such a voice already in this girl. And already such thick black hair on her head.”
“She is an admirable daughter,” the delivery nurse said.
“Did you hear that Mazzine? You did it.”
His wife did not answer. Rhan excitedly turned towards Delthi.
“Did you hear that Delthi?” he asked. “You have a younger sister.” He turned his attention back towards his wife lying on the hard wood bed and squeezed her hand but it did not squeeze back. He put his large hand over her forehead. “No…Mazzine,” he said, and then in more of a panic asked the delivery nurse, “What happened, why is she…” He couldn’t finish the sentence as his eyes searched over Mazzine’s face and body in the dim light for signs of life, breathing or twitching. He found none.
“It has been a difficult birth,” the delivery nurse said. “Very difficult. It required her all. The strength she shown is a beauty which will last forever.”
Rhan stared at the nurse intensely, not wanting to believe.
“May Zhar escort her soul to glory,” the nurse said.
Rhan darted his gaze between his now dead wife, then at his newborn daughter, wailing in her first tastes of the rich island air while the nurse continued washing her, then down at Delthi who had rolled her red ball under her mother’s bed and looked back up at her father with wide-eyed curiosity, concern and confusion.
Rhan hollered then yanked his newborn away from the nurse, tucking her tiny body tight against his chest and then clumsily stumbled out the door. Heaving in heavy breaths, fighting off his coming sobs, he ran into the darkness towards Olpous Mountain, its peaks illuminated in golden glitter coming from the golden city Yent; he could almost hear the laughter and play of the Yet-Gods in their late night merriment in their splendid and luxurious lavish living, free from worry, sadness, struggles, death. His pace quickened, the baby quit her screams, as if she enjoyed the ride, and he ran until he nearly fell, stumbling over the long grass at the banks of Rhosk river, which he splashed into, wet nearly up to his knees. He thrust his baby up high over his head, locking his elbows, raising his eyes, chin and chest up towards Olpous Mountain facing him square.
“Behold!” he yelled full voiced, “a new life, my daughter. She will be called Selza! My wife Mazzine passed all her strength and power and beauty into her before you took her; she, Selza, will join you! She will be glorified and rescue Mazzine’s soul, lifting her up with her in Eternal glory!” He began to cry, but finished: “Mazzine has not died in vain! From her womb has come a god, an Eternal!”

And so was born Selza.
Even more so than her sister, Selza grew to be a child an infant of exceptional charm and beauty. Although, she had no mother, and in the Valcian culture the mothers bestowed on their daughters the tricks, trades, and ways of the art of beauty and singing and dancing, outside of the meager basic instructions provided in their school systems, while the fathers instructed their sons on strength trainings, warrior athleticisms, and dramatic acting, in preparations for their children’s chances at the Grand Auditions. The elders of the coastal city Les where Rhan dwelled instructed Rhan to remarry, to provide a female presence for his daughters of great potential, but Rhan could not bring himself to remarry.
Those of more wealth than Rhan spent more time on educating their pre-school children on strength and beauty, and could keep their daughters away from the planting and harvesting of the berry bushes and other crops, to keep their hands and the souls of their feet soft, free from the hard and dirty calluses developed from labor; they kept their children in shade to keep their hair and skin from being damaged by the suns reddening and wrinkling and drying out effects, but Rhan could not afford that luxury or option for his daughters. For nearly as long as Delthi and Selza could walk they joined Rhan in the berry bushes and sugar grass fields. Many mothers instructed their daughters not to laugh because of the unflattering face lines laughter could eventually cause, but uninstructed, Delthi and Selza laughed often, freely and whole heartedly, which their father believed added not subtracted from their budding charm and beauty; Delthi and Selza loved basking in the sun and feeling the salty winds wisp through their hair as they played on the beaches, unconcerned with vanity marring effects of overexposure to natures elements; indeed hadn’t it been instructed by the gods long ago that true beauty cannot be manufactured outside of what is natural? Such instruction seemed to have been twisted or forgotten by the culture in their quest for the idealized versions of what beauty is, Rhan believed, with the ways the woman adorned and painted themselves, and the ways the men grew muscles not from useful labor but from pointless lifting of heavy objects.
Despite their disadvantages Rhan held fast to his unshakable belief that Pezek would select Selza, and possibly Delthi as well, for Yet-God status and despite the derisive dismissals from the judgmental and competitive village parents, mostly ladies but also some men, towards his young daughters, concerning their dress, hair and skin, he suspected the others did as well by the leers of jealousy bestowed on them. Because of this he kept diligent watch over them, especially Selza, for it had been known to happen that the faces of those with perceived high prospects of finding favor with Pezek would become disfigured, cut to scars by those who perceived themselves as competitors; however there have also been miraculous stories of Yet-Gods descending down to stop such crimes the moment before they happen.

***

When Selza turned six she went to school for the first time. Delthi had already undergone a year of schooling.
“I’m scared,” Selza said holding hands with Delthi walking towards the stone building with the roof made of palm leaves and tree bark rope.
“Don’t be,” Delthi said. “I’ll protect you as father instructed. Besides, they say you’re a cute child, so you’ll do fine.”
“Father says the others are jealous of us and will be mean.”
“I think father worries too much. I’ve managed to make some friends, and you will too. Everyone is sort of jealous of each other already anyways,” Delthi said.
Selza began humming to herself.
“I heard you practicing your song last night,” Delthi said.
“I feel I sing well but my reading is not yet good,” Selza, smart like her sister, uncommonly articulate for one so young, said.
“Most first years don’t really read well,” Delthi said.
“You did. And I want to be in class with you at the second level.”
“Don’t worry. Zhar’s fate will decide,” Delthi answered.
Only a year older, Delthi still played the mother role in escorting Selza to school. Once gathered in the building Selza obeyed the instructor and went and stood in a single file line with the other first years facing the rest of the students in the large assembly room. The instructor, in a costume meant to represent Pezek, a purple robe, silk box mask, gold cane, walked up the line, examining the children in deciding what level class to place them; the symbolic ritual mostly only ceremonial, it being rare for a first year to begin above a level one, but this ritual, symbolic of the Grand Audition, would prepare the students for their life of competition, favoritism, judgment and selection their school years, preparing for adult life, would consist of.
The instructor again walked up and down the line. He randomly stopped in front of a child and yelled demandingly, “sing!” He’d repeat this until all the children sang. Usually at the moment after the instructor barked his order the little first years would burst in tears, succumbing to the pressure, throats constricting from nervousness and uncertainty, or warble some horrible off-tune disasters, or open their mouths to only sputter out chocking gurgling, to tense to properly perform with a maturity only gained by growth and technique gained by teaching and guidance. Usually the watching students, the older classmates, as well as the witnessing mothers, standing in the back, would then burst in mocking laughter directed at the failures of the first years, taking delight in the hazing initiations.
“Sing!” the instructor demanded of Selza and she immediately opened her mouth and sang. She had prepared well, had a firm strong voice, and performed well for one so young at her first time singing in public. After ten syllables of All Hail Zhar and Beauty the instructor held up his hand and Selza stopped. “Praise Zhar,” he said, then the students echoed his words in unison in praising Zhar.
The instructor then touched Selza’s hair, crisp and sun burnt compared with the other girls hair, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger, then brought his fingers towards where his nose would be if his face were not concealed in the silk box mask made to resemble that worn by Pezek. Then he rubbed his hand down the gown of the girl to the right of Selza whose silken hair had been done up and braided with flowers; she shrieked “gross!” and the watching students and mothers then had their turn to laugh at Selza and her undone hair.
A bigger laugh erupted after when the instructor stopped and stood in front of the girl to Selza’s left, a smaller girl with the unfortunate hair color of umber orange, which the culture deemed unattractive, and said, “Who let the piggy in?” When Selza heard him name call the poor little red haired girl she curled her hands in fists and grit her teeth. She didn’t laugh as the others in the audience and in the line did. Then a chorus of mocking pig snout sounds directed at the girl came from the older students and the girl burst in tears, harder and louder than any previous sob outburst.
“Stop it!” Selza screamed, her hands balled in fists at her sides.
A collective audible gasp then preceded the tense silence, all eyes on the instructor.
“Oh no,” Delthi whispered then put her hands over her mouth as her friends looked at her worryingly and took side steps away from her.
The instructor calmly walked towards Selza and again stood in front of her. He raised his cane, a gold eagle ornament decorating the top, then swung it down striking Selza directly on the crown of her head with a whopping thud, the eagle’s beak breaking through her hair and skin to pound her skull, her bones still soft because of her youth in development. Selza immediately fell landing on her rump and felt the force reverberate from her head down to her feet, causing her jaw and fingers to tingle as she then openly and loudly cried from the shock and pain. She put her hand on her head and looked at her palm and saw it red with her blood and her screaming cries intensified, echoing in the stone room but still nearly drowned out from the laughter of the students.
“You will learn your place!” the instructor angrily bellowed, raising his cane in striking stance again.
Just as he was about to strike for the second time, Delthi, running, reached Selza, shielding her in a protective hug. The instructor hesitated. “She is your sister?” he asked with a mix of bewilderment and disappointment, Delthi being a prized student a year earlier.
Delthi looked up at him with moist eyes unable to speak.
“Be gone,” the instructor ordered. “And take your piggy with you.”
Although not much bigger, Delthi then picked up her younger sister and carried her out of the building, followed by the red haired girl who had been called Piggy. Delthi tore the bottom of her white dress and used the cloth as a bandage to wrap around Selza’s head. Her father had taught her rudimentary first aid just weeks before. They walked until they reached the shade of a fig tree atop the nearest hill.
“I have never witnessed anything so cruel,” Delthi whispered.
“And we are told our people are the most beautiful,” Selza said. “But I don’t believe true beauty to be so cruel.”
“Thank you for standing up for me,” the girl said.
“What’s your name?” Selza asked.
“My name is Triz,” the girl answered.
“You are pretty to me,” Selza said to Triz and then smiled.
“Most new ones have come with a mother,” Delthi said.
“I don’t have a mother,” Triz said.
“What happened to her?” Delthi asked.
“She just… disappeared one day,” Triz said.
“Did the Yet-Gods take her?” Selza asked.
“Selza, be careful what you say,” Delthi snapped. “You must learn that lesson.”
Triz stared blankly at a group of five stray sheep feeding on grass in a pasture below them. A warm breeze blew by.
“We don’t have a mother either,” Delthi said.
“Zhar took her when I was born,” Selza explained.
“It is hard without a mother. To teach us the ways of beauty,” Triz said. “Or be rich enough to die my hair black like yours.”
“Father says true glory cannot be bought,” Selza said.
“I can tell by your dress you are poor like me,” Triz said. “My father says all the Yet-Gods buy their way into Yent.”
“We will be outcasts now,” Delthi mumbled.
“We have each other,” Selza said.
“I’m an only child. I always wanted sisters,” Triz said.
“You will be like our sister then,” Selza said.
“But you two are so pretty and I am ugly,” Triz said.
“We don’t care about that,” Selza said. She then gave Triz a side hug and both girls smiled.
“Father will be displeased with us,” Delthi mumbled absent mindedly gazing down at the sheep. It took her all to keep from crying.

However, Delthi’s fear proved unfounded. That evening, after Delthi explained what had happened to Rhan he did become angry, but with the school and the instructor, not his daughters. However he knew he must temper his anger when speaking with the instructor the next day to ask that his daughters be reemitted; anger would only subvert the objective and it is imperative, even at the cost of his own pride, that his daughters go to school. With Triz’s father Malk, Rhan went to the head instructor the next day to humbly ask for forgiveness and that their daughters be reemitted. And so they were, under the strength of argument that Zhar and his Eternals would be displeased if those with such potential beauty and talent, so therefore candidates for Yet-God status, as Delthi and Selza, were denied an education.
“They may one day rule over you,” Rhan had said.
“If they are uneducated the Yet-Gods will never find favor with them; do not try to persuade me with fear, I hold the power here,” the instructor had angrily shot back, to which Rhan quickly retorted:
“You cannot keep jewels from out of Zhar’s sight; the gods see all and will know of your treachery!”
And the instructor relented. Malk had to pay half his years wages in order for the instructor to allow Triz back in.
“Ugly girls fill the purpose of making moderate looking girls feel better about themselves; indeed, for us to know and understand what beauty is we must be aware of what ugly is as well,” the instructor had explained, mumbling more to himself than talking with the fathers, after Malk agreed to pay the penalty fee in order to allow Triz back in.
“I will contribute to your payments; I feel party responsible,” Rhan had said to Malk as they walked away from their encounter with the instructor at the stone school.
“That is very kind, but why?” Malk had asked.
“My daughter Selza should have kept quiet.”
“She was brave to speak up in defense of Triz. I am glad she did, even if it cost me half my year’s wages,” Malk had answered.
And so the three children, Delthi, Selza, and Triz attended school together, in the same class, Delthi knocked back down to level one with Selza and Triz, but as Delthi had predicted, they were outcasts, socially banished by their peers, ridiculed and bullied by the other students and parents and adults, although they didn’t let it bother them too much because they had each other, and as long as they had each other they could survive any other torment, they told themselves.

Tags: all my novels, amazon, awesome, beauty, book, cameron glenn, emma roberts, fantasy, good price, literature, love, myth of valcia, philosophy, romance, selena gomez, truth, victoria justice, young adult
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

EXCERPTS OF CUPIDS’ OVERLOOK

April 8, 2010

http://www.amazon.com/Cupids-Overlook-Cameron-Glenn/dp/1451504268/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270651519&sr=1-5

good price! only 13 dollars!

CUPIDS’ OVERLOOK
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE

My sister and I sit on a cloud dangling and kicking our legs over the edge wiggling our chubby toes and giggling. We hear a newborn baby cry and swoop down to take a peek.

We’ll be like that baby soon, my sister says. Think of it.

We have to pair two together first, I say.

My sister giggles excitedly. Look at the mother, she says. She’s glowing.

The baby emerges from darkness in the womb to the light of the world. The light is as tangible as water in a baptism, isn’t it? With those new eyes.

Babies are born blind at first my sister says and adds she doesn’t like it when I talk that way.
But I bet you can just feel the light. The glow. And talk what way?

All trying to be poetic and metaphorical and whatever.

I laugh. The cells that cause the heart form first and the heart is the last to function at death.

Yeah, like that, she says, rolling her eyes while smiling at me.

A new realization, a new spirituality is bestowed on the new mother, an understanding that the light of life came before and will continue after; it’s a lesson that can be as quickly forgotten as the pain of childbirth.

Yeah, what does that even mean, and how would you even know such a thing? my sister asks.

I nudge her shoulder and laugh and say sorry, I’m just messing with you, I don’t really know. But the heaviness of childbirth does have a new understanding of spirituality attached to it, I believe. You can see it in the glow.

You mean her sweat? my sister asks.

No, it’s more than that. A new reverence for miracles, a new respect for life and beauty and responsibility.

A new understanding of pain.

Perhaps, I say.

The mother does make a great sacrifice, in her body and life, to bring new life to earth, doesn’t she? my sister says.

She does.

It’s beautiful. He’s so cute; my sister says looking at the newborn now resting in his mother’s arms on the hospital bed. Is this the room we’ll be born in?

I don’t know. There’s a lot of hospitals in Orange County California. Or New Orleans Louisiana if Nina delivers us there, after she becomes pregnant. Do you have a preference?

Not really. Do you think she’s scared? That new mother?

Probably, I say. A little at least. Or scared might be the wrong word. In wonderment.
But she looks at peace.

She does, I answer.

Are you scared? she asks.

Of being born? Of life? A little.

I’m more excited than scared.

Our time of birth might not be for awhile still, I say, ten years or so.

Or maybe just two years, we were told. No more than ten. That’s nothing, with how long we’ve been waiting.

We have work to do then, I say.

I’m excited. It will be fun. Not to get too corny or anything, but love is so fun, isn’t it? Making it happen. Mashing it all up, cooking it, baking it.

It is, I answer, smiling back at her. People in love seem to enjoy the feelings.

We wanted Nina to be our mother.

A rare torrent of rain fell over Los Angeles and Nina looked out the Starbucks window, smiling, then put her calf covering boots back on, zipped them up, lifted the L.A. Times above her head for protection from the downpour and skip-ran down the sidewalk. When she came to the corner a ray of sun broke through a cloud and a thick rainbow stretched through the sky between two palm trees over her, and she beamed up at it and said a silent prayer thanking God for the beauty, glad to be reminded of her childhood Hawaii home.

Yet unborn souls, my sister and I looked down on her excitedly, believing we had at last found the one we wanted to bare and raise us. As yet unborn souls don’t have the final say on who our parents will be, but we can make suggestions, which are always listened to and considered and often implemented. From above, we saw her bright golden light bursting in warmness and beauty, like sun glistening on ocean waves at sunset; subtle but once noticed and concentrated on, strong and pure. Discovering her, we instantly felt and thought to each other, is like discovering a smooth polished white rock buried under rough granite rubble. My sister clenched her teeth and balled her hands in fists and shook from happy excitement at the possibility of finding our mother, and that our mother had such a warm and beautiful light as Nina.

The suggestions, made by unborn souls, like my sister and I are, of who we want as our parents, are given even deeper consideration and weight if we’re instrumental in the pairing of the woman to man needed to bring about children. Initial romances are flighty fizzy fun affairs, butterfly wings tickling insides, delightfully breezy airs uplifting feet to feel like floating, love-struck thoughts causing heavy sighs and mindless lingering smiles. My sister and I set out on the delightfully bubbly, fizzy fun, yet challenging task of pairing Nina and Jason together and igniting the flame of love in them, each a fuel for the fire of the others love, to come to be one bright blaze. We are, I presume, the modern notion of cupids; angelic entities (we think maturely but often take forms of babies and children, in excitedly anticipating our relatively soon brand new earthly shapes) set about with the purpose and mission of matchmaking and love creating, so that we may become real children, brought to earth through those we’ve paired up.

Time is nebulous to us, not as concrete and incremental as it is kept on earth; to us time is made of impressions and moments, some protracted some slippery quick. My sister says time to us is like snow and sand and star shine, and I tell her those metaphors are difficult to follow using earthly comprehension. If time were a curvy road, those in heaven can look down on it from aerial perspective and see at once the full length and curves and turns of it, while time to those down on earth is like driving on the road, only able to know it from a limited fixed perspective. Although time on earth and heaven are differently felt and understood, time on earth is quick and temporary and urgent in some ways; seasons slip away and chances meant for certain seasons can be missed, never to be able to go back and rectify. Conversely, fields harvested and fruits picked too soon at the wrong times can spoil. The body houses the soul for a limited duration; time can be as fragile and unexpected as life in a way that intertwines the two.

My sister wants me to also say that we often speak in dreams and impressions and metaphors. Especially me she says, although I don’t think I overdo it.

CHAPTER TWO

In the summer Jason’s younger brother by three years, Liam got married, despite the insistence from family, friends, acquaintances, seemingly the general consensus of the United States that twenty is much too young to marry. Jason heard it from others, that commitment to marriage is the death of the carefree looseness of youth, the wild fun abandon breeding inside young men that needs to be let loose and run ragged and tired and dead, get the stampede out before settling down with one woman. Young men are like wild boars which need to rub their tusks raw and dulled before marrying, otherwise there will be trouble; statistics show those who marry young are twice as likely to divorce, in a society with a divorce rate already of nearly 50%. Get your head on straight, organize a life plan, build a solid financial foundation first, later in life to plant a marriage and family on, Jason’s father, hopefully my future grandfather, had instructed all his three sons.

At 2:30am one evening Jason talked with Liam, both sitting on the kitchen counter tops of their parents home, after a game of scrabble and a movie, and the topic of this too young for marriage idea surfaced and Liam told him that the word “husband” doesn’t scare him; he doesn’t think of it as a death to romance and love and welcoming to tamed passion and domestic bland routine; but because of who he’d be a husband to, who he could call his wife, the word excited and enthralled him and made him amazed with dumb luck happiness; that to spend any more time not as her husband would just be a silly meaningless waste of time, because she brought meaning to his life, he loves her that much; he wants to build a life with her, from the ground up, in it together, and maybe they’re both just “babies” in life, as Aunt Lisa said, but he wants to grow with her, sharing his life with her. Jason told him, I hope I find someone I can feel that way about, and Liam answered, I hope so too.

The marriage had a nice mix of formal and fun, in the celebration and solemnity of the ceremony and occasion. Cork popping of Champaign bottles is a guaranteed laugh. A tuxedo dance battle erupted at the reception between Jason and his brothers. Jason’s eight year old niece caught the brides bouquet, and her father, Jason’s brother-in-law, my possible future uncle grabbed it from her and said he’d give it back to her in twenty years or so, to the laughs of the other adults, but bursting the happy bubble of the young girl who simply liked the flowers and felt excited to have won something, without understanding the game. That night Jason looked at a giant family portrait taken six years ago, hanging in the entryway of his parents new house, when Liam, the youngest, was just fourteen, in an awkward stage with over gelled hair in spikes, and he thought of his little brother honeymooning in Disneyworld now, and wondered when or if the time would come for himself to be married or if he’d be the only child in the family to remain single forever, the one not to give his parents any coveted grandchildren.

It is especially suggested that loves passion and fire is snuffed with the arrival of children. As a future child, I hope that’s not the case; I hope children strengthens the marriage bond and the partnership sealed in vows, although I know sometimes the arrival of children can be the wedge between two in marriage rather than a sweetening glue. It depends on the people and their maturation in life; my sister and I thought we picked good ones in Nina and Jason. They’d love being parents together because their water of nourishment would come from a deep well of love. My sister just told me that metaphor is too sugary sweet and I should use plainer language. Okay, so we saw that Nina and Jason’s love for each other would be deep, and love that deep usually results in good parents (except, I suppose when their love for each other overpowers their love for their children, and they see it as a separate thing rather than the same thing, as we wish them too).

We looked and saw that Jason’s aurora and light complimented and went well with Nina’s aurora and light, to look like one source of light together, brighter together as one, rather than two clashing and contrasting and competing light sources, causing dark shadows within each other, the way some lights in people argument. We looked and saw that they’d fit well together, comfortably without force, and they’d make each other happy if they allowed it. Our job appeared easy, but sometimes the most obvious is most often ignored and takes the most work to bring into realization, countless doubts and obstacles in the way; humans are conditioned to be suspicious of simplicity and doubtful, so therefore apprehensive, of the obvious. It’s difficult to understand, both in heaven and earth, but sometimes people knowingly make choices to steer themselves away from happiness; they’re fearful or wary of it or don’t trust or believe in it.

We only had about a twelve week window to hook Nina and Jason up, not in marriage necessarily, (although that’d impress our other cupid friends and win us the best matchmakers of the year award, which really is meaningless; it’s not about rushing, but carefully doing the job right), but at least in a loving relationship which could intensify into an engagement, because Nina had to return to New Orleans where she’s scheduled to film the third season of Motivation Movers, a hit hip silly song and dance preschool series, where she played the pretty smiley sunny sweet neighbor friend named Jazzy.

My sister and I wanted to get Nina and Jason stuck in an elevator together (we have some power of electricity if we use it carefully and responsibly) but that proved too difficult to arrange. Besides, we realized, thinking practically without over romanticized notions, that putting them in a stressful situation, like being stuck in an elevator together, may be detrimental to our goal; although love can sometimes grow from shared worry, it’s a risk and could backfire. Dislike can just as easily stem from shared worry, or lust, gratification and sexual release to escape the pressure of stress; from lust can sometimes come love, but more often lust is a wrecking ball to love, if love isn’t first established, for lust slips easily into selfishness and love produces selflessness. My sister just told me to stop babbling; that love and lust and hate are all a sloppy messy thing together and just causes babbling when tried to sort out, and she’s right.

We placed a dream where she walked through a park barefooted and the squashy green grass reached to tickle the souls of her feet and she’d look behind her to see in her imprints white columbines bursting in bloom. Then we made bees and tiny pastel colored butterflies rush past her face, wind tickling her nose and ear lobes and nape of her neck, to get to the brand new flowers to gather their pollen and nectar to make honey. She laughed at the tickling and pleasure and beauty of it all, feeling a childhood type pure happiness. Then we made it so she saw Jason, and we whispered his name to her, and he was showering with tight jeans on under a waterfall. My sister actually made most of that dream up for Nina, and I think she probably made Jason’s torso to look more muscular than his reality; although he does have a fit not flabby upper body. Nina walked to the handsome man, Jason, under the waterfall and as she touched the waterfall it went into reverse, shooting up, and it took with it Nina and Jason, rocketing them up in the sky in a thrill ride, and she screamed then laughed, then felt fear as she reached the zenith of her flight then began her descent plummeting down, and she grabbed Jason as tightly as she squeezed her eyes shut, for safety, her arms around his muscular midsection, then she woke up feeling as if she landed from the sky safely into the softness of her mattress and pillows, but sadly, alone, without the man. Then she felt her stomach, the dream leaving her the impression she were pregnant; then as the walls of the dream melted away and she regained her waking sense of reality and place she laughed at herself for momentarily thinking a dream could make her pregnant by a flume waterfall ride up.

We made it happen that Jason had seen Nina in some Motivation Mover episodes when he babysat his niece Lexi (hopefully our future cousin) Saturday mornings. My sister and I had to arrange so that Jason’s sister Sarah, currently a single mother, worked at the health club Saturday mornings, when the daycare would be closed, and that Lexi would be a Motivation Movers fan, which wasn’t hard; we just had to make sure she saw an episode, changing the channel when her mom didn’t look so she wouldn’t freak out thinking her house were haunted by remote control hogging ghosts. In the first episode Jason saw Nina in, the Motivators walked into Jazzy’s room to catch her singing in a hairbrush.

They first spoke to each other at Hollywood Hills Park (the same park we used as the template for Nina’s dream). Jason had gone to meet up with some friends for pick-up basketball, and before his drive over in his black Dodge Ram I told him to wear his USC jersey and long shorts I hoped Nina would admire. Nina went to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather after last week’s rare but welcoming and refreshing rain storms, and to try and read under the shade of a red and orange leafed tree some advent-guard book Torrents of Blood her friend recommended to her, after she expressed to her friend she needs some heavy mentally lifting material to maybe build up her adult brain cells, after six months of twelve hour days laboring and playing on set of the fun but simple and slapstick preschool show she worked on, filming in New Orleans. Her friend told her on the surface Torrents of Blood is about nothing but below the surface it’s about everything. Nina had trouble getting through it, trying to drink chunky peanut better would be easier, but she always believed in finishing what one starts, no matter how difficult. Later she found out her friends ex-boyfriend had self-published it, which would explain all the typos Nina had wasted time trying to figure out the deep advent-guard meanings of—the typos represent the fallacies of the characters and life, she had wondered, over-thinking it.

Jason would have gone on the path that didn’t pass Nina on his way to the courts, if my sister and I hadn’t intervened. My sister sent a dragonfly across Jason’s face, and I angled the dragonfly so the sun glint off its shiny wings to hit Jason’s eye, and Jason, unconscious really of his decision, decided to follow it. He saw Nina in the distance reading under a tree and he instantly felt glad he had taken this path to see this beautiful girl, who he could sense the beauty of despite being too far to really notice her fine features, which focused clearer the closer he came to her, each step towards her increasing his opinion of her magnificence, until he was nearly overcome by it, astonished by it, trying to place where he had seen her before, not immediately knowing. Had he seen her in a dream?

My sister whispered in Nina’s ear look up and Nina turned the page; she was listening to her i-pod, Dave Mathews Band, Crash into Me, after Better Together by Jack Johnson, more than reading, and she looked up and took the earphones out and saw Jason standing, looking at her. He had stopped, the power of Nina’s beauty like a wind blowing against him, forcing his walk to slow the closer he got to her, she the source of this tempest of loveliness hurled at him, until he were forced to stop, not wanting to completely pass her just yet. Their eyes met and I blew a flurry of fluffy cotton looking dandelion seeds between them, checking first to make sure neither one were allergic. Jason felt a sense of shame for having been caught looking at her, assuming how creepy he must appear, but since he had been trapped, no sense in trying to deny the crime of his leering by braking away. He felt relieved after she smiled at him rather than turning away from him repulsed as she’d return to her i-pod and reading. He didn’t know Nina sought any pleasant distraction to keep her from Torrents of Blood. Isn’t he cute, my sister whispered in Nina’s ear, and Nina thought, yes, and she smiled larger showing her teeth and dimples and pushing the balls of her cheeks up into her eyes, the glint of sun causing them to sparkle. Nina had a shy disposition to her, especially as a child, her refuge and rescue being in performing and the beauty of art on stage, in acting, singing, especially dancing, and leers by strangers, even tall handsome ones, when isolated off stage, usually gave her a discomforting unease. But, for whatever reasons she didn’t know, she felt as she did in her waterfall dream, glad, at peace, pleased, to have caught this guy looking at her, and returning the persistent gaze right back at him. Then a sense of awe and surprise struck her as she realized she had seen him before, maybe even a few times; my sister assured Nina it was a happy happenstance safe event, more magic magnetism than maliciousness in the reoccurrence of seeing his face and his yearning look at her, with his goofy dumbstruck smile. Seeing him again is serendipitous, my sister told Nina, and serendipity is always a happy event.

I placed the dragonfly on the crown of Nina’s head, and feeling it there, she kept her face still as she lifted her eyes and brows up and touched the roof of her mouth with her tongue, then she returned her eyes back to Jason. My sister placed a cloud at a spot where the sun hit its corner, casting the light diagonally on Jason, which caused shadows in the creases of the muscles on his arms and legs, highlighting their definitions.

Their eyes first met, in the real world, not TV or dream worlds, two nights ago through the windows of a Millions of Milkshakes store on Santa Monica Blvd. My sister and I persuaded Nina and her friends to try that out, rather than their usual Pinkberry frozen yogurt hangout. Nina avoided slurping milkshakes, conscious of the fact her metabolism didn’t work as quickly as when a teen, and knowing that an attractive image is, being realistic and adult about it, about 60% of most casting in Hollywood. But sometimes it’s nice to mindlessly gorge guiltless on sweets, just to keep the soul and body full and contented on balance, she and her girlfriends, Lindsay, Kelsey and Debbie, fellow dancers and dance instructors at Millennium Dance Complex in North Hollywood, decided. Most of Nina’s newer friends, the ones she met in LA, were of the, use Halloween as an excuse to provocatively show off cleavage and legs in guises of sultry fairy-tale characters type; Nina had dressed as Thelma from Scooby Doo, complete with big baggy orange sweater, nerd square glasses, and bowl cut wig, last Halloween. Most of her Hawaii friends, her childhood playmates, were of the same quirky sensibility as her. Nina’s friend Kelsey carried a camera with her constantly recording, to chronicle her life for her fairly popular narcissistic blog. She filmed as they walked into Millions of Milkshakes, and a thumping electro dance song blasting from the speakers greeted them, and Lindsay and Debbie started to mildly dance to it, bop and weave, flashing pretend gang signs at the camera. Kelsey pointed the camera at Nina who gave her an I don’t know; they’re pretty crazy, shrug and smile. Then Kelsey guffawed and exclaimed an OMG, swiveling the camera at the Millions of Milkshakes employee, a buff black man in the pink shirt uniform, body vogue dancing behind them, freezing in odd poses to the beats. And yes, cupids like me know what body vogue club dancing is; we know a lot. Nina’s friends erupted in squeals at him, zooming in on him and encouraging him into even more exaggerated dance spasms and posses. Everyone here’s a performer, Nina thought. They invited him out from behind the counter to teach them his moves, which he gladly did, telling them the trick is to freeze in full extension, like you’re a comic book superhero drawing, pow, pow, pow; then he demonstrated and the girls copied his pow, pow, pow’s, then giggled. Nina, feeling shy, a crowd forming around them, mostly just watched and giggled, electing not to fully participate in this impromptu dance session, and shook her head in amusing disbelief at the colorful characters one runs into out here in La La Land.

The dancing employee had recognized Nina from Motivation Movers; she’s what initially excited him more so than the red light aglow on the camera; he’d seen his fare share of young celebrities enter, as testament by all the framed autographed pictures, but for whatever reason seeing Nina wound him up more than any others had. Yet he wanted to play it cool with her, pretending not to be a fan. “What about you, let’s see what you can do,” he said to Nina, who then did her elbows locked milking the cow cheesy 1950’s beach blanket bingo movie dance, complete with cheesy eyebrows raised mouth agape in a smile expression, which made everyone chuckle, and the employee gave her a high-five and said, you go girl, then laughed.

