This is an excerpt from my first chapter. Immediately after the main character Jay is introduced by mysteriously waking up in an unfamiliar place. Right as he meets Arlo, his accomplice throughout the story. 

Suddenly, screams echoed throughout the salty breeze. Shattering the stillness as his focus broke, snapping his attention down the shore. 
What?!…what is that?! Jay’s mind screamed. 
Viciously rubbing his eyes, he looked back up at the figures closing in. His jaw dropping in bewilderment as he locked onto a small, furry creature running as fast as its little legs could carry it. 
“Help!” The creature yelled out.
What even is that?! Jay anxiously faltered. 
The distressed creature couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. Bottom-heavy like a pear, covered in shabby, golden-brown hair, it resembled a teddy bear more than anything. Its short legs and chubby frame caused it to bob about in a haphazard fashion. As if any step could be its last before tripping over itself, succumbing to the pursuing figures. 
 “Run…start running! They will kill you!” The creature screamed. Jay looked beyond to see the three pursuing soldiers advancing nearer. Covered entirely in black armor, donning masks resembling the husk of a human’s face. The way their hooded disguises swathed tightly around their heads created an extremely disturbing sight.
“Run!” The creature screamed again as he approached. In an instant Jay turned, mustering his strength, he took off as fast as he could. Stammering about as the pebbles shifted awkwardly beneath his feet.
    “Take a right! Go into the woods!” the creature yelled.
“What is going on?! Who are you? Who are those men?” Jay panted in between strides, a hundred questions attempting to escape his mouth at once. 
“They are not men! I promise you they will kill you if they get ahold of us. Now take a right. The forest is dense. We will have an easier time losing them.” The creature barked before gasping for air. 
The forest emitted a dark green glow from its profuse vegetation. The trees were ancient, their gigantic leaves concealing the canopy, hindering any light brave enough to shine through to its floor. Scattered boulders jutted upwards aimlessly. The enormous ferns were as tall as Jay as he pushed what petals he could out of his path. An endless web of vines hung from each branch, creating an intertwining nuisance consuming every inch of ground. Dangling in their path, not a few feet went by where Jay didn’t find himself swatting or maneuvering over a fallen tree or host of snarled vines. 
    The chase was becoming excruciating, but they persisted. Jay's eyes caught something on his side. The creature was now equal to him. His smaller frame allowing him to run directly under everything instead of wasting precious time avoiding the many obstacles. 
“I think we’re losing them,” the creature roared. 
“I can’t see them! I think I can see some bushes still moving farther back, but I’m not sure,” Jay squeaked between breaths. 
“It doesn’t matter, don’t stop. We need to go further into the woods to be safe, trust me,” the creature self-assuredly exhaled. 
Jay and the small being continued to run side by side, ducking, jumping, and wiggling through every tree, ditch, and ravine. 
“Over there,” the creature spoke much softer as he started slowing down.
“Look! That log, It’s hollow. Follow me. I think you can fit if you crouch down.” He said while entering the crevice with ease. Jay had stopped thinking altogether and followed without hesitation. 
“Here, come here, come in more.” 
Jay obeyed. Crouching down, pressing his hands and knees into the soft, damp moss covering the inside of the decaying log, sluggishly crawling into the darkness.  
    The two sat side by side. A dense mustiness surrounding them as Jay took a deep breath of hot air, attempting to gain some composure. He strained to concentrate. He had no thoughts or words. As if he wasn’t distraught enough, it was impossible to think as the cavity drowned in the gasps and pants of the furry being grabbing his chest while settling himself.  
    “Are you going to kill me?” Jay softly spoke.
“Kill you? Good Gods no. Until you started running, I thought you were going to kill me!” The creature remarked. 
“This isn’t real! I got hit by a car, I’m dreaming, no I was drugged! or, or… I’m in a coma. Oh my God I’m in a coma?! I’m going to wake up any second at the hospital,” Jay panicked. 
“Well, I don’t know what a car is, but they sound dangerous… I’m a Makita? You know, a Keeper?” The creature hesitantly stated, looking confused himself. 
 

Here's an intro scene (prolog, chapter zero) that doesn't even mention the novel's main characters but is the reason the entire novel takes place.

Act Zero or Prolog

The cadet peered into the twilight over the distant trees, then at the screen on the communication console. Still no blips; the supply ship was running even later than usual. He and the Com Sarj were the only officers still awake, trapped in the tiny lookout center atop the station's tower, struggling to stay awake until this tenday’s supply flyer showed up.

"Dunno where they get these pilots, Sarj sir," the cadet said. "They're late every time."

"Bureau civilians, cadet,” the Com Sarj said. “Manual flight, no signals at any time. It's a wonder they get here at all." The two militars resumed their vigil in silence.

The console shrieked and blazed red.

"What! Distress!" the cadet cried. He palmed the hailing plate "Supply vessel, this is destination! Explain your--Fuck! Signal's gone."

The Sarj pointed a night scope at a gray-green hull peppered with fluttering black spots, wobbling over the trees toward the complex, its cabin portal half-open and an arm hanging out. A body plummeted into the jungle. "Shit! There's biters inside the cabin. Fucking idiots must have opened the door. Supply vessel!" he barked at the hailer. "Touch down now! We'll send Containment to your location."

"Speed and course for freight module " the young cadet reported in a shaky voice. "Unsteady and sinking."

"Supply vessel! I said touch down!" the Sarj roared. "Shock your hull. Get the biters off! Now!" The hull did not shock, the flyer did not touch down.

The Sarj turned to the wide-eyed cadet. "This could be bad, son. Suit up before--"

Two modules away, the flyer plowed into the supply dock. The hull shocked in a blaze of lightning. An explosion rocked the complex, tossing the flyer upward, where it shaved off the com tower and tore along the module roofs on a trail of sparks.

Inside the complex, debris flew, lights failed, sirens shrieked, doors sealed, and vents whirred.

Three modules away, Commander Sharl Agrik started at the noise. Yellow containment lights flashed overhead; panicked voices chattered in her earpiece, then quickly went silent. She ran for the bio lab module.

At the laboratory window, she palmed a speaker plate. "Breach! Shut it down, wizards! Get to Decon, then Refuge. Now!"

Most of the twenty scientists hurried from their stations, but a few glared at her over their shoulders at yet another interruption. Another explosion, the groaning ceiling and warping windows, flickering screens, and ever louder alarms inspired them to follow their colleagues.

One lab-coated figure turned toward the window. "What is it this time, Sharl?" she yelled, pointing to a wall clock. "It's only 9.75 hours!"

"Supply ship got swarmed and came in dead," Agrik shouted over the rumbling and creaking of the building. "Hit the dock pad, tore open all eight roofs, landed in the atrium. We've already lost three staffers to vamp bites--hold on, got a call. Agrik here. Yeah." She stared at the com dot, then said faintly, "Acknowledged."

Grim-faced, she turned to the professor. "It's bad, Urb. The Fast got in."[JC1] 

An outer window warped until it exploded into the room; the wall cracked. Prof Urbana wrenched open the sealed lab door and stepped out. She tried to shut the door, but the frame had warped. The women headed toward the decon booth at the far end of the module.

"Nobody's on the com. Last report was, Containment tried to scorch the flyer and the warehouse module."

"That Lesser Vamp swarm," Urbana said. "It wasn't normal."

"Neither is this damage level."

The last of the power failed. Ghostly emergency lights sputtered on briefly, then most went dark. The structure around them groaned and cracked, sealed windows sprang from their frames, the rush of airmakers ceased. The two women exchanged a long look and headed to the reserve decon booth.

They found it open to the night sky and crawling with tiny vampires. The exterior doors were jammed open with bloody, swelling corpses.

Sharl backed away [JC3] and slammed the inner door. "To the bail port, now!" She and Urbana hurried down a groaning corridor, tendrils of smoke following them, until they reached a heavy door that still stood in its frame. Sharl wrenched the door aside and shone a wrist torch inside. The outer door was still sealed; an untouched shelf of packaged bitesuits lined one bulkhead.

Sharl and Urbana stared at each other. No one else had made it this far.

"I smell smoke," Urbana said, forcing the hall entrance shut. Something fell and clanged against the outside of the door.

"Into heavy bitesuits," Sharl ordered. "The crawler park is right outside. We'll get to one and hope it's stocked up." The pair struggled into the bulky suits, Sharl's wrist torch flashing about wildly in the tiny chamber.

Sharl handed Urbana a pistol and readied her own. "It's set to mid-wide. Should kill or stun any biters that get too close. Ready?" The Prof nodded.

Sharl wrenched open the outer door. A few groans and a stench hit them. A few fallen figures stirred weakly and then stilled. Bodies hung from the opened portals of the nearest crawlers, arms reaching for blood on the ground. She pointed the pistol overhead and held down the trigger; it hummed and began to heat up. "Third crawler over is still okay. Stay close. Don't stop." The women crouched beneath the flickering pistol shield and hurried toward the crawler’s portal.

#

*

the time i try to run 
    you hold me down 
i am seven or eight years old 
get up to run to my room 
can't stop crying 
stay here you say
    your arm around me 
when i resist you use both arms
stay here you say      
    just stay 
i’m hyperventilating      
    though i don't know that word yet 
        can't breathe
        can't move 
you are too strong for me to go
but in between breaths i find 
there is a space 
    inside your arms      
    against your side 
it is the space between bars of a cage 
it is the air between branches 
    of closely planted trees 
but if i make myself small     
    and thin
         and still     
    i just might fit 
if i shallow     
    my breath    
        and wait
                and wait  
i can make room for myself in here  
    if i shrink and slow my breathing 
there is a place i make inside 
    inside your arms
      and deep inside of me 
and that is where i go and hide 
    you hold me
that is where i stay and calm
    you pray
        say you love me 
and this is how i learn love is this way 
        those who love me hurt me
but everything will be okay 
if i just 
    stay 
    and shrink 
    and learn to live without 
        breathing 
            deeply 
that night I dream of running through trees

 

 
I. Skin Like Powder

    "It goes so quickly," she says. 
    She is saying something about the moon, and the young man driving hears her voice but is not listening. The night is dark and beautiful. They are heading to the coast, driving on a long, low bridge across the water, the car gently rocking. It is hurricane season, and he can feel the weather building somewhere out there. 

    She has skin like powder. It is pale white and soft, so soft it feels like it rubs off in his fingers when he touches her. They meet in college. It is 1989. She loves him unconditionally. He knows she is beautiful, but he does not find her physically attractive. He falls in love with her happiness when they meet at a party. 
    She is bubbly and laughing. 
    There is a group playing an ice-breaker game and she is asked to name a food that best describes her and why, and she says, "Spaghetti. It's fun to eat!" Then she realizes what she said and doubles over laughing.
    Each day over the next two years she laughs less. He later wonders if his sadness rubs away her happiness. In the end, her anger turns to violent rage. She tells him she wants to marry and have his children. He loves her deeply, but deep inside he is afraid he might not be faithful. He tells her he cannot marry her. She is furious. 

    Over the years, he comes back to her many times. Later in life, he marries and divorces her. She will have many names. She is his college girlfriend and his ex-wife and an escort and drug addict. The best and the worst. Always the same and yet different. She is each of these and none of these. 
    He is in and out of dreams and visions. He cannot stop them coming. They are words and songs and poems and scenes. When he writes them down he writes imperfectly. So he writes them over and over. Then cuts away the extra words, cuts way his ego, until there is nothing but truth. 
    When his wife is jealous of his poems, he throws them away, but not before committing them to memory. He says them aloud whenever he is driving. And he doesn't know it yet, but the words and dreams have kept him alive. 

*

    It is hot. We are walking. 
    “There’s nothing like that water,” he says. Highway 60 stretches out before us in the Texas heat. “It’s way down deep in the ground, keepin cool.”
    He is an old man. I do not know his name, but he is familiar. His voice is hoarse like my grandfather’s. His boots brush the asphalt as we walk. 
    It feels like midday. Sweat trickles down my back. Around us, the earth is sectioned in great patchworks of cracks in the dust. The horizon is tan and brown and purple and shimmers silver blue like there is a wide lake with low hills a few miles ahead. 
    His hat is light and crisp with a wide brim, shading his eyes. 
    “It is out there. Clear and true.” He turns and looks me full in the face I see his eyes are a crystal blue. 
    “If you can find it,” he says looking toward the horizon, “you can tap it for years.” 
    He glides ahead. I notice my legs are not moving fast enough, I can’t make them move. I look down and then back up, and he is gone. 
    I wake. 
 

*

His father swinging. One, two, three four. One two HIT four. 
And again. And again. 

*

“It goes so quickly,” she says. 
She is saying something about the moon, and the young man driving hears her voice but is not listening. 
“The clouds turning,” she says, “and the light of the moon behind.” 
They are driving across the water on their way to the coast. The car rocks gently. 
“You can tell something is building.” 
He nods slowly. He is listening to the rhythm of tires going over seams in the pavement. 

    She has skin like powder. 
    He falls in love with her just after sunset. Fireflies blink near the trees. She catches one in her hands and says a rhyme. 
    Hold her up and watch her glow
Just a moment, let her go. 
    He tries it himself. 
    "Hold her gently," she says. "If you hold too tight, her fairy dust rubs off in your fingers. And it is beautiful for just a moment, but she will die."
    He watches her catch and let go. Catch and let go. She is laughing. It is then he knows she is magic. 
    That summer they break up and he misses her deeply. He writes,  

Last night I think I dreamt 
that I went sinking 
slowly resting 
in the black water of the ocean 
    that rolled me over. 
And I breathed that hollow water 
    that was closing 
    me down deep 
    relaxing in black cool.
Above I saw the shimmer of the moon on it shining
    thin-milk pale 
    and blurring 
        empty moon 
        on empty water, 
and I thought how easy it would be 
    staying down there 
    nebulous 
    and unthinkable.
So, I will wait 
until the evening
when I can fill it up again with cool beer 
and swim in the mirage of 
    dreamy smiles 
    and white teeth 
    and voices that laugh like yours 
until the morning 
when I am empty again
    and missing you 
    and missing me.

    She consoles herself with one of his best friends overnight at a hotel. The friend confesses the next weekend during a night of drinking (though he says they did not sleep together), and he remembers that those who love him hurt him. He calls her late that night to tell her he is furious, and she says she is sorry and that she loves him, things just happened but she didn’t sleep with the friend. In his anger, he writes, 

        Every piece of ass has some shit in it. 

    When he sees her a few weeks later at a party, he puts aside his anger because he just wants to be close to her, and they make love that night on the mattress on the floor of his room. He knows he should pull out because he does not have protection, but it feels so good to be loved he does not. 
    The next morning, the stray kitten who adopted the house comes into his room and they play with it from beneath the sheets. She loves cats. He is allergic. When his eyes puff up and start tearing, she asks, “Are you crying?” 
    “No, he says. "But I love you, I can’t be with you.” 
    She says, “I know. I love you too,” and they part ways knowing they will not be together as a couple. 

    The next weekend he goes to Virginia Beach for a retirement party for the father of one of his roommates. It is a backyard cookout in a cul-de-sac on the salt creek, with low houses and boat docks across the way and a long view of the marsh toward the ocean. He slips away from the party and walks to the water as the sun is setting. That’s when he sees it coming toward him. 

A snowy egret, powdery and small. Gliding down the creek, silent and pale gray-white in the dimming light. It makes no sound, no movement as it passes maybe twenty feet from him standing there on the dock, transfixed. Neck pulled back in flight. Black beak sharp. Cold eye dark and fierce. It looks at him and into him and through him all at once, as if it fully understands and knows him, and he is insignificant. The wide wings lilt. Silent. The air has chilled. Small, ghost-white almost translucent. Just hanging there in the thin of the air. The angel of death passing quietly toward the sea. 

A month later she will tell him she is pregnant. 

*

    “It goes so quickly,” she says. "You can tell something is building." 
    He nods slowly. The car gently rocking. 
    He is listening to the music and the rhythm of the tires going over seams in the pavement. Thump-thump. He likes that sound. 

    When he was growing up his family traveled every summer. His father was a preacher and they traveled to churches across the South. Drove all night to get to the next town. He curled up in the floor of the back seat with his brothers and sisters around, his head near the floorboards listening to that sound, his dad driving. The car is warm, he goes to sleep. 
    Thump-thump. 
    He wakes. It is late at night. They are crossing a bridge with lights overhead. Crossing over water. They are in a new city. 
    They move from the Texas panhandle to Hampton, Virginia, when he is seven, and they are the second Perez in the local phonebook. 
    He loves driving. It takes him away. He loves to think.

*

[to my brothers and sisters] 

 
We grow up knowing we are different, you and I. 
We are not like “normal” kids. 
Normal kids live in ranch-style houses 
    set back on the country roads we drive on Sundays to church. 
Normal kids don’t go to church Sunday morning, 
    Sunday night and 
    Wednesday night. 
Normal kids probably spend Sundays watching television, 
    because normal kids have TV. 
Or they play in yards big and wide and green,  
    lawns so large their dads cut the grass on riding mowers,  
    big enough to play a full game of football 
    or soccer, 
    or just run. 
Normal kids’ houses have wide driveways with basketball goals 
    where they probably play with their buddies,  
    lots of friends,  
    happy kids. 
Normal kids smile a lot, light eyes, 
    freckles on sharp noses,  
    and their skin is not tan or brown like ours. 
Normal kids have simple, strong 
    American names 
    that no teacher ever asks them to spell.
Normal kids can afford to buy their lunch at school every day.
    In fact, they only bring their lunch from home 
    on cold winter days 
    when they have a brand-new Thermos 
        full of hot Spaghettios. 
    Normal kids eat name-brand foods like Spaghettios 
        or maybe Cheerios, 
        not “Toasty Os.” 
    They don’t eat peanut-butter-and-jelly from a brown paper bag. 
    And they don’t eat beans and rice every night. 
Normal kids have more than one pair of shoes, 
and their toes are not stunted from wearing them all year round 
even when they’ve outgrown them 
        to school, to church, on the playground, in the street. 
Normal kids don’t get their clothes from older brothers and sisters. 
    They buy their clothes from the mall. 
    And they have more than two pairs of jeans and three shirts 
to alternate throughout the week. 
But we can’t have that. We don’t do that. We aren’t like that. 
    Because we are different. 
     We are poor. 
    We are Christian. 
    We are Mexican American. 
    And to the parents of normal kids, we are “minorities.” 

But there is one place we start even with normal kids. 
At the starting line, on the playground. 
We run the same distance, 
throw the same ball, 
shoot at the same goal as normal kids. 
And normal kids are not great at sports. But we are. 
We can beat them running or in football or basketball or soccer. 
    We are faster and tougher. 
    Because we play every day 
against other kids who are not normal, 
    and against our cousins and big brothers and sisters. 
    And they kick our ass. 
When we play, we play longer and harder. 
    We even practice for practice
    so we can run faster, 
     shoot better, 
     throw and kick farther. 
    We will win. 
And at first, we think winning is a way for normal kids to like us. 
But later we realize the reason we win is 
    deep down normal kids know they are normal 
    and they are content with that. 
But you and I are always hungry, 
    and we are never content with that 
    and the only way for us to get what normal kids have 
    is to be better than them at everything. 
And yes, make no mistake about it
    because we are not normal
    you and I
    we will kick their ass.

*

    His parents do not allow him to play organized football, even though it is his favorite sport. They say it is too violent, they don’t want him to get hurt. He and his brother are two of the best athletes in the neighborhood, and they excel in soccer, basketball, baseball and even games of tackle football with friends on the playground. 
    In his junior year of high school, he tries out to be the kicker for the football team without telling his parents. The night before his first game, he comes home and tells them.
    "If you guys aren't doing anything tomorrow night, I have a game at City Stadium, 7:30."
    "City Stadium?" says his mom, coming out of the kitchen. "What game? It's not soccer season. It's not basketball or baseball season." Wipes her hands on a dish towel. 
    "I'm playing football," he says.
    "You're not playing football," say his mom. 
    His dad gets up from the table.  
    "Yes I am," he says. "I am the starting kicker on the football team, and we have a game tomorrow night. If you guys aren't doing anything, I hope you can come." 
    "You won the starting job?!" says his big sister. "Yeah!" Hugs and high-fives from his brothers and sisters. 
    "You're not going to get hurt, are you?" says his mom. 
    "Not if I hit them first," he says. 

He spends the rest of his life running. 

*

    It is in college he realizes he is a writer. He is studying English at a liberal arts school in Virginia where he has earned a half scholarship to be the kicker on the football team. Every night, he huddles in the basement of the college library listening to jazz on the school’s new CD player. He puts on headphones, slides the Verve Silver Collection into the machine, pushes the button and hears for the first time Louis Armstrong's low, gravelly breath breathing sadness into the trumpet, mourning Stormy Weather, Have You Met Miss Jones, I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues, Home, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen. He listens over and over. And the words start coming. 

Thank you, Louie
for that thoughtful
soulful 
way 
down low 
way
you do it, slow
lilting 
    like leaves 
    in river eddies
lips cupped 
toward gray skies rolling. 
I want to write it the way you sing it 
give a damn about that
low gray
slow way
you sing it
    see it
    say it 
    won't you say it for me 
because it is killing.
My window shows the river 
with its barges, bridges
lights at dusk blinking on
    into nightlife in the city
wide awake and listening 
for that something 
somewhere 
save me somehow.
Go find me west of the moon.
With your sweat-tears 
tell me
    it's not all over
tell me 
    I've got something real
    way down here in this bottom
    of nothing 
take me 
     where sun rises
with the smell of bread baking warm,
where mother finds me sleeping
tousles my hair and covers me
till I wake 
    from dreams of daylight
into daylight.

    He takes a writing class - a seminar with a professor from the famed Iowa Writer's Workshop. It is the first time anyone has ever taken his writing seriously. The first time anyone reads his work and tries to understand what the words are saying without judging him. 
    He remembers his professor, a tall man folded into in a student desk and hunched over the text of a manuscript as if to discern the meaning of each word and the spaces between words. 
    "Listen to the voice," says the professor. "Listen to the voice. It is not you. It is the voice of your character.
    "Write it down. Write it over and over and over. Your ego will get in the way, so you will have to cut and cut and cut away everything that is not the voice, everything that is you. 
    "Cut away your ego. And all you will have left - if it is any good - will be truth. That is all that matters." 
    Cut away your ego. And you will have truth. It is natural. He has been cutting away himself his whole life. The professor becomes his academic advisor. They will remain friends and reconnect when he comes back to writing years later. 
    He reads Hemingway for the first time in freshman seminar, reads Hills Like White Elephants and is struck by the simple beauty of the dialogue. Dialogue that says nothing, yet everything. Plain words and narrative, but complex depth. He thinks Fenimore Cooper is a blowhard, taking several pages to describe riding in a wagon over the prairie. He loves the cadences and imagery and everyday miracles of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 
    During this time he begins dreaming of walking in the desert with his grandfather or god or an old man he does not know, looking for water. His grandfather tells him stories of his Mexican heritage. He dreams it over and over. 

*

It is hot. We are walking. 
    “There’s nothing like that water,” he says. 
    Highway 60 stretches out before us in the Texas heat. It is midday. 
    “Just way down deep in the ground keeping cool,” he says.
    He is an old man. His voice is hoarse like my Grandfather Lázaro’s – but I do not know him. His hat is light and crisp with a wide brim that shades his face, and the back of his neck is red from the sun but he is not sweating. I feel the trickle of perspiration down my back. 
    His boots are light on the pavement as we walk. He is just ahead. 
    The earth is a great patchwork of cracks in the dry-caked dust upon dust. 
The horizon is purple and brown and shimmers silver blue like there’s a lake with hills a few miles ahead.  

    It is late afternoon when your great grandmother Ildefonsa Collado, barely eighteen, meets her husband Santos at the door of their hut holding his shotgun. 
    He is coming back from two days of drinking. She has heard him crashing through the trees on his horse. 
    He stops when he sees her standing, shotgun leveled. He reels atop his horse, legs bloody from riding through the brush. 
    "You will not come in," she says. "If you try, you will die. 
    "Go now and sleep it off. Make peace with God and you can come home. But if you ever touch me or the children again, I will surely kill you. Dios me ayuda." 
    So Santos wheels cursing, almost falling off his horse, goes and sleeps on a pew in the Catholic church. The next morning he confesses to the priest, gives up drinking and goes home. 
    For the next six months, Ildefonsa sleeps with the shotgun in the middle of their bed.
    "If anything happens," she says, "at least one of us will end it quickly." 

    “I don't know why you are telling me this," I say.  
    "Some people search and never find it. But it is here. Clear and true,” he says.  
    He turns and looks me full in the face I see his eyes are crystal blue. He looks back to the horizon. 
    "If you find it," he says, "you can tap it for years." 
    "You can tap it for years." 

*

She has skin like powder. 
“We will be there shortly,” he says. 
    He drives her to the clinic in another town because she does not want to see anyone she knows. They go the first day, she has an exam, takes a pill, and they go back again the next day for the procedure. 
    In the waiting room he avoids eye contact with a few others waiting, tries to read the paper, magazines, tries to do anything. 
    He sits on the sofa, a drab 1970s-style yellow and brown plaid next to a large window with sunlight pouring onto the spot where he sits. Even though the air conditioning is on, he feels warm and sleepy as if there is a blanket of haze coming over his head. He cannot keep his eyes open. 
    It had been that way during the prior weeks when they made the decision. He seemed to fall into a deep sleep and wake hours later just as tired, then eat and sleep again. He later wonders if subconsciously he wanted to escape and sleep away the time until it was over, like Jack Burden in All the King's Men. 
    He wakes when the nurse shakes him and says Powder is coming out. She is in a wheelchair. They wheel her out to the car, and he helps her into the passenger seat and gives her a pillow. She is groggy and starts crying. They stop at a gas station along the way, so she can lean out the door and throw up. When they get home, he puts her in bed lays beside her, tries to think about nothing. 
    He wakes in the middle of the night when she goes to the bathroom and he hears her wailing uncontrollably, finds her weeping on the floor, sitting in a small puddle of lumpy blood. She is inconsolable. 
    "I didn't want to kill it," she is saying. 
    They had said it would be like this. He cleans her up and helps her back to bed. Then finishes cleaning the floor. Flushes the blood and tissue. 
    She cries and sleeps, sleeps and cries for the next two weeks. He brings her tea and soup and stays with her. He tells her he loves her because it is honest and true. She asks him to stay for a while. He holds her while she sleeps. 
    The words come quietly. 

She came back on hard gravel. 
The road she walked was hot and dusty. 
She cooled beneath the shade of a large green tree, 
sat beneath blue sky 
    and white clouds 
    on green grass 
    and the wind lifted branches 
and as she drifted dreamily thought she heard 
the lightness of leaves 
    lilting in the breeze 
    with the wind in branches
    all whispering hush, 
        hush.
Hush baby and the wind will hold you. 
Hush baby and the wind will heal you. 
My baby let the wind take you up in its leafy branches 
    tell you 
nothing of the pain but coolness 
    softness, 
and the weight of your shoulders, 
and the aching in your heartbeat 
    will lean way, way over
    in boughs and branches 
    but will not break. 
You will not break you. 
Hush softly. 

    They stay together for the next month. Her health returns, as does her rage, which grows deeper. She says she will never forgive him. Says it is all his fault. Deep inside he believes it too. When she hits him, he puts his arms around her and holds on until she stops and falls asleep. Holds her every night when she sleeps. And in his heart the words continue. 

for I will be a different kind of tree 
I will plant me alone
where I will flourish in the sun
    green on a hill 
    near the stream 
    where waters run 
    and run 
    and run 
and I will live forever the sun 
    
    And in the morning, when she wakes he will tell her he is yet alive and will be leaving.  

*

It is hot. We are walking. 
“What is it that you long for? What do you dream of?"

Si algo pidieres. Si algo pidieres.   

*

"It goes so quickly," she says." It is night. They are driving. 
He is listening to the sound of tires on pavement and the music and the words that he can't stop coming. 

There is a man running beside my car as I drive. 
I have never seen him.   
Sometimes I catch him in the corner of my eye 
    but he is fleeting. 
I see the shadows of his long legs running 
    in furrows of fields I pass by  
        deep brown loam
        cool to the touch 
        when you kneel 
        and smell it 
        hold it in your fist 
    that’s when you hear the whispers 
        it is in you 
        can you feel it 
        as real as this dirt 
        it is deep within 
But I don’t stop driving. 
When I drive through woods 
he runs from tree to tree. 
When I turn to look 
he stops in shadows so I cannot see. 
And I do not know who he is 
    or why he chases
        me. 

*

    When Powder dies that fall, he finds out through mutual friends. 
    “Sorry to hear,” says the message. “Hope you’re okay.” 
    She was drinking with friends and it was just a few pills. It was her first time. But the mix of pills with her prescription was lethal. She fell asleep across the bed wearing only her panties and did not wake. 

    He goes to the funeral and sits in the back. It is a graveside service, a brilliant autumn afternoon, the trees just turning gold and red. He wears dark glasses, tries not to notice anyone, though he wants to be with everyone. 
    "She was an angel to all who knew her," the minister is saying. 

"The Psalmist says
He leadeth me beside still waters. 
He restoreth my soul 
    restores my soul and leads me 
    still the waters run 
Yea, though I walk through the valley 
    of the shadow of death 
        I walk in shadows
I shall not fear, for thou art with me 
My cup runneth over. 
    my cup runs over
    still, the water 
    still, the water  
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. 
    Surely goodness. Surely goodness and mercy."  

    He cannot listen. He looks up. High in the sky there is a tiny silver airplane way up there in blue above. Bloated in the belly and shining in the waning sunlight. Thin vapor trail. He hears the words come quick and cutting. 
  
for I am the angel of death slowly passing. 
Do not fall in love with me. I will surely kill you. 
I have no feelings. Though I am honest and true
I am quiet death to you. 

    He breaks. Looks down at his hands. And just for a moment he thinks it looks like fairy dust.  

 
 

Running Through Trees Novel v7 2025 08.docx

(My opening scene below basically foreshadows the entire novel, including the murders the main character commits, the antagonist, the death of the love interest, and the suicide of the main character.)

There’s a world I like to escape to when I feel out of place.

What is that world? I don’t even know myself.

Yet, it’s different everyday.

And today, like every other day, was a new place.

I opened my eyes in the middle of Paris. I don’t know how I got there; I’d never been to France before, and I don’t know how to get there from my house. 

I didn’t really think about how I got there, but rather the fact that I was in Paris. I was finally here!

I’d never seen it outside of paintings of the gorgeous scenery. I always pictured myself there, yet I never imagined the day I’d actually be in the center of the city of love.

But something about it seemed off.

I hardly noticed anyone who passed me, for they looked like bullets whizzing right by my head.

None of them ran into me, thankfully, because I felt like they all despised me for some reason. 

They all felt like ghosts. Ghosts who sought revenge for something I have no knowledge of.  

As they passed by me, I felt their frigid arms graze mine. They were cold, cold to the touch like they’d been killed out of spite. 

“That was her,” One pointed at me, “That was the girl who…”

I couldn’t hear the rest of the sentence; he was mumbling now. 

“I was the first of them.” I looked up to see the face of a soldier in a coat the hue of blood glaring at me intently, “I was the first who was…”

He, like the other man, muttered incoherently as a blood-red foam the color of his coat quickly filled his mouth. 

I looked away to see more and more people talking about me. Though, they were quiet; so that I wouldn’t hear them. 

What had I done to make grown adults talk about me so horribly?

I had to get away, yes, I had to get out of this crowd. 

I ran, I ran so fast I bet a bullet couldn’t even catch up to me. 

I refused to look back; I couldn’t look back.

I hadn’t done anything wrong, I swear! I’m just an eleven-year-old girl from Concord; I haven’t lived enough life to do anything so sinful! I couldn’t have! I’m only a child!

What did I do? What did I do?
I ran faster as the sky seemed to change from blue to black.

Why? Why? Why?

It felt that these phantoms were now chasing me, following me regardless if I tried to lose them.

I don’t even know what I’ve done!

Why? Why? Why?

Abruptly, I ran into a boy.

“I am so sorry!” I panted as I felt the weight of hundreds of raging souls latch onto me. “Please ,forgive me!”

Oddly enough, I recognized this boy. Even though we’d never met before, I knew him.

The first thing I noticed about him was his eyes. He had doe-like eyes that looked like endless pools of dark chocolate that stood out from his pale skin. He also had shaggy yet neat dirty-blond hair that was the color of sand. He was tall, maybe a little over six feet. 