When a nine year old, growing up in Honolulu Hawaii, Nina’s mother took her to the ballet. Nina’s mother had fallen asleep during Swan Lake, but Nina had watched enraptured, transfixed, her eyes absorbed by the prima ballerina; the dancing, costumes, music, all creating the most beautiful spectacle and sensation she’d ever experienced, and from that moment on she knew she wanted to somehow be a part of that beauty and feeling, belong to that beauty, not just see it but be in it and help create it and make others feel as it had made her feel; good and amazed and like the exquisiteness of heaven is capable within humans, that humans can be conduits to heavenly beauties, making heaven on earth and showing that the essence of heaven is the divine of the humanities. Only being nine at the time, she didn’t articulate those feelings quite that way, and later in life she’d recognize such notions as being grandiose, and without childlike purity but through the demeanor of an adolescent, pretentious; but at her core she still believed in this beauty and recognized it despite witnessing it and/or feeling it on regrettably rarer occasions. She kept it a secret and sacred within herself, similar to how one who regularity witnesses angles keeps such holy information precious and sealed to a less reverent wild outer world. And no, I wasn’t with Nina at this time, but I have ways of seeing into her subconscious and memories that are important to her, as I do with Jason; in seeing who they are it is revealed to us who they were and how they became what they currently are, leading to the hope of what they one day will be. Life time spans are like snow on a mountainside, my sister just told me; it builds up and is stored gaining kinetic energy, then falls in an avalanche then settles at the bottom.

Nina hadn’t grown to the height and slenderness (fit and svelte but genetically disposed with curves too rotund for the classical ballerina shape) to become a professional ballerina, the spike of her ultimate childhood dream osculated between prima ballerina or playing a modern Gidget, a spunky young head-strong surfer girl in a cute, comedy-drama TV series, although the older she got the more she realized the unlikelihood of that ever happening. She dedicated herself to dance enough (lyrical replaced ballet as her favorite form, although she appreciated all styles, tap, contemporary, hip-hop) and had natural ability, to develop into a remarkable standout and proved to be a keen and clever choreographer and patient and respected teacher, especially with children, corralling and synergizing their liveliness, being as a nurturing mother or cool older sister, depending on her students ages, (in some cases she wasn’t much older than them, given her first class at fifteen, but she always seemed years ahead and advanced) and installing in them love and enthusiasm for dance. An ambitious, organized, competent and capable go-getter girl, she’d come to own her own dance company eventually. During her youth she also pursued other avenues involving the fine arts, singing and piano lessons, theater, the beauty pageants mostly to please her mother, landing a job as the teen entertainment reporter and on scene correspondent for the Honolulu local news, covering plays, surfing events, concerts, celebrity sightings, impressing everyone with her maturity and professionalism, charming all with her quick wit and sweet ever-present smile. It was probably true what her dance instructors had told her, that to really develop and reach the heights of her dancer potential she should transfer to the mainland; there are many accomplished fine arts boarding schools there, especially in the Northeast and New York, who would likely accept her on a scholarship. Then, of course, there are more job opportunities for dancers and entertainers on the mainland, in the Broadway of New York and the Hollywood of California; conversely, of course, one can make a living entertaining tourists at Honolulu Hotel shows and Luaus, but Nina, you’re better than that, she often heard. Nina’s mother, her biggest supporter and fan, she often told her, as well as a spur for her ambitions, said she’d be willing to let her go to a boarding school on the mainland, for her good, to reach her heights and dreams, but Nina didn’t want to leave Hawaii, didn’t feel ready; there can be no more beautiful sunsets or sunrises anywhere on earth then her home. But she knew at some point, she’d have to leave.

Beyonce’s Put a ring on it/ All the single ladies song blared next over the Millions of Milkshakes store stereo, and Kelsey, Lindsay, and Debbie all turned to Nina with big eyed gasps, pleading with her to do her dance to it, because to them this was Nina’s Jam. “Please, you dance like a fire to this song,” Debbie said. “Oh, do it, do it,” the vogue dancer employee said. “She’s the best at it, you’ve got to see it,” Lindsay said. Nina sighed, smiled, tilted her head, then said “okay,” and her friends hopped and clapped excitedly, exaggerating their enthusiasm, all in silly moods. Nina waited to come in on the beat and did her version of the “single ladies” dance, with the required full commitment needed, hair twirling, body jerking, neck snapping, oozing fierce attitude, to match the songs fierce declaration and celebration of demanding commitment and matrimony; independent powerful women deserve it, demand it, all the single ladies, put a ring on it, get your hands up, uh-uh-oh.

No one really knew it, a private only in Nina thing, but this song, to Nina, could just as well be called The Chad Song. The song first came out about a year ago while she had still been engaged to Chad and every time she heard it since she thought of that phone call which led to the dinner where he announced he were breaking off their engagement and he wanted the 10K gold diamond ring back, which led her back to her apartment, to turn on the radio and have that song blare out. The main thrust of the spear which bad broken their engagement apart, causing two people who had pledged to make a commitment together, to make their lives one, sharing common life dreams and goals and pursuits, ones successes and failures being celebrated and lamented equally, into instead two strangers eventually oblivious to each other, only recalled in dark shadows of memory where poisoned spoiled times and the people who produced them are placed, the care for the other resorting from solid tangibility into vague ambiguity, (you can’t go back to “just being friends” after once being engaged) was Nina beating out 800 hopefuls (or so the producers told her, just to make her feel good, she’d modestly report) to win the role of the smiley sweet neighbor girl Jazzy on Motivation Movers. My sister just told me that sentence runs on and is confusing but I reread it and think it works.

She won the role shortly after making a conscious decision to be more assertive and outgoing at her auditions, not just the sweet passive little sun kissed golden skinned black haired almond eyed Hawaiian girl in awe and grateful just to be there, thankful just for the opportunity. She got a little sick of being that girl with the masses of the miss congeniality award sashes, which sure was nice but didn’t pay or get her anywhere. She decided to show some grit and fight in the want and pursuit of the roles (her New York audition experience had toughened her; she got a dancing part in a Broadway show called Bombay, which she later traveled with, promoted to assistant choreographer) but moving to L.A. had again made her feel like a small shy girl overwhelmed by the size and brightness and pace and sizzle of it all, just another big-eyed dreamer girl off the bus, guppy thrown in the ocean, initially fearful of being swallowed and spit out by it all; how much rejection can a girl take before the cliché of actresses turning a little nuts starts to grow on her, she wondered. She did have self-confidence, deserved not delusional, and knew she could make it out here as an entertainer; she had been a performer and excelled at it her whole life, not some flighty slightly pretty girl, thinking all it takes to make the big bucks and salivating paparazzi attention (what kind of people really want that anyways, she wondered) is a cute wink and accidental sex tape leak with some famous athlete or R&B star or something; no, she put in the work, had the talent, determination, and now, grit. The Motivation Movers role required her to move to New Orleans where the kid’s band, calling themselves an alternative band for preschoolers, originated and would film, thirty episodes for the first season in seven months.

My sister and I first saw Nina while she still romped around with Chad, and we thought Chad would be our father, and didn’t have any reservations against it, really, and didn’t put in any of our magical little love interventions with them, since they had already taken care of that on their own. We were nearly just as shocked, disappointed, and torn-up as Nina when Chad pulled the Ultimatum card on her, after she won the role on Motivation Movers; either me or that kids show, he told her. That little surprise hadn’t been in our script, although looking at it retroactively, the signs were there that Chad had gushes of too much selfish pride who, secretly or not, wanted a wife who would be subservient to him. Nina didn’t understand why he couldn’t wait, if he’d be unwilling to move with her; why it had to be his way, why he couldn’t be supportive and excited for her; we share successes, remember, she had tried to reason with him. But Chad wouldn’t budge or bend to her view. To him, she had to pick between her zeal for her pursuit of pushing down the professional entertainer/actress/dancer path (he, unfairly, called it her “obsession;” not at all true), or instead choose to redirect that passion and desire on him. He, no doubt Nina, me and my sister all afterwards surmised, thought her Hollywood dreams just flighty foolish childish endeavors she’d eventually let go of, like a child growing to let go of her red helium balloon once she’d reach to clutch the hand of the man she’d marry, and she’d then consume herself with more weighty grown-up responsibilities of marriage, child-rearing, and gleaming in the gold he’d get for them in his budding landscaping business (converting green grassy lawns into more eco-friendly desert appropriate gardens; a growing business despite the recession, in drought stricken southern California.) He somehow recognized and loved her for her talents without thinking them suitable or good enough for the greater world.

She had already told the producers she’d do it; she had rightly felt clear about it; it really had been destined for her, but Chad hadn’t liked that she accepted without first consulting him; and maybe she should have, she realized, and told him so, and even apologized, but not even her softest devout kisses tenderized him enough to remove his stubborn ultimatum, and there poor Nina was, stuck, with only two weeks to plan and pack and pick up her now fragmenting earth upending life and plant it in New Orleans. My sister and I stayed out of it; disallowed to whisper any suggestions to her or give her any dreams, as much as we wished we could lesson her stress and comfort her, for we had come to love her as a person beyond her being our potential mother. But she had to come to this decision and its conclusion on her own, which, after all, despite whatever our influence and other heavenly interventions, all life outcomes result from personal choices made under free-will. Nina prayed for answers and comfort and ultimately saw that Chad didn’t really understand her, or her him; and of course no one can really know or understand anyone else she realized; we take so much on faith and hope in relationships with others; so Nina changed understand to love in her mental attempts at sorting and making sense of this emotional earthquake caused mess; a painful realization; she couldn’t fully love someone who didn’t love her enough to encourage, support, and be happy for her; she didn’t even care if he were helpful or not; she could take care of herself, but at least—not even understanding, but—believing; she couldn’t marry someone who didn’t believe in her.

Although she refused to see it as a black and white issue as Chad decided to; she refused to be the one to break the engagement off, although in Chad’s mind she were the wreaker of it all by accepting the little kiddy show acting job in the swamps of the south; she were the one to move away from him. Chad would bellow at her, Nina never raised her voice back, always having been one to hide hurt and anger inside, only outwardly manifest through unintentional quit murky sulks; although sometimes she’d cry, burst in sobs, and if Chad were there, he’d hug her and kiss her wet cheeks and she’d momentarily think it will all be okay, nearly every engagement has their under the surface disruptions the silk slopes of the white wedding dress neatly covers up.

They played that Beyonce “Single Ladies” song a lot during those two weeks, and it sounded to her like jarring screeching ice pick over chalkboards ear and head torture. Nina’s core felt too torn and heavy, like she swallowed bent rusty nails, to dance; it’s impossible to be light of feet and carefree and dance with this pressure sickness; she wished she could and let the dancing catharsis relive her stress. Nina and Chad had their last ever date at Olive Garden of all odd random places (she’d never eat there again) and she told him she still hadn’t changed her mind, and he asked for the ring back, and she clumsily slipped it off with shaky hands and placed it on his waiting open palm. She held her composure, managing to muster a mumbling bye to him, then once she shut the door inside her car, a 2005 teal Honda accord she had named Sunshine Betty, she burst into tears, hyperventilating while driving back to her apartment, fully expecting to crumple into a fetus ball on her wood floor as soon as she shut the door behind her, hating herself for not being stronger, hating to wonder if she missed her best chance at lasting love. And she still had to somehow pack; she hadn’t packed yet and her flight was scheduled for 12:30pm the next day. It would have been more cost effective to drive to Louisiana, but that would have shaved precious hours from the time she had to try and salvage her relationship with Chad; so she bought a plane ticket for the day before she were due on set, hired a moving van to take her things to her new apartment she had to find and pay her deposit online, and her friend Berry agreed to sell her 2005 teal Honda accord, Sunshine Betty for her, keeping 10% and sending her the rest. She parked and hid her face in her hands as she climbed the stairs, not wanting to bother any other tenants, and once in front of her door she sniffed and inhaled and fumbled for her keys, opened the door, walked in, placed her keys on the counter table, clumsily, her hands still shaking, feeling like a disoriented pilot with numb cold limbs full of potential crashes, and as she placed her keys down her fingers touched the top edge of the remote control to her stereo.

I had placed it there.

Huffing, she again tried to inhale back inside all the moisture leaking out her eyes and nose, and she pressed power. She almost had to laugh; predictably, ridiculously, perhaps serendipitously, Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” blared out the stereo; the most overplayed song of the moment. Resolve Nina told herself and she pointed her chin up, slipped off her blue high heels, strutted to the center of her living room, shook her limbs to loosen up, closed her eyes and bowed her head, her usual pre-performance or audition ritual to help calm her nerves and enter reaches and personas outside and different from herself. Then she bounced her head pretending to hear the song fresh as if for the first time, detached from herself. She felt its bombast fierceness, there could be some anger interpreted in it, amongst all the soul baring freedom blasting, celebrating in it. Nina lifted her head, danced to it, loving every part of it, letting go and forgetting herself while in it, her body a slave to the song, which by its end had left her a panting, sweaty, smiling, delirious, delicious mess; catharsis achieved. She laughed, shrugged, and with her i-pod attached to her speaker stereo, she played a mix she had made and titled “packing” music: I Feel It All by Feist, Let Go by Frou Frou, Starlight by Muse, Last Good-by by Jeff Buckley (hard not to cry during that one, as well as Lost Cause by Beck, which she really hated herself for including, yet didn’t skip over once it came on; I almost pressed “next” during it, but my sister stopped me) The Greatest, by Cat Power, When you’re young you get high you get sad, by Ryan Adams, Silver Lining by Rilo Kiley. She didn’t cry until in the seat on the American Airlines Bowing 747, L.A. to Chicago to change flights for New Orleans (embarrassing for her; she tried not to, tried to contain it; her seat neighbors were kind not to complain of her, she thought) and hadn’t cried over Chad since; she realized it were for the best, they weren’t right for each other, and she wished him no ill will, but wished the same for him as she did for herself; that someone right would come and be the completion to their wants and needs to make them happy, which happiness could hopefully ferment over years into a eternal contented joy, in a pleasing life of fulfillment and satisfaction.

She never regret her decision. She had a blast filming Motivation Movers season one; everyone involved became like a second family to her, the guys in the band like her brothers, it felt, sharing in the creation of this colorful wonderful thing they had fun making and felt proud of; the press and studio all gave it, and her, positive reactions and feedback, which came nearly instantly, the episodes airing only about two weeks after they wrapped, and most important, or second most important to the kids perhaps, the parents really loved it, complimenting the catchiness and strength of the songs, saying it’s not torture to watch, like some preschool shows are, many signaling out Nina, and what a pretty presence she is on the show and how their daughters especially love her and get excited every time she comes on screen; and all adding how much their kids love it, which is always a blessing as a parent, to find a non offensive or annoying show that could entertain and positively encourage the kids. My sister and I had a blast watching Nina film; the seven months felt like seven days to us. She eagerly anticipated the start of filming Season Two (the costume lady Madge promised her more cute outfits and variety; Stan the producer promised her a song; she got a substantial raise), but during her time off she’d go back to L.A. teaching dance classes and auditioning, and continuing to forget about Chad.

Tags: children, cupids' overlook, eclipse, ghost babies, good price, heaven, love, novel, romance, teen pregnancy, vampires
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Excerpts of Amber’s Summer with M. the V. and New Poems

February 3, 2010

SCROLL DOWN for EXCERTPS of “Elle and the Ghost Author and Short Stories and Poems,” “Four Novella’s Featuring Pink Frost,” and “Dance and Basketball Love”…

http://www.amazon.com/Ambers-Summer-M-New-Poems/dp/0557174309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265215032&sr=8-1

AMBER’S SUMMER

Cameron Glenn

Preface

I’m Amber, fifteen, and for my English project I decided to write about what I did for my summer vacation. I know it’s the most basic elementary school topic. But hopefully, Mrs. Mullins, you’ll find it better than elementary school quality? It ended up being just about book length anyways, and took a long time to type, so I think that alone deserves an A. Also, I know we’ve talked about how I’ll slip between present tense and past tense, and I need to stick to one. I personally think that criticism is pretty lame, because people are smart enough to know everything written in present tense has already happened, since you can’t literally write while actions are going on. You know, like if I write: then he puts his mouth over mine and I feel him slide his tongue against the bottom of my top teeth, I obviously don’t really have my pen out, writing all the action and my thoughts and feelings down as they’re happening. To add my own little criticism, readers are pretty stupid if they’re confused by that concept. Anyways I’m mostly going with present tense, to try and put myself in the moment, but it took place in the past, last summer 2008. Also I’m still trying to figure out my writing style, as, you know, us youngsters are trying to figure out ourselves. I don’t really have a hook to add here, like you said we should put at the beginning of our writings. Some foreshadowing life in peril scene, which would make readers want to find out how that point is reached. As if some werewolf’s claws poked at the jugular in my neck, seconds away from tearing my head off and some dashing destined lover of mine, a sensitive rebel type, troubled and misunderstood, needing my love to make him whole, needs to swoop down, with his super powers, and rescue me. Wouldn’t that be neat? Unfortunately, my life isn’t as interesting as that, nor am I that special. I will say that the summer of 08 changed me profoundly. And if you read on you’ll see how. Okay, so now that that little qualifier and introduction is out of the way, I’ll get to it.

***
One
Angel
Angel and I are brave new sexy warrior women. This summer, the best one yet, because every summer should be better than the one before we believed, life a rocket ride up, we’ll dare each other to do impossible tasks. Because we’ll be in high school next school year, and it’s time to start living for once. We’re chattering in the backseat headed to Gold Beach, where her parents just bought a new beach house, where I’ll stay for the summer. Angel and I talk how we’re going to party together, every night, and I’m giddy by that idea. I’m also going to escape my quarreling parents, as they work out their ugly divorce. I get to take a vacation from being their pawn or possession; I don’t have to listen to their yelling for awhile. I’ve been to Gold Beach a few times and it’s just this quaint little vacation town up north a little ways. Not really populated by flexing muscle men, which you first think when hearing the name.
A lot of classmates scrawled “Don’t change,” in my 8th grade yearbook. Everything is right as it is, you’re cool just as you are, its’ been fun, love ya. But of course we change. Old skin cells flake off. Shoes get worn out. Childhood friendships sometimes dissolve despite bonds formed and pledges and promises made. We want to be on the right side of cool as we emerge in adolescence, aware of the invisible but very real coolness barometer existing among our peers. We’re always talking and thinking upgrade.
But that won’t happen to Angel and me. We’ve talked about it. We need each other. We’d die without each other. We’ll survive high school together, and if one is an outcast, we’ll both be outcasts. We promised. And when I get married it will be with someone who I’ll love forever. Not just love long enough to have a few kids with, then move on, that love dimed, changed, with time, like what’s happening with my parents. Love somehow transforming into hate, as if love and hate are the same thing but just take different forms, like how water can be liquid ice or vapor.
But they’re behind me. I’m in the car, engine humming, Angel’s dad is speeding, the air conditioner blasting, and Angel is now squinting in her sleep, the sun magnified through the car window making a stripe across her eyes. Her mouth is agape and sticky drool drips off her fat lower lip, onto her chin. I laugh, thinking how horrified she’d be if some cute boy saw her like that. But I think she’s pretty when she sleeps.
“Modern Love,” by David Bowie plays out the radio speakers and I’m shocked this moms’ favorite light station would play something so cool. I nod and bop along to the beats and mouth along to the lyrics, pretending to put on a passionate performance. I want to shake Angel awake so we can perform backseat karaoke together, but I let her dream. Then I’m pricked by this sudden random happiness. I’m excited for the summer, to be speeding away, thinking of dreams and the future and the ocean waves coming to tickle our naked toes before we submerge our heads completely under the buoyant salt water. And will we meet cute boys and develop cute powerful summer romance adventures? We hope so. We’re filled and lifted by the hope, excited and empowered by the teasing possibilities. What dares and fears will we challenge ourselves with? The landscape becomes blurs behind us. I decide my worries and stress are behind me also, left with my ugly old bitter parents, fuming in their hatreds. I don’t have to be like them. I declare my independence from them. My life will not erode away. I am new, bright and free, able to conquer. In that moment, a brief bliss bite me, as if it could be bestowed by a kiss on the neck from some invisible bliss bug—just that simple, silly and haphazard. Angel will be with me. We’re like sisters, company commanders in this fight through life changes together: High School, College, Career, Marriage, kids. Best friends forever.
Angel moans and repositions her head to get her eyes out of the sunlight, as she slouches further down in her seat. A strand of her long sun bleached bangs falls over her face and tickles her nose; she then rubs with the back of her hand.
I wonder if in heaven we’re allowed to go back to moments in life as they were before anything after happened and just sit in them; before friendships and love fades, or depressions swell. I hope so. I’d go back to that moment, that feeling, and just ride it out, into eternity, oblivious to future reality, mistakes, confusions, consequences ahead and the price of the loss of some faith and innocence.

***

We arrive at around 8:30pm, walk in and turn on the lights. I’m awed and amazed looking at the high ceilings with fans and wall sized windows with ocean views, and a balcony, like I’m some poor rags girl whisked to some princess palace. I give Angel a look which tells her I knew you were rich but not this rich, and she gives me a shrug as if to reply, the place isn’t really so big, you’ll see. I never realized when I looked at Angel’s dad I was looking at a freaking millionaire. He makes his money with banks or investments or markets or something, stuff I’m as clueless about as black hole dark matter physics. This was before the economic crisis shook the country. Simpler times.
Angel and I share a room upstairs. It has white carpet, a computer and an air mattress for me. After exploring all the rooms Angel’s dad takes us to Dream Pizza in town. Angel and I scope the place for cute teenagers, and find a few, and we make ourselves laugh by winking at some boys only when we’re certain they can’t see us; then we giggle harder when maybe one boy did catch us. You girls are a giggle factory Angel’s dad says.
We come back and Angel is tired so she falls asleep quickly. I drank Coke instead of Sprite so I’m not as lucky. I had hoped coming here would solve the sleeping problem I developed since my parents decided to become wrecking balls to their marriage. But after I manage to enter dreamland I wake up before sunrise only five hours later. I prepare hot chocolate and go to the balcony to watch the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, expecting this profound massively beautiful soul stirring experience. Maybe at sunrise the whales breach in flips in an ecological celebration of themselves. As it gets light I realize the sun is rising behind me, in front of the house. And I feel like a dunce. I should have known that. And that independent puffed ego I got on the car ride here is deflated a bit. Sometimes I feel like I know nothing about how the world works, and other times I feel like I know all I need to know, which is more than a lot of adults know, such as the importance of appearance, I’ll never become as hateful at someone I once loved as my parents are, and music and dancing can cure and lift the dense morose fog which sometimes hovers around me during my blah funk moods, and all you need in life to love it is a best friend like Angel.
At 9:30am Angel and I go running along the beach, which, in our minds, it being summer, is the same as if we had gotten up at 6:30am to go running, which proves our dedication to exercise, to our health and bodies, which we’re trying to get firm. So we’re pretty proud of ourselves, scattering the seagulls as we run, listening to our i-pod runners’ mix. Except we must be out of shape because we’re huffing. But sand is hard to run in. It’s easier to put a foot into sand than drag it out. We stop to walk and we take the i-pod speakers out our ears. The sky is solid blue.
“Sexy,” Angel says, through panting.
I laugh. “What?”
Angel smiles and lifts up her shirt, patting her stomach. I smile back and shake my head at her. She points to the outdoor basketball courts ahead of us. “Water” she says.
“Water,” I say, trying to sound like a cave girl. We can be weird with each other like that. She smiles then runs sideways into me, trying, but failing, to knock me over. “Oops,’ she says. I laugh.
“I thought you said their would be cute surfers out,” I say.
“There usually are,” she says.
“Maybe they’ve all drowned.”
“And will come back as zombies.”
“The surfer zombies of Gold Beach,” I say.
We take turns slurping from the drinking fountain, then lay on some benches by the courts. Angel lifts up her shirt again, exposing her stomach to the sun, and I act like I’m going to whack at her abs, and she flinches then laughs. A pickup truck with boys in the flatbed pulls up, rap music blaring. Some are cute and shirtless and cradling basketballs. They’re our age. Teenagers. Well maybe a little bit older. Sixteen. Obviously the driver has his license. Angel and I are both almost fifteen. But we both think we can pass as older. Angel definitely can, body wise, and I’m smart and mature for my age. I’ve been in advanced math and reading since third grade. We sit up and watch the boys pile out and dribble onto the court and start randomly shooting and doing impromptu one-on-ones, preparing for a game. In our minds they’re aware of us and trying to show off for us a little bit.
“I dare you,” Angel says slowly, looking at the boys, and before she finishes I say I’ll do it. Angel gasps then says “To catch a seagulls droppings in your mouth.”
I stand up and stretch, shake my legs and arms, trying to get my nerves out. I’m nervous, but determined I’m just going to do it, ask if I can play with them. This is a new place, and I’m a brave new girl, and I can have a fresh start here to be who I want to be, who is someone not so timid, someone assured and unafraid. A young woman now, soon to be in high school, not a little girl hiding in shadows clinging to dolls, wishing, wondering of the girl she’d like to one day be.
“Really?” Angel says, still sitting as I go back to over-stretching.
“You dared me,” I say.
“Okay, but you have to flirt with the cutest one. That one,” she says and points to a muscular boy with dark thick hair in a black tank top, who appears to be the leader, being the finest specimen. I think he drove the truck.
“You coming?” I ask.
Angel violently shakes her head no, as if I had asked her to do something as frightening as eat a live cockroach or jump off a cliff. I laugh, take a deep breath, pull up my socks and walk onto the court. All the boys stop and stare at me. “Can I play?” I ask, trying to muster my most confident squeak. I like basketball. I’m not horrible at it. But I’m probably not as good as I think I am. Boys don’t go play pick-up basketball to flirt with girls. Guys are one-focus creatures, and especially during sports they get annoyed if some girl comes and spoils their game by trying to be flirty or cutesy.
“I don’t know, can you play?” some boy who I immediately hate says in an accusing tone.
The old me, of a week ago, the little girl from back home, would have run off in defeat, embarrassment, and escape at this point, with the boys humiliating laughter ringing in my ears, then cry all day in my pillow, cursing myself, telling myself a girl like me should just lock herself in her room rather then subject the world to my clumsy failures. But I decide to be better and more grown up than that. Cool, confident, belonging, in their league.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I know the rules of a girl in a guys game. No calling girly ticky-tack fouls, stay out of the paint, hit the open shot, make the smart pass. I won’t get in the way.” Although I don’t turn around to look at her, I sense Angels astonished gaze directed at me. She’s impressed with my boldness, how I’m unintimidated by these jocks. I’m glad I impress her. I let that look of astonishment I sense she’s giving me boost my confidence. I do my cute little relaxed confident stance, fists on hips, weight on right leg, chin slightly tipped up, and smug smile. “And if we go shirts verses skins I’ll go topless as long as you guys go bottomless,” I say. Wow. Where did that come from? At first I astonish myself over the cleverness of that line, and that it came from me. Then after the round of chuckles dies out, with the way some of the guys are looking at me, I wish I hadn’t said it. I sort of invited them to look at my chest. Which some are doing, while trying not to, with that weird, guys checking you out while trying to not let you know they’re checking you out, vibe. Not that they have much to look at, in that area, as of now. Since I stopped stuffing my bra. I try keeping my confidence stance. “Just kidding,” I feel like I need to clarify.
The cute leader guy, the one Angel pointed out, Jake, I’ve heard some guys call him, smiles and looks me in the eyes and I instantly feel safer and more comfortable with him despite his intimidating good-looks superiority over the others, who couldn’t look me in the eyes like he did, who either still looked at my chest, or looked away from me, in their shame from looking at my boobs. I’m supposing.
“Yeah, we need a player. She’s on my team,” he says, and throws a hard bounce pass my way which I walk into and catch. Then he gives me a look like he’s about to apologize for his tactless Neanderthal friends, but senses, impressed, that I’m strong and beautiful enough to handle myself and no apology is necessary.
I’m lucky. I have a good game and our team wins. I hit my open shot, only turn the ball over once, make good passes, and don’t call fouls, although Jake called one for me. That’s his name, the cute boy, and the pickup truck belongs to him, and he’s also the best player, despite what some of the other guys, the hot shots, think. We introduced ourselves before the game and I shook Jakes hand and he flashed his brilliant dimple cheeked smile, and I said I’m Amber; I’ll be here all summer, staying at my friend Angel’s vacation home. And he answered, “Awesome.”
After the game all the guys congratulated me. I felt triumphant and cool. Amber the conqueror. Then I remembered Angel’s dare included that I flirt with him, Jake, and that I hadn’t accomplished that yet. “Hey,” I say to Jake, “I have to go.” He gives me a look of genuine disappointment. “I have to…” I let my sentence trail off, not thinking of an excuse to leave. I couldn’t really tell him, I wanted to make an impression, and now that I’ve done that I need to leave, to keep a sense of mystery about myself, so you’ll think of me, and I hope later I can be your summer babe and you’ll be my summer boy in a summer romance—I’ve never had one of those before. I hope it’s not obvious. Which would have been the truth.
“We’re here most mornings,” he says. “You’re welcome anytime. You and your friend. Does she play?” He looks over at Angel, and so do I. She’s still sitting on the bench, with a wide-eyed expression, as if she’s intently watching some climatic scene of a romantic movie she’s really into.
“Um. Not so much,” I say. “But she’s real athletic. And obviously gorgeous. Not like we’re lesbians.” I feel myself blush. The butterflies return to my stomach. What a stupid thing to say. At least I didn’t add Or are we? Which I thought of doing, thinking of a possible playful flirty enticing yet not too slutty thing I might say. Truth is, I do sometimes feel inadequate and insecure by Angel’s beauty. As if all it would take for some boy to turn his attention from me to her would be just one glance at her, negating months of efforts I might have poured out in trying to gain his favor, with all the charm, intelligence, personality, talents I’d desperately dump at him. Angel could become a model. She’s tall, blonde, athletic, with some exotic features, her mom being half Asian. Angel already has the best bust of our class, able to fully fill a woman’s bra and bikini top, able to attain that effortless sexiness other girls envy and guys crazily crave, unlike me, who tries to compensate for my lack of size by doing millions of torturous abs burning exercises.
Jake glances at her, then looks at me, right in the eyes and says with conviction, “I like you.” And then I think, excuse me while I melt into a puddle at your feet. I sheepishly smile and giggle, my guard down.
“How old are you?” he asks.
“Sixteen,” I lie. “How old are you?”
“Same,” he says.
“Yes, but how long have you been sixteen?”
He wryly smiles. “Awhile,” he answers.
I laugh. “You’ve read Twilight!”
He looks embarrassed. “An old girlfriend made me.”
He said Old girlfriend, I think, a burst of excitement welling in me.
“Anyways, no, I’ve been sixteen for about half a year. Hey, can I see your phone?”
“Sure,” I say. I turn my back to him, facing Angel and excitedly raise my eyebrows and grit my teeth at her, and she mirrors my excited expression. Only later do I realize Jake could see her and knew her expression to be a response to my reaction. But hopefully he’d think that cute, rather then pathetic. I’m trying to play cool, but sooner or later he’ll find out I’m a dork anyways. Angel hands me my cell and I take it and turn and walk back to Jake, then hand it to him. He punches his digits in it and hands it back to me. I shake the phone by my ear, as if I could physically hear the new numbers rattle in it. He laughs. His friends, his boys are waiting for him, for the next game, so I leave him. As I’m walking away some boys say bye to me and tell me it was nice meeting me, and I answer them back likewise. Then I think I hear some boys tell Jake that they think I’m cute.
I’m smiling. I feel like I’ve passed a threshold. Moving beyond the stage of the giggly boy crazy daydreamer girl, full of girlish squeals at thoughts of daydreams in the forms of The Jonas Brothers or anything “Twilight,” into a cooler, more confident mature girl, able to handle friendships with real boys, in reality, and not turn into a hysterical mess from it. Although I never considered myself as boy crazy as some girls, such as Angel.
As Angel and I walk back to her house, excitedly gabbing away, I think of the possibility of kissing Jake. A premature thought, I know, yet still it’s present. A real kiss, which means not in some kiddy truth or dare game. I haven’t had many kisses, real or fake. More fake than real. Pictures. I feel as on a high. I wonder if popular, attractive cool kids, like Alice from my dance class, always feel this way. Feel like celebrating and dancing and racing, and that they’d win at whatever they tried.
Neither Angel nor I are popular back at Middleton Junior High. Angel could have been, given her stunner looks, but she has an innate shyness that sort of sometimes cripples her. I think only I have seen her crazy fun side unleashed. How hysterically funny she can be, making me laugh so hard I could die. I can’t think of specifics now, it’s just sort of everything. The way she’d laugh. It’s a shame more people haven’t heard that. Maybe I’ll dare her to unleash that in public this summer. She wants to be braver, just like I do. We’re going to rule the world together someday.