And he was young. He was merely a teenager, or perhaps he just turned eighteen.

“I know you.” I reached out for his hand. “I know you.”

He was silent.

I stared into his brown eyes, which had to have been the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen, and saw nothing. No emotions. No hate. No love. No joy. Nothing.

Nothing except where his eyes were glazed with tears.

Had I hurt him too? Was that why tears were in his eyes?

I reached out for his hand again; they were cold to the touch.

He was dead.

I felt the urge to cry. It was like a piece of me was gone, and I could never get it back. 

He was gone, gone forever.

I fell to my knees and wept as he turned to ash and vanished within the air.

I sobbed, “Why you?! Anyone but you!”

A wave of anguish washed over me, and I was drowning in it. Someone, who I shouldn’t know but I do, just died in front of me.

He was my everything.

I was everything to him.

I cried out again, “Why him?”

I don’t know who I was talking to.

“Why would you take him away, you monster!”

Then the world went silent, and time seemed to stop.

The vibrato of my agony bounced around before slowly, slowly ceasing.

And then, another voice arose amongst the silence.

“You don’t need him.” One of the spirits whispered, grasping my neck with his free hand. “He was in the way of us.”

“No, he wasn’t!” I tried to break free of his grasp, yet my efforts were in vain. 

This spirit was a piece of me, and I could never make him go away.

He was here, here forever.

I wanted to scream. Scream so loud that his ears would bleed. Maybe he would bleed out right here on the Paris grass. 

That seems oddly satisfying to me, watching someone bleed to death.

His grip was getting tighter and tighter, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. 

“Let me go!” I screeched. “Get off of me!”

Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw the glimmer of a blade in the iridescent moonlight. I didn’t try looking at it. I knew with one head turn, the phantom could snap my neck.

So I gave in.

And before long, there was a sharp pain in my left arm.

A warm liquid ran down my arm to touch the tips of my fingers. 

I only grimaced. Even though it stung, I could hardly feel any pain.

“Oh, but Karalyna…”

He brought the knife towards my throat, slicing it open with a clean cut.

I didn’t see much of the world after that. Everything was dark like an abyss that never ended.

I felt myself slowly losing consciousness as he whispered in my ear one final time. 

“I thought you loved me…”

Romel Velaj_Everything for PIGS CH1.pdf

OPENING SCENE - Introduces antagonist or major character, setting, tone, and perhaps a foreshadow of the primary conflict.

On mornings like this, I wonder what the sky looks like. I mean, I’ve seen it. Dozens of times. Captured in paintings, glimpsed through the thick glass wall of the Great Hall, our only window to the outside world. But I’ve never stood beneath it, outside the walls of my Facility.  

So more specifically, on mornings like this, at the peak of summer, I wonder what the moon looks like as she fades. If she lingers for just a moment, winking at the sun before slipping beneath the horizon, swallowed by the endless red sands of the dying planet. I wonder if she ever catches a glimpse of him—if she ever wants to—as he ascends, casting his golden fire behind the domineering silhouette of the Ashpire Volcano.

The sun. The moon. Our creators. Eternally orbiting in purgatory.

I scold myself.

I’ve done it again. Gone and started thinking. I must hurry.

The hem of my modest, grey work dress swishes around my ankles, tickling me, but I ignore it.

No time for that.

My white canvas shoes pad quickly across my bedchamber floor as I yank open the door, expecting the familiar steel corridor beyond. Pyremire is more a collection of glorified war facilities than a city now, reduced to steel and dust after the Uprising demolished the original lava stone and gold quartz desert oasis. Cool, steel fortresses rose from the ashes. The walls beyond my chambers should be flickering like molten lava, pulsing with the heat energy of our fire wielders contained in glass sconces.

Instead, I collide with something solid. No, not something. Someone.

Liam.

“Zayla,” he chuckles, even as the breath rushes out of him. I didn’t realize how fast I was moving, how desperate I was to leave the nightmare that jolted me awake before dawn behind in that cold, grey box I call my chambers.

The nightmare. The one that got me thinking…

But Liam… No, I can’t burden him with this.

I suppress a shudder, remembering the recurring dream that haunts my subconscious. The panic from its entrapment has faded, but something else festers in its place. A familiar, roiling darkness. It scratches at my insides, begging for release. I shove it down, down, down, locking it away.

His smile is easy, effortless. His uniform is pressed, pristine. The left lapel of his charcoal military jacket adorned with a single titanium triangle.

Shiny. Simple. Brutal.

The mark of Pyremire. The symbol of his rank.

“Lieutenant,” I greet him, forcing a smile I hope comes across as soft. Sweet. Shy. I shove the nightmare deeper, pack it down tight beneath layers of composure. It puts up a fight, curling like smoke, clawing to be free.

Liam’s gaze flicks past me, toward the still-propped door of my bedroom. He leans in, just slightly, close enough that his golden curls slip forward, brushing over his amber eyes. Sometimes they remind me of cognac. Deep and warm. Like when he’s contemplating something important. Other times, they’re honey. Like the butterscotch he used to steal for me from the kitchen when we were children. Now, they darken to whiskey. A slow burn, flickering with mischief… and something else.

His broad hands settle on my shoulders, firm yet unhurried, and he gently pushes me backward. Into my room. My midnight eyes widen, my stomach clenching—not in fear of Liam. Never of Liam. He is the only light in this grey world, a golden beacon against cold steel.

A breathy laugh escapes me. Too sharp, too uncertain. I want it to sound like anticipation, not the creeping panic of stepping back into my prison. The small, suffocating box where I am trapped from curfew at sundown until sunrise, left alone with my thoughts. My fears.

I cross the threshold first. Then Liam.

He doesn’t break my gaze as he shifts his weight, lifts a freshly shined black boot behind him, and nudges the door closed.

The noise I make this time is different. Unmistakable anticipation, swallowed by the quiet click of the door sealing us in.

His lips brush over mine, barely a whisper.

He smells like Liam. Sunshine and the ashen embers of a dying bonfire. Warm and familiar. Where that scent once wrapped around me like a comfort, now it tightens, suffocating, as if the fire is stealing the very oxygen from my lungs.

He pulls back, searching my face.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I haven’t.”

I have.

His brows pull together, concern flickering in his amber eyes. “Why?”

I don’t know.

And I don’t. Not really.

I love Liam. At least, I think I do. He’s been my best friend since I was a child. Somewhere in between adolescence and adulthood, he became something more. But now… now I’m not sure. How can I be sure? I was never given a choice in our union. Our arranged match. It was sanctioned by the Commanders.

Liam is too good. Too kind. The darkness inside me grows stronger every day. But I can’t tell him this. I can’t burden him with this. I can’t trust him with this.

"I told you,” I whisper, leaning into him, rising onto my toes until my body brushes against his. My lips graze his, soft, coaxing. Diverting. “I haven’t.”

ASCENSION...My first four pages:

Chapter One 

The Rising Storm

February 18, 2025, Durham, North Carolina

Natalia lies in a hospital bed at Duke University, holding her newborn daughter against her chest. The white sheets crinkle as she shifts beneath them, pain radiating from her C-section incision. Chanel is barely three hours old, but her dark eyes seem focused, watching with an awareness that defies explanation.

A familiar wisp disturbs the sterile air—a presence she knows intimately. Her past self, astral projecting from 2019, was witnessing this moment. The temporal loop closes as Natalia tells her younger self to return to her own time before she runs out of energy. She feels the presence fade, leaving only the antiseptic smell of the hospital and the weight of her daughter in her arms.

Where the hell is Crew?

Her husband should be here. They planned this moment for years, but when her labor accelerated, two weeks early, he was already en route to Moscow for "urgent intelligence." His absence burns like acid.

Chanel makes a soft sound, not quite crying. For just a moment, Natalia swears the infant winks at her—not possible for a newborn, but the flutter is unmistakable.

"You're special, aren't you?" she whispers to her daughter. "You have both our gifts flowing through you."

Natalia can already sense it—the quantum resonance humming beneath Chanel's alert gaze. Both she and Crew mastered reality manipulation through years of training and natural ability. Their daughter was conceived by two people who can bend space-time itself. What kind of genetics could emerge from that combination?

Her phone buzzes. A text from Crew: Sorry. Moscow essential. Back soon. Love you both.

"Essential," anger flaring hot in her chest. She carried his child for eight and a half months, labored for eighteen hours, and he's in Russia playing spy games with his ex.

Sounds in the hall interrupt her brooding. Something is not right.

Through her open door, she sees an Eastern European-looking man entering the maternity ward. Unremarkable face, careful movements, watching. He doesn't belong here. The CIA cordoned off this entire floor, yet he made his way through security like smoke.

Natalia's body transforms instantly from exhausted mother to lethal predator. Every sense sharpens as she recognizes the threat. He has a Romanian accent when he speaks to the nurse. Professional insertion. Targeted extraction.

He's here for Chanel.

She hits the call button while shifting Chanel to her left arm, keeping her right arm free. Through the narrow window, she sees him approaching the nurse's station. The duty nurse looks up with a smile that dies as his blade opens her throat. 

No hesitation. No emotion. Professional work.

Natalia's mind races through options as she watches him check the medical chart outside her door. Chanel Thomas. He knows exactly who he's hunting.

The Romanian terrorist enters her room with confidence, carrying a cotton bag for extraction. He dismissed her as incapacitated—a woman who gave birth hours ago, alone and vulnerable.

His first mistake is underestimating a master assassin.

His second mistake is threatening a child whose quantum signature already blazes brighter than most trained operatives.

Natalia moves the instant he reaches for Chanel. Pain explodes through her incision, but adrenaline overrides. She rolls from the bed, placing herself between the evil man and her child and grips the scalpel she palmed from the medical tray.

"Step back," she warns in Romanian.

He smiles, recognizing a fellow professional. "Natalia Net. Your reputation precedes you."

"Then you know this ends badly for you."

"Perhaps. But the child comes with me regardless. Do you have any idea what she's worth? Two masters of quantum physics for parents?" His eyes gleam with avarice. "The GAUL will pay any price for that kind of potential."

"She's three hours old."

"Old enough for her abilities to manifest. I can feel the strength radiating from her even now." He lunges forward. "She'll be the most powerful operative ever trained."

Natalia anticipates his approach. She sidesteps, using his momentum against him while driving the scalpel toward his carotid artery. He deflects the strike, countering with an elbow toward her wounded abdomen.

Natalia twists away, the blow glancing off her ribs instead of reopening her incision. She maintains her grip on Chanel throughout the exchange, protecting her daughter even while fighting for their lives.

The kidnapper presses his advantage, forcing Natalia backward toward the window. Blood seeps through her hospital gown as stitches strain under the physical stress. She's operating on willpower and maternal fury, her body pushed far beyond safe limits.

"You cannot win," he says, circling like a predator. "You are weak. Wounded. I am fresh and prepared."

"You talk too much."

Natalia feints left, then spins right, using the Romanian's confidence against him. As he commits to blocking her attack, she drops low and sweeps his legs. He stumbles, off-balance for just a moment.

That moment is enough.

Natalia drives the scalpel upward, finding the gap between his ribs. The blade pierces his heart, stopping it instantly. He drops without a sound, his body going limp as life exits.

She staggers against the wall, exhaustion and blood loss threatening to overwhelm her. Chanel remains perfectly calm throughout the violence, watching.

"It's okay, baby," Natalia whispers, checking her daughter for any harm. "Mama's got you."

Her phone buzzes. Another text from Crew: Meetings running long. I'll be there tonight.

Rage fills the space where adrenaline burned. Crew is networking with Nora and the Russians while Natalia kills an assassin to protect their gifted child. The betrayal feels more devastating than the physical pain.

CIA operatives flood the hallway minutes later, their shouts echoing. They find two dead agents in the corridor and the Romanian's body cooling in her room. Professional cleanup protocols engage automatically.

"Ma'am, are you injured?" The lead agent approaches cautiously, noting the blood on her gown.

"Reopened stitches. It’s not critical." Natalia's tone carries the cold authority that has made her legendary. "Run facial recognition. I want to know who sent him."

As medical staff rush to treat her wounds, Natalia studies Chanel. Her daughter watches the chaos with an understanding that transcends her hours of existence. In those moments, Natalia sees a terrible potential that will make Chanel invaluable to people who collect weapons.

More than invaluable. Irreplaceable. The first child born to Crew Thomas and Natalia Net. This baby’s power could eventually reshape entire conflicts, bend reality itself to serve whoever controls her development.

Natalia’s phone displays the facial recognition results. He was a member of the Romanian Mafia, hired by the GAUL. Alina Balan—her former roommate, former friend—has declared war on everything Natalia. 

"This is just the beginning," she tells Chanel softly. "They'll keep coming. They know what you are."

Outside, snow begins falling on Durham, where the first shot of a dimensional war has just been fired. 

Inside, a mother makes the most terrifying calculation of her life: sometimes love means letting go of what you treasure most.

Crew's absence tonight isn't just about missing the birth. It's about showing Natalia exactly where she stands in his priorities. That knowledge will make her next decision easier, even if it destroys her heart in the process.

Some battles aren't fought with weapons. They're fought with love, sacrifice, and the courage to choose your child over your desires.

Especially when that child carries the potential to change the balance of power in a world where consciousness itself has become the ultimate battlefield.

 

Opening Scene: For word count purposes, I excluded the very beginning: Lindsey's foster mother kicks her out of the foster house, leaving her to the streets. The following scene is two days prior to the expulsion.

Introduces: protagonist, antagonist, setting (1), tone, core wound, primary conflict, foreshadowing. 

                                                                                - 2 Days Earlier -

    "Lindsey!” For what seemed like the tenth time that day, my name was called from the living room. The television rerun of CSI nearly drowned any lingering noise in the foster house. “Make yourself useful and get me another beer," he said. 

   No one was in the house but us. I was supposed to watch over the three kids playing in the backyard – or really, make sure they weren't coerced into a van by an unsuspecting candy man. The other half were dragged to errand-running with Hellen. 

   With a huff, I dropped my number-two pencil against the rickety kitchen table. Algebra obviously had to take a break. Reaching into the fridge, I plucked a cold bottle of beer and strolled to his reclining chair. 

    My arm extended, but his eyes stayed glued to the screen. The reflection of blue and white danced on his dark eyes. So dark that his pupils were oftentimes nonexistent. Beer stains marked his dirty yellow T-shirt, stretching over a protruded beer belly. Walter’s chubby hand reached for the bottle with stunningly-accurate precision. Right before his fingertips reached his lifeline, I dropped it with a smile.

    The crashing and fizzing sounds startled him, anger flashing across his face. "What the hell was that for?"

    I shrugged, barely able to contain my smile. "Oops." Walter stood abruptly, or as abruptly as his body allowed. 

    I gasped and placed a hand on my heart. "So you can stand!" I looked to the ceiling, shutting my eyes. "Thank you, Lord, for this miracle."

    He glared and raised a challenging finger. "You better watch yourself."

    I raised my eyebrows, enjoying myself. "You better watch yourself." I waved a hand over my body. "If you even raise a finger to me, you'll probably be arrested." I was bluffing, but only to scare him.

    "You're bluffing."

    "I don't think you wanna test my knowledge."

    He smiled and stepped forward. "I don't think you want to cross me." I shuddered as his stale breath of cigarettes and alcohol fanned my face. He waved a hand to the ground, stepping around me and tossing over his shoulder, “clean this up.”

– 

  "Lindsey? Beer."

    I groaned to myself, fed up with the recent beer runs. "No," I yelled back, returning to my book and squinting. I looked up. My eyes hurt. I had only one lamp – an obnoxiously pink,  Barbie table lamp gifted to me when I was ten from some church donation. I didn’t like it then, and I definitely didn’t like it at my current age of sixteen, but I felt at least grateful for having a semi-private lamp I could use at my own discretion. I paused, shaking my head; how pitiful was that? 

    "Lindsey!"

     I threw down my book and stormed down the white-carpeted stairs. I reached the living room. I looked at Walter. "Are you really that handicapped that you can't even take one step into the kitchen and get yourself your own beer?"

     He looked up, shocked by my outburst. "You watch your tone."

    "You're not my father.”

     He stood with a vindictive smile. The TV remote slipped into the crack of the recliner. "Look, little lady, how would you even know what it's like to have a father? Isn't yours, oh I don't know, dead?" 