***
Back in her room at the house, we instantly go on the computer to cyber stalk Jake and his friends, searching the MySpace and Facebook profiles. Despite most of the profiles set to private, we score some pictures of Jake at last prom. He’s a handsome fun loving stud.
“Since when did you get so cool around boys?” Angel asks.
“We’re more similar than different really,” I say.
“Okay,” Angel says sarcastically, looking at my crotch. “So his name is Jake?”
“Not a bad name.”
“And oh my gosh, the way he was looking at you! And he passed you the ball all the time!”
“And he said he likes me!”
“And he’s sixteen and drives!”
“He owns that truck.”
“And he put his number in your phone!”
I shake my phone by my ear again. “That’s pretty sexual now that I think about it. A boy putting his cell number into a girl’s cell.”
Angel giggles.
“Eh, maybe not. I have dumb thoughts sometimes.”
“Call him!” Angel says.
“No! What, three hours after I just met him? How long has it been? Wow, time is moving too fast already.”
“Second dare of the summer,” Angel says.
I pretend to call, as a joke. I’d fake a steamy conversation, make Angel laugh. Except in pretending to call him I hear a ring tone and then Jake’s very real voice says into my ear, “This is Jake.” Oops. I’m a retard.
“Um. Oh, wait. Sorry, wrong number,” I say, flustered.
“Waite,” he says. “Is this Amber?”
“Yeaahhh,” I say, drawn out, while wanting to say no.
He laughs. “Well you don’t waste any time.”
“Well in summer time moves fast, so why waste it?” I say, trying to save myself by saying something cool. “No,” I say, “I obviously didn’t mean to call you so soon. You put yourself on my speed dial.” I look over at Angel. She’s smiling at me while nibbling on her fingernail.
Jake laughs. “No I didn’t, did I?”
“Yeah, so this is your fault. I was really trying to call…” I stop mid-sentence. I was going to say my boyfriend. I don’t want him to think I’m a loser unable to score a boyfriend. Although that’s the truth. I’ve never had a real boyfriend.
“Actually I’m really glad you called,” Jake says, after he realizes I’m not going to finish my sentence.
“You are?”
“Yeah, I forgot to invite you to this shindig thing tomorrow night. On the beach. One of our legendary bonfire parties.”
“Well, see, it can’t be legendary without me there.”
He laughs. When did I become comfortable talking with boys? Saying things like that. It’s this new attitude I’m trying out, since just this morning, and I think it’s working for me. I like it. Maybe I just got tired of being afraid. It’s such a tiring thing to be afraid. There’s no reason to be. Winners aren’t afraid. Successful, happy people don’t get nervous around other people. They’re too confident in themselves to wonder what others might think. You can’t be a hermit.
“Text me the deets,” I say.
“Will do. You and your friend.”
“Angel,” I say. It’s me he likes, I remind myself. I hang up.
Angel sighs.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s so romantic. Like Edward and Bella.”
“Whatever,” I say, grinning at her.

I know it might be tedious reading everything in first person, Mrs. Mullins. I’m sorry about that, but there’s a reason for it. I want to try and remember this, relive this, exactly how it happened. Everything that happened with Angel and I and Jake and this Dameon boy you’ll meet later. Because it’s important to me to try and relieve these moments as they were happening, before they left and are gone forever. The memories fade so fast, and are always clouded and tainted by whatever your current perceptions are. I hate that. I wish I could get away from that; from how the present dictates itself on the past, like an older kid bullying a younger kid. I know I’m being a little self-indulgent, trying to write this way. But I have to. I’ll let you decide whether I’m a horrible person or not also, for a lot of reasons. I sometimes still hate myself.

***

Later, in the evening, after we went grocery shopping with Angel’s mom, (she said we could go to the beach party as long as it was alright with Angel’s dad), explored the little town a little bit more and ate tacos for dinner, Angel and I are talking in our bedroom, in our bare feet, sitting on the ground, leaning against a wall. Our conversation drifts back to Jake.
“Summer romance,” Angel says.
“I’ll be his summer babe,” I say.
“Hold hands on the Ferris wheel.”
“Share an ice-cream cone.”
“Down pants.”
“Angel!” I say.
“Sorry,” she says. “Not beyond PG-13. I remember. Your tongues accidentally touch, sharing an ice-cream cone.”
“He’ll teach me how to surf.”
“Does he surf?”
“I hope so. I want to learn.”
“Me too,” Angel says.
“I want to learn a lot. Not what you’re thinking, I mean, just about, I don’t know. How to live. New things.”
“You’re already a nerd.”
“There’s lots of different ways to be smart. But we’ll cuddle watching fireworks on a blanket on the Fourth of July. Maybe on the roof of his car. Or in his pick-up bed.”
“Or you’ll make your own fireworks in a real bed,” Angel says. “Sorry,” she says. “A meteor shower.”
“In our pants,” I say, and we laugh. “Kidding,” I say. “We’re so gross.”
“He’ll make you a mix CD,” she says.
I sign in the daydream.
“You’ll be stung by jellyfish out in the surf and he’ll have to pee on your legs.”
I laugh. “You’re so random!” I love her randomness. “And some lucky boy will be your summer babe.”
“I won’t find a boy.”
“Yes you will. Think positive. Take action. I dare you. At the beach party.”
“Okay,” Angel says, and blushes.
“Then we’ll all go night swimming together. Wet kisses are the best,” I say, as if I know such things. “Not saliva wet, I mean swimming pool wet. Wet hugs, squeezing out the absorbed water in each other’s dripping soft wet skin. Splashing.”
“Summer swimming is the best,” Angel says.
“Remember last year how we practically grew gills with all the time we spent in your pool?”
Angel smiles. “I read in a magazine about ways to kiss.”
“I know,” I say. “Soft then harder. Then soft again. Pull away, make him reach for you. Come close, then hesitate.” Also just things I’ve read, not really practiced. I’d love to be a good kisser. Make it a goal, same way I had a goal of getting good grades. I also want to look good in a bikini.
“Not too much tongue,” Angel says.
We really don’t talk about this type of stuff all the time. Just that night we did.
“Not tongue just for tongues sake. But if it’s there, open mouth, it slips around all happily accidentally. Free, but with connection and purpose. Not just camel slobber. And I like it when he touches my face.”
“With his tongue?”
“With his hand. Gently. Lightly props up my jaw bone with his finger tips.”
“You have a very feminine jaw line,” she says.
“You’ve watched too much American Top Model,” I say.
“Slopes up real fast, real soft. Some girls have guy jaws. Square.”
“Thanks,” I say. “You too.”
“Will it last beyond summer?” Angel asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you sick of just day dreams?”
“I am so sick of just daydreams. My gosh, how old are we now?”
“Too old for just daydreams. Almost fifteen.”
“Old enough to actually experience life. Beach part tomorrow night.”
“Tell me your sexual fantasy,” Angel says, in a mock day-dreamy way.
“No, sicko perv.”
“Pleassse?”
“Okay, but only if you get rid of that stuffed Tiger your ex gave you. You’ve got to get rid of him.”
“Awww,” Angel says.
“You’ve got to get rid of your 6th grade middle school romances. Stop staring at the computer waiting for him to sign onto AIM.”
“He doesn’t answer my messages anymore anyways.”
“I know!” I say. “He’s a frosted flake!”
“You’re right. Middle school romances are stupid,” Angel says. “How we pledge our eternal love to each other forever, you’ve saved me.”
“Then break up a week later.”
Angel laughs. “Getting boyfriends just so we can brag to our friends.”
“It’s sort of like playing dress up, isn’t it? Or dress rehearsal. Preparing for the real deal.”
“But if you remember, the tears I cried to you when he broke up with me were real.”
“I remember. We laugh about it now, how stupid we were. But at the time, it feels real.”
“I’m glad you’re my best friend,” Angel says.
“Where would I be without you? So where’s Tony the Tiger?” I ask.
“On the bed.”
I grab Tony the Tiger and take him in the bathroom connected to the bedroom.
“No! Tony!” Angel yells.
“I’m going to do it!” I yell, holding Tony over the toilet.
“But I love him! Life is dull and meaningless without him!” She says, acting melodramatic, as if she’s in a soap opera, like she’ll comically do sometimes.
“You’re weird,” I say.
“Look who’s talking. Okay do it. No wait don’t.”
“Too late!” I drop him in the toilet. “See, it’s symbolic of how he treated you like crap. You just need to flush it away and move on.”
She delicately picks it up out of the toilet. It’s dripping and pathetic. “Awww he’s all wet,” she says, faking a pout, then smiling. I can tell part of her is sad about her stuffed Tiger being ruined, although she’s trying not to show it. I instantly feel a little guilty.

I wonder how often it happens that both involved in relationships are equally in love—have that same burning euphoria, that happy satisfying fulfilling healthy obsession, equally, for any substantial length at all. And have it happen, that love was validated; the wonderfulness not a trick of the mind or heart or delusion—each person as great and deserving of that love. I don’t know. That’s probably rare. Breakups aren’t usually as complicated as people say. He likes her more than she likes him. Or visa versa. I wonder how many are as close to their best friends as Angel and I are. I think we are rare and lucky.
***

M. the V.
Mortimer the Vampire

Chapter One

Magical creatures do exist. I knew so when I first saw the new student exchange guy from England, Mortimer, and in his eyes I saw this bursting of vivid life liquid, so powerful it could strike a person dead, just unnaturally powerful, and so beautiful, in his hazel eyes. Then when I saw the blue of Arielle’s eyes I saw that they had that perfect Caribbean blue ocean water color swirling and shimmering in them, that’s so clear you can see straight through, and on the bottom gold sands are blue sapphires shining by their own power, and there was such soft dazzling strength in her eyes it made me think stars and galaxies were contained in them somehow. Then Drake’s green eyes were perhaps the most magic of all, so fierce and pricing; I could see red flame in them somehow, despite their hard emerald concentrated compact greenness. All three were foreign exchange students from England, all, it would later become apparent, knew each other, and for some reason all had decided to make my sleepy nothing-happens town of Forflick Oregon (which I couldn’t wait to get out of to pursue my bigger and booming exciting life destiny) the stage of their continuing centuries old drama, and, it would eventually come about, make me a character. Or maybe I made myself one, thrusting myself into it, not being one to sit back and just watch; I’m the type of girl who has magnetized blood which pulls spotlights towards her. My name is Liz, a high school junior, and those three destroyed me forever.
But it was Mortimer’s magic which consumed me first and most, unrelenting. I first saw him in a Carl’s Junior/Green Burrito, where me and my boyfriend Chad and the popular crew were hanging out after school. I got the red punch Fantana mixed with Dr. Pepper, to make this dark red fizzy drink I pretended to be vampire elixir (so sticky delicious), because vampires, the sexy brooding high school bad boy but sensitive type, were on my mind, because I guess they’re on everyone’s mind lately, because of this pop culture vampire frenzy; when one thing becomes popular it breeds imitations, and so far the vampire imitations have been pretty good and successful, which makes it continue, and it’s continuing, we are in it, this sexy brooding vampire boy craze. I sucked up and laughed, I don’t remember at what, sometimes I just laugh when with my friends just because it looks cute and cool to laugh, all about appearance, but what excuse do you ever really need to laugh, and some of my drink fizzed out my nose—which looks real adorable when it squirts out my cute little nose, and that made the other people laugh, and in walks this guy, and oh my gosh he’s freeze people stunningly good looking, like, people freeze to look at him and soak him in and pause in the beauty of his presence and wonder what he’s all about—how quickly the imagination fires out scenarios, back stories, possibilities, and it’s like, we’re imagining we’re in a teen soap opera show on the CW, like Gossip Girl or Vampire Diaries or something, which we do a lot actually, and we know if a guy came on screen looking that good there would be a slow motion pan over him while some hip indie song played, so we edit that in our minds, when we see this guy who’s all mysterious and gorgeous walk into our little local Mexican owned Carl’s Junior/Green Burrito. So he comes in and we stare at him and he stares back, but he’s staring at my boyfriend Chad, long and hard, then he just walks out. And wow, that’s weird, we then said to each other, and all ask Chad what that was all about, do you know that guy, and Chad told us he didn’t, then we all laughed again, feeling pretty cool about ourselves, per usual.
“What are you looking at loser,” Laura snapped at this nerd boy Gillman who was staring at us.

So the next day I see him, Mortimer, with his brown wool coat and thick heavy bangs cascading down half his face, his deep and dark and gorgeous magical umber eyes, show up at my school. We had English together, and he spoke, and he had this adorable English accent, and he said his name was Mortimer, and all the girls giggled when he said it, what a weird funny name, but I didn’t giggle, I stared at him, transfixed and mesmerized by him. I didn’t realize then, looking at his smooth creamy white skin and unreal eyes that he’d destroy me, turn me into a mess.
I saw him again in the cafeteria during lunch and gave him a long look over, just, I told myself, out of customary curiosity. My friend Laura said, “I know, he’s totally emo.”
“But in an English way, so it’s cool,” another friend said.
“Aren’t all English guys emo? Like, because of all the rain and gray clouds.”
“It rains a lot here,” I mumbled.
“All English guys are fags,” Chad said.
“Don’t use that word it’s offensive,” I said.
“Doesn’t fags mean cigarette’s in England?” Laura asked.
“Ohhh, maybe he’s a vampire,” my friend Janelle said, and us group of friends laughed so the whole cafeteria could hear. I kept looking at him, struck by how uninterested he was in us, in me, as if he were blind or deaf, stuck in his own world or something—how irritating. I noticed that all three times seeing him, in Carl’s Jr., English class, and the cafeteria, he had this constant expressionless bored of it all type expression. My curiosity glance/stare spiraled into a longing linger I couldn’t escape, was helpless over, the way light is helpless from escaping the gravitational pull of a black hole, like he were sucking me in. I sensed I had seen him or known him before yet I couldn’t place where or how and this mystery, the whole mystery of him, this Mortimer, irked me to such a degree, the annoyance of unknowing, I feared it might drive me insane, similar to how people can become over preoccupied in trying to recall the name of some song they know they should know but is just beyond their grasp, just tipped over conscious memories horizon, on the tip of the tongue or brain; or how obsessed people, whatever their obsession is, causes them to be abnormal and unable to function; the object of their obsession being both their prized love and paralyzing killing curse. Sort of like “the ring” in “The Lord of the Rings” I guess—and oh my gosh I can’t believe I thought of that, I really hate fantasy crap like that.

Anyways, I begun studying him, from a distance, since he wouldn’t allow me to get any closer. It’s so not like me to be timid and uncertain about a guy, usually I’m bold, certain and confident of my good looks and attributes, so not intimidated by guys, or anything in life. But there was something about Mortimer that scared me, in both a gut wrenching yet wonderful tickling way, butterflies in my stomach, feeling shy and too self aware, wondering, daydreaming, deep sighing, only able to admire from a distance, like feeling he were something too high above for me to reach that I’d have to climb to get. I didn’t feel guilty having these feelings while still supposedly “with” or “going out with” Chad; I wasn’t “emotionally cheating” on Chad with Mortimer or anything, or if I was I didn’t feel guilty at all about it. Mortimer kept to himself, isolated himself, distanced himself from others, with an heir about him as if he just didn’t care; so unusual for teenagers to not seem to care about peers or what the world thinks. I mean, we all act like we don’t care, but we all know we really do; the ones who aren’t, like, already dead anyways. Like, even trying to look Goth or counter-culture or whatever, like that spider clique at our school, takes obvious effort as a result from caring. But Mortimer’s level of not caring was like at a level I hadn’t seen before, like he were a new college grad who had to go back to high school for some reason and he just hates it. It’s just the vibe he gave off, nothing really specific I can think of—like, he pretended not to even notice me. Not caring is usually a gross turn-off, like, people who give up and stop showering or making any money and junk, but Mortimer still looked fresh and clean and hot and sexy; it seemed to work for him, somehow. Or, it worked on me. I couldn’t really gage if he acted this way out of shyness or a sense of superiority, thinking himself above and too good for us lowly slob unrefined small-town Americans.
On the Friday after the first week I saw him I mustered the courage to throw a gracious flirty smile at him and did a little finger wave and wink, and I was wearing a low cut blouse that always gets lots of attention (but not slutty, I promise—there’s ways of owning and wearing a low cut blouse and showing that top heavy cleavage sexiness in a classy not slutty way; it’s a skill). So I did all that for him passing in the hall and he pretends to not even look at me. So I assumed he had a condescending superiority complex, or he was Gay. Other self-imposed social outcasts glare derisively at the popular crowds and pretty and peppy girls who actually (oh the horror and offense!) display outward happiness and excitement of living; the socially self imprisoned put on this thick skinned armor of sneering condensation to mask their intense jealousies and insecurities in witnessing the popular, bubbly, life-active proactive ways (or clichés) of the happy winners, jocks, cheerleaders, socials, who don’t see the point in finding the irony in caring. But Mortimer didn’t have that sneer. He’d stare off and out at nothing, seemingly always weighed down and burdened by the deepness of his own thoughts. Occasionally he’d cock an eyebrow and lick his lips.
He should be terribly boring to me, as he seemed so bored with it all, me and this town (I can’t blame him from finding Forflick Oregon boring; we, or the cool people, all hate it and give it rude disparaging nick-names like Horror flick, Foreskin lick, Four Hicks, etc.) but as I’d study him, in English, the hallways, the cafeteria, in the parking lot, he still excited me, made me think of him. He appeared pained by his boredom yet somehow content with it as well, or used to it, like, not all crazy-stir, or stir-crazy I guess is the word, the way people can get when pent up in cages, like he probably felt he was. He seemed comfortable in his skin, if not his surroundings. I can’t explain how I got this vibe from him; he didn’t really seem to be doing anything ever, yet still I sensed an aura about him, which was a strange sensation for me, because I never believed in astrology or mysticism or aura’s and that witchcraft junk. Yet I could somehow pick up vibes from Mortimer’s presence that gave me insights into him beyond what mere physical observation could determine. And that I could do this fascinated, perplexed, and frustrated me.

“Have you noticed how he’s always looking at Chad?” Janelle said to me during one of our lunchtime conversations.
“Um. No,” I said.
“Well he totally does, it’s so gross; if I were you I’d tell him to stop,” Janelle said.
“Well who can blame him?” Laura said.
“I mean, his name is Mortimer. And he’s from England. How can he not be Gay?” Janelle asked.
“I wish I were you so bad,” Laura said. “I wish I could feel his bulging muscles.”
Janelle raised her eyebrows and took a sip, as if to say, I’m not even going there, I don’t even need to say it, and that made Laura laugh loud, and I would have laughed, except I’m not as laugh-ready giddy as I used to be; the change coming from seeing Mortimer. I thought, with concern, over what Janelle had said. I guess I had noticed Mortimer looking at Chad; the only time Mortimer ever really appeared interested in anything was when he’d look at my boyfriend Chad; I must have just blocked that fact from my mind. With a name like Mortimer, and being from England, he could be gay, and Chad really is muscular with thick spectacular hair. I didn’t know if I should feel jealousy or threatened or what.
“Well so what, I don’t care,” I said.
“Well if he were gay that’d solve one dilemma for you,” Janelle said.
“What’s that?”
“It’d mean he’s unattainable to you, so you can stop your school girl crush on him,” she said.
“Nuh-Uh!” Laura said, and gave me a shove and bulged her eyes excitedly at me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, trying to sound casual in my lie, like I really didn’t know what she were talking about when of course I did.
“Duh, I’ve seen how you stare at him.”
“That’s true,” Laura said. “Well if you go out with him I’ve got dibs on Chad.”
“You can have him,” I mumbled, then took a drink.
“What?!” Laura said.
“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, just what’s his deal?” I then said. “Like, he pretends I don’t even exist or something.”
“Hello. Gay,” Janelle said.
“No, he’s not,” I said.
“How do you know? He could be,” Laura said, then added, “I’ve always wanted a gay friend.”
“I sort of think he looks like a gay vampire,” Janelle said.
I laughed.
“Gross!” Laura said.
“Why is that gross?” Janelle asked.
“You know. The whole… sucking thing,” Laura said, and we laughed because we’re idiots.
“Alright, let’s change subjects,” I said, but then didn’t heed my own direction because then I said, “You know, Chad and Mortimer sort of look alike.”
“Well we’re often attracted to people who look like ourselves,” Janelle said.
“What, where’d you hear that?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know. Just an observation,” Janelle said.
“I guess that’s sometimes true,” Laura said. “Like ugly people get with ugly people and hot people hook up with other hot people. Laws of nature.”
“ But yeah, I could sort of see that,” Janelle said. “Mortimer is more like the slender but fit European GQ model and Chad is like the body-builder big meat head American jock star football player.”
“Well I don’t know what you guys see in Mort,” Laura said, then added, “Gay vampire,” and laughed to herself.
“You know, each day before school I tell myself I’m not going to stare at him. But then I do. I can’t help it. It’s like… I’m under some spell. And I feel guilty at staring at him and thinking about him so much, like, an alcoholic who relapses feels guilty or something. Then I tell myself I’m not going to think about him, but of course trying not to think of him is still thinking of him.”
“True,” Laura said. “That’s deep. Like, when you think of someone you shouldn’t you start getting ideas you shouldn’t.”
“Like you hooking up with Chad?” Janelle asked.
“Exactly, no wait, Liz, totally not.”
I chuckled then continued my monologue rant-ramble: “Stupid thing is, what do I really know of him to think of? Nothing. So much of nothing that there shouldn’t even be any base or foundation in which to conjure up and imagine all his deep and hidden mysteries or whatever. Like, how he looks so bored…”
“Well of course he’s bored, there aren’t any other gay vampires for him to play with,” Janelle said.
“Besides who wouldn’t be bored in Bore Flick Oregon,” Laura said.
“…His mystery,” I continued, “his beauty…”
“Beauty?” Janelle and Laura said together.
“Look you really need to get this figured out, because, you know, you’re still with Chad,” Laura said.
“You wouldn’t have a chance with him even if he were available,” Janelle said.
“Ah! Some friend you are,” Laura said.
I decided I wouldn’t tell them, or anyone, the dreams I’ve had of him. They’d think me crazy; I think I might be crazy to have them, the way they come, so dense and vivid and real; it’s a big factor, maybe the biggest factor of my thoughts and bubbling obsession of Mortimer; my dreams of him. They have this dense texture or realness, as if recalling a memory, or not just recalling a memory, but watching the memory on a screen in a movie you’re in, but the movie isn’t about you directly, yet you feel you’re connected to it, with it somehow—it’s so strange and hard to explain. I remember them vividly when I’ve never really remembered dreams before; I attribute them, and their strangeness and power, to Mortimer and his effect over me. They seemed to be placed on me, in me, from an outside source, from him, rather than from inside myself; they were narrative dreams with the weight of reality yet with the breeze of memory. They mostly seemed to take place during The Middle Ages, or the Medieval time of kings and knights and princesses and dragons and all that junk, whenever that was (like I’ve said, I’ve never been into fantasy or role-playing or King Arthur and Renaissance Fairs and crap, which makes these dreams even stranger.)

The first dream I had of Mortimer happened the night after I first saw him at that Carl’s Jr. /Green Burrito. Since seeing him it’s like he imprinted himself on me somehow, like how a song can get stuck in your head, even if you hate the song, you don’t even need to know a thing about the singer, and it lingers there so long that it becomes indistinctive and like white noise that is just always there so you hardly notice it, like ugly wallpaper or wood paneling. Something like that. A tattoo on the brain; I’ve heard that used before, in various songs, some Ally and AJ song I think, and other places, but I think I came up with it before I heard of it anywhere else; he stamped himself on me when I first saw him like a tattoo on my brain.
So I dreamed of him, resting my pretty sleepy head on my dainty pink satin pillow and my big Bubbles pillow, the character from that old childhood cartoon Powerpuff Girls, and somehow when my dream started I knew it was about and caused my Mortimer although he would only make, like, a cameo appearance at the end of it. I saw a frozen lake and looked down on it from aerial view, bird view. I heard the scratching of claws digging and scraping at the frozen ice over the lake from below. The sound came from a creature under the ice in the freezing water and I saw its thick black curved claws, like monstrous bear claws desperately trying to cut through the ice, slice and break it to save itself from drowning. Then a thunderous sound barrier breaking boom rung through the cloudless sky. My view point then shifted to ground level where I looked up and saw a flashing streak dart through the sky with the speed, power, blister of a comet, a trail of smoke behind, ripping through the atmosphere, tearing the atmosphere in two with a fiery swishing blade. I somehow knew, without seeing, that a dragon caused the streak in the sky and the claws scratching under the thick ice belonged to a sea serpent.
The dragon flew with booming sonic speed and crashed from the sky into the thick glassy ice below with the force of a comet which should cause a continent sized crater, it seemed and felt, with the fierce force in landed from the sky to the ground, it shook the earth, yet the ice cracked but didn’t break. There must be a powerful magic force field over the ice, unnaturally impenetrable, I surmised in my dream.
Then I saw the dragon with such clarity and detail I don’t think my imagination could have come up with it. I’m aware people retelling their dreams is only interesting to the dreamers, but this was different than that; it was like the dreams were so vivid they were a intense part of my life, despite me not being directly in them—how strange is that? Like, flashbacks of a former life, something more profound than the quickly forgotten brain farts most dreams are or favorite TV shows. It had silver scales like a fish, and they gleamed under the winter sun, and the scales shimmered then turned gold then blue, and it had solid green emerald eyes which burst in flames as it lifted its long elephant trunk like neck to the sky, unfurled its massive leathery wings, I saw the veins in them, like a bats wings, and it opened its long beaked mouth and I saw the long slender knife teeth lacing inside its snout and it erupted out a ear-piercing anguished roar sounding like metal scraping over metal in a car crash amplified through fiery explosions and rock show speakers, electric guitar wail with screeching feedback, then a fireball flew from out its mouth and I swore I felt the heat somehow, in my bed, waking up with my ears ringing and damp forehead from the heat and fearful the house were ablaze. How could a dream bring actual pain? That dragon roar screech of panic, anger, lament, had been so loud it woke me up, shook me from the insides with its vibrations, and I stumbled out of bed to the bathroom to look in the mirror to see if my ears were trickling blood.
Then, strange how this happened, but thinking of trickling blood reminded me of an occurrence in the dream; either that or like, the dream wasn’t through with me although I had woken up, so it continued, like the radiation or shock waves from the dream were still hot and reverberating in me as to continue despite being awake. I saw, standing on the edge of the lake, Mortimer, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he watched this dragon in its agony scream after failing to break through the ice. Then Mortimer had this creepy villainous wry smile and raised one eyebrow. Then I saw, or recalled seeing, a princess, a beautiful porcelain skinned girl in a fairy tale Barbie type regal princess dress, real pretty, and I thought she sort of looked like me. (Not to brag about my looks or anything, but, ya know, some guys, or okay everybody, has made a big deal about my model-worthy looks and bikini model worthy body and figure. I don’t even have to diet. Lucky genes I guess.) Mortimer looked at her from across the lake, he could see her with his super-mortal eyes but she couldn’t see him, too far away, and that sort of made me think how we can see celebrities and think of them and even have, like, something feeling like a strong relationship with them somehow, but they can’t see us or know us. Sort of weird when you think about it, right? Like our “relationship” with these celebrities which feels so real and can even be important to us and sometimes feel like real love is only really a “relationship” with our own thoughts and imagination. Then blood began to leak from the princesses mouth, which really surprised and freaked her out, and it actually freaked me out, because I vicariously felt as if I were the princess and it felt like blood were coming out of my mouth, I could taste it, tart, salt, thick, my tongue stirred the blood liquid, and I put my hand over my lips and chin and gasped and my eyes were big and scared in the mirror and that shock, like a fear bolt, woke me up from the dream a second time, and I thought, what is the matter with me, oh my gosh, I’m waking up from dreams I’ve already woken up from, what the crap? And I really wasn’t bleeding after all.
I walked to the kitchen and living room area and the clocks all said 3:00am, I’d have to get up for school way too soon, although I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, it wouldn’t even be worth trying, I’d just lay in bed bored, and besides I didn’t really want to return to freaky dreamland. The dream swirled in my head, like a tornado in there, blowing all my other superficial thoughts, Chad, what to wear, teen celebrity gossip and pop stars and songs, away. There must be some poetic symbolism to it somehow. Some meaning. I called Peggy because I knew she wouldn’t mind being woken up by me; she’s one of those follower type girls who wishes she could be as cool as Janelle Laura and I, in her mind she probably thinks she belongs in our group, and I guess she sort of does, although we all make fun of her behind her back. She’s annoying but harmless, she’ll carry our books for us and crap, it’s cute.
“Oh my gosh Liz,” she said, and in her grogginess she almost sounded perturbed that I woke her up, forgetting that she practically worships me. But as we continued talking and she woke up more she became excited that I had called her, pretending to be deeply interested in this dream I told her about, saying it was a cool dream and she wished she could have a dream as cool as that, trying to flatter me, not really getting what I was saying at all. She’s the only one I’ll tell the dream to, I told myself, afraid of my friends thinking I were crazy if they knew I dreamed so vividly dorky stuff about dragons and lonely foreign exchange students. “So how are you and Chad,” Peggy asked, little nosey, and I said, “Oh well he’s a wolf in bed so it’s all good,” and I could practically hear her blushing over the phone; I was lying, it’s nobody’s business, but Chad and I haven’t gone that far, despite the popular opinion on the matter and whatever Chad brags to his buds in the weight and locker rooms.

So Mortimer and I and Janelle are all in English class together, and our teacher Mrs. Thompson has gotten real lazy and apathetic for some reason, like she just stopped caring and gave up hope on our reckless wacky generation, or she’s going through menopause or she woke up and realized all of Oprah Winfery’s self help messages weren’t helping her much or something, so she doesn’t teach so much but shows us literary inspired movies, like the MTV Leo Romeo and Juliet, or anything where girls wear corsets and speak polite Brit-talk, and she gives us reading and writing and research paper study time in the library. So we’re in the library, and Janelle and I are sitting at a round little table, gabbing like we do, Janelle’s smacking her gum and talking about something, I don’t know, gum and watermelons and her sister, an architect intern in London, and I’m nodding my head like I’m listing and care, but I don’t really, I’m fighting not looking at Mortimer, in sight alone at a table, doing nothing, how weird he just can sit there doing nothing, like he’s learned to sleep with his eyes open. He just absently stared at nothing, seeing something at some distance that only he apparently could see, and I thought he had that same look in my dream when he stared out across the vast frozen lake looking at the princess. I had this urge, itch, desire to stare at him and soak in the sight of him, slack-jawed and drooling unaware or uncaring of manners, like how babies can get away with staring deeply with bottomless curiosity at attractive strangers faces, and give in to this impulse in complete surrender, quenching my desire and thirst with all the intensity required to unravel the mystery of him and that weird powerful feeling dragon/sea serpent dream of him. It felt as if only I were allowed to stare at him, unburdened and free and fully and inappropriately, a teenage fan ogling over a dream-boy pop star poster, in seclusion then kissing the picture, then he’d reveal some of his mystery to me and there was nothing I wanted more than to peek at some of his mystery and have a piece of him be revealed to me, to satisfy my overwhelming curiosity. Hey, there’s a lot of rhyming in that sentence—neat. I wanted to stare and be free while staring to escape into absent minded reverie on him, fueled by teenage romance percolating into steam releasing bubbling liquids. Why did he have such power over me? How infuriating!
It took all my strength and effort and concentration not to stare at him; I felt like physically fighting against my muscles, like in resistance strength training. I’d let the desire to stare slip out in jerky momentary glances and each look at him would cause my heart to thump heavy, like the heave right before a free-fall in “Twilight of Terror” in Disneyland, or skydiving. It’s like my heart were its own organism inside me, like a baby kicking or something, and like pregnant ladies have all these wild outlandish food cravings, like whip cream salmon chocolate three-cheese pizza or something, I had all these crazy thoughts about Mortimer strike me, like thinking how I’d just love to run my finger down the line separating his two firm pectoral chest muscles, my finger then maybe my tongue, oh my gosh that’s a bad thought, then I’d blush and get all fussy and flushed within myself and tell myself stop it Liz, stop it crazy girl, oh how delicious that would be, no stop it, what’s the matter with you? Really. Fighting my desire to stare at him felt like trying to push down helium. It was physically, literally making me ill. Meanwhile while this inner dialogue is going on Janelle is yammering nasal-y away about celebrity gossip I think. Bwaa, bwaa, bwaa, Miley Nick Kristen Taylor, bwaa, bwaa, bwaa.
In one of my glances at him I thought I saw a trickle of blood escape from the corner of his mouth and leak down his chin. I did a double take as my heart jumped, then did a third take then locked my eyes on his lips, and there wasn’t any blood—what had I seen, did I hallucinate, am I going mad?
“I can’t stand it anymore Janelle,” I said.
“Oh?” Janelle said, sort of offended and hurt, thinking I were referring to her in some way. I think I may have interrupted her mid-sentence. Or mid sheep bleating Bwaa.
“I’m just going to do it. Stare at him long and hard like it’s a no-blinking staring contest.”
Janelle giggled. “Okay?” she said.
I stared, like with intense concentration, eyes locked, totally rude, and it felt releasing and reliving giving into my powerful impolite desire; sort of felt like I were sinning with how I stared at him, like I were snorting cocaine or giving in to some taboo freakish fetish, but I liked it in the moment enough to not care of later consequence and regret. It’s a strange but fitting metaphor; the release brought from the uninterrupted stare felt like finally releasing urine after holding it in for an hour. Ahhhhh. I stared at him as if he were some favorite celebrity suddenly in the room with me and only by staring could I process the surreal feeling and sensation of the actuality and real-time reality of him, who previously had only been personally seen and observed through flat two dimensions of movie, computer, TV screens and glossy paper, as well as whatever dimension dreams and thoughts and mental visualizations are, now in all three full, thick dimensions and senses (I could smell him through staring at him) sharing the same air in the same room as me. I sensed Janelle flicker her eyes back and forth between Mortimer and I and giggle nervously.
Strange thing, but for the longest time he continued ignoring me, showing no signs of knowing what I was doing, when he must have known, my staring was so obvious to everyone in the library, I sensed they were all staring at me staring at Mortimer, who didn’t look at all uncomfortable as he continued staring off into space like a re—I mean, mentally challenged person. Then he slowly turned his glance towards me, real freaky slow-motion horror movie like. I gasped and my heart kicked me, then my jaw dropped hanging slack jawed as I watched in terror blood slowly drip from just inside his mouth and then down his chin. It took me a minute or so to realize my jaw hung open and that I should close it, which I did by pushing up on my own chin with my fingers, which I then smeared over my lips as if there were glue on my fingers and I needed my lips to be sealed or else I’d scream. I think I screamed with my eyes. While he still looked at me I tapped my chin where I saw the blood on his chin then his lizard quick tongue touched the side of his lip and the blood vanished, so quickly, faster than a blink, that I thought it must not have been there at all; just my hallucination caused by sleep deprivation caused by stupid beautiful Mortimer. I blinked. A girl as pretty and popular as I just couldn’t be crazy—that can’t be allowed, but what was going on? I hated and loved him at once with a new never before felt intensity which scared and thrilled me, as well as confused me, since I still knew nothing about him, so don’t know how such strong emotions of him could erupt, with the heat of lava to singe away all I thought I knew of who I was. Ya know?
The bell rang and I couldn’t have been any happier to hear it and leave. I got up and gathered my junk to leave as fast as I could but Janelle tugged on my elbow and said, “that was weird.” Then I froze, like, literally, I think my heart stopped and I held my breath, as Mortimer walked by us. I closed my eyes and sucked in my lips and tensed up as I sensed him walk by, so close if I stuck my foot out I think he’d have tripped over me. I think I heard his breath and when I heard it all the details of that dream flooded me in hard concentrate. After he left the library I whispered to Janelle, “did you see that?” She asked what and wondered what I was talking about.

While at my locker a period later I thought about all this stuff, and then Janelle came up to me and said “What’s the matter with you?” and it so surprised me that I nearly dropped all my books.
“Why are you so jumpy?”
“Don’t sneak up on people like that,” I said. “Are you like pretending to be a ninja or something?”
“Um, hello. I didn’t sneak up, you were just off in dreamland again.”
Then Laura came up and said, “Everybody’s talking about how you were drooling over the new guy in the library.”
“Yeah, what’s that about?” Janelle said.
“And you call Peggy in the middle of the night? You have a problem and you call Peggy?”
“That stupid loudmouth,” I said. “What’d she tell you?”
“She said you told her all about you and Chad. He’s a wolf in bed?”
I laughed and said, “Oh my gosh, no, no, I was just messing with her. Come on, like I’d really tell Peggy anything like that. No, I just couldn’t sleep and was bored and didn’t think you two would have appreciated being woken up in the middle of the night.”
“True,” Janelle said.
“Look, Liz, if you’re having any problems you can call me anytime,” Laura said.
“Yeah, echo that,” Janelle said.
“I don’t have any problems,” I said.
“Well if you have a crush on someone other than Chad…”
“Crush? What are you talking about?”
“Come on Liz, you made it pretty obvious in the library,” Janelle said.
“No, it was just like… I thought I saw… okay, like when someone has a massive pimple you just have to stare.”
“He definitely doesn’t have any pimples,” Janelle said. “He has the most, like, perfect skin, like, I want to know what he uses. What’s his name? Mort?”
“Mortimer,” I said.
Laura laughed for some reason.
“Guys please don’t start any rumors. You know how I feel about unnecessary drama. I mean, that’s so Freshman.”
“Well if you don’t want rumors don’t tell Peggy anything. Everyone’s calling Chad Wolf now,” Janelle said.
“Oh Gawd,” I said.
“Awoooo,” Laura said, then mumbled a sorry after the disapproving look Janelle and I gave her. I know Laura likes Chad, it’s been obvious for years.
“But Liz, Mortimer? I mean he’s so… his name is Mortimer for starters, and he’s so odd, like I don’t think I’ve ever seen him talk to anyone or smile.”
“I think he’s cute,” Laura said. “If you feel…”
I rolled my eyes so loudly it shut Laura up. Of course she’d want me to dump Chad to go after some strange foreign exchange student so she could pursue Chad or Wolf Man for herself.
“He’s not bad,” Janelle said, “but definitely not your type. I mean… I just don’t get it.”
“Guys, I don’t like him, okay. I have a boyfriend, and we’re very happy,” I said, emphasizing my words in the direction of Laura. Then I mumbled, “besides, I think he’s Gay.”
“No!” Laura said.
“Well have you seen the way he stares at Chad? I think he is too,” Janelle said. “Wait, I thought we already had this conversation?”
“Did I hear my name?” Chad said and walked up on us and he slapped his hand on my back and I made a little shriek and dropped my books, which Chad just thought was hilarious.
“Hi Chad,” Laura said, then bit her lip, looked down and up, and drew lines on the floor with her pointed foot; maybe writing his name, I don’t know.
“What, is it everyone sneak up on me like a ninja day?” I asked.
“Why are you so jumpy?” Chad asked.
“I asked her the same thing!” Janelle said.
“Sorry,” I answered, took a deep breath and placed my hand over my jack-hammering heart. “It’s just this strange dream I had last night.” I had this irrational fear that at any moment Mortimer would pop up in front of me and grin at me with a bleeding mouth. That’s why I was so jumpy, but of course I couldn’t tell my friends that.
“Tell,’ Chad said and he wrapped his large strong arms around me and squeezed me too tightly and I saw Laura look hurt or embarrassed or something, maybe feeling lonely and jealous.
“Impossible to explain,” I said. I closed my locker and there was Mortimer; the open locker had shielded his face so that when I closed it he appeared as if he materialized out of nowhere; the prospect of which had made me so jumpy. Although he came so sudden I didn’t jump, but I took a step back, bumping Chad. Laura and Janelle looked pretty befuddled too. I looked into his eyes; I had never been so close to him or his eyes, and they looked abnormally large and piercing, like an owl’s eyes focused on a meal rat or something. His hair was slicked behind his ears exposing his full handsome face, seemingly glowing eerily. I feared I might pee myself. I bit my lip and looked down and blushed, and I never blush, I’m usually a confident girl, strong enough to not be easily self-conscious or insecure or easily embarrassed—why live in fear is my motto—but I blushed, hard red, like purple, like I’m not a human but a chameleon, my blood ripening my color strawberry red, then that purple color strawberries become once they’ve died and are rotting. I saw Mortimer smile at me, he liked me blushing. I wanted to speak, to say something, but couldn’t. Apparently nobody could, because nobody did. We were all just standing there, looking at each other, not talking. The most awkward thing, yet somehow also wonderful to me. I then had this strong urge and desire to kiss him, and smother out all my questions, fears, discomfort, obsession of him through kissing, like stuffing out a fire by smothering it with blankets or a snuggie. Again, just like my dreams, this inexplicable desire to kiss him seemed to strike me from outside myself rather than internally, like struck by cupid’s arrows or something dumb like that, as if the impulse were out of my control and not my doing.
“Bro,” Chad said in a challenging way directed at Mortimer.
Mortimer bent down and smoothly picked up my chemistry textbook I hadn’t even noticed I dropped and held it out for me to take. I had massive delayed reaction, so he held it out for like, seven seconds before I took it from him, looking at his eyes, so close to him, just, I don’t know, like star-struck I guess is what I was feeling. By this time we were all way late to our next class and we were all alone in the hallway.
“Um, I’ve got to go,” Laura said, and she slinked away in a way that made me think Mortimer made her uncomfortable and gave her the creeps, which I could totally understand.
“Yeah me too,” Janelle said and she also slinked away.
So there was just the three of us left, Mortimer Chad and me. I looked at Chad and he had his angry “game face” on, like when he’s all trying to be focused and angry, with narrow eyes tight lips and flared nostrils. Something made him angry at Mortimer. Maybe the discomfort he got from Mortimer made him feel threatened and therefore defensive, or maybe he thought Mortimer were coming on to me by picking up my book. Then he saw me looking at him and he gave me a look of disappointment which said, like Liz what the hell I’ve never seen you like this before, shy and blushing and flummoxed, although I don’t think flummoxed is in his vocabulary. Then he turned his attention back to Mortimer and said “Dude,” like in the what the hell that is not cool way guys, or more specifically jocks, mean when they say “dude?” to each other.
Mortimer’s movements when he moves were so fluid. He turned to Chad and showed Chad his creepy grin, and as he opened his mouth ever so slightly and I concentrated my sight on inside his mouth to try and spot any blood.
“I knew your father,” Mortimer said in his charming English accent with his soft but firm voice which sent a shiver down my spine.
Chad had told me his father died when he was nine. I saw Chad turn red, I think with rage, not romantic blushing.
“And your grandfather. And…I’m sorry,” Mortimer said.
I sensed Chad tense up as he made his hands into fists, and I thought I should play the role of good little girlfriend and press my softness against his side just in front of him, between him and Mortimer, to de-tense Chad to keep him from throwing a punch at Mortimer, which I sensed he really wanted to do for some reason. Although with how fluid Mortimer moved I don’t think Chad would be able to land a punch on him, which would just embarrass him and make him grumpy for the rest of the year, which I really didn’t’ want to deal with. Chad’s a jock, a big brawny muscular brute with great thick hair he keeps long and shaggy. He’s the type you’d expect to become angry at something strange he couldn’t understand, wanting to feel in control of everything and dealing with things out of his grasp of understanding, such as Mortimer telling him he knew his father and grandfather (how strange!) made him quake with derisive anger.
“You know nothing!” Chad said incredulously pointing a finger threateningly close to Mortimer’s face, and this thought just rushed to me that he shouldn’t put his finger so close to Mortimer’s mouth Mortimer might bite it off.
“And I know what you are,” Mortimer said calmly in his adorable accent. Then he looked at me and his look made me bite my lip and look down and away while I twirled my hair and blushed and tried not to giggle, and felt really stupid.
“And I know what you are!” Chad yelled. “You’re an English Fag!” Chad then stormed off in his usual fast paced strut and pounded a few lockers with his fists down the hall; just like a lug-head brawny jock villain who had just been one-upped by the class cool wise-guy would in some 1980’s teen movie. He left me alone with Mortimer. My heart raced.
“Sorry,” I whispered, looking at my shoes. Mortimer didn’t say anything so I had to look up to see if he was still there, and I did so and was surprised that he actually was still there. I sort of expected him to have mysteriously disappeared as suddenly and quickly as he had appeared. But he was defiantly still there. Looking at me. And oh my gosh, then he gave me that creepy beautiful wicked wry grin he does. And my heart thumped and I felt like I’d pee my pants. “Um… are y-y,” I gulped hard. “A-a-are you, g-g-gay,” I said softly and stuttering, and I can literally not recall one time before I have ever stuttered.
“No,” Mortimer said.
I felt instantly stupid for asking that question. But I also felt relieved and glad I asked it. But I also realized I really didn’t need to ask it, because somehow I already knew he wasn’t; maybe by the way he looked at me, wanting.
“Th-the Arctic Monkey’s are playing in Portland next month,” I blurted out, awkward like the bumper falling off a clunker car.
“Oh?” Mortimer said.
“I’ve heard they’re really huge in England.”
“Yes, so have I.”
“I like their We are all vampires so let’s dance song.”
“The actual title is, Perhaps vampires is a bit strong but…”
“Oh yeah,” I said softly and blushed and looked down and when I looked up he was gone, so I’d have to save my I also like Vampire Weekend comment for some other time.

Tags: author, books, disney celebrites, literature, Lulu, novels, poems, romance, short stories, tragedy, vampire romance, young adult
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Excerpts from “Elle & The Ghost Author and short stories and poems

December 5, 2009

SCROLL DOWN FOR EXCERPTS OF OTHER NOVELS

ELLE AND THE GHOST WRITER AND SHORT STORIES AND POEMS

ELLE AND THE GHOST WRITER

Cameron Glenn

Chapter One

A few months after her mother’s funeral, Elle went up to explore the attic. She had never been in that space above their new house before. She had only been vaguely aware it even existed. She had recently read a novel about house fairies living in attics, which had made her curious. In the garage she pulled the string that brought down a folding ladder, leading up to a rectangular entry way in the ceiling. She climbed it then pulled another string clicking on a single light bulb. She crawled in, stood up, her head not far from touching the wood beams, the reverse side of the roof. She tepidly walked farther in, wondering if there were things ahead she’d fear: spiders, bats, ghosts hiding among the storage bins of Halloween and Christmas decorations, or whatever else her father threw up there, or had been left by the previous owner. She considered some type of parallel between a hidden room above her house, to the hidden place where her mothers spirit went, as if an attic was more then just a space, but a symbol or metaphor for an unseen world. Perhaps subconsciously she had been compelled to venture to the attic in order to explore this symbolism, and connect with her dead mother; discover some heirloom of hers, perhaps a necklace passed down familial generations. She only considered this possibility once in the attic, and quickly discounted it as over romanticized wishful thinking.
Elle found and then opened a plastic bin she found. Inside were spiral notebooks and binders. She picked a gold colored spiral notebook from the bin and she coughed from the dust and musty order. She saw her fingerprint smeared on the dust over the cover of the notebook she held. She opened it, discovering the pages full of writings in handwriting not her mothers or fathers; handwriting messy in its quickness, by a hand pressing the pen into the paper with force. She thought it’d be a struggle to read, but glancing over it, instantly realized it was easily readable to her—she felt as if she’s been given the gift of deciphering it—she could read it, probably most wouldn’t be able too. How strange, she thought.
Unseen to her then came Nathan, the author of the notebooks, the spirit of a young man, lost and confused in his death. He looked at Elle and thought her beautiful. The line of light freckles across her nose and cheeks, her thick brown hair, bangs cut just over her green eyes, looking at his notebook, held by her small hands.
What are these, Elle whispered out loud to herself. Everything in me I tried to express, he said back to her out loud, although she couldn’t hear him.
Being somewhat sometimes presumptuous while alive, he had wanted to think of his writings not as lyrical or narrative poems, or journal musings, but rather as songs. He wished to create with words the stirring colors, moods, movements that rhythms, beats and melodies infuse in people. The winds powering the music listeners daydream sails to pleasant places, the tools which enhanced their current feelings and moods and life; cause the want to dance, smile, connect with instinctive primal senses, appeal to there senses over intellect. Cause catharsis. Cause power and healing. Be powerful, like water rushing to the ebbs of a waterfall. He wanted his writings to be like that, have the same effect as music has on people. However all his novel attempts were failures. Some crashed into tangled disasters, becoming an un careful gut gushing outpouring of unedited thoughts, feelings, randomness, disconnected from whatever character and story he had tried to framework. Sloppy language and metaphors only making sense to him the moment he wrote of them, for himself, within himself; thick extended rampant nonsense, too much of it, overflowing into mindless pulp and bulk, when taken as a whole; a lot of words, without much details, a lot of adjectives, without specifics, not having much of a life of his own to drawn on, for examples to illustrate specifics or ignite inspiration. But in parts, sometimes some of his writings weren’t so bad, depending on the mood and taste of whoever would read it.
Being a self-critical dreamer with a low self-esteem he mostly thought of himself as a failure, at life and writing. He realized the daunting nonsense and ridiculousness of trying to write songs without music; of trying to be a great writer. It is a pompous notion. Words are only dormant, unlike songs. He’d rather be a musician. He wished he could have been. But he didn’t have the talent or work ethic or belief in himself to make that happen. So he wrote instead. A lot. In addition to his failed novels, he wrote free-write abstractions, poems, short stories, screenplays, journal entries. He didn’t get much better or worse, the more he wrote, or the older he got; the papers’ piling higher, en mass.
He wanted to somehow use writing as a way of making himself better than he was. Create something impressive, and so, he hoped, become a more impressive person himself, rather than just another faceless number among the worlds overwhelming populations, worth nothing. By his early death, his writings, whatever merit or mess of them, were all he had to validate his life and himself, so he thought; thinking he had poured his soul into them. However, nothing had come from his writings. They had brought nothing to him or the world and so were as insignificant, wasteful and useless as he was, and as he is now; just decaying storage space. So he thought.

But now, here she was. This beautiful young girl holding him. Or his notebook. The gold covered one. Will she read it? Will she like it? Or hate it. Or not read it. Just a waste of time. Whoever she is. So beautiful. She’s probably busy, he thought. All the beautiful girls are. It’s part of what makes them so beautiful. How busy they are, entangled in the beauty around them, which they create, and are, and live in and among, in their lives, making the world brighter, worth fighting for and so therefore meaningful; without meaning life isn’t worth living. They, girls like her, make a positive difference. Inspire others, make others smile, charming them, as they continue in their progressive, fascinating work, flying through the days full of freshness, new activities, friends, endeavors, constant actions, constantly active. Such brightness follows them, circles around them, radiates from them.
Maybe she’ll find it of worth to look at. He wanted her too. She reminded him of someone he had loved. Someone who had brought him happiness in life. Or maybe it was her who he loved, instantly, at first sight. He thought that possible.
It’s said that reading takes one to other worlds. Elle’s father told her to stay in this world. It’s dangerous to want to escape the world so much, though movies or fantasy or daydreams or novels. Go out, make friends, play, make your own stories, discover and build and live your own life, rather than hide and dwell and escape in others lives, in made up stories, or reality as perceived through gossip magazines, simultaneously mocking and worshiping celebrities. We love them we hate them, we want to be them, we envy them. It’s unhealthy to read as much as you do, he told her; an opinion formed through observation of her. Before, he had fallen in line with the modern notion of reading as being rewarding, mind stimulating, and soul nourishing, as advertised in the posters hung in schools and libraries, encouraging kids to read. The Teddy Bears in the hot air balloons, letting the breeze carry then to some new height, to a new world. Maybe so, but we live down in this world. And Teddy Bears can’t read anyways. And imagination is maybe overrated, causing just as many problems as solutions, he thought.
In Victorian times, society discouraged reading, especially for whom they labeled “impressionable young women.” The basis for this thinking being that it installs in them over-romanticized and false notions and hopes, concerning life expectations and romance and marriage. He had considered this obvious sexism. But maybe there was an amount of truth to it, and maybe it’s not so different today. An aspect of growing up is learning to accept reality, while weeding out the dreams of fantasy, and like anything taken in bulk, rather than moderation, reading diluted and delayed this natural process and life progression.
He had been encouraged by Elle’s early voracious reading habits. He had thought it made her smarter than her peers, who didn’t have the patience or stamina to delve into literature. There lives are instead abuzz with the flashy and instant distractions and disruptions of the technology of modern multi-tasking culture; everything looked at and touched is electronically illuminated and audio enhanced, from cell phones, computers, social sites, television, video-games.
But then he came to think of this perspective of reading being valuable as old fashioned, as he noticed Elle increasingly shelter herself in her room and read, rather than go to birthday parties, sleepovers, or activities with friends, the way normal healthy children do. Her devotion to reading isolated her; caused her a type of enslavement. She had once been a sunny enthusiastic happy child, much like her younger sister, Rhodes. But, as Elle grew farther in her adolescence, he saw her harden with sullenness, becoming increasingly inward. She had always been somewhat shy in groups, but never quite so sad seeming, or slow moving. She had shown signs of athletic ability as a kid, participating in sports, in an earlier era. She had enjoyed Disneyland so much as a kid. If he took there now, with Rhodes, he wouldn’t doubt if she’d prefer to just stay in her hotel room all day, away from the happiness and the sun and activity outside, just sulking and reading, traveling deeper into the imaginations of her mind. She doesn’t laugh much anymore. She used to have a laugh almost as sweet and light as Rhodes. This transition begun before her mothers death, but he feared her mothers death would exacerbate her miserable decline, thus plunging her further into the abyss of inner life-escape, from which she could not emerge out, causing her to be unprepared for the responsibilities of the realities of independent adult life. She lost her childhood spark, which had brightened his days. Rhodes had taken up that mantle.
“Make friends” he’d tell Elle, and she’d answer, books are my friends. And this pained him because books can’t be friends. It’s sad she no longer had friends. He knew one can’t be truly happy without friends. It’s not right to live in fear of others. One can’t really live at all, that way. He told her books aren’t friends, they’re objects. She told him my imagination is my friend; he answered if she really believes that she might literally be insane, a borderline schizophrenic. You’re too old for imaginary friends. She wanted to burst into tears, from her father calling her insane. From the possibility of him being right. This argument happened not long after her mothers death from brain cancer, but before the move to their new house, in a neighboring neighborhood. Elle told her father, maybe that’s true, and she ran from him, slammed her bedroom door, and burst into tears on her pillow on her bed. Her books on the floor and one on her bed.
Elle stood in the attic, holding the newfound notebook. She flipped through it, stopping on a random page. What a strange discovery. She decided to read was in front of her. The ghost, standing close by her, looked at her intently. She read from his notebook:

Everything in a dot. Smaller than a period. Smaller than an atom, unfathomable to consider. In a instant from this speck boomed out our universe—everything. A explosion reaction faster than sound, faster than heat and radiation and space, faster then light, light created after the explosion, the birth and huge expanse of this spec, now unfathomable in its limitless reaching. And from this event formed all that would become, all there is and us and all we are and all we know of and taste and see and feel and believe in, imagine, myths, science, history, friends, family, land, dances, songs, pages, spirits, sports, stories—all we love and hate and know of. Everything. All. Our sun, its warmth and our earth, us on earth, the earth turning, causing the nights, days, tides, seasons, hotness, coldness. Our moon, the suns light bouncing off its orb body reflecting to us all, and in splinters, waxing, waning, as we turn, on this earth, its tides, cycles, as we take our turns, at the time passing, time as our inventions, and understandings, fractions in billions years and endless times.
And what does any of that matter except it brought us here now. On the beach and you’re laying out, the sun on you and I peek over where you’re at, think of peering over mountains into valleys and tumbling over cliffs and hoping for safety and beauty below what I’d fall in and be caught by. A spec of sand is on my finger, and I think of the spec as the Universe once was, smaller than this sand grain I want to place on your lip and have you not notice, as I’d stare at it, until you wipe it away, not knowing it were even there. And as you wiped it away did it tear some skin from your lip away? I’d like to kiss you and find out.
And I wish I could write everything, all my loves and hates and thoughts and emotions and what I marvel at-you—and how I marvel, nature, how I want, beauty and breaths and flights and paradise—your pleasures, and have all that everything be the speck of a period dot—everything in it, all potential in its infinitesimal size. But I’ll never have that skill.
And I’d take your book away, it’s a teen romance with vampires, and I’d place this sand grain on my finer on your lip, and you’ll think me strange, wondering why and what I’m doing—feeling my finger, not the sand grain on it. Then you wipe your lips, smeared with lip gloss, with the back of your hand, and the grain of sand is gone, lost, there are more planets in the universe then there are grains of sand on all the earths beaches and deserts. Think of that.
But don’t it doesn’t matter, you wiping the sand off your lips tells it, the universe and my lack of skill to express everything don’t matter, wipe them away. There’s just you. And your clean unfiltered lips. And you giving me that quizzical expression which makes me laugh. And me. And life. Wondering, what can become in an instant. What can form from an instant kiss. Everything, all.

Elle falsely assumed that because she couldn’t very well make out the meaning of what she had read, it meant that the writing was elevated above her, and so something to admire. The mystery of the notebook, and the other notebooks and binders in the plastic bin, also intrigued her, making them, in her mind, more special discoveries than they actually were. Although she couldn’t immediately decipher much logic from the handwritten words, they brought moods, impressions, and reverie’s to her.
She thought this effect similar to how song lyrics can be stale and confusing while flat on paper, but once given their power, when sung, put in melody and rhythm, can cause emotional response, and personal thoughts and feelings perhaps unrelated to the authors own intention and interpretation of the words. Maybe that’s why Mr. Todd, her old English teacher before the move, had played classical music while reading poetry, during the section on poetry. Then he’d read the same poem to the accompaniment of a fierce fast and thumping song, and then to a pop ballad, or smooth slow R&B jam. He’d make the class write their impressions of the poem during each separate song. He did have some good lessons. Despite everything he had done to her.
Elle turned to another random spot in the center of another random page, and found the start of a sentence and read:

You should have been there—I wanted you to be, I needed it—the brick wall and mirror and stereo and the full of people here—there and only you I wanted, to take me, lead me away, be amazing, your regular amazing you. The sink, the splash, the mirror, and only me alone.
Rise up like steams in hot baths and smear condensation away on our bodies. Take control of the puddles trying to fall, hold me I’m slipping melting fast in this. Hold me I’m solid and will not sink. Rise up like sparks from fire outside at night—they rise and cool to ash in place, twinkle like stars held up there as long as you look at them. Keep this breath. Just breath. That is enough to rise you up.

She re-read it. It made no logical sense. Was nonsense. But the mood and impression it gave her was of an advanced romance she didn’t know of, or of a longing to cure or be cured or be great. This person, or idea, he writes to, or of, is great and will rise—whatever that means; become greater, better, do greater, better things, simply because it breaths. And so is alive. She thought this abstract sentiment beautiful. Or the impression it gave her was one of beauty, despite the ambiguity, vagueness, and illogic of it.
As she read, the ghost placed his hand on her cheek, letting the cup shape of palm and fingers fit the form of the slope of her cheek to chin, touching her, if he still had the flesh to do so. He gently caressed the shape of her cheek to chin to neck to shoulder, all delicate, done delicately. Looking at her beauty as she read. Wanting to love somebody, as in life love for him were only daydreams he’d write of. She got chills as he carefully caressed the shape made form the top of her head to her shoulder, his hand as close to touch without touch. She got goose-bumps, she thought, from the writing, but more so from the literal effects of his ghost so near, his ghost fingers so near her, wanting to press her.
This is for me, she thought. This is for you, he said. He thought of angles and music and happiness and lava and blood.

SHORT STORIES & POEMS

A BLIP ON THE MACHINE AND OTHER
SHORT STORIES FROM 2001.

GLORIA NEXT DOOR

The Olympics make me think about Gloria. Eight swimming world records have already been broken. USA got gold and silver in the men’s and women’s 400 meter medley. I belt out the national anthem. I hope Gloria next door can hear me.
The American woman’s gymnastics team enters and the cheers from my TV sound close. They stumble through their routines. The home team, Australia, is worse though. They crash into the vault like cars hitting a wall. They flip and land on their hands, knees, butts, faces. This is what they gave their life for? Then the Russians enter and own the place. Khorkina, Zamololdtchikova, Lobokiva—there’s elitism in their walk and eyes. I wonder what right they have to be proud with their country a mess. They smile after their floor exercises—I’m watching art. How ice sculptures look cold and warm, that’s how they are; precise, mind blowing, graceful, powerful. That’s how Gloria is too, although I haven’t used “precise” before in describing her. She’s as a leaf or feather, or some other soft thing, in a breeze, comfortable among chaos. She’s playful like water balloons. Now she’s precise like Russian gymnasts also. I apply their strong determined beauty on her and it fits. I’m always rediscovering her. It’s one reason why she’ll never leave.
The first conversation I had with Gloria involved gymnastics. The third day after I moved to Cleveland, I found her in my apartment. The city was new to me. I didn’t know why I’d picked Cleveland to live until I saw her. I had come home from a job interview at Wendy’s when I opened my door. Looking back it was quite symbolic. I opened my door and there she was, the answer, the sun; I’ll use that comparison without fear of being too dramatic or poetic. My personal journal, papers, and pictures were scattered around her. She held my flattened Wheaties box, the one which featured the 96 gold medal gymnasts from the Atlanta games four years ago, the “Magnificent Seven.” Gloria made the spot on the rug she sat on look warm and comfortable, as if cats and kittens had circled and snuggled in the area. She’s cats and kittens, dogs and puppies, I’ll think while chuckling.
“I always wanted to be Nadia Comaneci when I was a kid,” she said. “But this body in those little leotards would give me an unfair advantage, ya think?”
I said nothing. I was and still am and always will ne such a stunned fool around her.
“Don’t stare, I’m your neighbor across the hall, room seventeen. It’s a dump here, just like the name suggests, “Pond Water Apartments.” More like pond scum, right? But it has its charms, it has atmosphere, old and quaint, it’s like a moody painting. The world is what you make of it, if you don’t mind me speaking in clichés.
“I’m Scott.”
I know. You just graduated from Georgia and you don’t know why the hell you came out here, majored in psychology, and you sometimes question your own sanity.”
She stood up and I got a good look at her figure. She wore a tight white T-shirt. Her breasts were like two round and heavy helium and water filled balloons. I get strange when thinking of them, let alone trying to describe them. Her face is what I would rather stare at though. It’s a face from a fashion magazine, but cuter.
She picked up a picture of my family. “Your little sister is adorable.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I think it’s cute you believe in god. I think that’s nice. No, I’m not a psychic. I read part of your journal. It’s cute you keep one. I used to keep one. It was pink. I hope you don’t mind. It saves time with small talk and get to know you games. I hate all that stuff. I’d rather just get right to it, you know? Oh, and don’t worry, I think if you don’t occasionally question your sanity you’re not sane.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I was bored and your door was open. You really should lock it. Not everyone is as friendly as I am.”
“No,” I said.
“Well I’ve got to go,” she said, then slapped my shoulder as if we were old chums.
“Bye,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to be gentlemanly and kiss my hand before I leave?”
“Um.”
She laughed then kissed my cheek, as I stood feeling as if a statue carved from wood. “You’re sweet. I’ll see you around. I’ll show you the town sometime.”
“Okay.”
“Does your religion keep you from drinking?”
“Sometimes.”
“We’ll see,” she said, flashed her smile at me, giggled her sweet natural girly giggle, winked at me and left, into her room across the hall, and I felt as if I were in a movie, and I wished I were, so the world could see how this stunning girl just kissed my cheek.