     A brewing anger rose up my throat. I'd seen enough movies to know the position a father holds. I’d even seen the way Lavender’s dad was with her. "Shut. Up."

     He stepped forward, tapping his chin. "Where's your mother, Lindsey? Do you even have one? Or were you one of those petri-dish type births—" Petri-what? 

     I shoved him. "Don't you dare talk about my parents!"

     He stopped laughing, his sick humor evaporating as he stumbled backwards. "You little," I pushed him a second time. He tripped backwards over the chair's arm onto the floor. 

     It was my turn to laugh while I stepped forward, towering above him. "You don't know a thing about my parents.” And neither did I. 

     I watched him slowly rise to his feet like a jumble of bloated limps repositioning themselves. My spotlight was fading quickly.

    “Next time you want to open your mouth about them—“ a hard slap burned my left cheek. My skin prickled. I held eye contact, desperate to maintain my last shred of humanity. I’d heard somewhere that when encountering a wild, aggressive animal, the first survival technique was to propose direct eye contact. Or was it the last?

     A sick smile stretched his face, the twinkle in his faded eyes reminding me he was in control. I clenched my fists at my side to distract a flood of fear burrowed in my tummy. I weighed my options; he was a (stronger) man, and I was a 5’5” girl with a small frame. 

    The only thing I knew I still had were my words. “You’re a lonely, masochistic drunk that sticks around his old stomping grounds just to feel something again.” 

    He shoved me backwards. I felt my body sail to the ground, the impact scaring me more than it hurt. That time, it was he who stood above me with all the power in the world. “I suggest you don’t cross me again. Do as I say, get me my beers, or you’ll see how much power I have in my old. . . what did you call it?” A snap of his fingers. “Old stomping grounds.” A laugh. “That’s it.” 

   Walter straightened, his lower spine letting out a crack as he made his way back to the sagging throne. I watched him fall into it, fixing his gaze on the television. The front door cracked open slowly, three kids peeking in. They eyed me on the ground, then Walter, then me again. I motioned for them to get out — they shouldn’t see what I was about to do.  But they filed in anyway, sitting on the staircase to poke their heads through the railings like fiercely protective guards.

    I pulled myself up, legs shaking, and walked down the hallway to the downstairs bathroom. I turned my face in the mirror and eyed the bright red mark splayed across my cheek. A tear leaked from my chocolate-brown eye. I swiped at it, blinking rapidly. I forced any semblance of stored tears to dry. My heart beat fast — bumbum, bumbum, bumbum. My veins pumped with adrenaline. I tucked my brown, silky hair behind my ear

    Game on. 

    I marched into the kitchen, quietly pulling a cherished member of his arsenal. My audience of eight year olds now sat quietly on the staircase, watching my every move. I was never one to be a role model. I glided back into the room with the bottle in hand, stepping up to him.

    Walter looked up. "That's more like—" I didn't let him finish. I swung my arm to the top of his head and slammed the bottle of beer down. Glass exploded around him, beer dripping from the tips of his hair.

   "There's your beer."

First Scene. Introduces protagonist, antagonist, setting and major conflict.

Chapter One

Dirk Kleparoth threw the Chevy pick-up into park, making Mara’s head lurch on her neck. He jerked his chin toward the house with the pink door across the street. “7485. That’s it.”

Mara nibbled on a fingernail and stared at the new three-bedroom bungalow, identical to all its neighbors, save the pink trim.

“Do you need me to wait, or…?” Dirk ran a thick palm over the roof of his brush cut. “I should probably get back, eh.”

“Oh no. You go home to your boys. I imagine we’ll have tea.” But Mara stayed in the passenger seat, “I’ll take the bus home.”

“Well, did you want to go meet her? Or should we just go to A&W, get a burger?” He placed his hand on her thigh and squeezed. “I don’t really get why you’re doing this, Mara.”

Marasol Adkins turned to look into his green eyes and smile. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for twenty-four years.”

“She probably won’t even know you. You haven’t seen her since she was a baby, right?”

“Yes. But I have a feeling. I was a mother to her after our mom died.”

“Well. Don’t get your hopes up, eh.” He reached across her, pushed the door open, then handed her an umbrella. “Take this. Storm’s coming.”

“It’ll have passed by the time I’m ready to leave. See you at work tomorrow.” Mara got out, then stood behind a lamp post, which failed to hide her big body. She just needed a moment to collect herself, take in the lay of the land. The neighborhood’s tidy lawns sloped to a boulevard where young ash and maple trees were tethered to their support against the coming winds and the brutal winter they’d carry. Mara shivered and gripped the strap of her fringed bag, telling herself to just go on over and give that pink door a solid rap.

Still she waited, one of her braids between her lips.

The family appeared well off; a new 1965 Ford Country Squire station wagon sat in their driveway. On their lawn, two robins twittered, and Mara could smell the lilac blooms that framed the pink door from where she stood.

A clap of thunder made her jump and get moving. She glanced at the wide prairie sky, bright blue, save the blot of angry clouds to the west, and hurried over. She hated storms.

“Yes?” The woman who opened the door had a hand on her very pregnant belly and a toddler attached to her leg.

Looking into eyes she hadn’t seen in over two decades, Mara forgot all her words for a moment. When she finally remembered some, they fell out in a blurt: “I think you’re my sister.”

The woman gasped and took a step back. “You. You’re the one who followed us home from Woodward’s the other day.” She had the same dark hair and eyes, same long nose and high cheekbones as Mara, but was shorter, rounder. She pulled her daughter to her. “Nadine, stand behind me. What do you want?” Her voice carried panic.

“I didn’t think you’d seen me. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Mara held a supplicating palm out. “You’re Dorothy, right? I’m Marasol Adkins, Mara. Er, Marasol Griffith. I’m pretty sure you’re my sister. You were taken when you were just a baby…” The sun seared like a branding iron. Perspiration ran under her arms despite the extra layer of Arrid Extra Dry she’d applied.

Dorothy narrowed her eyes at Mara. The door might be open, but her sister still stood behind a wall.

In a rush, Mara explained how she’d seen Dorothy with her daughter looking at gloves on $1.49 Day at Woodward’s and she knew her with the sureness of gravity. She was a replica of their mother. It had been such a shock. Edmonton was not that big, but she’d never run into her before. So, of course, she followed them home. “I didn’t want to lose you again,” she lowered her voice: “I’ve been missing you for twenty-four years. Since I was twelve.”

“Why didn’t you just come on over, say hello?”

“Well, I was so surprised, and I wanted to, you know, prepare.” Mara lifted her shoulders in a small shrug and looked down at her home-made outfit which she’d selected with care. The red polka dots on her mini skirt paired with the forest green blouse and white peter-pan collar now seemed not so much reassuring, but outlandish. She’d tied teal ropes around the ends of her braids, and she held them for a moment, then coughed on nothing. When she looked up to see Dorothy scowling at a polka dot.

“Mommy. Who is this lady?” Nadine pulled at her mother’s skirt.

“She’s my sister.”

“Yes!” Mara smiled and relaxed her arms, ready for an embrace. “And your mother, kind of, after our mother died. Since I was so much older.”

“Nadine, go play.” The woman’s gaze hardened like cement. “It’s true. They adopted me out. What kind of family gives someone away?”

“What’s adopted, Mommy.” Nadine had not gone to play.

“It was my fault, somehow. I don’t quite remember all the details …” An unsettling hum filled Mara’s ears.

“Well, whatever the reason. Apparently, I wasn’t worth keeping—” She held her hand up when Mara tried to speak. “Anyway, thanks for coming by.” She patted her tummy, “As you can see, I have my hands full here, and I’m not feeling well these days. You must know what it’s like. Don’t you have a family?”

“No, well. I did have a son, but….he’s, he’s gone.”

“Oh, I’m sorry about that. That is awful. But a husband?”

“I was married.”

“Oh no, you’re a widow?”

“Um, no actually, we divorced.” Mara watched as Dorothy’s expression made the usual migration from sympathetic to critical.

“Oh. I see. You’re a divorcee,” she sniffed.

“Yes, but, years ago,” Mara hurried to change the subject, right the wrong course this conversation now traveled on. “I thought we could be sisters again, you know? Go for coffee, shopping…”

“A woman’s job is to keep the family together. At least, that’s what our minister says.”

“But it wasn’t my—”

“Besides. You can’t scare a person half to death, then just come knocking on her door. Barging into someone’s life.”

“But, we have the same parents. We’re family.”

“Well, I’m sure what you’re saying is true – we do look alike, but your family clearly didn’t want me. I have my own parents, or at least did, and I’m making my own family, as you can see. So.” Dorothy stepped back into her house and started to close the door.

Mara looked around for an excuse to linger. “Wait, are those boxes? Are you moving?” From somewhere inside the house, a telephone rang.

“Telephone,” yelled Nadine.

“Yes, I know,” said her mother. “I really need to get that. Thanks for coming —”

“But what about —” Mara words bumped up against the closing pink door. She stood for a moment and numbly raised her hand at Nadine when the little girl waved at her through the front room window.

Mara stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk, haunted by the image of Dorothy shielding her daughter from her. Dirk had called it. She doesn’t want to get to know me. And why should she? It looks like she’s been doing fine without you, has her life in order, look at those lilacs, for god’s sake. Not like you. You’re no good at family. All you’ve ever done is lose them or send them away – your husband, your sister and brother, your son. Maybe deep down, she even remembers it was all your fault.

The rumble of thunder was closer and sent cold down Mara’s spine. The drone of running water filled her ears again, drowning out the birdsong. Her breath quickened and her mouth dried up. Mara slapped her leg, hoping the pain would distract her from the coming storm. She started to run, wishing she’d taken Dirk’s umbrella.

By the time the bus arrived, she was drenched, her fringed leather bag ruined, her braids dripping, her thick mascara halfway down her face. She deposited her twenty cents and left large wet footprints all the way to her seat. As she stared glumly out the window, she thought of the inside of Dorothy’s house, and the boxes that were piled up. Were they about to move away and out of Mara’s life again?

 

Chapter One.docx

This was probably the hardest task-as you can probably tell. I repost my 7 assignments because my hook simply wasn'7 ASSIGNMENTS Write To Pitch 2025 (1).docx7 ASSIGNMENTS Write To Pitch 2025 (1).docx7 ASSIGNMENTS Write To Pitch 2025 (1).docxt good enough. It took about 15 hours to come up with the final version.

The Unbound Warrior
(The Cycle of Scars and Beauty)

by Jess Veronique Olofsson

Context:

The prologue consists of three short scenes set 30 years before the main story. Together, they establish the cultural identity of the northern kingdom of Svea, reveal tensions between its elemental bloodlines, and hint at the growing threat from the northern Iskin tribes. 

These scenes also show how the protagonist (Vessia), a child born with forbidden mixed bloodlines, is adopted by General Bjorn Vader and his wife Elise Vader, despite knowing that such mixed gifts lead to magical and mental instability: “fracturing”.

Silvana Tjorne appears briefly, who will become the book’s primary ‘hidden’ antagonist and the visible tip of a much deeper conspiracy at the heart of the series.

 

Elise Vader - Omin, Svean Kingdom

The temple of Dor, in Omin, was the largest in Svea, yet it held no grandeur beyond size. The building was outside the walls of the capital, a looming dark shape surrounded by the thick pine forest of Svea’s coast. The throng of faithful pressed through the trees in heavy winter garments.

The procession moved slowly, and Elise Vader felt winter nibble at her fingertips. The chill wind whipped strands of her white hair around in a flurry. She tucked them behind her ear as she looked upwards, pale blue eyes searching the sky for the sun. The light lasted mere hours this time of year and was often shrouded in ominous clouds. She had been in Svea since she was young, yet she still resented the winters in the capital, Omin. Elise pulled her blue cloak tighter around her against the chill, it marked her Vaaneer, blessed by the god of water.

Why bless me with dominion over ice, but not the cold?

Elise sighed as she stared at the temple ahead. The structure was hewn of dark stone quarried from the northern coast along the Norral ocean, built before Svea expanded eastward to the Star mountains. Her home in the south used light mountain stone, but that would have been an odd choice to honor the god of death.

“Elise, found you! Dor damn this chill.” A small, slender woman pressed through the sea of cloaks.

She’s really been glowing of late, Elise smiled at her friend Silvana Tjorne.

Silvana rolled her silver-specked eyes, nodding towards the crowd ahead. “I bet they’ve let the Jordeer all upfront?”

The entrance lay at the end of a downward slope. Elise observed the clusters of cloaks – each shade a declaration of bloodline. The first to enter were dark green, blessed by the earth goddess Jord and the bloodline of the royal family.

Before she could respond, Silvana took her hands and beamed at her. “How… are you?”

The question landed like a stone. Elise faltered. It’s been months.

The memory clung – her daughter born the shade of the deeps of the Norral sea. She’d begged to hold her. Now, she wished she hadn’t. It’s not fair. Her chest jerked angrily.

Silvana’s smile faded, she shook her head and squeezed Elise’s fingers. “Stupid question. I’m sorry. I’m… here.

Elise swallowed and whispered, “Thank you.”

They turned in silence towards the temple.

As the crowd made its way down towards the entrance, their voices hushed, replaced by a steady drumbeat. Elise spotted the dark figures approaching the other end of the temple. The offerees wore dark mantles with hoods pulled down low to conceal their faces ahead of the ceremony. Elise’s jaw tightened as Silvana squeezed her hand once more, whispering, “It’s necessary.”

The hall was a dark, long room lit by cast iron chandeliers. It was mostly an expanse of barren stone, but the area nearest the dais had wooden benches reserved for the nobles and high-ranked military. Elise and Silvana shuffled into the third row, surrounded by blue Vaaneer cloaks.

Ahead of them, the ceremonial platform was wrought of black stone polished to glint in the firelight. Water ran across carved channels, pooling around a lacquered chair then continuing down into a grand basin.

Elise felt a shiver watching the water in the dark pool. It trembled to the beat of the drums. Like a heartbeat.

She shook her head and turned her attention behind her. The hall was nearly filled, and the iron doors had been swung partially shut. She knew many Ungifted would gather outside in the cold, hoping that the words would be passed back.

Silvana gently elbowed her in the side. “Torn looks like he hasn’t slept in a fortnight.” She was looking towards another raised platform where a pair of intricately carved thrones held Torn and Ana Foldir, King and Queen of Svea. “And as usual Ana looks like she’s sat on a metal spike.”

Elise failed to hold back a snort at her friend’s brazenness as she looked at the royals. King Torn sat slouched, rubbing his temples, crown askew. Yet the manifestation of his Eir – a towering moose – stood regal by his side. Its Jordeer green gaze shone with intelligence. Next to them Queen Ana sat rigidly upright, pale, with sharp features that complemented her Eir-mate, the white fox in her lap.

They are too young to rule and the world is dark, Elise empathized.

She turned to Silvana, “Bjorn has been the same. The Iskin attacks along our coast…” she paused then leaned in closer to Silvana to whisper, “…they’re getting more organized.”

Silvana’s brows knit, as she exhaled slowly. “Dor damn these colder winters.” It was just like her to curse the death god in his own temple. “But the Morn pass won’t stay frozen forever.”

Opening scene: Introduces the protagonist, Danny Irvine. The scene takes place behind a closed down business and sets the basis for the primary conflict.

Danny gave the taxi driver a five dollar tip and stepped out into the drizzle. Despite being early spring, winter was pushing back hard, and a damp, cold evening like this could cause a man to try and hide his head under an umbrella, or pull the collars of his trench coat up tight to his cheek bones, but Danny walked tall, anticipating a profit. The only acknowledgements to the weather that he wore were a dark grey water resistant polyester soft shell jacket, a pair of worn leather gloves, and a faded black baseball cap. The sun had set and with the help of the heavy clouds, darkness was coming quickly. A gust of wind gave him a momentary chill and splattered icy droplets onto his face. Still, the meeting location was a block away, behind a nail salon that had recently closed down, and Danny walked briskly to his destination. He glanced at the fabric of a once colorful awning that sheltered the front door and windows of the now defunct enterprise. Sun and harsh weather had faded it from a bright canary to pale pastel, splattered with patches of dirt and grime. This was a clear sign that business had been slowing down for a while and the proprietors probably didn’t have the money to perform maintenance and make upgrades.  It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, since the word was that most of the patrons were choosing to go to a nail salon that imbedded itself in the new super grocery store that opened about a five minute drive away. None of that mattered to Danny.