“USA! USA! USA!” I chant. My french-fry spins and flips and doesn’t hop on its landing inside the barbecue sauce on the arm of my broken Laz-E-boy recliner—a perfect ten. McDonalds has an instant win game coinciding with the Olympics. I can win a million dollars. Then I’d take Gloria to Brazil where she’d wear a thong on the beach and a white dress at night, for dancing. She wouldn’t need any of her old boyfriends.
I hear her coming home. I’d sung the national anthem to an empty hall. Friends are with her and they make happy loud noises which seem to mock me, making me feel pathetic. Strobe lights, popping bulbs, flying Champaign corks, confetti all dazzle her weekend nights. Door seventeen shuts and music blares. Sydney, the Olympic host city, is no longer the most exciting place on earth right now; the best party is across the hall, but it may as well be in Australia. Another french-fry another perfect ten.
I’m proud America’s winning the Olympics. That’s such an arrogant American thing to think. I don’t care, I’m an arrogant American, and I’m showing the world my superiority, trying to sleep on my Laz-E-boy. Gloria keeps me awake. I hear her. She’s like caffeine inside me. I think of kissing her. It doesn’t matter if what I hear is imagined or real. It makes me smile. I feel like I’m on a podium. Her lips blow on my face. I stare at her eyes, framed by her mascara; I stare at them like staring at Van Gough’s Starry Night. Her eyes are blue and green. She’s always hanging new apparel in my mind—she owns a closet there.
I fight to own my thoughts. I’m alone without a pet. But there’s a new attachment on or in me that I fight to control and sometimes have to clean up after. It’s because of Gloria. I imagine myself as a fourteen year old gymnast—Dominique Mocumecue, in order to distract myself. I’m wearing a golden leotard which is dark blue over the arms and shoulders, and the rest is gold. Diamonds are woven in. I’m piling on the tens as easy as giving high fives, as easy as I could make my french-fry tumble through the air. The other gymnasts gasp at what I’m doing. I imagine Gloria in the golden leotard. She has a look on her where laughter vibrates around her and she’s about to call me ridiculous. It’s the same look she gives me when she’s about to launch a cherry from her mouth at me. I imagine she is the french-fry, she’s Nadia, flipping and spinning through the air—golden, hot, wet with sauce. She likes it in my mouth. She falls. She cries the same way she did when telling me about her dad, who drunk too much. I hold her and she is safe.
I hear a man in her room. They’re playing the latest Lenny Kravitz song: I wonder when I’ll see you again the muffled song says. I hear their voices. Gloria is giggling. The man is maybe tickling her. The beats become bold, instant, and vibrate around her. She and the man share the music and I hear the leftovers. I pretend I am the man. The barbecue sauce spills on the rug. I fall asleep.
I see Gloria. She’s my Vice Presidential running mate. She wears a navy blue blazer and skirt. We’re in the oval office. She puts her reading glasses on the desk. Her hair is slicked back in a pony tail and is shinny as a polished marble floor. She reveals her voluptuousness, her bust bulges around her black bra. I lean in her, delighting in our victory. She’s soft like dense liquid. Her bones press on me through her warm skin in the cold room. Her skin illuminates from her inside glow. You’re wonderful, Mrs. Vice-President. Yellow and blue canaries flutter around us. It’s the best night of my life.
I wake up. There’s a rustling in my McDonalds bag on the ground—roach, rat, draft or my imagination. I smile although it disgusts me. It’s 9:00am and I’m late for work. I spray mountain snow potpourri on my Ralph Lauren shirt before putting it on. I fill the glass blue bowl in the kitchen with cherries for Gloria. I have time to do this, but not time for a shower, which I desperately need. I hold and rub a cherry. It warms in my hand. Its plush curves are Gloria’s. It’s ripe and healthy. I think of conversations we’ve had around this bowl. She likes to suck on cherries and spit the seeds at me while I say nice things about her. Seeing her is like listening to music—she transports me—escapism, giddy, moving music by Moby, Blur, U2, Radiohead, Pixies, Duran Duran, the Go-go’s, echo and swirl from her. She’s a bright star. She likes making cute faces at me. She makes me feel like I’m in a movie. She tells me of her parties and friends and of the nooks she’s recently read: A movable feast by Hemmingway, and how she wants to host a travel show for The Travel Network. She tells me fascinating stories from her life. She lets me sate at her while she tries to tie cherry stems into knots with her tongue, which she’s never done yet. She says I’m her cherry provider, and she finds serenity in my quietness; I’m peaceful like water, and her life is so hectic she needs a little peace. She thought I was gay because I never brought women over, was skinny and neat, and liked gymnastics. I told her if I were Gay she would have changed me, then she laughed and spit a cherry pit at me.
I walk out the door. Gloria sits on the steps in the closed stairwell. The stairs are barely wide enough for me to pass. I nudge the back of her arm with my knee. Her thin gray jacket clings to her wet skin; her brown hair is wet and rippled. She pulls her ash gray socks up tight over her calves. Her platform shoes lay on the step below. The light through the window reveals the sensual shapes and impressions of her jowl, neck, collarbone and upper breast. She hasn’t zipped her jacket up all the way and isn’t wearing a T-shirt. Her white skirt looks like silk napkins had been dropped on her lap. She’s rushed yet placid, not stressed. She tilts her head up at me and smiles. This moment could sustain a Henry James novel. Sometimes she makes me feel like I’m in something more significant than a movie, something more artful and special. She stands and bounces down the concrete stairs, holding her shoes. A taxi takes her.
At the survey center I call people and ask them questions. A supervisor younger than me orders me to complete a survey by the end of the hour. I tell him making people answer their phones when they don’t want to is a magic I don’t have. I read off a blue computer screen and wonder who is more tortured, me or the people I’m calling. Have you heard of Oakstone? (No) have you ever had an account with Oakstone? (I said I haven’t heard of them) please rate them from one to five (I don’t know) your best guess is fine (seven) does the gumball machine at Blockbuster make you want to buy more video’s? How about rent more videos.
Most people don’t want to talk to me. Most of the time I hear ringing, fax machines, and the most polite voice of the night telling me the number you have dialed is not in service. If you feel you have dialed this number in error please hang up and try your call again. I write nice sentences about Gloria on scratch paper. I buy her a red BMW from the McDonalds instant win money. We fly to Italy and Paris. I write her a song. Her eyes are like a Caribbean sea, bright on the surface, yet deep enough to immerse and drown. They’re full of stars, soft like a child’s strong like a Russian gymnasts.
“Have you ever read Tess of D’Uberville? She asked me two weeks ago.
I had after I learned it was one of her favorite books.
“Do you think she’s pure?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Even though she murders.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it was the only way she could be with Angel. The man took her purity away and she took it back by killing him.”
“I think so too,” Gloria said. “She’s pure without religion, without laws.”
“The law catches up to her.”
“But not after a few glorious days,” she said. “Stop me if I’m being blasphemous.”
“No, not at all.”
She spit a cherry pit at me. “I think children are like Tess. They do horrible things but are guiltless anyway. I used to think kids are like anchors or something, you know, tying you down. Now I’m not so sure. I might even want some someday.”
“I think you’d be great with children.”
“Not now I wouldn’t,” she said, spitting another seed at me. “I’m irresponsible, wild, like that Bjork song says, about not knowing her future after the weekend and not wanting to.
Gloria then sung me that lyric, even putting in the grunt where the comma goes.
“But maybe I can rebel from my rebellion some day, you know Scott? Be a responsible mother. Do real good to the world.”
I just smiled at her. So proud of her. Imagining her to be the best mother. Imagining I could be her children’s father. I’d work so hard for them. For her.
“You know,” she said, “I tell you things I tell no one. As a kid I used to tell secrets and stuff to an oak tree in the backyard. You know, stuff my dad would do. You’re like my oak tree Scott.”
I have a pretty healthy branch I thought but didn’t say. I didn’t want to ruin her image of me. I’m sure she gets enough humorous vulgarity from her other boyfriends. I’ll be whatever she wants me to be. It’s only fair.

Two days after the U.S. gymnasts made their debut in Sydney, they won fourth place in the team competition. I’m proud of them. China took third place and in China they rob children and take them to gymnastics concentration camps, and how can they U.S. compete with that? Romania took gold and Russia surprised me by only taking silver. I wonder what they’ll show next. I hope it’s woman’s water polo or volleyball.
There’s a knock on my door. I open it and wonder why Gloria just didn’t come in the way she always does, without knocking. She’s wearing the sweater I love, the one with the pink, blue, yellow stripes. Still, nothing manages to look baggy on her; nothing is able to hide her killer body. She’s looking at the floor. She comes in and sits on the couch and doesn’t make eye contact with me. She tucks her hands in her sleeves—I love how she does this. Her hair is wet but she’s done a better job of drying herself the last time I caught her just out of the shower, on the steps. I walk to the fridge and come back with two cans of Dr. Pepper. She places hers on the coffee table. She’s adorable.
“I want to tell you something,” she says.
“Okay.”
“This isn’t easy,” she says, rubbing her forearms together, glancing up and down at my eyes. Her skin is soft and glowing. She seems to shiver inside her sweater. I want to warm her. It’s as if she brought the coldness of outside in with her and we’re both feeling it now. I try to hide my shivers.
“I’ve never seen you worried,” I say, pretending to be Carry Grant.
“I know, I shouldn’t ne, or I’m not, but I just wanted to… needed to… tell you something… before I leave.”
“You’ve got another party to get to?”
“Yes. In Miami. For awhile.”
“Oh,” I say. Suddenly Cleveland is the coldest place on earth and Miami the warmest. I want an excuse to go to Miami. A job transfer. “What’s going on there?” I ask. I suddenly realize I don’t know much about her at all. Yet I want to cry, from the thought of her no longer living next door.
She takes a deep breath, staring at the ground. She closes her eyes. She reminds me of someone trying to muster enough courage to do something brave, such as jump off a cliff.
“I don’t know why I want to tell you this… only like, I guess I should? I want you to forgive me.”
“Of course,” I say; she always stuns me, and this time I’m stunned by the humorous and absurd thought that she’s done anything to me she needs to ask forgiveness for.
“Yeah,” she says. “I took sex for money. A few times.” She takes a deep breath again, and looks away from me, and she closes her eyes and tightens her mouth. I’ve never seen her cry before, like she now is, softly, like water dripping off ice. I don’t say anything and neither does she. We’re silent. I want to warm her, hug her. I think about heaven for the first time in awhile, as something beyond abstraction, but reality. I know some of my thoughts on her would not allow me to go to heaven. Her beauty is so powerful. I see her beauty, and it shakes me and makes me want to warm her and dig into her and discover. I imagine her with children, my children, and we’re together for eternity, in heaven. I imagine her slowly taking off her bra, turning her exposed back to me, and turning around and walking toward me.
“I had to tell you,” she says. “I wanted you to know, I want you to forgive me.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong.”
I have a check in my pocket from work—almost five hundred dollars. I want to repay her, this moment, all moments with her have been better than a movie, better than heaven. I walk to her. She comes in my arms, leans in my chest. I want to be good, to be her oak tree, to control my thoughts. Think of purity and heaven. But heaven is too far away, too abstract, and Gloria is here with me now, soon to leave, and nothing can feel better or be better than her anyway. I let my thoughts roam where they want to go. Gloria’s breasts are on me, her hair is wet and smells like strawberries and blood rushes in me. She has to leave now nut I don’t want her to.
Her lip quivers and I want to bite it. I want to dig in her. I want to quiver and be gentle and take time to enjoy this little spot here on your collarbone, and your ear lobe, and slide my hand along this slope down here Gloria, and right under your arm Gloria, and follow your arm down to your other leg and see what happens next with our lips on each other, and oh hell stop me.
I reach in my pocket. She must feel my tenseness. I put the chick in her hand and wonder what will happen next. She steps back and looks at it and sees my tenseness, my stiffness, my desire. She looks disappointed and suddenly a quit sorrow comes on her. I think I know her thoughts. She’s thinking why do I have to be like all the others, she thought I was different. She’s wondering if she’ll always and only meet disappointments’ in others. She drops the check and turns and walks away. I want to cry.
I turn on the TV and watch women’s volleyball. It calms me. I’m beginning to regain control over myself and realize how stupid I am. I pick up the check and I want to have the guts to rip it up; that would be the only right thing to do, but I need the money. I want to cry, I think from guilt this time, the beauty and paradise of heaven once so assured to me drifting further away, its attainability gone as with the sunset; I am such a horrible person, yet still, I have to admit, I can’t fully regret all the ways I had thought of her, the dreams and desires. I wonder if there really is a hell. During commercial I go to the sink and splash water on my face. The USA volleyball team wins. They jump in their celebratory excitements. I hope Gloria doesn’t stay a whore. She’s too good for that.

When Gloria left the confetti became the bits of paper, the litter, they always had been; the party over. She’s gone now, mysterious, like the universe. My new neighbor is Pedro. He’s from Guatemala. His wife used to be a Latin model from Argentina. He showed me pictures of her and she’s hot. Or she used to be before her accident. She rubbed alcohol on her face before a shower, because in places where the Virgin Marry appears in taco shells, alcohol in your pours helps with beauty apparently. Don’t light a cigarette afterwards though, like Pedro’s wife did.
When Pedro told me he left her after her accident, my instinct was to boo him as if an audience member on “Oprah.” He told me how he cried next to her hospital bed for days, some for her, some for himself. She was used to stares because of her beauty, now she’ll be stared at because she’s a monster with a melted face. He told me he wanted to do the right thing, by Mr. Romantico Guapo. Like Jimmy Stewart, I said, and he nodded his head, although I doubt he knew who Jimmy Stewart was. I told him he would have to be a superhero, some romantic Zorro, to have stayed with her, and these types don’t exist outside of comic books, romance novels, and chick flicks, and real life isn’t like a movie and we can’t be expected to behave like romantic leads.
He told me he had loved her more than life, and it wasn’t fair. He cried at his weakness. It would have been better if she would have died, he told me. I’m not in an Oprah audience and so I didn’t boo him and I wasn’t even surprised at what he said. I think I even understood him a little. Her memory would remain sacred if she had died, he told me, and he wouldn’t have to feel guilty and he could carry her picture with him, adoring her angelic virtues, for surly she would have gone straight through St. Peters gate, she was such a good wife and loving person, and so beautiful, a statue couldn’t be made to represent her beauty; she’s like broken art now. I told Pedro I understood, and he could stop telling me.
“You wanted her to be like Snow White in the glass coffin, beautiful and tragic forever.”
He shook his head, but I doubt he knew what I was talking about. He then tried describing her beauty to me, although he already showed me her picture, but frankly, I was tired of it. He can’t tell stories or give descriptions the way Gloria could. He had no animation, timing, or humor, the way she did, and his subjects are way more grotesque. Gloria only told exciting stories. It was cute the way she’d try and censor herself for my Christian ears.
I had to help Pedro with his descriptions because he wouldn’t stop until he was sure I understood how pretty she was, and the way she is now. “It’s like lava from a volcano in Hawaii,” I said, “that I aw on the Discovery channel. It oozed slowly, covering grass, palm trees, rich homes. When it dried it was like black burnt cookie dough, black syrup, or heavy chunky tar, covering a paradise. You can’t live there anymore.” Pedro nodded his head.
I should like Pedro. He’s friendly, chatty, outgoing, humorous. But I hate him. He lives where Gloria used to live and her perfume still sometimes carries over from her old room into mine. I hate him because I thought of Gloria one time and Pedro’s story of his wife then came to me, and the brightness of Gloria shouldn’t be mixed with Pedro’s ugly story. I hate that I’m not the guy who gets to sit and stare at Gloria and receive her undiluted, pure, in concentrate before him. I hate not knowing what she’s doing right now. I’m jealous of the mystery man who will come and make her happy and give her all the children she some day wants. When I think of nature I think of Gloria. When it rains she’s there making me wet and the pureness and joy is unmistakably hers. I thank her for it. I, like everyone, am like a plant reaching for sunlight, when it comes to beauty. I found the ideal in her and I hate myself for not enjoying it more when I had it. Now Pond Water apartments are void of charm, void of art, ever since she left and Pedro moved in, and it kills me that I’m using their names in the same sentence.
I bought Van Gough’s Starry Night and hung it in my kitchen. Pedro comes over to watch some NBA basketball on TNT. He tells me it’s not as good as soccer. I don’t want him here. He walks into my kitchen and I forget about him. I’m sitting in my recliner enjoying the game. It isn’t until the fourth quarter until I remember Pedro hasn’t left my kitchen. I walk in and see Pedro staring at the Van Gough painting, eating the cherries I put in the bowl for Gloria.

THE SHOW OFF

Amy’s skinny arms pressed her textbooks tight against her shirt as she walked down the hall. She sat down in the last row, glancing at the empty seats in front of her, before opening her chemistry book to re-read chapter 13. She wasn’t normal, or was too normal, blending in, either way her peers made fun of her.
She didn’t listen to the music the cliques listened to (N.E.R.D were popular) and didn’t drive down the street hanging out at Dairy Queen, or the malls or go to dances or road trips of belong to clubs or have boyfriends or friends at all. She was inward and quiet with small tight lips and heavy eyelids, while her peers seemed to open and scream loudly from all their orifices. That which made her an outcast, was that she didn’t belong—a catch 22. Even her fellow flute players in band didn’t talk to her. Lucy, the burned girl, had more friends and acceptance than Amy did.
Gradually the uncomfortable loudness in the halls trickled into the classroom as her nose lowered to the page, as if trying to get high off the binding glue in her textbook. She concentrated on the space between the dot and line of the “I” in the world “isotope.” A wadded paper hit her on her forehead. She didn’t open it to read whatever note or drawing littered it. She pretended the subsequent laughter had nothing to do with her. She hated how Mr. Smith, the chemistry teacher, always came late and didn’t care about discipline, wanting to be the “cool,” teacher, and sometimes swore to prove it.
Lucy, the burned girl, was Amy’s lab partner. They didn’t talk to each other except to discuss the directions on the work sheet: two teaspoons of sodium, observe what happens when you stir and let sit for a minuet. Amy stirred and Lucy poured and the H20 turned blue. Mock oohhs and ahhhs came from the other lab stations.
“Don’t piss yourself with overstimulation,” Mr. Smith said.
Someone turned on the radio. The teenagers talked loudly over the music. A cartoonist drew on the chalkboard. Mr. Smith talked to some girls about the Dave Mathews Band concert last week.
Amy looked over Lucy’s shoulder and saw what looked like a love letter Lucy wrote. Dear Paul it read in loopy script. I’ve been wanting to… ever since… you just… my heart… love is… I just…
No don’t Amy thought, already embarrassed for Lucy. Lucy tried to act normal, as if she had full lips and eyelids, lush heavy hair and long fingers. She put nail polish at the tips of her stubs and wore hip-hop wool hats and “Skittle” colored bright cloths. Lucy tried out for the cheerleading squad and that week, Amy noticed, everyone pretended she had a chance. Lucy’s peers showed how mature they all were by being decent to her, the local charity, letting Lucy pretend, if she wanted, that she could get a boyfriend some day, and that the popular girls smiled at her because of her great personality, and not for pity or charity.
Amy pretended to be in a music video when she walked down the halls—she was the beautiful singer, walking in slow motion, looking into the camera with tender emotion, while the others in the background attended to their busy hyper activities in happy oblivion, like ants on a sugar mound, unaware of any larger creature looking down at them and their insignificance. Amy walked in her heavy invisibility, hugging her notebooks tight against her flat chest and glanced up from the floor and saw Lucy slip her love note into Paul’s locker. Amy cringed.
Once at home, Amy played with her cat, fluff ball. She dangled a string in front of his and the cat was kitten enough that it would reach up with claws out and swipe at the yarn. It’s sad to be fifteen and understand why old crazy widows surround themselves with cats. Maybe cats don’t love, but they don’t hate and if you rub them they purr, no matter how bony and ugly your fingers are, and it feels good to be responsible for life and make it purr.
Amy sat on her bed. She kept her room clean, making it look as if no one lived there to mess up anything at all. She massaged her head where the paper had hit in chemistry class—the class she was getting a D in. They called her “crazy Amy,” when they called her anything at all, and asked her what was going on in her imaginary world, inside her crazy head, and got real good and creative with the stuff they made up for her, in her imaginary world, with her pet squirrels, and handsome boner knights, which they all laughed at, even making up a cartoon voice which was supposed to sound like her but didn’t. In elementary school, boys would stuff sawdust down her shirt and she would laugh and throw sawdust back at them. She daydreamed she brought a water gun to school and sprayed everyone with water, and everyone, soaking, would laugh and cheer her, for coming up with such a fun prank.
In the mornings, when she puts on her makeup, she’ll sometimes talk to herself in the mirror. Why not be crazy if that’s what people expect? She’d sometimes pretend the image in the mirror was a psychologist she is speaking to ten years into the future.
No, I never had the impulse to shoot anything or do anything so horrible and drastic, but an ounce of me, the tip of my pinky finger part, understood, you know, understood a little bit about this school shooting epidemic. You know, it was like, they all had something, and you had nothing, and their was no reason for that, no justice. Yes, that’s what it is, what it comes from—how not only does life seem unfair, but the cruelty, the injustice just becomes this angry, red, ugly thing, which builds over time. I mean, not in me or anything, but I could see how that could happen, with others, who, you know, see no value in life anywhere, and maybe have mental problems. I’m not saying they’re not guilty and not monsters.
So how did you deal with it?
Turning inward I guess. Yes, the world wasn’t ugly. The problem wasn’t with the world. The world was beautiful—it had to be, so see people like Kate in it, being so happy—all the happy people, happy songs. No, the problem was me. Their must have been something wrong with me.
But of course there wasn’t.
No there wasn’t—except for, I don’t know, I mean, the problem with myself was that I had a low self esteem. So that was problematic.
Yes but you can see where that came from.
Oh, of course. I mean, my worth was never validated—quite the opposite really. But I should have been stronger—an inner strength, to rid that negative self image garbage from my mind. I mean, I’m not—or I wasn’t, perfectly pretty or perfectly gifted or anything, but I wasn’t—I mean I didn’t deserve to be treated—didn’t deserve all that.
No. No one does.
I really hated myself.
Do you still?
A little. When you grow up with it, when it becomes your identity, when it’s all you’ve ever known—I mean, it’s not just a helium balloon you can let go of.
No it’s much heavier I’m sure.
Yes, much heavier. I can say I hate who I was, what I let happen to me, how I accepted it, convinced myself I deserve it.
And now?
Not as much. I’m stronger. I no longer…
Go ahead… did you question taking your life?
Yes. Every second.

Amy wanted to be strong and not cry. She’d emotionally bleed internally she decided. She didn’t want to expose herself. Tears came to her like those to someone hit in the stomach with a bat, robbed of the oxygen needed to blubber the tears the pain deserved.
She walked to school. “Hi,” she practiced saying with different inflections, smiling. “Happy to see you, hi, hello, hi, haha.”
Next to her locker on a bulletin board she read a paper inviting people to participate in the pep rally talent show. First sign, you get the time it read. Amy signed Crazy Amy on the paper, out of impulse, while feeling a good song inside her, in her music video, where she pretended to be a cool girl. She walked away, the song in her ended, and she realized she didn’t have a talent she could think of. Dancing? No. She was painfully shy, frail, wore bland earth tones and turtle necks to hide and cover from the world. Singing? No. And now she was a name on a paper, for the whole school to read, signifying she’d stand in front of the entire school. She walked down the fall faster (she was usually turtle slow) as if she had down a crime she wanted to escape from.
What did you just do?
I don’t know.
Why did you do it?
I shouldn’t have.
What are you going to do?
Erase my name
Do you really want to?
Yes, what was I thinking?
What were you thinking?
I wasn’t thinking.
It’s fun not to think sometimes.
It is.
Thinking just brings trouble.
It does.
Do you want to take your name off the list?
I don’t want to think about it.
Don’t think about it then.
But what am I going to do?
Don’t think about that.
Wouldn’t it be nice.
It would be nice.
To be somebody.
Somebody thrilling.
Do you want to be somebody thrilling?
Yes and somebody loved.
Sexy and cool and smart.
And loved and happy and beautiful.
I’m imagining it now.
So am I.
Hello world.
I love you.
I am somebody.

The day of the talent show came. Paul’s rock band played a song with the lyrics: I see the fire engine speeding/ it’s red and flashing brightly/ it’s so pretty/ it’s brave and fights a brilliant blaze/ a house on fire/hearts on fire/ skin on fire/ keep your desire/ it’s beautiful/ baby you inspire/ deformities are beautiful/ but I still can’t love you/ the way you love me/ everyone turns ugly with time/ what counts is what’s inside/ with that in mind/ you’re more beautiful then I am/ you’re so strong and I’m such a coward/ you’re beautiful baby/ but I just can’t make myself love you/ the way that you love me/ I’m sorry.
It was a good song, a good melody, tender, slow, full of emotion, very advanced considering the young ages of the musicians. Paul had a voice trying to mimic Thom York from Radiohead. After the song practically all the girls were crying. They all knew it was sung for Lucy, and they looked at Lucy wearing her cool hip hop cloths and green and wool hat, and hair, what was left, tied in braids, crying, and it made them all want to cry. It would have been the most talked about thing and talent if not for what Amy did next.
In her head one of her favorite songs played. And she started stripping. She didn’t know she would until the moment. She couldn’t think of any other talent. She knew she had a beautiful body—maybe that was one of the reasons the girls hated her so much. She would show it off, because that’s what they all would want, isn’t it? Wouldn’t they talk about her and love her for it, just like the world loves all the other beautiful women who stripped for magazines and became celebrities. As she began to pull down her underwear she heard exciting howls from the boys, in hysteria, standing to look at her, and it thrilled her, making her feel as if her insides had caught on fire. She was just down to her socks when two female teachers ran to cover her with their bodies, since no matter how frantically they had looked no one could find a blanket to wrap her with. Male teachers jackets were used instead to cover Amy’s nakedness. The female teachers formed a circle around Amy and moved her by shuffling their feet out of the gymnasium, where Amy then fainted.

VARIOUS POEMS

All the rage of a fist
Come open a palm out
Three grass seeds
Blow out over an ancient Chinese
Field before communism, before the wall,
Before the Ming dynasty, there were
A Forgotten people who didn’t worship
The moon, sun, stars, fate, but themselves
And God and the moon is full which
Is like a green light meaning go
To the modern metaphor girl who lived
Her life by the moon when it’s full and it’s a
Silver eye looking down at the vast emptiness
And swamp (before dinosaurs) and even it (all knowing)
Had no idea what all would happen.

*
When time has taken its toll
A new day for a new age
When our generation has grown old
A new life lived in a different way
When new and bright things are forgotten
And disappear as they often do
When all this happens it doesn’t matter
Because I’ll always remember you.

Simplicity cares for me
I’ll care for all the simple things
I’ll marvel over the dimples in a smile
And other simple things
At fast jets
And you and me
At the water and the wet
And the beauty of a tree.

*
As we go our separate ways
As a cell mitosis into two
Once one from years and day
Now like the difference of orange and blue
Time has worked well with us
Two new people in two new lands
All around with all around us
We pass through the days and do what we can
Did it have to be this way?
When I think of it I miss you
We are as only little seeds in the sway
As you are orange I am blue.

Luminous
Possibilities
Too many to number
Circle you
Like light bugs.

Totally destroyed
A heart
Turned to tar
By your gaze.

Riding a glacier
To cold water
We melted
And were refreshed
And went to
Work in London
While nicely dressed.

Crystalline glass sparkle
On an open ceiling
Neon in our veins
Fast in our minds
Wind in our hair
We were already there.

A good nod
At me
A slow wink
Turned, looked up
Pointed at the moon
Full bright
Us below
Tipped glasses and hats
Then it fell on us
And we were dead.

That feeling that comes sweeping in
It is artful and strange
A bit of ice warm in sun
A bit of moisture drying humid and dense
You in wide Africa
As hot as you are cool
This makes sense to me in its liquid form
A sun on you
Beauty is truth
Is a joy
Seeking beauty
One moment to last forever
Be quiet music silence
Come overpower
Come be dense alive take up space
Feeling music inside me
Alone and I could do it all for once
And be right.

Soon
The moon won’t care
Anymore
What we do right
Rebels
On a car ride
Stars pass by
And hitchhike
In your hair and eyes
Your lips full of fresh breath
Yes, there we are
On a journey where
We might have made it
Yes I think so
Turn up that song on the blur CD
And kiss me.

Your hair’s a tangle
Like soil to sprout weeds
Fast, so fast, in that dark
Umber soil so wild daisies
Puff umbrellas and ivy or
Lady bugs, butterflies too why not
Why not tangle all that about
On your head, rebel, not too fast
Fast enough to get away, miracle grow
How’d you grow, well while we’re young
While this kind of indie rock rebel music
Means something, tangle your hair
Fast but not so fast.

Thoughts like
Globs of wax in a lava lamp
Forming balls and shapes which stretch
They were chucked
Out the window behind the bumper
Splattered on the road behind me
Like bombs which
Explode into nothing
And the road went on fast
Attached to nothing
Doing nothing
Feeling something supernatural.

And we on our way
Had somewhere to go
Something to do
Woke at four
I-84 was closed
Iced over
We waited behind
Eighteen wheels
Truck shot bights
On our backs
And we on our way
Had nowhere to go
Nothing to do
Read Tess on the road
While waiting.

To be like a lying lawyer
In a mad mad case
And to blow out smoke
Feels like blowing out smoke
Without a cigarette
Hey lawyer overworked
It’s turned midnight
And the wife is in bed
Pregnant.

New century is nothing
Yeah so what
Is in numbers
And zeros like wheels
To scoot on out of here
There’s no magic in math
Or counting away
Days like brick on the outside
Helium inside.

Fiesta shake down
Green blue palm trees
In a jazzy dance
On a golden silver sand bank.

If I could walk
In water
Wake up on clouds
Determine the outcome
Of basketball games
The most I would want
Is for you to continue to be happy.

I scream
At what I
Can’t do
I want to scream
But can’t.

To be left vague
Is like dark
What wonders
Are hidden
To reveal
Is to be
Too much sometimes
When what is revealed
Doesn’t matter anyways.

To be over a cliff
Thrown down a ball of yarn
Watching it dangle down
Hold one end
See a breeze
Blow it almost sideways
Trying to reach
Perpendicularity
All this is nothing really
In ten more minuets
Then I’m free.

Sweet rain
Crash open a window
Wet washed in on us
We all screamed except
For her giggling furiously
Like she were mad
Playing with her wet hair
Pretty when wet
Then bright colors
Were her cloths
And far away mind
Near us all.

I will taste you honey
I will climb you tree
I will laugh at funny
I want to be
A man of a mountain
A man for all years
A boy for a kiss
A boy for a girl.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Excerpt FOUR NOVELA’S FEATURING PINK FROST

November 2, 2009

Here’s excerpts of Four Novella’s Featuring Pink Frost

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Novellas-Featuring-Pink-Frost/dp/0557092752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257180614&sr=1-1FOUR NOVELLA’S FEATURING PINK FROST

REBECCA AND SAVANAH
Written in 2004
Chapter One

A sad thing happened to Rebecca. Her dad died in the beginning of summer from a car accident. At first she wanted to learn all the details of how it happened. Then she didn’t want to know, why would it matter? Sometimes, when the pain felt unbearable she’d envision a yellow smiley face and mumble the mantra everything will be fine. Sometimes that would help, for the same duration the pain of a pinprick on a finger lasts. She’d force a fake smile to all the old people, trying to be nice, who’d tell her it’s all for God’s reasons, you’re just a poor little girl who can’t yet understand. If that were true she wouldn’t feel like a plush animal with the stuffing ripped out, or so suddenly frightened of the world. She wishes she could feel the death served a greater good, but couldn’t, like one can’t become dry in a thunderstorm by pretending to be a sweatshirt tumbling inside a dryer. Twelve is too old for make-believe.
She felt she could throw cars and smash brick walls, like The Incredible Hulk or whatever superhero got power from rage. She felt guilty. “Stages,” the counselor called them. Her feelings, apparently, were predetermined by a pamphlet. She made up names for her various ways of crying the way Eskimos have a hundred names for snow. Rebecca loved music. Some amazing web sites helped her to develop a collection of albums and songs she thought college age cool kids would approve of: Interpol, The Smiths, Coldplay, The Shins, The Strokes; this music will engulf and comfort me, she thought. But in her sadness, even music, like everything else, diminished some from its previous glory; became closer to soupy grey porridge. She was a guitar prodigy, proficient at it, yet she stopped practicing; she used to practice at least two hours a day. It became harder to daydream about getting a record contract.
By the time the summer of her dad’s death ended, she felt “acceptance” more often. Her mother moved the disfigured family to a new neighborhood. Rebecca had to start the seventh grade at a new school, without any of her old friends, who she felt five years older then anyway now.
Rebecca remembered a quote, but she couldn’t remember from where it came–the funeral or the counselor or maybe from Abraham Lincoln. It went something like, “the worst kinds of tragedies are those which strike the young because they haven’t yet realized life is full of sorrow.”