He splashed through a puddle in size 10 brown canvas shoes as he turned down a dirty alley next to the nail salon, strewn with cans, beer bottles, broken glass, and random trash, en route to the meeting spot, eager to get on with the business. When he arrived, he found the location to be devoid of activity, but that only lasted a minute before a rented truck rumbled into the space, its headlights burning Danny’s retinas a bit. An unshaven man in his mid twenties was behind the wheel, his bright blue eyes blazing from within a visage defined by his scraggly beard and stringy hair. He shut off the engine, swung open the door, and jumped down. Apparently he too was unaffected by the weather and wore only a flannel shirt over a white tee-shirt and dirty jeans.

"Danny boy!” the man exclaimed. “Ready to make some money?”

“Howard!” Danny replied. “How you doing man?!”

Danny and Howard shook hands with the gusto of two men who had worked together before. Just few months ago, they managed to swipe a few boxes of car speakers off a loading dock at the mall. They were working on a much bigger score today.

“Where’s Ray?” Danny asked.

“He said he had some other things to take care of,” Howard replied, “but I’ll meet up with him later.”

“Sounds good,” Danny responded, “when we’re done here, we should go grab a few drinks.”

“Definitely!” Howard agreed. “So let’s do this!”

They headed for the back of the truck and Howard rolled the door up and open, climbing into the back with Danny close behind him. Numerous boxes with the Sony logo filled about two thirds of the musty cargo box. There was a three inch hole in the ceiling of the cargo box, which let water in but somehow did not dampen any of the cardboard. Danny glanced at Howard to see where he positioned himself. He took notice that he was close enough for a hand to hand fight, but too close for the gun that he kept under his belt. If he was forced to draw the weapon, Howard would be in a position to wrestle for it. At this range, his knife would be a good option. Danny didn’t expect to have a fight with Howard, but he was always ready for one. Howard pushed a box over to Danny for him to examine. Danny ignored it and chose his own. He took his knife from his pocket and flicked out the blade, testing its sharpness against his thumb. He cut the box open, pulled out an item still in its original factory packaging, and smiled. He opened another box and smiled again.

 “Just as I said,” Howard reassured, “Playstation 3s and games.  We staked out a warehouse and followed a delivery truck for an hour before we made our move. This has got be worth between 30 to 40 grand.”

"I hope 40 grand is the right number," Danny mused.

“So why don’t you sell them yourselves?” he asked, snapping out of his rumination.

“Not our thing,” Howard said, “we just want a quick score.”

 “All right then. Nice job,” Danny said as he reached into the large inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a thick brown envelope. He handed it to Howard, who inspected the contents and grinned.

“We good?” Danny asked.

“Oh, we are good,” Howard answered.

Danny was already doing the easy math in his head. The sharks expected a thousand dollars a week for 20 weeks. He figured he could do that easily and still clear 20 grand for himself. This would allow his to relax for a while and step back from the day to day hustle in the life of thug. Maybe he could be normal for a little while. Maybe he could get a job while he lived off that money.

 “Where are the keys?” Danny asked.

 “In the ignition,” Howard responded. “Where are you going to put those?”

 “I’ve got a storage unit. I can unload the truck and return it to you tonight."

 They jumped down from the cargo box and Danny pulled the door closed.

 “Meet me at The End Zone in two hours and we can have a few drinks,” Danny said.

“You’ll have all that unloaded that fast?” Howard asked.

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there,” Howard replied as he reached out his hand.

They shook hands again and Howard turned to leave the site. Danny moved quickly to the cab and climbed into the driver’s seat as a flash of blue light caught the peripheral vision of his left eye. He shifted his gaze and caught sight of police cars streaming into the space behind the defunct nail salon. Jumping down from the truck, his first instinct was to return from the direction he came, but that wasn’t possible and cops were rushing out of that alley toward him. He turned sharply and sprinted around the back of the truck, aiming to cut down another alley he took notice of previously while talking to Howard. Too late! Howard was already there and was being cut off by a police car with officers throwing the doors open and having their weapons drawn. Instead of raising his hands into the air in futility, Howard produced a weapon and leveled it at the cops. Danny didn’t see which one pulled the trigger, but there were two quick pops and Howard crumpled to the ground.

The following is an excerpt from my novel, IMPRESSIONS. This scene comes from Chapter 20. After being declared as God by an artificial intelligence program named Aeon, Lina Waters meets with the most prominent religious leader in the world: Pope Aeitus of the Catholic Church. I'm not quite sure why the formatting issues have caused the beginning of each sentence to be bolded.

 

Escorted by guards and bishops into a golden-laden hall, Lina swore (though maybe she wasn’t supposed to do that in a holy place) that everyone could hear her pounding heart. It wasn’t hot - in fact, cold air seeped through her thin sleeves - but sweat piled on her forehead like she’d stepped into a humid haze. 

The Sistine Chapel was larger than Lina imagined it to be, and much more grandiose. Precise paintings plastered the walls and ceilings, and a mosaic of colored stones adorned the floors. She took slow steps, but attempting to absorb the enormity of it all was like trying to comprehend how the infinite universe was ever-expanding. 

Lina stared at the ceiling, her neck tilted so far backwards that it began to strain. The elaborate depictions created by Michelangelo himself made Lina understand her parents’ faith a little more.

Genesis. The creation story. The fall of man. And somehow, there she was, standing in the middle of it all, sweaty palms making faint stains against her red dress. 

As she tore her eyes from the overhead artistry, she saw him. Dressed in a white cassock, an old man with a lopsided grin and a snaggletooth stood before her. He wore an amused expression on his wrinkled face, as if she were a child, not an Agnostic who challenged his faith’s core. 

There were no cameras. No press. No bishops, priests, or deacons. Even Will, Chance, and Sophie stayed outside the room. No devices were allowed in the Chapel, so it was safe from the interference of Aeon. It was just Lina, and the living face of an entire religious denomination. 

“Pope Aeitus,” Lina breathed. Then, she didn’t know what to do next. So she curtsied, stumbling over her feet as she returned to standing. 

“‘Your Holiness’ is the preferred greeting,” Pope Aeitus said, a hearty laugh at the end of his sentence.

Oh my god. Lina was mortified. She couldn’t say one goddamn – oops, not goddamn – she couldn’t get out three words before offending the Pope. 

Her quickened breathing rendered her lightheaded; Lina knew her lie of omission had escalated out of control. Her most divine quality was her ability to turn a cherry stem into a knot. She couldn’t fool the most famed religious leader alive, and she didn’t want to. 

“It’s okay,” He whispered, “It’s just a title. Maybe you’ll understand.”

Lina flinched. 

“Do you believe?” The Pope asked, “In God? In Heaven?”

Lina opened her mouth, then closed it. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing and risk damnation. Not eternally–on Earth. 

“I believe in the afterlife,” she said, her voice quiet. 

She touched the ring around her pointer finger. Ilias, the ever-blooming magnolia. She wished she could close her eyes and envision him in that chapel, his presence next to hers. Just breathe, Lina, he would say, The Pope is just a person. He knew how to ground her when she floated. 

“I have a friend there,” she added.

The Pope nodded, his magnanimous patience apparent, “Religion is a tricky thing. People think faith is about certainty. That it is about knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God exists. But that’s not faith at all, that’s fear. Faith is what you cling to when certainty is impossible.”

Lina mirrored the Pope’s sentiments, “Faith is a beautiful thing. It must be nice to have enough to fuel entire congregations.” 

It was the Pope who was quiet then. 

“I have faith in God,” the Pope said, “though I humbly admit, I do not know what God looks like.”

Lina inhaled. The opulent space spun, and she swallowed. 

She whispered, “Are you saying that you don’t know if I’m God?”

Pope Aeitus smiled, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening, “Do you?”

“I’m –” Lina tried, but her words fell short. 

She glanced over, a fresco of a holy figure levitating before a praying crowd glaring back at her, daring her to prove her divinity. Though her heart rate slowed, the cool sweat forming on her forehead didn’t show any signs of relinquishing. She took a deep inhale, the smell of ancient texts filling her nostrils. 

“The Church has survived wars, plagues, emperors, and revolutions,” Pope Aeitus said, “The Vatican has watched a thousand people claim divinity. And yet, here we are, on the brink of an era that parallels Revelations.”

Lina studied the Pope. Despite his calm demeanor and reassuring smile, in his words rested a truth. 

“You know about the climate crisis, don’t you?” she asked before she could take back her audacity. “And the bunker?”

The Pope gave a soft laugh, “The underground lifestyle wouldn’t be a proper fit for an old man like me.”

Her hands ran across her face. She searched the sanctuary for something – a chair, a stool, a ladder, anything–only to see the room barren. 

The Pope placed his hands behind his back, his tone darkening, “I don’t know if you are God, Miss Waters.”

Her mouth went dry. The Pope was in his 80s, creeping towards his 90s. For the sake of the old man’s psyche, she wanted to give him an answer. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t holy. She wanted to tell this gentle, aging man that she wasn’t God, or a prophet, or a divine leader in any capacity. She wanted to say that she wasn’t any more holy than the bottles of Grey Goose she downed on her weekends. 

But the truth was, she was no longer certain of anything. 

He took a steady step forward, “If you are God, Lina Waters… the world will kill you.”

The grand room shrank, becoming infinitesimal, a claustrophobic Lina trapped within. Lina couldn’t tell if Pope Aeitus’ words were his threat or his truth. 

She accepted personal sacrifice. She sacrificed her college, her anonymity, her parents. She volunteered to sacrifice her personhood. But she never volunteered to sacrifice her life. 

“Why would you say that?” Lina spat, her voice loud and tone defensive, “I’m not going to die.”

“God doesn’t survive Earth,” The Pope smiled, “Earth survives God. God survives after.”

PREFACE

“Enough already.” 

The Stem writhed in my grasp, appendages flailing, a spray of waste soaking my coat. An orifice opened. “Bluug, oog, blah.” Nonsense syllables I failed to parse. Was it language? Part of me feared so.

“Bit of help?” I called out. Millicent grimaced, but grabbed a couple of limbs and pinned them as we pulled the thing towards the recycler. 

“Big side first,” she said unnecessarily, lifting her end. The leakage increased, and I ducked, avoiding a particularly vile stream. 

“Did it say something?” Millicent asked, heaving it up and over the lip of the machine.

“Too late,” I muttered, now pushing down, allowing the grinder to grab on and pull. The gears finally got a hold, and with a final shriek the grinder dragged the Stem through, reducing it to slurry.

“Toughest one yet,” I commented as a cleaner bot hosed down the room, the worst of the excretions and grinder-splatter slithering towards the drain. 

“We’re making progress,” Milli stated, always trying to motivate me. “You think we’re rushing things a bit? If we’d given this one more time, it would’ve improved?”

I shook the last bits of Stem off my hand so the bot could wash it away. “I don’t have the patience to spend more time with these things.” I’d been working in Milli’s lab for a while and, in truth, we’d made amazing progress. Her first few specimens had barely lasted a week—they’d just waste away after that. But eventually, varying the amount of water and goo that she provided them, Millicent got specimens to survive months and then years. That’s when I’d joined the effort.  

Recognizing my frustration, Milli made a proposal. “Let’s use bots for the early development stages? It’s rote now, anyway. Once a Stem gets to this point,” she gestured at the pail of slop, but I understood she meant the pre-ground version, “is when we’ll jump in.” I’d thought of this often; it was heretical.

“They’ll ostracize us.” It was standard practice for researchers to work directly with their specimens throughout the full lifecycle, not to pass that work on to bots, which could never provide the same nuanced care.

“It’s just momentum.” Millicent responded. “We’ll add more value if we do it this way.”

“I’m in,” I exclaimed, focused on removing boredom, ignoring the ethical implications.

The recycler gave a final burp and then fell silent. The factories that provided us with younger Stems would retrieve the sludge. I still didn't understand how these strange beings were produced; all I knew is Millicent had a steady stream of Stems on order so we could advance our experiments. If recycling made that process more efficient, I was all for it. Not once had I complained about using the grinder, despite the mess and noise.

“It’s a plan,” Millicent was grinning. “Let’s program some bots.”

“Let’s go further. Let’s tell everyone what we’re doing. Anonymously.” To my surprise, Milli agreed. Testing the limits of the system thrilled me. It shouldn’t have.

The first 500 words of the opening chapter of my Techno-thriller - Darkwire. This introduces the protagonist, setting and tone. 

 

CHAPTER 1 - “ATTACK”

FBI Agent Adam Conner pressed his back against a towering elm and swept his gaze across the National Mall’s Fourth of July crowd. The air smelled of grilled meat, cotton candy, and sunscreen. Every breath was summer, but the bass beat from the band stage thumped through his feet like rotor-wash.

His hand drifted to his side, checking for the Glock where his M16 used to ride. Fifteen years as a field agent and two tours in Iraq had left him cataloging threats: the teenager in the oversized jacket, the delivery van idling too long, the couple arguing near the monument. Around him, people enjoyed their lives without looking for danger in every shadow. The thought felt alien. Uncomfortable. Like a shirt that no longer fit.

His partner, Mike Santos, had cornered him at the coffee machine yesterday, all six-foot-two of Texas persistence. “Normal people go places on weekends. See things. Talk to people who ain’t wearing badges.”

Adam glanced at his watch. 1437 hours. He estimated a ninety-minute minimum to satisfy Mike’s definition of “normal behavior.” Then back to the Bureau, where case files didn’t make small-talk and evidence didn’t ask how his weekend went.

His phone buzzed. Mike, checking on him like a worried mother hen.

You there yet?

Adam thumbed back: Position secure. Crowd density manageable. Zero threats.

Jesus, Conner. Can you speak human?

Adam smiled. I’m here. People. Music. Food on sticks. Happy?

Pics or it didn’t happen.

Adam raised his phone and snapped a selfie with the Washington Monument in the background. His forty-five-year-old face looked foreign to him. Crow’s feet bracketed eyes that tracked the Monument’s reflection for threats even in a selfie. Mike was right. He looked like he was planning an assault on the funnel cake stand.

Adam bought a beer and dropped onto the grass. The cold aluminum sweated in his palm. Around him, teenagers shrieked, couples tangled fingers. He watched them the way he watched security footage. Present but analyzing patterns. His mind drifted to the Morrison case file waiting on his desk.

Movement at two o’clock, fifty feet elevation. His eyes tracked the object before conscious thought labeled it: quadcopter, professional grade. The beer hit the grass. His body moved before his mind caught up, the same way it had in Fallujah when the first mortar whistled in.

The drone descended in a measured arc. Not the herky-jerky movement of weekend hobbyists, but the controlled descent of someone who’d practiced this exact maneuver. Matte black finish, commercial airframe modified for... what?

Adam’s hand moved to his holster. Range forty meters, minimal cover between current position and closest hard structure. He scanned the area for security personnel. The Park Police had officers stationed around the perimeter, but none seemed to notice the drone. It wasn’t the only one either. Now that he was looking, Adam counted nine more drones, each moving in coordinated patterns above different sections of the crowd. His stomach tightened.

Their flight pattern bothered him. They weren’t capturing panoramic footage or following the action. They were...searching.

 

This is the opening scene for Conversate followed by the description of the high school that figures strongly in this memoir.

 

She stood over me, mid afternoon sun seeping through the cheap plastic blinds, both hands firmly clamped over my right breast, leaning her full weight on my chest. I was the last appointment of this midweek day at the Whittier Breast Center. I had just had a punch biopsy for suspected breast cancer. As the doctor had explained, the procedure would remove a sample of tissue that would be analyzed to determine the grade and type of cancer. A tiny metal clip would also be inserted to help guide future diagnostic tests and surgical procedures. The biopsy itself, though uncomfortable because of the contortions needed for correct positioning, had been painless. What neither the doctor nor I had anticipated was nicking an artery in my breast that was at present bleeding profusely and with abandon.

She smiled tiredly at me, shifting her weight slightly. “Sorry, hope I’m not hurting you too much.” Immobilized on the gurney, my hospital robe open and spilling onto the floor to allow maximum room for medical attention, I smiled back. “No worries,” I answered. No worries was a phrase I used a lot. In my classroom, at the grocery store, when I bumped into someone, or they let the door fall back on me. It was a reflexive phrase I employed far too often, and it struck me just then how absurd an answer it was in the present circumstances.

The nurse pulled her hands back and inspected my chest. The doctor appeared at my side and looked down at my mangled breast. Her face creased in that look that medical professionals sometimes get when they don’t like what they see. There was also just the slightest hint of disappointment, had she had plans on that Wednesday night? Was I interfering with a dinner date, or a late afternoon stop at the grocery store? A sunset walk at the beach? “OK, let’s try this,” she muttered, disappearing behind me. Afraid to move lest I somehow turn the spigot of blood from gushing to tidal, I waited, eyes trained on the ceiling, my back beginning cramp. She reappeared, EpiPen in hand. I looked at her quizzically.  Epinephrine, she explained, was sometimes used to constrict blood vessels and stop excessive bleeding. She plunged the needle into my breast, both she and the nurse looking on expectantly.

I don’t remember how long it took for the EpiPen to take effect but the bleeding did eventually stop. I must have gingerly slipped my shirt back on, pulled my pants and shoes on, shifted my purse to the other shoulder, and driven myself home that day, but those details are lost to me now. That was the beginning of an arduous journey I had not seen coming, and one that would lead to profound changes with repercussions that would affect my boys, dissolve my marriage, and bring unexpected connections into my life.  

The 2019-2020 school year would be beginning in just a few weeks. In typical Southern California fashion, the weather was blistering hot.  Steam rose off the pavement, and the air undulated as I watched the road through my windshield.  The morning’s coolness had quickly worn off, and now the sun bore down almost angrily, scorching everything in its path. I had been planning to go into my classroom in early August, to prepare for my upcoming French and ELD classes. I was beginning my third year at John Glenn High School in Norwalk, California. Glenn, as students and staff referred to it simply, was a 40 acre campus set at the far end of an odd mix of buildings on Shoemaker Avenue. Apartments and a church on one side, a Starbucks and Circle K at the end of the street where it intersects with Rosecrants. Tire shops and factories in between, and directly across from Glenn, improbably, a nine hole golf course. Large nets circle the golf course, keeping errant golf balls from crashing through windshields in the school’s parking lot.

Over the years, like many public high schools in California, Glenn’s enrollment had been steadily decreasing. Online classes and home schooling were making inroads, and though the pandemic was a few months away, severely reducing student enrollment even further, Glenn would never return to the numbers it had enjoyed in the 80’s and 90’s. It was now a fairly small school with a student population hovering just above 1,000. Glenn’s students are primarily Latino, with Mexico being most heavily represented and students coming from Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, and Columbia. Glenn is one of three high schools in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District. La Mirada High School caters to the more affluent families in the city of La Mirada, while Glenn and Norwalk High School serve Norwalk residents. Norwalk is a working class community and Glenn’s families are on the lower end of the socio-economic indicators for the area.  

I had been looking forward to starting the year teaching French 1 and 2, and English Language Development 1 and 2. The summer had been short, punctuated by my oldest son’s month away at the University of San Diego as part of the COSMO program. 16 at the time, Julien was spending four weeks studying math and science and rooming in a campus dorm. My younger son Mateo, aged 10, and I had enjoyed low key days of picnics, trips to the beach, and visits to Baskin Robbins. But the final days of summer were stretching before us, numbered and finite. I didn’t mind. Like I did every year, I looked forward to starting a new school year.  I loved most aspects of teaching. I spent an inordinate amount of time scrolling through Pinterest and Facebook, combing posts for classroom decor ideas, lesson plans, and potential language projects. 

My classroom was right in the center of the campus, affording me a central place to interact with students and staff. Though reserved and shy in adult company, I enjoyed talking with students and had picked up the habit of standing at my door to greet kids as they came in.  There were always campus wanderers, taking the extended route to the bathroom, or a guidance counselor walking hurriedly from one side of the campus to the other. Security routinely maneuvered their golf cart down the hallways, lifting an arm in greeting and expertly avoiding students in their path. Concrete benches flanked my classroom doors, giving students a place to sit and eat their snack or lunch. On occasion, my own students would sit on those benches working on a project or doing a communication activity. From my door, I could see most of the campus: the admin office, the library, the counselor’s office, the main walkway, the security station, and the water drainage pipes that ran through the middle of campus under a bed of concrete.  

What I had not yet discovered was that an enormous family of skunks, well over thirty of them, lived in those drainage pipes. They took shelter from the hundreds of feet walking over them, the raised voices trading jokes and insults, the thud of backpacks hitting the ground.  They only ventured out at night, once most of the humans had gone home. I had seen them first hand one night, around 10 pm, helping security put away tables and chairs from a Homecoming celebration held outside, no budget for an indoor venue. Thirty little bodies, their trademark white stripes bifurcating their backs and bushy tails swaying from side to side, made their way out of the pipes and spread across the campus. Us humans gave them a wide berth but they were utterly non-plussed by our presence. This explained the paw prints I often found around the metal trash cans in the early morning. Most of the kids did not know about the skunks and would have had no cause to suspect their presence given their nocturnal nature, but I loved the idea of life under the ground we walked on. Like a reassuring presence you can’t see but know is there.

Opening Scene

My Awakening

“It’s either them or me,” he said. “If you won’t do it for me, at least do it for yourself.” 

The ultimatum hammered in my head, as I lay there, crouched on the cold, hard tiles of the bathroom floor, the grit pressing into my knees. 

I wept silently so my teenage sons wouldn’t hear me. As I finally got into the shower, the hot water mixing with my tears, I stood there paralyzed, broken. “I wish I had COVID,” I whispered desperately - a death sentence back in 2020. Awakened, as if by God himself, I recoiled to the severity of those words. I didn’t dare repeat them, fearing my wish would come true.

“No, no, no! I don’t mean it. I take it back.” Shame and shock washed over me, forcing me into a complete and absolute surrender. “Please help me, God!”

Months earlier, I was reading a heartfelt email from a 4th grade colleague announcing her retirement. (I mean, who wouldn’t want to retire after seeing the shitstorm of the lockdown ahead of us.) I had left the classroom six years prior to become a literacy coach. Now, with this position opened up, the mental ping pong games began. Should I or shouldn’t I? They were phasing out literacy coaches in my district and I really loved teaching 4th grade. Besides, the teachers didn’t need me as a coach; they needed me in the trenches, alongside them. Decision made! Little did I know what I had signed up for as I prepared to teach virtually- the systemic reference to war was not far from the truth.

My makeshift school was squeezed into the heart of our home, immediately visible upon entering. We live in a great room layout: the living room, kitchen, and dining area separated only by a partial wall. The dining table, right in the center, became my full-time classroom and my office. A flimsy Wayfair room divider (which my cat Garfield eventually tore up) served as my background, and I armed myself with a whiteboard, an Expo marker, a contraption to hold my phone as a second Zoom camera, and, of course, my school laptop.

“Good morning class!” I’d say with all the enthusiasm I could muster. “Please turn on your cameras so I can see those smiling faces.” There were always two students with their cameras turned off: Alex, whose name my sons knew by heart, and Gabriel, who would show up 10 minutes late, in bed and in his pajamas. 

Each day, I sat in that chair, putting on a show - singing, dancing, displaying my meticulously created Google slide lessons and doing anything and everything to keep those kids engaged. The screen became a magnifying glass where parents could judge my every move. I’d close out the Zoom session at the end of the school day and immediately call families or answer emails. After that, I’d plan reading and writing lessons that I’d share with my fourth-grade team. 

My husband and sons would make dinner and eat while I worked relentlessly at the table.  They would finish and clean up, yet I continued to work.

“It’s 9:00, Mom,” Nicholas said one night. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I’m almost done,” I replied, barely looking up.

My husband walked over to me and angrily announced, “This has got to stop! It’s either them or me.”

That’s when I looked up.

Introduces: protagonist, antagonist, setting, core wound, primary conflict.

 

 

I’m planning another trip to Baja with my husband Tom. This time, though, requires a different kind of inquiry than my normal pre-trip research. Instead of going to Google and typing in “Bird species found on Isla San Benito” or “Gray whale behavior in Laguna San Ignacio”, I type “Travel regulations for human ashes”.  

I’m going on a natural history trip, living aboard a 95-foot sportfishing boat to explore the deserted coves and rugged shorelines of Baja. To revel in the extraordinary wildlife – blue whales, albatross, century plants, parrotfish. Tom and I had been naturalists on similar trips in years past, and Tom requested that his ashes be scattered in the Sea of Cortez. He died two years ago, and I am finally ready to take this final trip with him. 

The first result is “For domestic travel, the TSA allows you to bring cremated remains onto the plane either in your carry on or in your checked luggage.”  Digging a little deeper, I got to “Of the “big three” American carriers, United Airlines and American Airlines require cremated remains to be transported with carry-on baggage.”  I’m flying United Airlines from San Francisco to San Diego, where the boat trip begins, so I need to bring him with me as carry-on. TSA requires a copy of his death certificate and cremation paperwork. 

February 7, 2020 – Day One

I arrive at SFO early, ready for the flight to San Diego, where the trip begins.  I check my duffle bag stuffed with snorkel gear, rain gear, clothes for twelve days.  I shift my weight from one foot to another while I wait in the TSA line, watching the agents, the other passengers.  My precious cargo is cushioned in my rolling backpack, packed with my journal.  After the roll-aboard goes down the conveyor belt and through x-ray, the TSA agent pulls my bag aside for a further security check. I brace myself for a lengthy explanation and inspection of the paperwork. I start to pull out the documents, hoping to get through this without bursting into tears. The agent is calm, respectful, and after my quiet “Those are my husband’s ashes”, he takes a quick look in the bag and waves me on without questions or paperwork.  I take a deep breath, grab my bag and head for the gate.

The flight is uneventful, just the nerves and speculations about what will happen on this trip.  I sleep fitfully after the stress of packing.  A friend picks me up at the airport and takes me to Fisherman’s Landing, the marina where Searcher is docked. 

I walk down the dock, breathing in the familiar salt air and climb up the portable stairs to get level with the deck. I step through the gap in the railing to board Searcher, this beautiful boat of memories. Celia, one of the owners, walks out of the salon and gives me a big hug, “Welcome back!”.

“My god, it’s been so long, it’s so great to see you!” I say, smiling and squeezing her hands. I reach out and stroke the shiny teak railing with affection. Then Art, the other owner and captain, comes aboard, belting out, “Where have you been Lewis, we’ve been here!”. I always like it when he calls me by my last name, makes me feel like part of the crew.

Despite my excitement and the anticipation for all the incredible experiences I know I’ll have over the next twelve days, I’m anxious. So many fears churning around in my head. Fear of seasickness, fear of asthma issues when snorkeling - Tom always had my back when things didn’t go well. I need to remember I’ve done it without him before, but that was a different life, different situation. I’m hoping this physical letting go, scattering of his ashes, will allow me to release his spirit.

Yet, I’m afraid of that too.

Other passengers start to come aboard - Trina from Marin, Barbara and Stan from England, just a few of the other twenty adventurers. People wander in and out of the salon after getting their cabins organized, grab some coffee, sit down to get oriented. I pull tight against the outer wall in one of the booths, rest my elbow on the table bordered with teak railing and a teal carpeted surface - it keeps the plates from sliding when the boat is rocking. Surrounded by people, I still feel alone.

Trina sits down across from me, then Barbara and Stan join the six-person booth, the four of us strangers who will soon be friends as we explore Baja.

“Where are you from?” Trina asks.

“Half Moon Bay, CA.” I say, then take a sip of tea from the logo’ed Searcher mug.

She asks “Have you seen whales before?”

I want to say Yes, I’ve been out on boats watching whales for more than thirty years but try not to be arrogant and simply say “Yep, lots of times. They’re amazing!”

Barbara asks me, “Have you been to Baja before?”

“Many times, twelve times on Searcher“.

Stan says “Wow!”, and I explain that my husband Tom and I used to lead these trips years ago. The subsequent questions get more challenging. 

“Where is he?”

“Did he come with you this year?”. 

I stutter, say “No,” as I glance away. Then, with a slight smile, “Well, actually, he is. He’s down in the stateroom, under my bunk in a shiny red, silk bag.” 

Art starts the orientation at eight PM.  Paul and Marc, this year’s naturalists, gather everyone into the salon to talk about the details and logistics of the trip. I start to feel overwhelmed with memories, thinking about the people who are here for their first time, how I felt the first time I came on this boat some thirty years ago.

I retreat from listening and gaze through the windows, picturing Tom when he was the one who gave this talk, him and me at the front of the salon introducing ourselves. I would have been wearing my ‘first day of the trip’ attire - a turquoise and gray striped shirt, collared, tucked into comfy blue jeans, my leather belt from college just barely fitting anymore. Tom was in his sage green vest, worn and frayed, the red-plaid flannel lining poking through in a few places. We stood in the galley, set off from the passengers.

“Welcome everyone, I’m Tom and welcome aboard Searcher – hope you’re excited!  Linda and me…”

I interrupted with “It’s ‘Linda and I’”.

Did I just do that?  Correct him in front of all these people?

After a sidewise glare and frown my way, he continued to explain the schedule of hiking, whale watching and snorkeling that would take place over the next twelve days.

Why was I so arrogant to think I was smarter than he was? Quick to correct him?

Bringing my focus back to tonight, I can’t help but be excited, and smile as I search the salon for Carol. A close friend of Tom’s and mine, she’s accompanying me for this personal ceremony of letting go. There to hold and support me.

                                                                        ***

This wasn’t my first trip to Baja without Tom.

Memorial Day 1994, 26 years ago, had been brilliant, perfect for the lazy day ahead. I looked forward to the evening, steaks and baked potatoes, just the two of us. The pyramid of charcoal briquets was ready to be lit when Tom said, “We need more lighter fluid, I’ll run to the store to buy some” and he drove away.

I finished prepping dinner, made some fresh lemonade (it’s the slightest pinch of salt in the simple syrup that makes it special), then sat down to wait. And I waited. Tossed the tennis ball to the dogs (Bristol always brought it back. Vince just chased it, then left it where it fell.). Sat on the front porch for a while, glanced at my watch. I began looking out the window any time I heard a car approaching. What was taking so darn long?  Was there a huge run on lighter fluid because it was Memorial Day?  Then I started listening for sirens – checked that the phone was working. Had he been in an accident?

More than two hours later he drove up to the house, trudged inside while gripping a rumpled brown bag with the lighter fluid, his eyes downcast. He headed directly to the backyard, saying “I need to talk to you” and guided me to sit next to him on our splintered picnic table bench. With no warning, he blurted out “I need to tell you I’m addicted to crack cocaine”.

Stunned, I stared at him. I didn’t even know what crack was, but ‘addicted’ and ‘cocaine’ I understood, and my stomach dropped.

My mind whirled and I tried to make sense of it.  I thought back over the last months, and gradually the signs that I had missed came into focus.  Individual events that didn’t seem significant on their own, but when added together revealed a problem. He had lost a lot of weight, looking rather slim for his normal bulk. Friends had asked me, “Tom looks great, how did he do it?” – now I knew. Every errand took longer than expected and he always eagerly volunteered for that quick run to Ralph’s to get a half gallon of milk that we didn’t really need right away. And the quick was never quick. His golf games stretched out to include drinks with his buddies afterwards. I should have paid attention the time there was a whale stranding and, instead of rushing to help with the necropsy, he stayed at the bar. He spent a lot of time in the backyard and in the garage. I thought he was spending quality time with the dogs. 

It was a place to smoke his drugs out of my sight.

I asked him some questions – when did this start?  Maybe he answered, “A couple months ago.”  I hadn’t noticed that our meager savings account of about $2000 was now down to zero.  “What?” I asked, another blow to my sense of security.  “This was our account to pay our property taxes!  How are we going to pay them now?”  He seemed ashamed, embarrassed, and assured me that he would stop using, wouldn’t be spending any more on drugs.  Taking him at his word, I assured him that I loved him, and we put the steaks on the grill.

He told me about his addiction because while out getting the lighter fluid, he thought that some cops had seen him – using or buying I’m not sure.  Convinced they followed him home, he expected they would come to arrest him.  He wanted to warn me before they came to the door.  We didn’t talk much while we ate, appetites dulled – his from the drugs?  Mine from fear and pain. 