CHAPTER TWO

The alarm clock radio played a bland song. Rebecca made a silly scream while yawning. Three dreams woke her that night. Her jean jacket had a “The Clash,” button on it. “The Clash,” played every song like the clouds soaked red, ready to doom down Armageddon on the world, and The Clash shouted against it—go out in defiance. She threw her jacket on her bed. Steam became thick in the shower. She wiped the condensation off the bathroom mirror.
The week before her dad died a friend told her, “If I were as pretty as you I’d never be sad.” Rebecca knew her old friends had envied her for having “Jr. Angelina Jolie lips,” eyes so intensely blue, hair so oil-slick black, and being the only girl who didn’t wear make-up and still looked like she could be a future model. They teased her for being tall, with lame taunts of “stork legs,” and “lanky.”
Things like the irony of a bowl of lucky charms in front of an unlucky unfortunate girl never manifest until after her dads death. She swirled the cereal and dunked the pink hearts and green clovers in the grainy milk. Jack spilled his orange juice, Megan cried and her mom told Rebecca’s little brother and sister, the twins, (only an amazing awesome coincidence they had the same names as the members of The White Stripes) to change their shirts.
Rebecca got in the Honda. The radio played the same bland pop song which had woke her up that morning. The radio plays the same songs over and over. The clouds looked like they had come from a jar and been spread by a butter knife. She didn’t talk with her mom until the car stopped in front of her new school. Rebecca wished the car hadn’t stopped. She liked the feeling of a car in motion.
Jefferson Middle School, the Wildcats, colors green and white, seventh grade, all loomed in front of her. But what if I’m still not fine after a while she wondered.
The first day of school is like a movie premier. They might as well roll out a red-carpet and have all the fashion police paparazzi people blather about who’s hot, who’s not, who has style, who doesn’t so are therefore deemed worthless. All the school “big stars” make a big fuss over themselves and ignore everyone else, merely the “extras”. No one paid special attention to Rebecca although she stood out by her tall height and striking looks. She hadn’t received the memo listing what the trends would be so went without a sparkly belt and lip gloss necklace.
Hi I’m Rebecca. I’m new. My dad got crushed in a fatal freak car accident at the start of this summer so I didn’t fly to Disneyworld or Europe or go camping. She thought of what she might say to introduced herself, but didn’t say that. Instead she said in her first class after the teacher asked everyone to introduce themselves: I just attended Madison last year. I like Dolphins and Panda’s. I play the guitar and my little brother and sister are named Jack and Meg just like The White Stripes. In her subsequent introductions she didn’t mention that she had attended rival Madison (she didn’t like being booed) and took out the White Stripes reference after one classmate said they “suck.”
Thank you nice to have you Mr. or Mrs. Teacher would then say and classmates playing whatever dumb get to know you memory game would repeat her name. The English teacher, apparently thinking them still in elementary school, made them clap syllables of their names. Rebecca laughed along with everyone else at the boy who clapped twice for “Matt.”
Rebecca hummed while spinning the dial on her locker.
“What song is that?” a girl by her asked.
“Huh? Oh, it’s not a song,” Rebecca said.
“It sounded good,” the girl, a locker neighbor, said.
“Yeah sure,” Rebecca said.
“I do that all the time,” the girl said. “Sing or hum or rap without even realizing it.”
“Sometimes it’s best not to think too much,” Rebecca said.
“You’re new.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“No sparkly belt or lip-gloss necklace.”
“Oh yeah,” Rebecca said then laughed.
“I’m also new.”
“Oh. They stick the new girls’ lockers together apparently.”
“I’m Savanah,” the girl said.
“I’m Rebecca. Are you in the sixth grade?” The girl looked small to Rebecca.
Savanah laughed. “No. Although I don’t know why I laughed. I should be. But I’m in seventh, like everyone else in this hall.”
“You skipped a grade? You don’t look like a nerd,” Rebecca said.
Savanah laughed again. “Well thanks. It’s impossible for me to look like a dork since I’m so cool. No, just kidding.”
“I like your hair like that. In the two pony tails.”
“Well first day of school I thought I’d do something crazy with my hair I guess. Life’s about hair risks, right? Is your hair naturally so black?” Savanah asked.
“Yup,” Rebecca said. “And these boobs are real too,” she said, opening her jean jacket, flashing her flat chest. She smiled at Savanah’s loud burst of laugher.
“I’ve got mine done last week,” Savanah said, tugging her gold T-shirt down over her flatter than that chest. “Maybe extreme for an eleven year old, but I’m mature for my age, so I’ve been told,” she said sarcastically.
Rebecca laughed.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t tell anyone I skipped a grade,” Savanah said. “I hear being smart isn’t currently considered cool.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not like I know anyone to gossip to, even if I did believe in gossip. Which I don’t,” Rebecca said.
“Me either. It’s so dumb. There was too much of it at my old school.”
“Mine too,” Rebecca said.
“We have American Government together next. I saw it on your schedule,” Savanah said, pointing.
“Oh,” Rebecca said. “I’m the only one carrying a class schedule around. Pretty dumb, huh?”
“No,” Savanah said, “I have my baby blanket in my locker, to pull out in case of emergencies.”
“Really?” Rebecca asked.
“No,” Savanah laughed. “We better go. Don’t want to be late.”
Rebecca followed her, walking faster than she had all day.
Anxiety, shock, fear, brings depressions. To be happy, relax, enjoy, afford. Rebecca sometimes wanted to hide and die and have highways built over her and maybe it would be better if lightening disintegrated her in her shoes. She never felt that way before her dad died. Everything glowed, then as quick as a shooting star, the world fell, and she hadn’t known before it needed to be supported. Some people don’t do well in life, she realized. Her thoughts used to twirl breezy ideas high about the colors, stripes, and smoothness of pretty rocks, and how holding a pretty pink smooth rock with a white stripe through it could feel so happy—feel like gripping the world. Satisfy the instant, entertain nonstop games, be frivolous, see that God is in sunshine and everywhere the sun shines which is everywhere and everywhere is happy. After her dad died she felt bloodless and transparent. She had sung and skipped and played, and then she tripped and broke. She worried that her newfound pessimism, her father’s unintentional post-death gift to her, might never leave, and how horrible if she had to live with it for more years then she could grasp—what if she lives to be one hundred? She felt like she constantly held her breath, waiting for something good, anxiously waiting and worrying, and realizing that lots of people are homeless and starve to death, or worse, hate their jobs and life and where there life took them, and their minds and souls are low and not right and they never are truly happy anymore, not since a child; some people break and the shattering can sneak up slowly like erosion, almost unnoticeable, or the breaking and crumbling can happen quick. Rebecca wanted to be like a hunter and shoot the animal, the threatening, wild mysterious monster, her pessimism, fear, worry, unhappiness. She didn’t want to break apart.
Then Rebecca met Savanah. Savanah glowed, as if she wore shiny armor in the sun. Rebecca regained some of her faith in the goodness of life and people when she met Savanah. There seemed to be an irregularity, perhaps something miraculous, in how they became friends instantly, instantly comfortable with each other, unquestioning of each other, solid and sure; it gave Rebecca a reformed confidence in the world and herself that she could do well in it. Luck came to her, in Savanah, and she felt like luck could come again. She could begin to feel happy again.

CHAPTER THREE

Savanah had moved from Southern California to the place where Rebecca lived, and in the city where Rebecca lived was a dilapidated amusement park, and Rebecca and Savanah went to it together in the spring and Savanah made Rebecca laugh in how she’d call it the slum ghetto of amusement parks. Savanah could always make Rebecca laugh.
Savanah, like Rebecca, had also had a summer tragedy she kept a secret. Her parents divorced. It came as suddenly and as shockingly as if a meteor had blasted through their family SUV during a sunny drive through wine country, or if an earthquake, with no warning, shook her. California kids know earthquakes and mudslides can instantly hit, so California kids enjoy every moment, Savanah thought, and when they hit they’re shrugged off as no big deal. If her parents no longer enjoyed each other, why stay with each other, Savanah had tried to rationalize, in the casual, all is still cool way California kids are supposed to think. Ride the wave the ocean gives you, goes the cliché, so many take on literally. But when, in the family meeting, she heard the word “divorce,” from her dad, then “we’re moving,” from her mom, she felt like the fabrications from movie lots permeated to her home, making things that aren’t supposed to happen, happen; it didn’t seem real. The heaviness of the words sunk her. She loved her dad. She didn’t want to move from Los Angeles, leave her friends, her school, her secret ambition to audition for TV shows, commercials, movies, music videos. She cried in her bed that night.
When she first looked out the car window at the new city, the devastating and thundering this isn’t struck her: this isn’t pretty, this isn’t exciting, this isn’t where or how my life is supposed to be. Despite being determined to make the best of the wave the ocean gave her, she couldn’t shake the sinking and scary this isn’t force. She tried to deny feeling pain and bewilderment. She wanted to be someone strong enough not to feel sorry for herself. She felt she should be strong. She had it in her to be strong. So she cried in secret.
On the first day of school, Savanah introduced herself to the American Government class after Rebecca. “Hi I’m Savanah; I’m also new, moved from LA. I love sports, especially basketball, dancing, especially hip-hop, music, especially Outkast, and movies, especially comedies, and this feels too much like one of those personal classified ad things.”
The teacher, Mr. Mike as he wanted to be called, chuckled. “How about a demonstration?” he said.
“A demonstration?” Savanah asked. “Like stupid human tricks? I can blow bubbles with my ears.”
“Oh you can not!” a girl with the brightest sparkly belt, signifying her popularity status blurted out.
“Raise your hand if you wish to talk Sarah,” Mr. Mike said.
“No, Sarah’s right,” Savanah said. “I can’t really. It’s like a magic trick.”
“You said you dance,” Mr. Mike said.
“Oh yeah, sure,” Savanah said. She nodded to a rhythm only she could hear playing in her head, then she took a strong step forward, and her hair swung in her forward bounce. Her large eyes flickered down then up and expressed a new intensity. She twisted her right ankle sideways as her left foot slid forward in a glide, then she did it again but in reverse and her shoulders lifted as she continued bobbing her head to an a beat more felt then heard; like feeling a large base in a super stereo, and the class, by looking at her, knew and felt the same rhythm Savanah did. Waite Rebecca thought, how is she staying in place when it looks like she’s moving forward and backwards? Rebecca wanted to see Savanah’s steps in slow motion to study the physics of the body caused optical illusion. Savanah then did a sudden heel-toe skip move that looked incredible and intense and athletic, then she jumped back throwing her arms out and crossing them in front of her. The class paused, not used to their peers so readily sharing their talents, most that age were too unsure and hesitant of themselves to display talents at a whim. They then clapped, then the clapping built to audible cheers, and them saying “that was so cool,” to each other.
“Guys, that was no big deal,” Sarah said, then Rebecca, sitting next to Sarah heard her mumble, you’d think she just made it rain money or something.
Sarah’s vision of where Savanah came from to learn to dance that way materialized; at dusk, glitter trucks paved the neighborhood streets and the coolest kids on earth all came out to dance under streetlights and stars that flickered to the beat, which flowed in like an intensifying fog. Then they’d go surf and talk to dolphins and movie stars by the light of nearby flashy amusement parks along the beach. Sarah felt envy and jealous and threatened by Savanah.
“Yup,” Savanah said sheepishly, blushing a little, smiling and squeezing her hands together as the class continued to clap for her; she looked disarmed, as if a completely different person then the warrior like confident girl who had just put on that demonstration. She then walked to her seat. She hadn’t intended to show off. She didn’t consider her dancing to be anything special. She had never, and would never, dance out of vanity. The boy in the desk behind her stood up and said, I’m Robert and I like turtles and Mr. Mike had to tell the class collectively to stop their snickering.
If I grew up in LA I could dance like that too Rebecca heard Sarah mumbling. Sarah might as well be wearing a tiara and sash that says “Queen Bee” on it, Rebecca thought, doodling music notes in her notebook. Rebecca wondered if there were a way to store what she had just seen, that dance step of Savanah’s, and replay it anytime she needed a smile; she’d replay that image all throughout the remainder of the day. She leaned towards Savanah both in their desks, and scrunched her face at her and said, that was wicked, then Savanah straightened her posture and tilted her head and gave Rebecca a full teethed smile, which made Rebecca laugh for some reason.

After seventh grade ended, the summer before the eighth grade, Rebecca and Savanah rode in the backseat of the SUV Savanah’s mother drove, all on their way to California, to Savanah’s home, to vacation in Disneyland. Savanah was moving back to her home, but Rebecca drove with them, to vacation with them, then she’d fly back on her own. In the back of the SUV they played a simple, silly game they made up to pass the time called Do You Remember. Rebecca or Savanah would say a statement, and if the statement were true the other would answer I remember, if it were a lie they’d answer I don’t remember, and to a possible future happening they’d answer maybe.
“Do you remember the Pixies concert?” Rebecca asked.
“I remember,” Savanah answered.
“Do you remember when Jake got me pregnant and I named the baby after you but you were jealous so you stole the baby and moved to Arizona but then you felt bad because you left the window up in the car while you shopped at Wal-Mart and little baby Savanah died of heat exhaustion?”
“I don’t remember,” Savanah said, then laughed.
“Do you remember how you had to delay shooting your big summer blockbuster movie for three days so you could come to my wedding,” Rebecca said.
“Maybe,” Savanah said. “Stephen Spielberg wasn’t too happy but I said my friends always come first. And Rebecca is my best friend.”
“Do you remember,” Rebecca said, “how freaky it was when we went through the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland and we saw Eddie Murphy chained to a wall screaming for help?”
“Maybe-no,” Savanah said then laughed. “Remember The Shins concert?”
“I remember,” Rebecca said.
“Remember when Jake kissed us both at the dance?”
“I remember,” Rebecca said.
The white noise of the wind rushing through the crack at the top of the window relaxed Rebecca. She liked the sound because she liked the feeling that came with the sound—slouching while moving ahead, the past shrinking behind, the sides a blur, going too quickly for the seconds ahead to attach to anything. She felt like the sky she passed under also passed through her mind, giving her reverie and daydreams an open purity. The steady straight flow of the SUV also felt reassuring and comforting to Rebecca. At the moment, traveling away, she didn’t worry about the tragedy of Savanah, her best friend forever who she only met less than a year ago, moving away from her, moving back to LA, or how horrible the eighth grade would be without her, and how she has to go through high-school without her. She didn’t worry about her future and the problems that would try to derail and stop her—the falling boulders, the scary realities, the gross crudeness of ugly machine parts and mean impersonal paperwork and heavy lifting and all the things on earth, not in the sky, where her mind drifted at the moment. Right now there are no falling rocks, and she didn’t see any as far as she could look. So maybe there wouldn’t be any more falling rocks at all. Maybe the peace she felt at that moment, being both sleepy yet too excited about Disneyland and this vacation to sleep, would continue for as long as the hum of the engine continued, which at the moment, felt like it could purr on forever, and at the moment she wanted it to and liked the feeling that it would. Maybe her future lay in clouds that wouldn’t rain anymore. A song she made up, without trying to make up, played in her head. She smiled at it; maybe it’s the best song ever. Maybe she’ll be a rock star. Maybe she’ll still be happy.
“What are you smiling at?” Savanah asked.
“Everything,” Rebecca said. “Remember?”
“I remember,” Savanah said.

Janelle’s Novella Project

PART ONE

Janelle gave herself a challenge to write a novella in three days, and pretend that this novella would be assigned reading for everyone in her class, meaning it’d have to be something that wouldn’t embarrass her, meaning it’d have to be good; quite a challenging task; also totally arbitrary, why three days? Well why not three days, God made the earth in three days—however that’s totally blasphemous to compare herself with god she realized so scratched that thought out—why not three days, if you don’t place a deadline on goals they’ll never happen, she had learned. Or no, God made the earth in seven days; whatever, she thought. Or it formed over 43 billion years or something, whatever.
Her older sister was in London now on an internship at an architecture firm and she sent Janelle in Facebook messages artistic photos (who knew she had such an artistic eye?) including a black and white shot of a couple walking over a bridge sharing an umbrella and in the foreground are classic Roman-Greek style old buildings mingling with modern glass and steel and curved concrete buildings, in London; a picture good enough to hang on a wall; she also sent her pictures of abstract paintings she took while visiting some museum, and a picture of a sign explaining, for some reason, the usefulness of mirrors to ballerina’s and actors. Janelle’s older sister wrote her that she’s growing, maturing, losing weight and so is more frugal and everyone here’s so nice, she’s loving it, and the experience is invaluable, and Janelle hadn’t really realized before her sister had the smarts to be an architect, but she apparently, although a student and novice, had a talent, perhaps now a passion for it, showed some skill at it, who would have expected? Pretty much no one, it sort of came out of nowhere, but Janelle was glad her sister finally seemed to find a life direction and career decision now, no longer, hopefully, drinking and partying as much now; hopefully she didn’t have such a sour negative attitude about life, Janelle hoped, for her sister. And a architect would be an amazing job, it’d garner Janelle’s sister money and respect and worthwhile challenges and rewarding work—how amazing a feeling it would be to design a building, and not any building, but a tall attractive noticeable one, a building the city and community and residents come to feel proud of, for it comes to help define and symbolize the city they take pride in, and therefore themselves, who they are, and the building is new yet will stand for hundreds of years, and is impressive and innovative and beautiful and a marvel of human creativity and ingenuity and function, and everyone knows this building, and have it be you designed it. That must be a proud feeling of accomplishment.
Janelle’s sister, already this summer, visited and toured Rome and Paris, saw sights and buildings and museums and the people there; the people there are skinny and dress immaculately, aware of fashion, and the city streets there are skinny just like the people, you have to be skinny there to fit through the narrow crowded streets, and Janelle’s sister thought and wrote to Janelle how she thought the wide open expanses of land America is known for, the open plains and skies, symbolic of endless dreams and limitless possibility clichés, breeds fatness in people; with so much open space people are free to grow as large as they like. There seems to be more plump people in London than in Rome and Paris however, Janelle’s older sister wrote her over Facebook; and children speaking their native Italian sound so cute, they sound like they’re exuberantly singing the way they talk, with so many words seemingly punctuated by an ending “La.” Later in the summer Janelle’s older sister would travel to New York City and stay with a friend there who’s a dancer extra in this major studio dance movie currently being filmed there, and at the end of summer Janelle’s sister is going on a cruise, so she’s having and will have a packed amazing life-altering type summer before she goes back to college, and here Janelle is, having a not so amazing summer at all, bored already with it with a long ways still yet to go; it’s only still May 22; some say summer doesn’t start until Memorial Day, this coming Monday, although the official calendar start of summer isn’t until mid June or something. But really summer starts when school ends and the seniors have gone through their graduation ceremonies, which happened about a week and a half ago.
In this current crap economy it’s impossible for teens to land summer jobs, Janelle’s heard, competing with laid off middle aged experience soaked resume stocked adults for all the traditional seasonal teen jobs at amusement and recreation parks, lifeguards, mall jobs, or at Arby’s or whatever, so Janelle decided this summer she wouldn’t even try to get a job, why bother and go through all the work of trying to land one without much hope of the job search effort paying off. Besides, if there are so many unemployed adults seeking these types of jobs they probably need them more than I do, Janelle reasoned; they have rent and mortgages and food and children and life in general to pay for, while I’m still young enough, Janelle thought, to mooch off mom and dad guilt free, legally not yet an adult.
Writing is sort of like architecture, she decided, and writing is a type of work which can potentially earn money and be a life career goal or ambition (she didn’t know the odds on that, but figured if her sister could be an architect she could be anything) and a author can be proud of a certain finished project in a similar way an architect can be proud of their building, perhaps, Janelle mused. Both have drafts before completion and come from ideas in the head first, before becoming an actual tangible thing outside the head, people can look at and assess. So I’ll write a novella, Janelle decided, to start this summer, and I’ll write it in three days, because that’s a nice number, and you have to put an end line, or deadline to goals, otherwise they’ll just drift on forever never being finished. But what qualifies as a novella? And what would she write of; she had to come up with all the materials needed to construct a novella; an idea, concept, plot, characters, all the needed elements and ingredients, setting, maybe the setting should come first, just as a groundwork or site has to be picked before construction starts; their needs to be a solid foundation first, otherwise the building will crumble. Set the stage like setting a table before putting on the food. Or something—maybe those metaphors work and are clever, or maybe they don’t fit at all. She has to come up with an idea fast, she realized; she’d just have to pick something and not second guess it, commit to it without hesitations and run with it, to fill up however many pages are needed to qualify it being a novella.
Just for fun she had looked at this self publishing site, and they said their minimum was forty eight pages with a maximum of seven hundred pages. So, Janelle supposed, a novella must be a story of at least forty eight pages; how’d they come up with that arbitrary number? Forty seven pages and it’s a long short story, forty eight pages and it’s a novella, a short novel. Who knows, but that seemed doable to her—forty eight pages in three days. Dialogue can fill up space quickly. Maybe she could write a novella that’s mostly basically two people talking; maybe she could just copy and past some of her instant messaging conversations she’d had with friends, some of those, she thought, had been pretty good and funny, and if printed over two days would probably be about fifty pages. But a novella can’t just be mindless words thrown together, or journal writings, it had to have a plot structure, Janelle knew, and besides she wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to use her mundane trivial personal matters, journal writings to help accomplish this project; that’d be lazy and like cheating, as well as probably boring, the way dreams are boring to everyone but the dreamer who found them all so exciting; also she wouldn’t want her classmates (she remembered she’d pretend this novella would be required reading for her class, in order to try and spur herself into actually writing something she could feel proud of and want to share, as supposed to just writing whatever just to fill up the required forty eight pages or whatever; so funny, strange, yet like her, she thought, to assign herself basically a English homework type assignment on the first week of summer vacation) to read her journal.
Janelle walked to Arby’s and used a coupon to buy a Beef N’ Cheddar combo for four dollars, and she brought with her her little sketch notebook she hoped to write ideas in, hoping to come up with an idea by the time she left Arby’s. She ordered, ate, and stared out the window. The Arby’s was at 2100 S and 1500 E in the Sugarhouse area of Salk Lake City and across the street, out the Arby’s window, is an entrance for Sugarhouse park, and Janelle looked out the window and saw green grass flowers and trees and snow capped mountains and bright blue sky and she thought there probably isn’t a more scenic view out any Arby’s window anywhere, and she hoped the view would give her ideas and inspiration but it didn’t really; on the contrary it seemed to distract her from her task of tying to come up with an idea. This Arby’s had no music playing which is strange and eerie and makes it too quiet; she hoped the music playing could give her inspiration and ideas.
With it so quiet she could hear conversations, and the place was empty except for her and the workers and she overheard the Arby’s manager tell and act out a story of a guy who came in and asked for a water cup he then poured soda in and grabbed a handful of Arby’s mints, all right in front of the manager, before tromping away. Someone left a newspaper on a table so she took that and looked through it. “Speed Weekend” she read in a bar on the front page; a headline referring to some NASCAR race, the Indianapolis 500; she couldn’t care less, a local race of pet turtles belonging to neighborhood kids on her street would interest her more, so she decided “Speed Weekend” would refer to this writing challenge and exercise she gave herself; she’d have to write fast to produce a novella in three days. She liked this only write fast idea—sort of an exciting idea, just go for it, go out, let it flow out, don’t care about being so meticulous and careful with everything, free-write; maybe writing this way would reveal some truth or profoundness or poetry she otherwise wouldn’t have come to or revealed; like running and not looking back afraid of what’s behind you, and with you running fast, it’s now behind you, so you don’t have to come to it again—you didn’t want to come to it, so you came to it fast, that was the only way to come to it and deal with it, and now it’s over, like, the best way of ripping off a band-aid is to just rip it off to get it over with, rather than slowly try and peel if off, raising the skin and skin hairs its stuck too, prolonging the pain—maybe this wasn’t making any sense. Anyways, she’d have to come up with a concept fast and write fast to do this and make this happen; earlier she had felt like she could pump out words quickly, being in a energized upswing mood from witnessing the Nuggets beat the Lakers by one point in LA in game two of their Western Conference Finals playoff series, the second thrilling game in a row; she had watched on edge, with her little brother who she bonded over basketball, specifically hating the Lakers, with, every possession in the last three minuets critical to the game’s outcome, and the Nuggets won and she jumped and cheered and clapped and hugged her even more exuberant over it little brother, sharing a uplifting happy moment. She knew it dumb and ridiculous to get so excited and care so much over sports, but she didn’t care, it had been fun, and fun to see her little brother get that way and join with him in the celebration of the close hard fought and well earned and deserved triumph and victory; redemption from the oh-so-close-no-fair-should have been, devastating one point defeat in game one.
A young guy and a old lady, probably his grandma, sat at the booth behind her, and in the quiet she couldn’t help but overhear parts of their conversation.
“Cole still going out with that girl you like?”
“Well he took her to dance.”
“What for?”
“He’s the only brother you’ll ever have. A brother-in-law.”
“He’ll be my best man for sure.”
“Yeah.”
“… It’s been an odd relationship…he’s a couple years older than you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“He’s been a good friend.”
“It’s probably weirder for him because I’m the younger one.”
“When it started he was probably young enough that it didn’t matter.”
“…So he was just a baby and you weren’t even born.”
“Mm-hmm…”
“Are you going down there on the 24th?”
“I guess it’s the 4th isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“The 24th at Liberty Park. No.”
“The fireworks?”
“On the Fourth then. Here.”
“Well thank you. Thanks for coming.”

With the Arby’s super quiet, disturbingly so, no music, Janelle then overheard the conversations of the Arby’s employees talking about some fellow employee who might have been fired, and what that would mean for their schedules. She no longer felt as if she could write anything fast and quickly, as if her ideas were this big rolling boulder tumbling down a mountain, or her story inspiration were like lighting and traveled as instantly to her as quick as electrical current, and she weren’t writing to push a boulder up a mountain, but to catch up with it; that’s what writing fast is like, writing to try and catch up to speeding ideas. If she wrote anything now it’d come from a forced slow grind—only writing that spills out fast seemed any good and worthwhile to her, and the slow grinding force it out writing stuff always became slow and tedious to read, it seemed to her, and funny how that is, the stuff that’s quickly written makes for fast paced quick reads, and the slow ponderous frustrated force it out stuff is laborious and slow paced and difficult to read through because of the heaviness of its slowness; like the difference between water and thick syrup, or driving over a paved highway or rural gravel road. But, the point in the journey isn’t always to get to the destination the quickest, but to slow down and enjoy the journey, to extend that travel and speeds metaphor, Janelle thought. She thought maybe she should give up on this write a novella in three days idea, but then quickly changed her mind again and decided to be determined and not give up and do this, write this novella in three days, type it out, and have it be something she’d feel proud of and not embarrassed by, willing to share it with her whole class. It’d be a fun challenge, and interesting to see what comes of it, after just three days; fun and interesting, perhaps, but also, she now realized, potentially frustrating, defeating, then demoralizing and depressing if she failed, crashed, unable to produce or create anything. Either way maybe she’d learn something new about herself by the end.

The cover story in the paper was about a mother who lost her Army son in the Iraq war after his ATV hit a roadside bomb, and she set up an online memorial to him using this online memorial site, and she visits it five times a day and writes on it, to him, addressed to him, daily messages about how she misses him and is proud of him and how she’s angry but doesn’t know who or what at, and how she’s coping, and how it all is in the Lords hands, and the article included some of her excerpts and it was moving and sad and Janelle remembered that Memorial Day is to remember those brave American soldiers, men and women, killed in duty to their country, to preserve our freedoms.
That’s be a good premise and story, Janelle then thought; the subject of a grieving mother over her son killed in the Iraq war, and it’d consist of this mothers touching messages to her dead son as she continuous on with her life going through the grieving process; no, to make it even “better” if that’s the right word and term, an Iraq mother who lost her son in the war, accidently killed by an American, or died in a suicide bomber attack on the street, or maybe he was an insurgent, finds this online tribute and writes a message on it, and the two mothers contact each other and begin a correspondence and then friendship. But Janelle instantly knew she wasn’t qualified to write anything like that any more than she’d be to write from the perspective of a Holocaust survivor or something, to use “great” tragic materials and subjects to create some moving piece of fiction; using tragedies not first hand felt or experienced to exploit for artistic purposes in order to receive personal praise and accolades, and possible money, from, just seemed wrong and distasteful to her; besides, she had to admit, she didn’t know anything about that type of history and pain and whatever. Although a good writer shouldn’t have limitations; Janelle recently read of this praised young adult novel about a Black boy in an inner-city Harlem or Brooklyn slum, dealing with drugs and violence and teen moms and gangs and poverty and racism and whatever, which was written by this recent Ivy League graduate White boy, yet the African American community, intellectual and working-class both, all praised this novel as true and profound. But a teen girl writing in the perspective of a grieving mother, although could be done, sure why not, would be a stretch and too big and difficult to try and accomplish in three days.
Janelle stared out the window and saw some sinewy man looking more naked than not, wearing nothing but tiny marathon shorts, run from the park across the street. Gross. Sort of indecent. Two little girls, eight or nine years old wearing Catholic school uniforms, walked into the Arby’s with their father. Janelle realized she should pick a theme before an idea, a genre and mood. Something bleak? It’s easier to squeeze out drama and conflict from traumas; death, abuse, depression, whatever, then it is to write some ordinary happy uplifting, everything is hunky dory in life thing. Although is it easier to write little slices of life tales, which little happy stories might more easily fall under, then to write some large big themed all important profound tale meant to symbolize all of humanity and what the problems are, which more melancholy depressing stuff might fall under? Janelle really didn’t know, she had never tried to write a novella before; hadn’t really even tried to write a short story before either, she realized, yet still decided not to downgrade this goal—it would be a novella, not a short story, it would be forty eight pages, at least. That didn’t seem like that much when she first got the idea, but now it seemed like tons. She realized she hadn’t ever really written anything that long before, not including her journals; none of her reports and essays for school had to be over twenty pages. Although, she read all the Twilight novels, and they were all huge, 500 plus pages, each one, yet while reading them, the length of them didn’t seem all that impressive or hard to do. But now she realized writing that much could be an extremely hard thing to do, at least while not even having any idea of what to fill the pages with.
But if she wrote something disturbing, then, she imagined, her classmates would think her dark, disturbed and weird and she might lose friends and potential boyfriends. Yet if she wrote something too cute and lighthearted she feared they might think her simple minded and shallow. And if I wrote a romance, Janelle thought, and included some love scene, they’d make fun of me for being a romantic dreamer, a loser, and possibly gross and perverted, if I included some make-out scene or something. And if I wrote fantasy they’d make fun of me for being a nerd; one of those types who don’t deal too well with people and life directly, so find refuge in escaping into imaginary lands of dorky dragons and elves and princesses and crap like that. Or if she wrote some simple slice of life story they’d say she’s boring and unimaginative and it’s a waste of time to read something where nothing really happens.
She opened her almost hand sized sketchbook, turned to a blank page and wrote in bubble letters “Janelle’s imagination,” then drew hearts and stars around it, and shaded it all with her pen and looked at it then looked out the window again, wishing the place played music. It was Friday and she looked at movie reviews in the paper, and the movies opening that day are the Night in the Museum sequel and Terminator 3, and a dance movie parody called Dance Flick; she wondered if her sisters dancer friend filming a dance movie in New York now would watch that and find it funny, stupid, or offensive, or not. Next Friday the 10th Pixar movie opens about a old guy who attaches balloons to his house and fly’s to South America, and their was an article on that and creativity and merchandise. A lanky young guy walked in and got a cup and sat in the back and he’s dressed like a pirate, Janelle thought, with his black pin stripped pants and a unbuttoned shirt with a sailboat and palm tree design over a white t-shirt, and a purple bandana over his head covering the top of his brown mangy hair which went below his ears, and his mangy goatee; he sort of looked like an uglier Orlando Bloom from Pirates of the Caribbean Janelle thought. She thought for a second maybe he could inspire a character she could write of for her novella, but then immediately dismissed the idea; she couldn’t make up anything about him, she didn’t want to get into the inner minds and motivations or explore the deeper meanings of people who dress up like pirates. One has to write what one finds personally compelling and interesting, and he looked more weird and creepy than romantic or interesting, if that’s what he were going for. An Arby’s employee girl then went back and talked to him, and he got up and talked to the other employee’s, and Janelle surmised that he’s an Arby’s employee who just came early for his shift, and so the mystery of him is solved. It’s cool, Janelle thought, how all the Arby’s employees seemed to like each other, and that the manager seemed friendly and cool to them, rather than strict and demanding. Not like she’d want to personally work there or anything.
Janelle turned to a blank page in her sketch notebook and drew a cartoon of pretty girl with large eyes and lashes and lips, then next to her drew a more cartoon-y looking vampire, Count-Chocula syle, then wrote under them in bubble letters Edward love Bella and added hearts to the drawing. She overheard the Arby’s manager talk about crappy employees who escaped to the bathroom every five minuets to make out, and she got pregnant (probably conceived while on shift, and if so, Janelle thought, they should call the child Arby) and he quit and joined the military; then he talked about needing an assistant manager who at least has a cell phone and a car and is reliable; then he told this story of these other employees who just told him moments before their shift they were heading off to Las Vegas; and the employee girl told him he should cut their hours, and the manager said he’d feel bad doing that because they beg at him not to, saying they can’t live, can’t pay rent, on any less hours, and she said he has to do what’s right for the store and not worry about it, and he answered I know. Then he talked about his friend who’s in Ultimate Fighting Championship, and being in a comedy troupe.
Maybe I’ll write of a dragon, Janelle thought; silver scales that gleam in the sun and can change colors—what’s that called when squids and chameleon lizards change their skin color? Not camouflage, well yes camouflage but there’s a more exotic sounding scientific name for it, isn’t there, Janelle couldn’t remember, and no time to look it up; but the dragon could change its skin color and tone to match its moods and surroundings, from gleaming silver to brilliant vibrant blues, gold, reds, yellows, greens, whatever it wanted. And he lives on top of a steep pointy mountain and it’s a mystery why it will randomly swoop down from his mountain and grab brides during their weddings in his clutching claws and whisk them away into the air. And this mystery will be revealed and it’s a tragic love story fairy tale thing; the dragon is in love with a slinky sexy sea serpent, which lives in the bottom of some deep body of water, in contrast to the dragon living on top a mountain. A sea serpent is, after all, basically a wingless dragon which lives in water rather than air, in some lake or loch, whatever exactly a loch is, or bay or marsh or out in the ocean or—well duh, Janelle thought, if it’s a Sea Serpent, it lives out in the sea. And there’s some beautiful head-strong princess in the story, and she’s engaged to some prince, and she’s concerned the dragon will whisk her away, so she investigates it and she goes down to this loch or marsh or lake or sea (I’ll really have to decide on one, Janelle thought) and she spies the dragon and observes its flirty courtship of the Lake Monster (it lives in a lake—but I shouldn’t call it a monster, Janelle thought). The dragon flaps his wings over the water, hovering silently—quite the sight—and the Sea Serpent/ Lake Monster emerges out the water, all splashes and bubbles as it surfaces, and turns on her back exposing her armor platted underbelly to the dragon, which he then carefully gently warms by blowing fire right over, and the water creature looks to be smiling at that, then it blows bubbles in the dragons face and the dragon appears to be laughing, to the princess. Then they grasp each others curved black claws, linking them, she reaching up from her water world, he reaching down from his sky world, and their romance is doomed and tragic because they belong to two different worlds so it is forbidden, and they can’t really be with each other, and the witnessing princess surmises the dragon takes the brides away so the grooms can know his pain, or something like that.
Janelle thought she should write some names down, something to call the dragon, sea serpent, princess, prince, perhaps some dragon slaying knight who would play a role in the story—he comes to kill the dragon and the princess has sympathy for the dragon and spares it, or something, but no names came to her. So she left the Arby’s without any real progress made towards her goal.
That night the Cleveland Cavilers played the Orlando Magic in game two of their Easter Conference series, and Janelle watched most of the game with her younger brother, and it turned out to be another classic game; a must win for the Cavs and they were down two with only one second left, Hedo Turkalou made what looked to be the game winning shot—a tough driving pull up jumper in the lane over multiple defenders, and in the next inbounds play, just one second left, down by two, Lebron James tries to get behind Turkalou to catch a lob thrown my Mo Williams from out of bounds, but Hedo didn’t let Lebron get behind him, so Lebron pushes off a little and goes the other direction towards the top of the three point arch—about two feet behind it, where he catches a lob pass by Mo, and he jumps and heaves the ball up in a high arch towards the rim, and Dwight Howard would later say it was like watching a movie, with the ball moving in slow motion, see each individual rotation it makes, waiting for it to come down, and it comes down and swishes in, Lebron makes it at the buzzer, Cavs win by one, the crowd erupts Lebron’s teammates swarm him, game over—just incredible, unbelievable, one of those shots that will be played in Lebron highlight reels forever, for decades to come, and Janelle and her younger brother had watched it while it happened, live, on TNT.
After the game Janelle decided she’d go to her room and open up her sketch book and write down names for these possible characters she had thought up earlier in the day; although she knew she’d feel silly trying to come up with hopefully creative names for medieval fantasy creatures and princesses and knights and whatever. Elizabeth? Aragon—no, that’s already taken, that’s the name of this dragon and novel written by this fifteen year old kid—it was also made into a movie, and the novel has sold millions, although Janelle hadn’t read it or seen the movie—she didn’t really like fantasy very much. Princess Aurora? No, that’s already taken from something else too—what was it—oh yeah, duh, Janelle recalled, that’s the name of Sleeping Beauty. Maybe the villagers call the dragon Reignfree, but his real name is Lester or something—Janelle chuckled, thinking this whole creative naming thing dumb.