When time for bed, he decided to sleep in the living room, to be near the door when the police showed up.  I climbed into our bed and tried to sleep.  I must have dozed off, because he knocked on the door about 1am and softly said “They’re here.”  My heart thumping, I pulled on some pants and went into the living room.  I could see the flashing red and blue lights of the cop car right in front of the house.  We stood in the living room, waiting for the knock.

After several minutes, we saw the lights start moving, and the cars drove away.  We looked at each other, not sure what to do or think.  We hung out for a while, expecting them to come back, but I eventually went back to bed to try to sleep so I could go to work in the morning.  They never came back, he never got arrested. 

Secretly glad that there had been this scare, I was sure that now he was “scared straight” and would stop using.  That was the logical result. 

Lesson learned.  Life can continue as normal. 

JUST GLORIOUS is a YA, historical coming-of-age novel with significant adult crossover and strong cinematic promise. Though it functions as a complete standalone, it is envisioned as the first book in a potential multi-novel series tracing Glorious Gardner’s journey from ordinary to extraordinary.

 

 

Hook: Glorious Gardner has carried her name like a burden, too bright and too hopeful for a girl raised in a prairie town where secrets fester, gossip is gospel, and her family’s shrouded past sits on the tip of everyone’s tongue. When a school essay forces her to confront the rumors surrounding her brother Frankie’s death and her family’s troubled past, she begins to unearth the truth the adults in her life have long kept buried. With her journal as witness and her words as courage, Glorious writes the essay that propels her into the national spotlight. But fame only sharpens the questions she’s tried to outrun: Who is her family, really? Who is she? And can an ordinary girl grow into a name that promises something far more than ordinary, something glorious?

 

Here is an excerpt from Chapter One of Just Glorious

 

 

Ordinarily, no one would take the time and effort to tell the story of an ordinary girl growing up in a small, stagnant town, surrounded by practical, plain-as-prairie people. But every once in a while, the westerly winds would whip through Chippewa Creek and blow away the dust of time, exposing the most ordinary of lives as something extraordinarily unusual, something kind of glorious.

Some people come into your life as a blessing, some as a lesson. No one, including Gloria, was entirely sure what her role was. Looking from the outside in, it would seem that wisdom found her willing, even in her youthful folly. Her wisdom was observational; she paid close attention to what people did or didn’t do. She listened to their words and turned her ear towards the tone of their voices, allowing these common interactions to form her conclusions. She faithfully made a record of these encounters in one of the many notebooks of reflections and verdicts that were born from her own partialities.

Gloria had spent her entire life in a small town. The rolling, unending prairie littered with tangled, parched coulee riverbeds and the rowdy waters of Chippewa Creek was her native habitat. Her innocence, slightly marred, provided a proficiency in the unwritten rules of small-town living. Just shy of fifteen years old, she already had plenty of practice in navigating the swell of stormy secrets and tumbleweed tales that strung across the prairie.

Most city folk don’t understand small-town living. City dwellers live with the rumble of energy, automobiles dodging, people dashing about, the fast walkers, and even faster talkers. Small towns are known to lumber along like the slow Missouri River rolls. Every day in Chippewa Creek was, well, every day same. The town folk were predictable, hard-working, dependable, normal, church-goin' sinners. About town, there were functional families, broken families, and secrets well kept. Circumstances would suggest that in Glorious Gardner’s corner of Chippewa Creek, there were many moments of chaos, confusion, and heartache that flooded her soul, while unexpectedly reaping her a clever eye and a gritty soul that would help guide her sensibilities, for the most part.

Chippewa Creek was an old prairie schooner town. A long time ago, the town just sort of happened. After a long line of covered wagons, on their way to the Pacific Northwest, by accident… and a little luck, found their way off the well-worn trail, made camp, and stayed for a while. The small town built its way up from campfires and baked beans into a rowdy western trading post, finally settling down as a peaceful prairie town.

In 1956, Chippewa Creek had a total of 1514 official residents. There was an old saying about small towns and small minds. This wasn’t so much the case in Chippewa Creek. The residents were an amalgam of sunflowers, tumbleweed, and tares. Sometimes it was hard to see anything but the beauty that flourished in her small world, and other times the tumbleweed tore about while the tares took root like a bindweed, choking out the otherwise good intentions. The seasons were well pronounced on the prairie. Summers were dry and hot. The young’uns spent their mornings as cheap day labor and their afternoons peddling up and down the gravel roads, then cooling off in the creek. The town spent its days in constant preparation for the winter. Farmers tended to crops, while housewives replenished depleted root cellars with freshly canned vegetables from the garden. Toward the close of summer, harvest implements colored the patchwork prairie with rows of freshly cut grain. Trucks moved the golden cargo from fence to fence, distributing the tiny threshing of wheat and barley to prairie skyscrapers that dotted the high-line road. Fall usually arrived early in that corner of the country, and with it a non-stop harvest festival. School was delayed until the fall finale. The Broken Bow County Harvest Hay Day Fair would bring sun-kissed country folk in from miles around. The Ladies Auxiliary would host the town parade. The fall events were the talk of the town, and talk was cheap in such a peaceable place. Gossip, however, was a highly traded commodity.

The long, heavy winters would eventually linger into spring, but before the warm westerly winds melted the snow, the thick winter chill hovered over the brown prairie, socking everyone in, keeping them close to home. Everyone and everything seemed to slow down a bit, except for the constant neighborly chit-chat, eyebrow-raising gossip, and pot stirring from some of Chippewa Creek’s finest provocateurs.

“Alright, class, your assignment for winter break is to research your family tree. Before you leave today, take a hand-drawn family tree. I made a carbon copy for each of you. You will notice that there are lines for both your mother’s side, or maternal relatives, and your father’s side, or paternal relatives. You can go back three generations on the tree. Take special note of old photographs, baptismal records, or family letters. This assignment will be tied to an exciting opportunity for you, so please do your best. Some of you may find you have family crests or tartans. You may even find out that you are royalty, imagine that!”

Gloria raised her hand. “Yes, Gloria?” “Mrs.Handswell, how will I know if I am related to royalty?” Mrs.Handswell’s eyebrows marched up, smacking her forehead. “Gloria, you have no worry of that. I am certain your family tree was never planted in that rich of soil!” Another hand darted up. “Yes, Henry?” “What if we have weird relatives, or crooks or thieves in our family, or plain boring people?” Asquawkyvoice butted in, “You should ask Gloria; she got ‘em all!” The young boy looked around for an accomplice in his taunting. “Mikey, keep your opinions to yourself, even if they have validity. Please include only proper memories of your family. No need to dig up old bones.” She quickly pointed a stern finger at Mikey.

Gloria figured her family had no royal claims; she merely wanted to discuss the possibility of something exciting, something encouraging. She was keenly aware Mrs.Handswellwas round about insulting her. She was often the target of her teacher’s discourteous nature. Gloria pulled out her small leather journal from her desk and wrote down Mrs.Handswell’sinsult, word for word, right under a quote from Benjamin Franklin she had read in Harper’s Bazaar. “Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.” She doodled Mike Olsen’s face with crossed eyes and a dunce hat. Her little leather journal was pushing volume 4. Each volume was full of things she noticed or read, and sayings she gave ear to that struck her heart and sensibilities.

“Remember to complete your assignments; they will be due two weeks after we reassemble back at school. Don’t forget your books, hats, jackets, and overshoes. DO NOT leave any food; we don’t need a science experiment to come back to. Thank you for all the gifts, have a great Christmas. ”

The 3 O’clock sun slumbered on top of High Timber Butte, waiting for the frosty December day to end. Winter break was officially on. Chippewa Creek was buzzing with holiday energy. The school playground was littered with red-cheeked youths, mittens, and flying snowballs. The high school kids were gathered around the parking lot, exchanging gossip and holiday plans. No one was interested in the warmth of home or the after-school chores that awaited them; they had left their cleverness and competence back inside the halls of the cold brick institution. It was time to gather and indulge in youthful distractions.

Gloria loitered around the swings, spotting her older sister Peggy gathered with a few girlfriends. The stylish set milled about, batting their eyes and teasing the senior boys with their aloofness. She avoided her sister’s domain, knowing she would only be ignored. It was hard being a 14-year-old underclassman; it had been hard since 13. Adults did not see them as notable; the upperclassmen were annoyed with them, or anyone, for that matter, and at 14, they were much too mature to hang out with the childish 11 or 12-year-olds. Gloria moved in and out through clusters of unmannerly kids. “Hey Gloria, guess what I heard?” Mike Olsen popped her in the back with a snowball. “Knock it off, you big ape!” she snapped, feeling the sting through her oversized jacket. “I heard they found an old man’s scalp out at your grandma’s place. They are planning to arrest her for murder! You can write about that in your assignment!” Gloria’s eyes struggled to set sight on Mikey. Her face contorted in anger, mashing her eyelids into the tops of her cheeks. “You leave my grandma alone, you big dumb ape! Leave my family alone!” “What ya gonna do, get Frankie to come beat me up? Oh yeah, almost forgot, he can’t!” Mikey tilted his head back, his limp tongue slid out the side of his lips, and his eyes rolled slowly into their sockets. Gloria’s face unfolded. Her schoolbooks slapped the ground, sliding away on the hard-packed snow. Her arms started swinging. A right hook met up with his slimy, red, bulbous nose, followed immediately by a left hook to his chin. One-two, and down he went, his eyes still firmly rolled back in his head. A sticky red river trickled from his nose, down his chin, staining the white snow.

“She killed him! Gloria killed him!” A redheaded third grader cried while a girl in a green checkered coat ran towards the school entrance. A few kids cheered; everyone else hovered over him and waited, staring at the crimson snow. “GET UP! GET UP!” Gloria stood over him, partly ordering him back to “life” and partly ordering him back to battle. His eyes fluttered. He wiped his chin, grazing his nose. “You broke my nose! A girl broke my nose!” He blubbered. The girl in the green coat ran up with Mr. Stanford, while Mrs.Handswellscooted on the slick snow, close behind. “See, child, there is no one dead here, just some unfortunate fella with a bloody nose.” Mr. Stanford reassured the onlookers. “Explain yourself, Miss Gardner!” Mrs. Handswelldemanded as she yanked her shoulders. “She broke my nose!” Mikey wailed. Mr. Stanford investigated. “Your nose is not broken, son, only your pride. Now let’s get you in the bathroom and clean up your face.” “Not until I get to the bottom of this and Gloria apologizes to him!” Mrs. Hansdwell barked. “I will never, ever apologize to him! He is the worst ever. He made fun of Frankie being dead and said my grandma murdered someone.” Gloria’s eyes filled with salty tears. A chorus of knitted heads bobbed up and down in unison. “He did, I heard it!” one small voice came from the back. Mrs. Handswell released her grip and jabbed her finger at Mikey. “What did I tell you? Use a little discretion. Not everything you think needs to be said out loud! Gloria, if you don’t apologize, I will call your parents to the school now!” A tall, slender body in a lavender coat pushed through the small children. She stuck her hand out towards Gloria. “Come on, Gloria, we are going home, you don’t need to apologize. I overheard the whole thing. She might be my sister, but it’s obvious she was defending herself. As for you, Mikey Big-Nose Olsen, maybe it’s true that not everything you think needs to be said because maybe everything you think is wrong and full of stinkin'lies.” She glanced back at Mrs.Handswell. “I’m telling my parents what he said and what you did not say! I know what you are really saying about my family. You and Mikey's mom are two peas in a pod. My dad is right; you both are members of the Chippewa Creek Ladies’ Auxiliary of Malfunctioned Mouths!” Peggy’s nostrils flared as she tightly gripped Gloria’s hand during her tirade. “Pick up your books, Gloria, let’s go!” Sara Peters and a few others had already started gathering her books. Mrs.Handswellsnorted and snarled about, yanking Mikey to his feet. The crowd stood frozen with fear but discreetly pleased. They were all enamored by Gloria’s right/left knockout combo and Peggy’s audacity, but most of all, they were secretly happy thatMikeyOlsen looked like a deranged Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This gave everyone so much to talk about during the holiday break.

Peggy pulled Gloria down past the other onlookers, Sara Peters put her arm around Gloria’s opposite shoulder, and they marched towards the sidewalk, to the street.

Safely out of sight, Peggy stopped and turned to her sister. “You will not tell Mama and Papa what happened. They do not need to be upset because of these dumb motor mouths.” She pulled together Gloria’s jacket and zipped it up past her chin. “I’ll take your books home, stay away from the school, stay with Sara. Remember, don’t give them any reason to say anything else about you…about us!” “Thanks, Peggy, thanks for being so nice.” Gloria’s limp red lips tightened as the saline trickled down from her eyes. “Of course, Gloria, that’s what big sisters are for!”

Gloria snuggled into her coat. It was red and black buffalo plaid. The wool had been sufficiently worn to a warm, fuzzy layer. It was a few sizes too big, but that only lent to more coziness. The coat had belonged to Frankie; she could still smell the lingering scent of horses, hay, and his aftershave. She really missed Frankie.

 

OPENING PAGES: This the prologue and the first few short chapters of my upmarket caper novel A is for Art Heist. The opening of the book, the prologue, starts in the middle of story, establishes the tone, introduces some of the key characteristics of the five moms who band together to steal art, and reveals the problem that opens the door to the second goal. Then the book starts back at the beginning at a field trip at the art gallery where the idea is first planted and develops the characters, suggests their roles in the heist, and connects the reader to the why behind the heist.

A is for Art Heist

by Elizabeth Rusch

Prologue

After nightfall, when the five moms gather in the kitchen of the hastily furnished red-brick hideout for their fake “Book Club,” Morgan Miller pours them all shots of whiskey. Though these women will never be her drinking buddies, a good leader knows how to ease some tension on a team.

Exhausted and exhilarated, the women collapse on the mismatched paisley, leopard-print and plaid loveseats and armchairs, clink their glasses, and toss back the sharp, woody liquid.

“Does anyone really fucking like whiskey?” Viv Crow, single mother of 10-year-old May asks, slamming her glass down and wiping her mouth. For someone who always brings the crazy, Viv is remarkably subdued. Still, Morgan winces at Viv’s foul mouth and at her very presence, regretting that you couldn’t really cut someone out of a plan when it was their idea.

Yoshi Sage, mother of 6-year-old Eve and CEO of Sage Security, scans every inch of the hideout as she has many times over the past few months—the city maps and architectural drawings on the wall, the forgery studio in the back, the heavy blackout curtains on all the windows. Satisfied, Yoshi peers at Morgan through her cat-eye glasses and gestures to her empty tumbler. “I could use another.” Unlike the others, Yoshi’s wearing work attire, a smart burgundy pants and vest combo.

The rest are still dressed all in black.

Viv glances at Ines Castillo’s gaunt, tense, and unusually pale face. Without her typical baggy cargo pants and oversized hoodie, Ines looks smaller, more vulnerable. “Have you had anything to eat since the…uh?” Viv asks, tucking a piece of flyaway strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear.

Ines shakes her head and covers her mouth with her hand, and Viv jumps up and heads toward the kitchen. “I'll get you something.” Riffling through the cabinets, Viv prepares wholegrain crackers, a ramekin of peanut butter, and apple slices on a plate, and sets it on the large coffee table before her best friend.

“A perfect after-heist snack,” smirks Dasha Fox, mother of twin 3^rd grade boys, as she grabs an apple slice. A maven of disguise, Dasha’s the only one who’s managed to remove all the white face paint. But her skin is so colorless, like an albino, that no one could tell the difference.

Morgan, trying not to thrum her fingers with impatience, stands. Towering over them, arms folded, she shakes her head. “All food and drink off the table,” she instructs, and the women hustle old and new dishes and glasses to the kitchen counter or onto the floor.

With a dry dish cloth, Ines frantically wipes away any residue of moisture or crumbs.

“Are we ready?” Viv asks, holding up a large duffel bag. Dasha rubs her hands together. Morgan and Yoshi nod solemnly. Ines hovers near the counter, keeping her distance while nibbling on a cracker. Viv unzips.

From the bag, she lifts out the Matisse and lays it on the wooden table. It’s still in its brushed gold frame. With the overhead lamp shining down on it, Over the Garden looks almost sculptural, with the paper cut-outs creating dimensionality. The women make a soft collective gasp.

Ines sets her cracker down and inches forward. “Wow,” she whispers, leaning over the artwork. “It's so beautiful.”