PINK FROST
The novelization of the screenplay written for Hilary Duff in 2004.

PREFACE

Cassy had a dream where the morning frost iced thick the grass and in the dim morning sunrise light the grassy hills appeared as soft and pink as fluffy clouds in sunset, and from this soft earth arose Cassy’s mother who committed suicide when Cassy was nine. It had been six years since Cassy’s mother was found dead in the bathroom bleeding from her wrists and Cassy lived with her father who abused her for all six of those years, whose skin on the palms of his hands had become calloused and hard like firm stretched leather, and the slapping her sounded like a baseball billowing hard fast in a mitt, and when he used his fists and knuckles it sounded like wood cracking open, echoing in an empty park. Cassy wondered if her father also had abused her now dead mother, and that abuse had been what drove her mother to kill herself; or maybe her father had murdered her mother and made it to look like a suicide.
During some of her father’s beatings and after, laying on the ground in her room, wishing her blood could be rain water she could ride with away down gutters to escape, Cassy sometimes wondered if she’d die, and most times, especially when he’d sexually abuse her, where his touch went from hard to slimy, she wished she’d die rather than being teased with death through the beatings and mental anguish and stress they caused beyond their immediate physical pain.
She had heard a theory that claimed that from every decision made an alternate reality, in another dimension, splinters off where a different decision, with its results and consequences, plays out. For example, if a high school senior has a choice to go to Harvard or Yale and chooses Yale, an alternate reality shoots off in another dimension where the choice had been Harvard, and both scenarios play out in their respective realms of reality. It sounds preposterous and like science fiction lunacy, but the inventor of this theory, whose son formed the popular indie experimental rock band, the Eels, had brilliant math more complex for most mathematicians to comprehend, to validate his claims. His own suicide probably resulted from being rejected as a lunatic rather than a genius by other physicists and scientists. Cassy could understand the pain, embarrassment, loneliness of rejection. She wondered of an alternate reality where instead of her mother dying, her dad had left and she grew up with her mother instead of her father. She’d be happier and more healthy and normal if this had occurred; she wished she could be this other happy girl in this other world; trade places with her and leave her problems.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduce Me

Cassy sat on the sofa watching a Lizzie McGuire rerun on The Disney Channel. The year was 2004 and Lizzie McGuire had made fifteen year old Hilary Duff into a multimedia star with Stuff by Duff and Lizzie merchandise, pop music and movies brandishing her image and name. Cassy, fifteen, same age as Hilary, read the review of Hilary’s new movie Raise Your Voice, and threw the paper down in disgust. The reviewer gave it only one out of four stars and wrote Just Shut Up Duff as the headline. Hilary can act, just wait, she’ll prove all you grumpy old critics wrong, Cassy thought. In that same newspaper was a headline about the Iraq War, a result of the 9-11 terrorist attack three years ago; the raw emotions, anger, defiance, shock, blind patriotism, still trembled the nation, on edge; however most of the more dire predictions of the days after 9-11, about the country losing its innocence and irony being dead and there is no humor, didn’t come to fruition; most of the nation, including the woodsy middle sized Willamette Valley Oregon town where Cassy lived, settled into its pervious sense of individual normalcy and routine; no one knew then how long the Iraq war would last or the epidemic of solider suicides which would stem from it.
On the TV screen Hilary, playing a wet eyed sniffling heartbroken Lizzie, tore up pink and white paper she had written her first boyfriends name on into confetti she threw over her head, then joined her best friends, the always funky and fabulously dressed Mexican pal Miranda (played by Lalaine, a Philippine) and her eventual love-interest, the smart, quirky, aspiring director Gordo, a Jew, into a arm joined saunter past the camera frame, then the closing credits rolled.
Cassy knew she was too old to watch Lizzie McGuire but she didn’t care. Hilary’s good for the world; her squeaky clean image provided a positive alterative tween role model, contrasting with the exponentially increasing raunchy overtly sexualized tabloid grabbing antics of the current reigning pop stars, Brittney Spears and Christina Aguilera, Cassy thought. So funny, this new feud between the supposed “punk anti-Britney” (although she was just as fake and manufactured as Britney; worse really, because she so blatantly lied about the songs she claimed she wrote herself in five minutes in a hotel room, and trying to look rebellious and punk when she didn’t really know what that was, coming from a Canadian town of two-hundred people, and, she admitted, never owned a CD but liked Hanson) Avril Lavigne (five years later Avril’s songs would be played on the mom loving light rock stations) and Hilary Duff. Funny, but not really, actually hurtful, how Cassy’s school peers sometimes, mockingly, teasingly, called Cassy Avril because, Cassy supposed, she shared Avril’s trait of never smiling; not that her classmates saw anyways. They pretended that Cassy thought she was a witch; how surprised they’d be, if they really cared but they didn’t, to find out that Cassy came home from school and watched Lizzie McGuire reruns, rather than draw black chalk pentagrams in her room, light candles and chant satanic verses pretending to conjure some Wicca spell to get some boy to fall in love with her, or whatever they supposed she did. They also called her “that crazy girl, crazy Cassy,” because they had all heard what she had done at her former school a few months ago, the reason she had to transfer.
Cassy did sometimes hear a voice in her head and she sometimes spoke out loud to it, although she recognized it as an extension of herself and her thoughts rather than a separate independent identity. But she understood that her school peers at her old school and new school might be more right then they realized concerning her undiagnosed insanity. She wasn’t normal like them. Abnormal things have happened and are happening to her since her mother committed suicide six year ago when Cassy was nine. When she’d cry she’d sometimes see water seeping into her room but when she felt the floor it would be dry. She always felt damp and cold even in summer. She sometimes thought a suffocating dark and invisible hand squeezed her throat at nights and when it did she no longer fought it but hoped it would strangle her all the way and she’d wake up in a more bright and beautiful death world where she could breathe easier. She seemed to live in a different dimension then her school peers; a slower more ponderous one, as if in her dimension rather than light air was dense water, and she could only dream of joining the active happy speeds the others existed in; that warmer and easier normal reality. Also her often drunk father sexually and physically abused her since her mother died.
Cassy hoped one day she could emerge from her outcast banishments and join with the pulse and vibrancy of the active, lively ones, plug herself into that electric current which powers positive pursuits, join the healthy, happy, normal ones and free herself, no longer burdened with her damp coldness, morose heaviness, the voice in her head she’d speak to, her suffocation, weariness, worry, anxieties, depressions; these haunting, draining, demon leeches. Maybe in five years, once her scrawny skinny still underdeveloped frame has matured and she has escaped her father and the constant pain from what her mother had done, feeling at fault, she can finally bloom and emerge out her cocoon and join the others and receive the same stronger energy which feeds them, have her skin and body absorb more of the suns sustenance as they do, be more privy to the comfort and happiness people should be exposed to. She dreamed.
But until then Cassy liked to go into other worlds inside her head. She liked the imagery and ideas associated with Alice in Wonderland. She last remembered being happy when a little girl and Alice was a little girl when she fell down a rabbit hole into another magical world, and Cassy wished she too could escape into a magical world. Children’s literature is rife with stories of children leaving a bleak dull world, usually war or abuse or neglect as a backdrop, into a more vividly colorful magical exciting world, usually where they are destined saviors and heroes: The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter being examples. In The Wizard of Oz movie, much is made of Dorothy’s dreary farm Kansas world being in black and white and the magical Oz world she falls into being presented in fabulous Technicolor. Wouldn’t it be nice if imagination could be real and animals could talk and darkness always overcome? That our worlds could be as fantastic as we can dream. Cassy wrote poems in a binder to try and help cope with her pain, but they weren’t very good and consoled her little and didn’t prevent her father’s continual abuses or gain her any friends or give her more sanity and peace of mind.
After Lizzie McGuire Disney Channel played Even Stevens which Cassy watched fifteen minutes of, looked at her watch, 4:45, her father might come home in an hour or so. She got up, went to the bathroom, went to her room and shut the door and would have locked it if it could lock.
Hilary is secretly dating Joel Madden of the band Good Charlotte and Joel’s identical twin brother has a tattoo on his shoulder and arm of a little girl crying in the rain over a gravestone, and he explained that it’s supposed to be his as yet unborn daughter crying over his grave; quite macabre, but the Madden twins loved macabre despite writing hook heavy catchy pop-rock songs played on TRL. Cassy thought of the image of a girl crying over a simple gravestone in the rain often; she had dreams of the image and the crying little girl was her and the gravestone belonged to her mother. Cassy also had visions of having an identical twin, lost in an alternate world somewhere, who would come and take her and save her, be her friend, take her to a better hidden world, one where maybe her mother lived instead of her father, and she was happy instead of sad.
Cassy put The Pixies third CD, Bossanova into her cheap boom box stereo in her room and pressed play. The Pixies are considered one of the first college-radio alternative rock power bands of the 80’s, who influenced Radiohead and Curt Cobain and that whole soft-loud dynamic which is the supposed hallmark of the Grunge music movement of the 90’s. Cassy recently discovered The Pixies because music blogs had mentioned their recent improbable reunion and tour and mentioned their influence on Radiohead and Nirvana and Curt Cobain who had shot himself in the head in his Seattle home, believing it better to go out in a burst rather than fade out. Cassy also liked Bjork because people thought Bjork was weird, but Cassy recognized what others called “weird” of Bjork to be profound brilliant smart musical art. Cassy once had a painting she created of Bjork hanging in her room, but during one of her father’s tirades he had destroyed it, calling her an ugly girl who can only make ugly things, then he grabbed her, shook her, undressed her and abused her. If I had a swan dress like the one Bjork wore to The Oscars for her role in “Dancer in the Dark,” I’d wear it every day Cassy thought. “Dancer in the Dark,” is a depressing and beautiful movie about a near blind factory worker lady who escapes her bleak existence by dreaming up musical numbers in her head, and she’s saving up money for the operation for her son, so he won’t go blind like her, but the money is stolen by her neighbor who wants to buy rich things for his wife, and Bjork’s character accidently shoots him in defense and she’s arrested and put on trial and is hanged, and it’s an injustice that Bjork wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar for that movie by the academy.
The first song Rock Music blared out the stereo and Cassy turned up the volume, and Frank Black, The Pixies lead singer screams an unearthly sound, like it came from the voice of a demonic power and pain howling up to shake the floors of heaven, begging for redemption by the passion and plea’s of his screams; his whole entire insides and soul unleashed in his scream-singing. Cassy screamed along to what she thought the lyrics were, although she was wrong: A mouth! A mile! Away! Hey-you-know-me-please-se-duce-me! He’s screaming out to music to be saved by music which is so many thousands of miles away to him. That was the interpretation Cassy had given the song, although it was impossible to decipher Frank Black’s lyrics. Cassy thrashed her body around to Frank’s screams, then shut her eyes tightly and jumped, her hands fists at her sides, pogo-ing along with the thumping steady beats; she sweat in her manic dance exercise, trying to use the music as purifying escapism.
In the middle of the album are three cool down songs which seemed to blend and bleed together into one song to Cassy, each having that mellow (for The Pixies) surf rock vibe, each song emerging her deeper into their wavy dreamscape landscapes, or soundscapes she’d enter into as she listened to them; she listened to the ending crescendo of the third song All Over The World with the harmonized refrain between Frank and Kim (the angel sweet voiced female bass player) sounding to Cassy something like All I have and all I am are only in my mind, are in my thoughts.
She heard the thud of her father’s fists hammering, shaking her door and felt the thud of her heart beating heavily and she tried to breath but her throat restricted. She wished so badly her door could lock but it couldn’t but she knew even if it could he’d bust it open no problem. She saw the door handle turn and she wished her surroundings, the scene she was in (she often pretended her life wasn’t real but a movie) would fade to black the way it sometimes happens in movies to spare the viewers from the horrendous events they knew next will transpire because of what has happened earlier; the last shot before the fade to black being the frightened panicked face of a crying girl, then after the fade to black, sounds of the slapping and beating continue, lingering, the audience left forced to imagine the disturbing images that would otherwise accompany those sounds if the screen hadn’t gone black.
Her door crashed open and her father walked in carefully and he couldn’t find his cigarettes and he pretended she had stolen them although she hadn’t, she didn’t even smoke, and he said, “you’re so strange and sad and a burden and your mother would be ashamed of you,” and Cassy closed her eyes as he shook her and beat her and sexually abused her, unleashing his guilt, frustration, anger, spite, pleasures, addictions, on her, in his thumping, beating, sloppy crashing rhythms; the accompaniment for the movie scene tense and dramatic building to climax then like a piano falling down stairs, breaking apart, then silence. Her mouth filled with blood and it pooled out her mouth onto the wood floor and she struggled to regain her normal breathing, coughing, choking, feeling she could vomit. As he beat her she tried to escape from the fear and pain by going inside herself and pretending it wasn’t her he forced his hard fists and slimy skin on but some other girl in a different world. The real her lived as a happy cheerful girl, bubbly, loves pink, smiles brightly, has amazing friends who she shares fun adventures with, making life exciting, is free and full of optimism and love for the world, the world before her, all the romantic beautiful sweeping orchestration playing for her as she runs and twirls on grassy hills under perfect bold pastel blue skies with fluffy white clouds; she has a boyfriend and will go to Harvard and she laughs so strongly so constantly and she is as loved as the brightest happiest most top of it all singing and acting and fashion creating celebrities are, loving life, so strongly, so full, so brightly, bursting from the happiness and love of friends, fans, family, they cry overjoyed. She wished her life could be like a Hilary Duff movie or TV show; she wished she could be Hilary Duff, she thought, vomiting blood, trying to pick herself off the hard wood floor.

CHAPTER TWO
A Movie

Bell Rings. Fade in. Interior, the day. Cassy sits at a desk in her high school English class in the new school she had to transfer to after the talent show incident at her last school.
Cassy sometimes set the scene of her surroundings using language she thought would appear in a movie script, in her mind. Her English teacher stood in front of the class as the bell rang. He had instructed the class to call him Mr. E; the students joked that the “E” stood for “easy.”
“Twenty minuet stream of conscious free write. Remember the tip of your pen does not leave the page. And go,” Mr. E said.
Cassy stared blankly ahead of her, her spiral notebook unopened on her desk. Idiot lazy teacher didn’t prepare a lesson again. That’s what twenty minuet free writes always mean. What a crock of shit she thought.
“Cassy, earth to Cassy, go you’re being graded,” Mr. E said.
You’re always being graded. Judged, Cassy thought.
“It’s okay Mr. E she thinks she’s some kind of a Wicca or something. She’s probably channeling into some other dimension,” Charlie, a classmate said.
“Thanks for your input Charles. Pen on paper please. Cassy, dear, you can’t just hand in poems for extra credit every time you zone out. If you want to pass this class you’ll have to participate, do the same work as everyone else.”
Some of her classmates snickered and Mr. E had to remind them that time is running, write people write, write freely, he said and the class snickered again.
Great as if the class doesn’t think I’m a big enough freak already he has to tell everyone I write poetry Cassy thought.
“Her Mr. E can I write poetry for extra credit too?” some other classmate asked. Cassy named him kid #2 in her mind; she had already named Charles kid #1.
“No Cassy’s poems are good, yours are not,” Mr. E said.
“Yeah, because she’s all dark and brooding right? And so misunderstood. Gawd Mr. E you buy into that cliché?” classmate #2 said.
“Hey Avril, I loved Skater Boy. So many layers of meaning in that,” a classmate sarcastically said to Cassy, and part of the class laughed.
“Hey when are you going to strip?” another boy interjected.
I want to die Cassy thought.
“Class please, that’s enough,” Mr. E said. “See Cassy if you’d just write like I asked you too. Everyone, pens on paper please,” Mr. E said, then excited by his unintentional use of alliteration added, “Quick, what’s that called what I just did, using all those P’s?”
“Alliteration,” a girl named Jenny answered.
“Good Jenny, five points to Gryffindor,” Mr. E said, and the class collectively groaned at his tacky Harry Potter reference joke.
Cassy opened her notebook and looked down at the blank paper. A blank paper says all there is to say. Nothingness is everything. It’s prettier that way. Unblemished. Unused. Pure. I wish I could go back to when mom still lived. Back to when I didn’t cry so much. But I’ll never let them see me cry. Cassy sensed Mr. E glaring at her so she began to write, producing:
Cold is a/ Gnawing/ Time is a constant/ Sawing/ When there is no/ Belonging/ Stars stare down/ Wanting nothing/ Waiting/ For something/ That won’t come/ Where are my keys/ I lost again, damn it/ Where did they go?
And fade to black, Cassy thought after she wrote it, but of course life isn’t a movie, series of scenes, and there is no fade to black, and there are no time jumps or musical interludes or montages or time compressions or plot structure or beautiful actors and actresses in their twenties playing privileged interesting teenagers or rising climax and resolutions and happy endings, or any endings except for death. She was still in her English class, only five minutes had passed although she felt as if her day should be over already and it should be the next day, but she knew tomorrow wouldn’t feel any different than today anyways; her dampness, anxieties and insecurities would still be there, as would her father. She looked around her and all her classmates were still writing in their notebooks, fulfilling the free-write assignment and Mr. E looked at her disappointingly.
What did I mean, “where are my keys?” why did I write that? Cassy thought. Maybe I was thinking of locked doors. Wishing I could lock my door. Or the life I should have had but don’t is behind a locked door. Mom shouldn’t have died. I should be living a different life. I should be happier. I’m suicidal. No one knows what it’s like. I don’t even smoke. I don’t deserve friends. I can’t make anyone’s day better or cheer anyone up. I wish I had an identical twin.
The bell rang and Cassy walked the bustling crowded school halls in solitude to her locker still thinking. They’re all so cheerful. What’s so funny to them? What are they talking so excitedly about? What do the girls get so dressed up for? They’re all so pretty, like they’re in a Ralph Lauren commercial or something—look how fabulous we are as we laugh, play, kiss, in our trendy American Ralph Lauren cloths; our lives are a continual beautiful vacation that we look beautiful in. I feel so heavy. There’s the popular kids.
“Hey what’s up zone-out girl,” one of the popular boys walking in a group said to Cassy as he passed her in a hall and held up his hand as if to signify she give him a high five as they passed. Cassy ignored him, pretending she didn’t hear him or the laughter of his group or the boy who next said to her “can’t wait for the talent show.”
A football game, a dance, means life and death to them. Who cares? I can’t feel anything. Everyone’s a balloon but me. I’m a rock. They’re helium balloons in the sky and I’m like a rock at the bottom of a lake. They live in a different dimension. I live inside my head.
In gym a volleyball struck her and she thought this scene would be used for levity if this day were a movie to give the audience a break from all the morose bleakness in her and around her suffocating her and the audience. People like to laugh. Life feels just as fake as a movie. One of those cute funny fantasy Disney ones where magical things happen, like mothers and daughters switching bodies by opening a fortune cookie, like in “Freaky Friday” or whatever.
Lindsay Lohan was in “Freaky Friday.” She was the hot “it” celebrity at the moment, getting all the attention she obviously craved, on the cover of all the tabloids every week, speculating whether her sudden beach ball boobs she’d flaunt with low cut dresses in LA nightclubs meant she had breast implants; and she’s on all the covers of the fashion magazines, who’d write sympathetic articles on her; poor girl, she’s young and just wants to live and have fun yet she has to put up with attention and paparazzi and tabloids; a cycle going; and there’s a feud between Lindsay and Hilary; they both simultaneously dated Aaron Carter, the younger brother of a Backstreet Boy, which was a popular boy band; and all the critics and media loved Lindsay over Hilary, because Lindsay was in “Mean Girls,” which was a lot edgier than “Lizzie McGuire,” and the kid stuff Hilary was doing; and the media sort of resented Hilary for being a pop star, although Lindsay was trying to be a pop star too, working on an album, and Hilary could have played that Mean Girls part just as well as Lindsay did, Cassy knew; how hard is it to eat alone in a bathroom stall while looking sad, such as what the part called for: and Lindsay lies about everything, Cassy knew; about her boobs, and not smoking, and doing cocaine, and not wanting the attention, and everything about Aaron—everything.
But it’s just all fake, as fake as movies, and who cares about movies.

ADVARNT GUARD STREAM OF CONSCIOUS ART

ONE

Slashes of sentences like Jackson Pollack paint swipes layered come about out in stream of conscious advarnt-gaurd art. Here it is, spilled, violent, sprayed, guts, heart, soul, poured slash, get it out, action, sweat, passion, out, splatter, chaos, out directed at the canvas, the paint, splashed out; then there are patters and symmetry hidden in it. Blah, it spews out, take it world, here it is, I don’t care, captured all the madness and chaos and confusion and everything in the world, directed through drunken Jackson Pollack the artist, through paints on the medium of canvas; wish words on paper could be the same way and work the same way and be just as praised and magic maybe James Joyce already did that and others—ever tried reading Finnegan’s Wake? It’s impossible.
Not really of course but maybe if you squint, you can see the order and beauty in it and if you look at but just beyond like looking through it maybe 3D images pop out.
She makes it hard to love her or not love her, she makes it hard, screams this band about this song about this girl who’s always giddy and in motion and dancing and jumping and being cute hanging out with friends, all so perky still and upbeat like a puppy dog still and she still looks cute in a bikini with her dancer body traveling all over breaking into movies, so cute he wants to squeeze her, so perky and happy it annoys the death out of him he wants to squeeze it out of her, her pictures she always looks so perky and smiling and jumping and posing and cute it kills him it’s too much he loves her he hates her he loves her, her dressing up for Halloween in that slick metallic faint purple wig and red rose cheeks looking like a white doll in Tokyo killed him; you make it hard, he screams out in the song; did I see you in Universal Studio’s or was it the beach in your bikini killer kill me body or was it in line at the movie or at a movie premier isn’t it weird how I see you everywhere, you make it hard to forget you, he sings, it’s so frustrating he lets it out in his music, maybe it’d be a hit it should be that might impress her except it’s not her type of music really anymore, and how to take it? What’s he trying to say anyways? Forget it, but isn’t it funny and fun to discuss with girl and boyfriends at Pinkberry late at nights around the corner, hey it’s summer! You’re just an ongoing optimistic little train that keeps on chugging, bubbles and steam and dancer mirrors and the tour in Sydney and tears black with ink mascara falling into hotel sinks, alone and traveling and balloons, fireworks, elaborate marriage proposals on Disneyland main street, a gay, meaning happy, production put on a crowd gathers and claps it’s all a part of the magic and they lived happily ever after (saw it promoted on YouTube) the end, rain and tears and caves hiding fears, cheers to the journey, here’s to you, you make it easy.

Elbows on table hands on cheeks, it’s been weeks since they’ve seen each other, smile for the camera, in a month it will end. Nature is lovely it loves you skip through it holding hands through the sun stream and rain streaming through the leaves and branches all green growing together, skipping along to the songs, it’s getting better ever better, put it in a recipe mix it in the brownie cookie cake batter cook it up in the oven, making out some loving to die for sweets to get through the tunnels dug through the mountains to pass through on our way, have a nice day, pretty birds singing in the trees, and flying out to sea, the mist of the ocean in the breeze, bottle it up call it a cologne to spray before the date, hope to get a kiss or two or three, if you’re ready for the dance tonight, the shoes fit right, the floor beckons a dance, better go quick or you’ll miss your chance for love, set in the clouds and stars high above, lovely, ready set go fly release, beg please, I just want to live, life don’t kill me and let me be free to say no or yes or second guess and try again; loser wants to win, doesn’t know where to begin, just get by and don’t sin, heaven may await if you stay straight, so they say; you’re a knight in shining armor with devils and dragons and life to slay; say do you feel the sway pulling this way, take off armor it’s so heavy down there is a beach to lay, let the surf wash up and take me away, I float in it before the sink, what do you think, I don’t know, what do you think, what do you want to do, I don’t know what do you want to do, got any games to play or stories to tell and friends to make or lips to kiss or art to create or anything interesting to say? Well no not really, still I’m alive for now either way, well what do you have?
A song to scream, she makes it hard, or is it easy, I get confused, lost in the lyrics. Sometimes when she sings it sounds like sad dripping syrup, lovely but sometimes I hate it also, sometimes I love it, she makes lots of money regardless, well maybe not millions yet, but enough anyways. Anyways, Costco Pizza, pineapple toppings, mailings and workings and movie theatre floors need mopping, and throwing spell check away; have a good day, hey you, I’m talking to you, selling the crystal unicorns on the sidewalk outside the Smith’s grocery store looking sort of gross and homeless with a dirty beard that might have some ants in it; you kill me, I wish you weren’t there, but good luck anyways, hope you make some money to feed your little girl—is that her in the big bright pink rimmed sunglasses, she’s cute you kill me, don’t take offense if I forget you, good luck, hope you sell a lot of that crystal unicorn crap today, you kill me, wonder if he spends it all on alcohol, wonder if it’s wrong to think that, wonder what I’m thinking anyway; I love you man, god bless you as you journey and struggle and seek rewards along your way. What do I care? Just don’t push me maybe I should make eye contact but I won’t. Move on to the next paragraph, make this faster, filled with laughter, what do you say? Want to keep playing? I’ll go on, metaphor for living, either way.
Tried to write a thing called Kid Apocalypse, didn’t get far with it (I just spelled apocalypse right, which sort of surprised me, no squiggly red line under it; I just spelled squiggly right too; double surprise—ha) but I’ll transcribe it here anyways to see what happens; don’t know what that means. Waiting for an e-mail from Max, he said soon but who knows how much soon really is, how long, and he’s—how’d he put it, I’ll go check, hold on… “I am still looking at some options for you. I will be in touch soon…” And all that is in regards to “Amber’s Summer,” which I sort of want to add to this, along with the others, and call the thing “Four Novella’s featuring Amber’s Summer,” and self publish it, just like I did with “Elle and the Ghost Author” (Oh my gosh, I am so sorry anybody who read any of that—wonder who, probably nobody—ha—but if anyone did… fam?… so sorry for the lack of editing in all the short stories… to anyone who tried to read that, and is now reading this… Amanda? Ha-ha) and “Love in Dance & Basketball,” (tomorrow I’ll send a copy to Disney and Universal because I got five copies I don’t know what to do with, I’ll keep one, gave one to Amanda, I typed it on her computer, and I’ll maybe slip one into Barnes and Noble somewhere, like the opposite of shoplifting, but maybe it’s a crime to slip in your junk in stores too, I don’t know, maybe I won’t do that, we’ll see, and also it’s sort of hard for me to go back and read them in their self-published book form, sort of feels like I’m an actor and I don’t want to watch myself in a movie, too self-conscious and cringing about stuff, impossible to look at it objectively, or subjectively, I get the two meanings of those two worlds mixed up because I’m not that smart, and I don’t really know how good any of it is but I’m guessing not that great, and wow, I just totally lost my place, don’t know if I’m writing in a “( )” thing or not, I think I am) where was I what was I talking about, something about, or yeah, I had those self published, and I want to get “Amber’s Summer,” published, along with those three other little novella’s, but I’m waiting to hear what Max has to say or send, he’s a literary agent, how much of one I’m not sure, how legit and everything, but he’s the only one who still talks to me anyways, and if it’s possible to get Amber’s Summer published for real, I should take that, to actually, you know, have it be for real and potentially actually make some real money from it and sell more than two copies (all you can expect, really, from self publishing) and… I lost my place again. Oh yeah, well, never mind. Hope while I wait.. hope I don’t have to wait too long, I get sort of antsy about all this once this is all finished, just sort of want to rush it through the process, anyways, hope Lulu doesn’t raise their price while I wait; they might, they’re the cheapest out there, I think; I would have saved a few hundred dollars if I had found them before I found the Christian self publishing company which printed “Dance and Basketball Love.” It’s on Amazon now, you can order it! I hope if I do publish all this with Lulu for the cover they pick a picture, hopefully that gray black-and white shade, of a beautiful teenage girl (that’d be Amber) crying on the beach. Did they? Is that even in this? I can’t believe Lulu is publishing this part now, how funny; did they? Wonder how much they publish every year; no I don’t, who cares, but it might be a lot, considering literary agents get and turn down 200 queries a week; and if just half those decide to self publish, that’s 100 a week, and I guess I’m among those? I don’t know.
When I started writing this I was listening to “Yeah Yeah Yeah’s” new CD, “It’s Blitz,” and it’s really good and gets better the more you listen to it, so far anyways, and I was typing out the very last part of Pink Frost, (how’d it turn out?) but got sort of burned out on that, so went to this and started writing that artsy stream of conscious stuff, above all this stuff, but then the CD finished, and then I started writing this—just dull self-musings journal writing stuff. But I’ll end this soon—got to—and get back to writing stream of conscious artsy advarnt guard stuff—how do you spell that—I’m spelling it so off that spell check is clueless; advent guard? It’s a French word, I know… I’m sure you know what word I mean. Got any questions? I don’t know why I just typed that. Why am I so stupid you ask? Guess I was born that way. Why am I reading this you ask? I don’t know, why are you? Why am I writing this? Because, I don’t know, I guess I sort of like the idea that I can write anything and it will show up in a book. Maybe that’s not real mature of me. But this extra writing will pad the book, make it look thicker, and so more impressive, maybe? And it will be the same price—I found out 15 dollars was too steep to set “Dance and Basketball” for; similar sized books on Amazon sell for 8 to 10 dollars, so to make up for it I’ll set the price for this as 10 dollars, and that’s a deal because it’s four novella’s, (if “Amber’s Summer” is included, I’m sort of hoping it is; and if you want to include “Janelle’s Novella Project,” which you probably don’t; not sure that can really count as a novella, did anyone get through that—honestly, right now, I have no idea how to end that—more Demi tweets? I just laughed a little at myself, how stupid that thing is. Hope I don’t get sued for plagiarizing Demi’s tweets; I paraphrased it by putting “She” where she put “I” and stuff… so I’m just retelling what she tweeted rather than copy it verbatim; but it’s not plagiarism because I’m putting it into a different context, right? And are tweets copy written anyways, or public domain? Maybe I’ll be sued and the case will go to the Supreme Court and we’ll all find out. Um, by the way, if any Lulu editor is reading this (yeah right) don’t get all apprehensive, I’m just joking around, I’m sure there’s no problem and Demi won’t sue me for using her tweets for inspiration—that’s what I’m doing right, I have no idea; and Demi tweets sounds funny to me. She’s a good tweeter though. Okay, I’m stopping this now. I’ll see what’s on TV, (don’t really care at all to see the Merlin miniseries but it might be the only thing on; maybe I’ll watch CNN, news on the remarkable Iran riots, or maybe some interesting science or history show is on, or movie, or I’ll just channel surf watching nothing really for a few hours; oh, I’m kind of excited to watch Jon and Kate plus eight tomorrow; the teaser hints they’ll announce their divorce; and wow I just feel horrible now that I actually typed out I’m excited to see Jon and Kate announce their divorce, if that’s what it is; I guess you forget those reality stars are real people; and I’m starting to hate myself now, writing all this) maybe cook some ramen-noodles, maybe twitter to all my twenty followers what I ate for dinner, just kidding (and how did I get twenty followers, Twitter must just randomly add people as followers?), wow I’m annoying myself right now, and then tonight I’ll finish typing up Pink Frost, and surf the net, or not, then while I’m waiting on Max’s e-mail (will it take a day or a week or a month?), I’ll work on this thing, doing hippie writing or whatever, and don’t get mad, it’s like free padding, it’d cost the same, just ten bucks, if this were added or not. So, yeah. END. So ABC Family is showing “Another Cinderella Story,” and I’ve never seen it, don’t really want to now; sort of strange and annoying how love struck Disney is with Selena; sort of creepy isn’t it, with how old Disney is, but they’re in love with her, give her anything, her own album soon, she’s working on it now, she’s not a great singer, I’m sure she’s nice enough, but why couldn’t ABC show “Alice,” with Alyson Stoner instead of this movie every day? “Alice” is such a cute good movie, Alyson does so amazing in it; people would really like it, even if it’s not as supposedly “hip” as this movie is; Selena plays a dancer in it, hilarious use of body doubles. I’m babbling, I called dad because it’s father’s day and the Ramen noodles, chili flavor, are bubbling, time to take them off the stove. Really, what’s the matter with me, why am I still writing, stop it! Stopping it… now.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

MY NOVELS /DANCE AND BASKETBALL LOVE

November 2, 2009

Hello! Here are the first three chapters of Dance and Basketball Love. You can order it off Amazon using this link: http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Basketball-Love-Cameron-Glenn/dp/1603831991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257180020&sr=1-1

DANCE AND BASKETBALL LOVE

By

Cameron Glenn

Preface

“I’ve been thinking,” Amber said to Derrick, although she didn’t know if he could hear her, “if our lives were a movie so far, what the tagline might be. I think it’d be a teen romance comedy drama, only PG rated, right, possibly PG-13, target audience twelve to thirty two year olds, and it’d make four hundred million internationally. Anyways, I came up with Passion is the fuel which drives us to what we love. Love is the reward. Without it, the game is pointless. Get it, because we’re both passionate about what we do, you with basketball, and me with dancing and acting. But without love, there’s no point to it. I don’t know, it’s a rough draft, a work in progress. But I think it works for us. What we’d both be willing to sacrifice. What we have sacrificed. But it needs to have a happy ending. So I need you to wake up.”
Amber looked at him, his eyes closed, and she felt a little foolish for rambling so much, essentially to herself, trying to make him smile by cracking that movie joke, yet there he lay near motionless, his lips dry, hooked up to the IV and a heart monitor in the dim hospital room. She stared at his chest just to see it rise with air. They can never get the lighting in hospital room’s right. They’re always too bright or too dim, both ways discomforting. She held his limp large hand and squeezed over his knuckles and under his palm. She saw a card on the mantel by his bed. A nurse must have found it on him and placed it there. He had written her name and scribbled a heart on it.
“I need you to wake up,” Amber whispered. She realized if this scene did take place in a movie how dumb it’d be, what the critics might say; such a cliché thing, a girl by a boy’s hospital bed as he clings to life, such a Soap Opera moment, in danger of becoming too sappy and melodramatic; nothing we haven’t seen before, the Hollywood people would say of the script; it needs creative edge. Yet this had never happened to her before and she didn’t feel melodramatic, she felt more sterile and numb, which is the way of hospitals, still in dazed shock from what transpired the night before, and where she now found herself; like the dizzy slightly nauseous sensation of being in a darkened room and a strobe light flashes on and off, high beam daggers to the eyes and she needs to regain herself. Not really such a romantic feeling at all. She wondered of fairy tales, how the princess wakes up with the kiss of a prince who truly loves her. Sort of a non-feminist antiquated thing, to suggest a girl needs a man in order to live. Amber didn’t agree with that. And she had learned that life isn’t anything like a fairy tale, otherwise her parents would still be in happily ever after bliss land, she’d have gotten all the roles she thought she deserved, and Derrick’s eyes would be open, he’d be smiling, and they’d be shooting on a basketball court together. A harsh lesson for the young, groomed to believe in miracles, to learn. But she wondered if she kissed him… what might happen. She closed her eyes and her bottom lip began to slightly quiver as she felt a hot tear begin to well behind her eye lid as she thought of him break dancing in his tuxedo for her, trying to do that hopping on one hand move then falling over; imagining one of his dunks in a game and how’d he point and smile at her after; remembering the first time they met as children on the basketball court at the elementary school and he couldn’t even get his ball to hit the rim. He’s usually so animated and to see him unresponsive felt brutal and surreal to her, as if the world froze in place, leaving her essentially the only living thing left, alone and cold, a melodramatic thought perhaps, but still true, still present. She couldn’t imagine her life without him, just as she couldn’t imagine her life without dancing. “Wake up Derrick,” she whispered again.

Chapter One

Derrick gazed intently on the pictures of Amber on his computer screen, transfixed by her beauty on the red carpet, in her velvet red strapless dress and red high heels and her umber hair down. He couldn’t stare at her so longingly when near her, couldn’t focus on the softness of her skin on her bare shoulders, over her collar bone, the shape of her shoulder to her neck to her jowl, her wry smile, her shiny lip-glossed lips, her deep set large eyes. He clicked through the pictures of her poses, her natural relaxed smile ones, her power stances of confidence, fists on hips shoulders and toes pointed ahead, square to the camera ones, her pouty flirty smoldering look ones, hints of sexiness, working it. She excelled at red carpet posing, just as she seemed to excel at everything, he thought. He clicked to the next picture; she had one eye squinted shut, her tongue out pressing against the left side of her open mouth, making the sideways peace sign with her hand. He laughed; she had told him she’d make this goofy gesture just for him. The picture acted as a proverbial cold water splash to his face otherwise he might have regretfully let his mind wander on pressing in on the softness of her shoulders with his fingers, giving her a back massage. Her features are so svelte, delicate, petite, but there’s such strength to her also, in her eyes and posture, and especially her movements, which still shots couldn’t capture. He had given her back massages before, but not on her bare skin, and only in friendly brotherly ways, not with the seeds of lusty thoughts and their power beginning to swell in him.
He didn’t want to look on her the way one of her creepy horny male fans might. It seemed strange to him how he could do that; look on her as an outsider might, at times when she’d dress up for premiers and other celebrity events and the onslaught of camera flashes would spray her, the photographers like wolves in a pack devouring meat, presenting to him pictures of her on the internet. In those pictures she almost seemed like a different person to him, which allowed him to gaze on her and think of her in ways different than when they’d chum, slum and hang together, as friends do. In looking at her pictures he’d sometimes get a nervous type awe-struck sensation brought on by the power of her beauty, while when being with her he felt more at ease and relaxed, from having known her for so long and connecting more with her silly sense of sarcastic humor and tomboyish nature, rather than acting like a trembling love crushed fan who won some date contest with her. But it’s because he knew her personally, one of her best friends since childhood, and knew her sweetness, wit, intelligence, that he could genuinely love her in a way her fan boys only dreamers couldn’t. Not just her talents, but her personality, which he had inside access to (she’s so competitive and pretends to be good natured and unaffected about it, she’s so ambitious and driven yet so considerate, remembering all her friends birthdays and making home made gifts for them, so patient and kind to children, like the kids in her dance class, she’s just so cool) gave power and validation to her beauty others just couldn’t know. Because she looked so hard edged and scowled in some of her earlier hip-hop videos and performances she had been in some people thought she should be filled with sassy too-cool-for-you attitude, but she only acted that way when joking as a way of making fun of her not ghetto at all little white girl Disney music loving dorky self.
Still, he knew she wouldn’t appreciate him staring at her pictures with impure desires and he felt some shame. Especially since over the past three years or so she had developed a strong Christian sensibility; perhaps party guided by a backlash or rebellion against some of the wilder celebrity panty-less, night club boozing antics of the young starlet generation ahead of hers, or by some of her friends in and out of show business, or because it’s easier to place faith in divine plans and purposes in the tough rejection filled world of Hollywood, or God simply touched her, she being one sensitive to spirituality, attuned to that entity or energy greater than us, as many dancers and performers, in their own ways, are. Anyways, Amber had become aware of purity and morality and kindness and values; she no longer swore or participated in racy type online surveys as she once did when younger. But maybe, he thought, it’s because she’d reject R or strong PG-13 rated material (she had complained to him that all the scripts sent to her were roles where she’d have to play a teen murderer or rape or hazing victim or druggie) that she drugged through what she had termed, “a bit of a career slump” at the moment. Hollywood culture is the definition of worldly and is always looking for the edgy, to gain attention and creative edge, and is unaccommodating to moral limits. It infuriated him her talents weren’t more widely recognized or used; everyone should be exposed to the most beautiful and talented girl on earth and every moment she spent not filming is shameful and the world is missing out; how could they not know and see this, he wondered, equating it to as if someone had taken and destroyed all the classic great works of art, never to be enjoyed again, that’s how strongly he believed in her and her talents. She’s a brilliant actress, a brilliant dancer, the best. When he’d tell her this she’d laugh and brush him off, thinking him to be exaggerating yet undeniably part of her agreeing with him that she had more to offer than her currently underused abilities; if they’d only give her a chance. Still, Derrick thought, her traditional values virtue and purity sense had made her even more attractive and admirable yet even more unattainable to him, as if she were the pristine perfect princess the sun shines for while he remained a swamp dragon in the murk at the foot of her castle . No matter how hard and muscular he made his body, with all the weight room time, or how skilled and praised he became at basketball, his life and passion; no matter how high he could jump or how fierce and tricky his dunks, she belonged in a higher league then him, better than him, smarter and more mature; he can’t be anything beyond just a buddy to her.

Derrick checked other fan sites where Amber’s picture might appear, and some general teen celebrity message boards where spite filled girls harshly attacked her dress and looks comparing her to a cross eyed hairy monkey then he logged off the computer. He went to his room, grabbed his basketball, and dribbled to the hoops at the park. As usual the other players on the court became excited to see him, believing a future NBA all star in just a few years, a local celebrity, basketball prodigy, the next Lebron James to be in their mists. He told them he felt like just shooting by himself today, and they cleared a court for him, as a crowd he ignored gathered to watch him shoot, while he thought of Amber, saying her name to himself with each shot, most of them swishes that night.

CHAPTER TWO

People said God made Derrick to play basketball, born with a gifted natural ability like a shark is born to swim and chomp. He had lazily been given the moniker The Shark because he played for the Santiago High School Sharks and by his mid-senior year topped the school record books: most points, rebounds, blocks, assists, but people gave credence to the nickname by reasoning his basketball skills resemble a sharks; how sharks will sink if they don’t swim moving forward, Derrick’s aggressive style always propelled him towards the basket, attacking; his smooth and powerful skills looked like a shark swimming; people said when Derrick became wet with sweat, wet like a shark in water, the sweat became like a energizing lubricant rather than an exhaust discharge. Derrick thought all that talk silly; he didn’t really like the Shark nickname. No one, except perhaps Amber, knew how hard he had worked. Only Amber knew he hadn’t possessed much natural ability at all; how bad he used to be when they first met as kids. She used to beat him all the time in horse, free-throw contests, one on one. She taught him how to shoot the first time they met, when kids, he around ten, she around nine, after she had recently moved to the LA suburb from Iowa to pursue acting, her mother taking the advice of the talent scouts.

Amber was born with a natural dancing ability, a God given gift. She possessed a purity and power to her dancing which can’t be taught. Unlike most dancers who look as if they’re trying to show off, Amber’s dancing was elevated above that; when she danced she showed off the songs, and the songs sounded better than before after people had seen her dance to the songs; her dancing like a physical extension and manifestation of the music, the literal transfusion of sounds into sights through movements. Even people who thought dancing to be a fruity and silly pursuit would be amazed, energized, in awe and entertained, after witnessing Amber dance. Everyone who saw her dance would then wish they could dance like her, but would be too appreciative of her skill for there to be envy, just as those are left in awe not envy at witnessing The Statue of Liberty or Eiffel Tower or the great Renaissance or Impressionist paintings. She, of course, didn’t classify what she could do as anything grandiose no more than a hummingbird should think its flight deserved any praise.
Amber taught a beginner hip-hop dance class mostly to kids ages six to nineteen Thursday afternoons from 3:30 to around 5:00 for free. This day, the day after she attended the Music High Four movie premier at the Chinese Theatre as a guest, she taught moves to “Just Dance,” by Lady Gaga. At the beginning of the song Amber stuck her hand out, wrist bent, and swiveled her head back and forth to the beat mouthing along. She then started the count, One, Two, Three, Four, and led the class in the moves she had instructed, as they faced the wall mirror. “You guys have got this,” she said after, smiling. “See I told you this was an easy fun one.”
“Waite how do you do that head swivel thing at the beginning,” a girl asked.
“And on what count is the fist pump at the end?” asked another girl.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Amber said. “I just threw that in there.”
Her class lightly laughed along with her.
“It’s not a count, it’s a feel, you know? The part of the song where if feels like it should go.”
“Like this?” one of her students asked then did a quickened version of the routine, adding the fist pump at the end, which is sort of silly, Amber thought, since there’s nothing complicated about adding a fist pump at the end.
“Exactly,” Amber said, “great job! I didn’t even realize I did that. Just let the music flow through you then you’ll know what to do. Right? Sorry, did I just repeat a cheesy dance cliché?”
The class laughed.
“Well some clichés are true, I guess. Okay, let’s do it again, from the top, this time with more feeling,” Amber said, “and that’s our second cheesy cliché in a row. Okay, one, two three four…”

While Amber taught her dance class Derrick shot baskets in the high school gym alone after school. The coach had given him his own keys. He liked to listen to music while he practiced alone, so he had brought in his stereo and played the newest Mos Def rap/hip-hop CD, and subconsciously danced while he bounced the ball, dribbled, moved, and shot in rhythm to the fast and funky beats. He had forgotten that on every other Thursday the junior high team had access to the high school gym for their team practices. The junior coach and his team, boys twelve and thirteen shuffled into the gymnasium. The boys surprised and excited to see Derrick, but brushing their excitement off, wanting to appear cool to him watched Derrick do a spin move while bouncing the ball between his legs, then cross over for a reverse layup. Amber had taught him that move.
“See boys, this is how you become a McDonalds All American. Dedication and work ethic. Preparing for the playoffs. Derrick, tell these kids what drives you,” the Junior Coach said.
“Love of the game coach. Kids,” Derrick said, stopping his workout, bouncing the ball, facing the junior team. “It’s as easy as that. If you love something you spend time with it. Take care of it, and it takes care of you back.”
“Profound. See kids, he’s smart too. Alright now get out of here, our turn to use the court.”
“Waite, don’t kick him out yet,” a kid said, then bravely strutted towards Derrick under the basket. “I think I can take him one on one.” The team then snickered and went ooohhh and ahhhh.
“A challenger. You’re cocky but I like your confidence. You’ve got it. Now I’m going to humiliate you in front of your friends and send your ego to the ER.”
The kid smiled big and swiped at the ball.

“Alright, it’s about that time,” Amber said, back at the dance studio. “Freestyle dance challenge.” Amber pressed play on the stereo and Shake It by Metro Station played, and the class formed a circle around Amber who began rocking back and forth to the beat. “Anyone?” she asked. “Don’t be shy. Do the side-sweep heel toe I taught last week.” A girl approached Amber and did the move. Amber smiled and clapped along, watching her, then joined her, and the class cheered, then the girl stepped out and another girl entered the circle to freestyle with Amber.

Derrick dribbled the ball at high speed close to the ground, so it looked to be rolling around the floor rather than bouncing, as he played keep away from the kid. He then let the kid take the ball and shoot a lay-up, pretending to miss time his block. The kid raised his arms and yelled “whoo-hoo! I just scored on a future NBA draft pick! I’ll see you in the league in five years.”
“He let you do that!” One of the teammates yelled.
“Why do you play music while you practice?” Another kid asked.
“To help me get rid of all the technique coach puts in my head. Basketball is about flow rhythm and feel, not X’s and O’s. It’s like dancing. That’s what my friend Amber says, that there’s too much counting, not enough response.”
“Okay, I’m kicking you out now, you’re poisoning them,” the Junior Coach said. “Don’t listen to him kids! Basketball is all about technique and X’s and O’s.”
“No offense coach, but I’d rather listen to Derrick. Not until I see you do a reverse dunk,” the kid who had been playing Derrick said.
“See what you’ve done Derrick? I try to hold you as a good example of work ethic and you end up corrupting them.”
“Sorry coach. It’s just the truth,” Derrick said, smiling, shrugging his shoulders.
“Alright, alright, now before you leave say something a little more helpful to these kids, please?”
“Alright,” Derrick said. “So you’ve heard the saying you can do anything you put your mind to? It needs to include heart. If your heart’s not into it, then it means nothing. Whatever you do, do it with all your heart. That’s all I meant.”
“Give it up for Mr. Big Heart everybody,” the Junior Coach said.
“My best friend Amber says that. She’s full of corny lines like that. She reads a lot of those inspirational books.”
“Hey Derrick, will you remember me when you’re in the NBA?” a kid asked.
“Will you remember me if I’m not? Just play’n. Alright kids, do what coach says.”
“Hey Derrick, so are we going to win the state championship again?” another kid asked.
“Or course. I guarantee it,” Derrick said.
Derrick then picked his wind-breaker blue Nike jacket off the floor, put it on, picked up his stereo and bounced the ball out of the gym towards the student parking lot as the kids all waved “bye” and said “hey,” to him. He put his i-pod speakers in his ears. He put his stereo inside his car, a black mustang convertible, looked around to make sure no one spied him then he started to do The Roger Rabbit old-school dance move which Amber had taught him, sort of in a joking way, but he still used it as his go to move at dances or just messing around. He felt his heart make a pounding Thump-Dump unnaturally large beat in his chest, then his heart stopped, and the burn expanded in his chest and lungs and he couldn’t breath, as if he had swallowed a rock now lodged in his esophagus, and he closed his eyes and a dizzying redness swelled in his head, and he dropped to his knees, in pain. This happened to him sometimes, in varying degrees of severity, for the last year or so, and he learned to not necessarily expect it, he never knew when it would come, but to not panic when it came, just wait it out, and his normal heart rhythms and breathing would return. Only he, his mom, his coach, and a doctor knew about his heart condition. Luckily, so far these attacks hadn’t happened during a game. He somehow could stave them off by his willpower, or maybe divine intervention, his prayers answered. Although he’d come to expect them to happen within an hour after his games, usually while alone in the shower. This is so stupid he thought, while on the ground. This is so unfair.

“Alright everybody, great class,” Amber said. “Remember practice everyday, take your vitamins, wear your seatbelts, look both ways before crossing the street, and if you catch on fire what do you do?”
“Don’t stop shooting!” the class answered in unison.
“Good. I’ve taught you well. Also, stop drop and roll. Okay, until next week!” Amber let the stereo run, playing the top 40 radio station, as the kids, mostly girls ages nine to fourteen, but a few older, many of them aspiring actress with stage parents, and a few guys, mingled and chatted and sloppily went over past dance routines together as they waited for their parents to come pick them up, or as their parents were let in and watched. An impromptu line usually formed of girls wanting to hug Amber at the end of class, which she allowed. Usually a few non-regulars, sometimes tourists excited to see Amber, asked for her pictures and autographs, she being something of a celebrity, having guest starred on some tween TV shows and been in a few movies, mostly when younger, the work unfortunately gradually thinning out a bit after she went through puberty.
“Amber, how can I be like you?” a chubby little girl in a pink sparkly hat asked her.
“You shouldn’t want to be like me. You should want to be yourself.”
“But I’m fat.”
“No, don’t say that. Love yourself. You’ve got a lot to offer, but only as you. Not as anyone else.”
“Okay. But I wish I could be a star like you.”
“I’m not a star. But I always tell myself, if I waste time dreaming of who I want to be I’m missing out on the person who I am.”
“Can I have a hug?” the girl asked.
“Sure, of course,” Amber said.
After most of her students had left, Amber still waited in the parking lot of the studio for her mom to pick her up. Although being sixteen she had her permit, but had not yet gotten her license, being busy with auditioning which she’d always go far in, recording voice work for various animation and commercial projects, going to various charity appearances and signings around the country, visiting her hometown in Iowa, her piano and voice lessons, her dentists appointments, brushing and walking her golden retriever dog Max, her independent study school work, which she spent a lot of time on, always being a goal and task oriented girl, wanting to get straight A’s and excel and impress people. She developed a habit of carrying a basketball in her duffle bag from when she had been on the traveling club team when younger. Her coach encouraged her to actively pursue basketball, telling her if she kept at it she could play collegiately on an athletic scholarship; although not tall she had quickness, accuracy, skillfully handled the ball and she understood the game better then anyone he had ever coached, including the boys. She had thought at the time she could do it all; act, sing, dance, be a scholar, motivator, and colligate level basketball player, and have a boyfriend. But as kids find out as they grow, they’re forced to focus their extracurricular pursuits on few rather than all, and Amber, in a tough not obvious at all decision had chosen the entertainment path, although she’d always love sports, especially basketball. She dribbled the ball repeatedly between her legs in the dance studio parking lot and thought of Derrick, imagining him trying to steal the ball from her.

CHAPTER THREE

Three years ago when thirteen Amber and her best friend Sam, short for Samantha, went through a phase where they tried to act cooler and maybe more grown up then they were; she had thought of herself mentally as a twenty one year old trapped in a thirteen year old body. Maybe there was an element of rebellion in it, with the cursing and staying up all night sneaking out and giggly talk and games of being horny, mostly just in play, playing at being a little bit shocking in a way they knew their parents wouldn’t be thrilled over, which had been part of the fun. Perhaps this had partly been influenced by some of Amber’s older and hip late teen co-stars who had temporarily befriended her, telling her she’s so much cooler than others her age and she felt she had to live up to that hype, or maybe the suggestive lyrics in rap and hip-hop songs had something to do with it, or maybe every kid goes through phases like these, as they seek their identities and independence. Amber already went through having a boyfriend by then, an actor, Josh Smith, who has since tried to be a pro skater and rock star and developed a drug habit, all before turning seventeen. But during this phase Amber hadn’t really done too much or gone too far, devising clever excuses not to take cigarettes or alcohol when offered, not going much beyond just kissing and cuddling, still one mindful of God; she hadn’t really done anything abnormal from what her peers did and most, even those who considered themselves strong Christians as Amber did, who went through similar stages with the same type of play at risqué behaviors, didn’t feel they had done anything wrong, to the degree Amber had, not wanting to be reminded or recall herself then; although she had asked God’s forgiveness and had forgiven herself.
During this time one late night, past 1:00am Amber and Sam saw a picture Derrick, also currently online, had taken and put on his Myspace with him lifting his shirt up proudly showing off his six pack abs which he had already developed, and they decided to have some teasing, flirty fun with him. My friend thinks you look sexxxyy Amber had written him, and uh-oh I caught myself staring, and look at my profile picture, and on her profile she had copied what some other girl had done by putting a bathroom mirror picture of herself up in her two piece swimsuit and she wrote him, I’m in a bikini you’re without a shirt partyyy and she wrote him I’m trying to get muscles like you, well not as hard, I’m soft, as you can see, and take it all off, and he took a picture with his shirt off, flexing, and captioned it with this is for my best friend Amber the coolest sexiest girl on earth, and then she went on to tease him with some other pictures she claimed she had taken but he missed, and you would have gone wild if you had seen them, she wrote, we deleted them but we were looking sexy, no it wasn’t anything gross… well depends who you are, haha. After that exchange, and the similar heated exchange the following night, Derrick had been left in awe over her teasing flirting skills; she’s good at everything, acting, dancing, school, and even flirting. She worked me.
A few nights later, when they were physically together in a room in at a mutual friends party, they participated in a truth or dare game that Amber made him promise never to bring up again. They both excused it as one of those things which don’t count in the life annuals of history, being just confused curious kids at the time, just a one time thing. Amber felt embarrassed and some shame over some acts, including flirting with Derrick, which she had participated in during this phase, and has since repented, how she termed it, and changed, and she felt happier about herself now, more solid in her convictions, no longer as easily swayed to act in ways she thought others wanted or expected her to act wanting to meet their idea and standards of hipness and edge and daring and fun. She especially felt foolish in the regard that she should have been and should be more careful about that type of stuff, pictures and surveys and messages posted online since she’s somewhat in the public eye, and there’s older creepy guys out there seeking her attention, which isn’t so flattering she realized; also she wanted to be a positive role model for others, for the girls in her dance class who looked up to her, and to her fans.

It’s complicated why she never pursued anything romantic with Derrick despite their obvious yet unspoken attraction and admiration of each other, but religious guilt over that incident might be a factor, as well as some possible fear of what they might physically do which she might regret if they did decided to become a couple, as well as the fact that they’ve been non-romantic friends for such a long time, which they both liked and were comfortable with and didn’t want to ruin. Also, although she didn’t think of herself as ugly, secretly inside she didn’t have confidence in her appearance. Others classified her beauty as unique, in an attempt to be kind, she thought, and those with no thought of kindness unleashed cruel and creative insults to her she knew she shouldn’t let affect her, yet they did; she had occasionally even cried, internally bruised, over the judgmental scolding’s concerning her appearance. She didn’t have that stunningly cute dimpled Disney smile or voluptuous curves or gorgeous radiance such as most of her acting peers, seemingly racing past her in the stardom game, did. She kept in shape, exercised every morning, and developed a clean crisp fashion sense, and she rather liked her hair and legs, but unless she had a face transplant and a boob job, which she’d never do, those other girls would always be prettier and get the magazine covers and attention and easier audition path than her, she thought. As she saw Derrick mature and bloom, in muscle, looks, confidence and basketball skill, she felt proud of him, but also saw all the swooning attention he drew from all the girls who, while not in the entertainment field, were still prettier than her, she thought, and he could have any girl he wanted. He had become, at least locally anyways, more famous than she was.

While Derrick, recovered from his irregular heart palpitation, drove on the highway home he took out his cell phone and pressed Ambers speed dial. She sat in the passenger side of the car as her mom drove her home from the dance studio when she answered his call.
“Yo Ambs. Where you at?”
“Driving home. You?”
“Chillen driven down the highway.”
“Blasting your tunes.”
“You know it. How was class?” he asked.
“Funky. Did you stay after school and shoot again?”
“Yeah. But then some kids took my gym away from me. Sucks. I left them with a positive message though.”
“What, don’t put your jersey on backwards under your warm up jacket?”
“I told you I did that on purpose. Just to make you laugh.”
“Surrree,” Amber said sarcastically through her smile.
“You’re never going to let me forget that are you?”
Amber laughed. “Nope. So did you tell them to eat their frosted Wheaties with chocolate milk? Your secret diet right?”
“Naw, no endorsement deals yet. I tried channeling you, since I know you’re good with those cheesy motivational type sayings.”
“Cheesy? What are you talking about?”
“You know, you can do anything, you have limitless potential, be grateful, do something positive, blah blah blah.”
“That’s not cheese, that’s wisdom! No, you know I really do believe all that. I’m not being fake,” Amber said, a hint of annoyance or defensiveness in her tone.
Derrick laughed. “ Don’t get upset, I know.”
“Although I did catch myself using two clichés in class today. So you’re right, I should be more original sometimes.”
“I told them to play not with their mind, but with their heart.”
“That’s good. I like that.”
“Like don’t think so much about it, but just feel it, do it.”
“Right, exactly. I actually told my kids something similar. But I hope you never play with my heart player,” Amber said, teasingly.
Derrick laughed. “Funny. I think you play with mine all the time.”
“Like a yo-yo. It’s just too easy. Kidding.”
“See, there you go. Another dagger in the chest.”
Amber laughed. “Some girl in my class told me she’s fat.”
“What you’d tell her? Lay off the extra chunky salsa?”
“No I’d never say that. I have an endorsement deal with chip dips,” Amber said sarcastically.
“Congratulations,” Derrick said, playing along.
“No, she’s not fat at all. Just our superficial culture getting to her.”
“You’re the one in the acting business. Trying to be a part of this culture.”
“Trying to change it for the better.”
“One chubby kid at a time.”
“She’s not chubby. And even if she was.”
“Don’t trip. I’m just play’n.”
“Those girls and guys in class keep me inline. I can’t mess up.”
“Don’t worry. You’re flawless.”
“Yeah sure, flawless like a bucket full of flaws,” Amber said.
“Like a polished marble floor. So I can come over? You’ll help me with my homework?”
“Sure enough. How else would you get your A’s?” We doing Trig again?”
“Nope sorry, I know you love math, but it’s poetry this time. For English. I know, ick.”
“Uh-oh. Not love poems. You wouldn’t be trying to seduce me?”
“If you only knew,” Derrick said. “Hey Amber?”
“Hey what?”
“You’re talking on your cell phone while driving. You’re breaking the law!”
Amber faked a scream then said, “Actually my mom’s driving. I still haven’t gotten my license. Embarrassing.”
“I know. I just like reminding you that you’re not perfect.”
“Jerk.”
They both then said see ya latter’s to each other, hung up, and both smiled, each feeling a little better, a little happier, satisfied and excited then they had before, just from their little conversation with each other. Amber had a light airy sweet and girly timbre to her voice sometimes, and Derrick’s voice had become deep, sounding similar to George Clooney. Amber closed her eyes and leaned her seat back and she squinted as the sun magnified through the car window hit her face. “Why are you smiling, was that Derrick?” her mother asked. “Yeah,” Amber said, still smiling with her eyes closed. “He’s a nice boy,” her mom said. “Mm-hmm,” Amber answered. In his car Derrick smiled and bobbed his head to the music beats. Aren’t those palm trees lining the streets so cool he thought. He, like everyone, took them for granted, not giving them much notice or thought, they’re just trees, but sometimes he tried to stop himself to just appreciate simple beauty around him, and try to see things in a fresh perspective as a tourist might. A car honked and he stalled to let it and another car into his lane, and he waved at them, still smiling, thinking of seeing Amber, eager to see her, wondering what style her hair would be this time, tonight, in two hours or so. He found Zippity Doo Dah on his i-pod attached to his car speaker, and the song in his car changed from a thumping base heavy Lil Wayne song to that Disney Classic song. That Little Blue Bird is dancing on my shoulders, he sang, improvising his own lyrics, snapping his fingers, wishing Amber sat with him for a sing-along.

CHAPTER FOUR

When Amber danced, really danced, not just instructing basic steps and counts to her class; when she felt the music stream through her, to lose herself to it, the dividing numbers instructing the steps to go with the counts gone, her mind not thinking of numbers but of the beauty around her, in life and in the song she felt as a conduit for, her body just in flow and reaction, it gave her the best feeling, like she could make sugar crystals shine from out her tingling skin. What a fun blast to do that, dance that way, leave the world and enter this other more pure world or dimension where the power and beauty of music existed, in a plane higher than ordinary life. Although she released energy through dancing it felt as if the dancing produced energy in her, fueling her, propelling her. It sometimes felt like a high she couldn’t imagine her life without, as if she’s addicted to it, the endorphins leaping out like dolphins in water in her while she danced, offering her this escape and release, like steam out boiling water, from the Hollywood pressures, rejections and stereotypes, the judgments, professional and from the hateful internet crowds, the pressure to be pretty, charming, impressive, perfect, accomplished, the sadness from not seeing her father back in Iowa enough; pure pleasure and release came in her and escaped out her when she danced, giving her this power, making her feel invincible and more attuned to the vibrancy in life.

Derrick felt the same way when in the midst, heat and heart of a good basketball game, feeling it. He felt like basketball elevated from a game into a power, a higher being which chose him to be its messenger, flow itself through him, and it became bigger than just himself; he could see all the court at once, it all belonged to him, as if the court were his land he fought for, and the ball and rim attracted each other like magnets and they wanted him to reunite them and he would do this despite the obstacles and resistance in his way. While in a game such as this he felt invincible, as if his sweat didn’t exhaust him but propelled him, and that this game, the movements inside these lines, became higher than and transcended ordinary life, offered him a refuge and release from stresses of the world, from his love of Amber unreturned, from his heart problem, from school and the recruiting hysteria; he couldn’t imagine his life without basketball anymore than he could imagine his life without Amber or his hands, eyes, feet, or other extensions of himself.
If others heard these descriptions of how dancing could make Amber feel and how basketball could make Derrick feel, they might think them too embellished and so worthy of mock derision, Holy things often being targets of lampooning laugher, yet Derrick understood Amber’s passion for dance and performing, and she understood his passion for basketball, in a more intimate way others couldn’t grasp, they both thought, because their passion was the same, it brought them to what they loved, and love was the reward.

Tags: dance basketball novel romance christian
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Hello world!

November 2, 2009

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Cameronglenn's Novels Blog

Oh Yeah, and A Writer’s Work

Two More Books: The 12 erotic tales of Lucy Locks, and Choked

Excerpt “The Myth of Valcia.”

EXCERPTS OF CUPIDS’ OVERLOOK

Excerpts of Amber’s Summer with M. the V. and New Poems

Excerpts from “Elle & The Ghost Author and short stories and poems

Excerpt FOUR NOVELA’S FEATURING PINK FROST

MY NOVELS /DANCE AND BASKETBALL LOVE

Hello world!

Pages

Archives

Categories

Blogroll

Meta

Follow “Cameronglenn's Novels Blog”