A collage artist herself, Viv blinks at the arrangement of cut-out papers, tongue-tied.

The blue figure is all fluid movement as if leaping in the sky above the garden. Edges of the colored floral shapes curl upward casting faint gray shadows, like those found on Portland sidewalks on a typical pewter day. Some of the colors of Over the Garden are more faded than the forgery Viv and Ines made. Others seem more exuberant in comparison.

Dasha’s eyes widen in glee. “We actually have a real Matisse, here, right in front of us.”

“We did it,” Yoshi intones.

Morgan nods. “Well done, everyone.”

They all find their tumblers and take a sip of their drinks.

Viv shift in her seat, turning to Morgan. “What now?”

Morgan’s head jerk backward like she’s been slapped. “What do you mean, what now?”

“How do we get the money? For the school?” Viv asks. “What’s the plan?’

“The plan?” Morgan replies, incredulous. “You hand it off to your buyer.”

Viv looks flummoxed. “What buyer?”

 

 

 

Part One

 

Two months earlier

 

“Fuck me, that’s a real Warhol,” Viv Crow whispers to her fellow chaperones Dasha Fox and Ines Castillo as they gaze over the heads of third graders milling around the vast public exhibit hall of the Nick Halladay Collection. Dasha snickers. Ines glances around furtively making sure none of the kids overheard.

When the school bus had pulled through the chain link fence entrance and parked in the small lot beside the beige warehouse, Viv and her two friends, known as the Chatman Elementary school “Art Moms,” thought the bus driver had made a mistake. The low squat building that exhibited pieces from the largest private art collection in the Pacific Northwest was under the St. Johns Bridge in the industrial section of the city surrounded by tool machine shops, cabinet manufacturers, and even oil tanks.

As trucks roared and rattled by Jordan, the class clown, had yelled, “We’re being kidnapped!” and the third graders erupted in fake screams and shrieks of laughter. Dasha, Jordan’s mom, enjoyed the minor chaos but shot her son a warning glance to keep things in check. Ines couldn’t help but peer nervously through the steamed-up bus windows and pelting February rain to make sure they were not in fact surrounded by armed kidnappers.

When the students and chaperones disembarked like some disjointed tumbling snake wriggling past the puddles and stepping through the double glass doors, a hush hit them. Inside, the gallery looked like any modern museum, crisp, clean, and bright with blonde wood floors. The gallery’s large, with two partitions stretching from either side of the entrance to the back, creating three, connected gallery spaces. White scaffolding on the ceiling held track lights which shone upon the riotously colorful artwork: a painting of the protest of the 1960s and 2020s; a green and purple graphic of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping;  and wall full of national flags cut in the shapes of flowers.

Wide-eyed, the kids seemed gob-smacked by the grandeur of the place.

Keeping an eye on her twin sons for signs of mischief, Dasha sidles up to Viv. They’re both curvy, but where Viv is all color, with long wavy strawberry blond hair, coral lipstick, and a collage of overlapping tattoos, Dasha is as pale as milk. To Dasha, all the world’s a stage and she’s ready to dress up for any role. For this field trip, she’s donned a paint spattered smock and sneakers and a beret over a wig cut in a black bob. She points at a jumbled composition of graffiti, text, and color. “I think that’s a Basquiat,” she whispers.

Ines, loaded down with a soggy backpack, a large fabric grocery bag overflowing with damp sweaters and sweatshirts the kids had peeled off on the bus, and a duffle bag, joins them. She’s surprised that the docent at the desk near the entrance hadn’t made her check the bags or leave them on the bus. Grateful, Ines feels grounded, protected by their weight.

Resembling a long, painfully thin Giacometti sculpture in cargo pants, Ines conducts an automatic head count…twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. After noting the relative stillness of the students, she takes in the arresting paintings and prints on the walls. “This is actually spectacular,” she says. “One guy owns all this?”

Viv shakes her head in dismay. “It’s indecent,” she spits out through the gap in her front teeth. She’s dressed in hodge podge of thrift store finds – tiger-skin pants, a wide red belt, and flowered blouse.

Indecent? Ines’s heart rate shoots up. Is there something too violent or too sexual for third graders here? She runs her eyes over a large piece that looks like a huge charcoal sketch of a man shouldering the weight of a coal factory; a shimmering print of the word HOPE; and a large mosaic portrait of a Black woman reclining, like the famous Manet but glittering with rhinestones. Nothing here seems indecent to Ines.

“A thousand a year!” Viv whisper-shouts to her friends. “Nick Halladay adds a thousand pieces to his private art collection EVERY YEAR.”

Suddenly shuffling and squeaking arises from the pack of kids. A voice yells, “OUCH!”

Ines scans the herd for the trouble. Dasha sweeps in. “Jordan Fox, you leave her braids alone.”

Morgan Miller, Parent-Teacher Association president and occasional chaperone who had been standing apart with arms crossed, strides forward. She’s dressed for work in beige trousers with a teal blazer, sleeves rolled up revealing her brown muscular forearms. “Hands to yourselves!” she commands.

To Ines, something seems slightly off with Morgan. Usually exuding confidence and ease in her leadership role, Morgan’s face and posture seem tense, and she keeps glancing at the door like she can’t wait to get out of this place.

Ines considers Morgan discomfort for a moment before sensing that something else is wrong. Some kids are rushing toward the back of the gallery.

“Donuts!” someone shouts.

The moms try to head off the food mob surging toward the elegant table that holds a small tower of powdered donuts and a few small bottles of Perrier.

“Drop it!” Morgan orders.

The docent, a twenty-something college-age kid with long hair, a nose ring, and a jacket festooned with patches, saunters toward the mayhem. “It’s fine,” he says to the astonishment of the four moms. “Those are for visitors.”

That’s all it takes for an octopus of small hands to reach out.

Viv, who comes from a family where every morsel of food was counted, notes, “There’s not enough for everyone.”

Morgan gives one boy’s powder-covered hand a light smack. “And he’s gluten free!”

The docent drifts away from the table and away from the fray. “I think we have something for him – for everyone…” He disappears through a door at the back of the room.

The kids who had snagged donuts scuttle away like dogs with a bone.

“Does he have any idea what sugar will do to these kids?” Dasha muses.

Viv can’t believe the docent would leave a mob like this unattended in place so full of valuable art. “Now’s our chance to grab the Warhol and run,” she jokes.

Ines, who can spot trouble through the back of her narrow head, hustles toward a painting of copper pipes, smoking pipes, and muscled arms overlaid with the words Not A Pipe. “No touching!” she exclaims. But it’s too late. Two white smudges of powder like ski tracks mar the bottom right corner of the composition. At least it’s an abstract piece.

She whips a bandana out of one of her bags and gently dusts the sugar off the painting as she scans guiltily for the docent.

He emerges with a platter of fruit leathers. Writhing hands wriggle forth again, some smooth and pudgy, others coated with white powder.

“Just in case their fingers were not gross enough…” Dasha mutters.

Ines dives into her duffle bag. “I’ve got wipes!”

“Of course you do,” Dasha cheers.

“Thank you, Ines,” Morgan adds, striding toward them. Her jaw feels tight and her breathing shallow. Just being in the Halladay gallery boils her blood. She knows public relations when she sees it. Does Halladay really think that showing sixty out of 20,000 pieces of art publicly will distract anyone from his obscene wealth and its origins?

Still, while the Art Moms hand out and collect wipes, Morgan Miller takes her usual position, at the helm. “Criss-cross applesauce,” she commands.

Like a swarm of sleeper agents deactivated by the push of a button, the children fall silent, cross their legs, and drop down onto their butts.

“Hand in laps,” she orders. Their arms button to their sides.

Morgan turns to the docent. “They’re all yours.”

 

Cuts

Viv jumps out of her seat and leans over the principal’s desk. “You’re kidding, right?”

Doug Ballat shifts back in his chair to put more space between himself and the three Momsketeers. He fully appreciates that Chatman Elementary School, especially the arts and theater programs, would not stay afloat without these women. But the nickname had popped into his head two years ago, when Dasha had dressed all three as swashbuckling pirates for Friday morning assembly to promote the school play. He could not for the life him get it out of his head.

After returning from the field trip to the Halladay gallery, the threesome had hustled through the pounding rain to return their volunteer badges to the school secretary.

The women want to be excited about where their kids go to school but the building is ancient, and worse than drab. Of the four front doors, one is nailed shut, two are made of banged-up wood and one is gray metal. Inside, the floors and walls, once white or cheery yellow, have taken on the murky color of concentrated urine. New LED overhead bulbs save money but cast a blueish light that makes everyone look vaguely ill.

When Ines, Viv and Dasha file into the main office, the principal seemed to be waiting for them. “Can I have a word?” he said. Dasha had hoped he was going to stop insisting on “Seussical” for the spring musical. The show was a hodge-podge of razzle-dazzle with no theatrical heart.

But alas the meeting was more disheartening. Their amazing art teacher Sylvie Wyatt had recently departed for a private school. Instead of replacing her, the position would be cut.

At the news, itchy heat prickles along Viv’s hairline. Art class was the only thing that kept her in school long enough to graduate. Art tethers her daughter to school, too. Bright, quirky, freethinking kids like May don’t do well in schools focused only on test scores and walking in straight lines.

 Ines is also abuzz with worry. How will this affect her daughter Luna, son Sebastian, and the whole school? Art is Luna’s happy place and Sebastian needs the physical movement that art class allows. Art, music, and the musical are the only things that keep this one troublemaker from acting out. And there are two really shy girls in Luna’s class who only speak in the art room. Still, she tugs Viv back to her chair. “Let’s hear him out.”

“It’s all about budget cuts and declining enrollment,” Doug continues, rocking nervously. “This term we have nineteen fewer students than we projected so there’s out budget shortfall is even worse.”

Whisps of Viv’s loose ponytail have escaped, and her hair is not the only thing that looks ready to come undone. “If we don’t have enough students, why are the classes so crowded?”

No one begrudges Viv her outrage. She’s saying what they’re all thinking.

“You’re not wrong,” the principal says. “School funding overall in inadequate…”

“But why art?” Ines asks.

“Yeah, why the art teacher?” Viv demands. She imagines the school without the three-times-a-week art class, kids’ shoulders drooping, fights breaking out, tears of overwhelm flowing down young faces. Viv also helps out in art class when she can and has seen how drawing, painting, and working with clay relaxes even the most tightly wound kids. “Why not cut the librarian or P.E. or something?” she pleads.

Dasha’s glad Viv didn’t suggest cutting the part-time music teacher who she needs to help produce the school musical. But she groans at the thought of Jordan without P.E.

The principal clasps his hands together. “P.E. is mandated,” he says. “And volunteers are already running the library.”

The room falls silent for a moment, aside from the ticking of the large round clock over the door and the squeaking of sneakers in the hallway. The secretary’s on the phone asking a parent to pick up their child who had vomited. Dasha wrinkles her nose at the thought. Or maybe it’s the odor of sweat, sour milk, and pencil shavings that pervades the school.

“Plus,” he says. “We have you all filling in, taking students to the  art gallery…”

“Oh, for god’s sake!” Viv erupts, jumping up from her chair again. This time, Ines and Dasha rise beside her. “This is ridiculous. We have jobs of our own!”  Viv paints, makes collages, and scrapes by in the gig economy; Ines is a printmaker and repairs outdoor gear, and Dasha sells real estate. Viv heads for the door. “Being the art teacher is not a volunteer position!” she says, and she storms out.

Dasha follows, smirking slightly as she mutters, “I imagine we haven’t heard the end of this.”

Ines stays behind. After all, it’s not really Doug Ballat’s fault.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?”

The principal shrugs.

But a firm and confident voice behind her declares: “You could speak at the upcoming school board meeting.”

Morgan Miller fills the doorway, unsmiling. “The arts aren’t the only programs suffering from cuts, you know.”

 

Late

Morgan only wanted one of the Art Moms to speak at the school board meeting, and Viv is supposed to do it. But she hasn't shown up yet.

“Where r u?” Ines texts.

Ines has never attended a board meeting. and she’s surprised that the room resembles a courtroom. The ten school board members sit at a long, elevated judge's bench with name plates and microphones. A lower table with one chair and a mic facing the bench must be where people testify. The rest of the room is filled with rows of wooden benches for the public. The place smells vaguely of furniture polish and ink.

As the room fills, Ines’s armpits and upper lip moisten. Though she has gathered all the supplies they need, she checks her bags again and again. “Hurry up,” she texts Viv.

A clock behind her shows that Viv is officially late. Waves of worry and fury surge through Ines. Viv’s always late and she always has an excuse. But Ines still imagines tangled wrecks of metal or paramedics thumping Viv’s chest.

The board chair bangs her gavel. “I know you are all concerned about the budget cuts,” she says. “So, let’s get right to it.” The crowd murmurs in agreement.

Morgan leans over to Ines. “I thought Viv was speaking,” she whispered. “Where is she?”

“I don't know.”

Morgan huffs. “If she's not here in time, you'll have to do it.”

Ines’s palms sweat, and she feels an overwhelming urge to pee. She considers running to the bathroom and maybe just continuing out the door.

Ines is yanked out of her panic when the board chair tells the crowd that the cuts are “inevitable” and that the best the board can do is “empower” local schools by allowing them to decide what should be cut.

What? Ines thinks. Everyone showed up to reverse the cuts. Anger shoots down Ines’s spine, and her feet begin to sweat in her work boots. Is this whole meeting about different parts of her kids’ education fighting each other for shrinking pieces of the pie?

All around her, parents shift and grumble. Morgan whispers something to the them about “the long game.”

While Ines stews in a soup of shock, dismay, and nerves, parents and teachers begin testifying about the damage the cuts will wreak in their schools. After 20 minutes, Morgan glances over to Ines and mouths, “Ready?”

Ines shakes her head desperately, pointing to the empty seat beside her. Morgan sighs and sends another parent to the podium, to talk about PE equipment and playground safety. Ines texts Viv once again. “Im going 2 kill u,” she writes, “unless u r already dead”

When the P.E. teacher finishes, Morgan turns to Ines. “It's now or never,” she says. “We need someone to talk about art.”

Ines gulps, gathers her bags, and stands up from her seat.

 

Art Lesson

As Ines approaches the witness table lugging her infernal bulky bags, Morgan regrets her lapse in judgment. Why did she allow the Art Moms to go last? Dasha, the theater one, isn’t even here. And Morgan should’ve predicted Viv’s unreliability. Now the whole presentation will depend on the quiet sidekick who looks like an emaciated deer in the headlights. Morgan wants to bury her head in her hands, but as the head of a PR firm, she knows she has to keep up appearances for the three reporters she convinced to cover the parents’ testimony.

Ines stands awkwardly next to the table facing the tired and irritated school board members. She glances desperately at the door, willing Viv to appear. Then she speaks into the mic. “Hi, uh, I'm Ines Castillo and my daughter and son attend Chatman Elementary where the principal is cutting our one art teacher.”

She reaches for one of her bags. “I have something for you. Something I want you to do.” She hands each school board member magazine scraps and colored paper, a glue stick, and kid-sized scissors.

Morgan itches to sweep in but knows how awkward it would look.

Ines returns to her mic. “I know, I'm sorry, but this is important,” she murmurs. “I’ve given you materials to make a collage.”

“What’s all this?” the chair asks. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

Suddenly, the double doors in the back swing open and Viv rushes in, unraveling a zebra print scarf and pulling off a red cape raincoat. “You heard the lady!” Viv booms.

For once, Morgan feels a kind of kinship with Ines who looks like she doesn’t know whether to hug Viv or head butt her.

Viv waves her hand in a dramatic sweep. “Your task is simple. As I talk, you cut and glue whatever you want onto the card stock.”

Morgan checks her watch. Viv will surely go over time, destroying any goodwill these board members still have.

Striding back and forth in front of the school board members, Viv projects loudly without a mic. “Ines and I are here,” she says, “because when we were young and our families were homeless, art saved us.” Some of the school board members glance up from their work in surprise, and Viv gazes around the room daring anyone to judge her. “And we know how it saves students in our school all the time.”

Morgan’s throat catches. She remembers when her parents were on the brink of losing their house, how she had hoped and prayed they would never have to stay in a shelter. Suddenly, Ines and Viv’s odd-couple friendship, Ines’s anxiety and Viv’s bombast make more sense to her.

Viv continues, “The shelter where we lived had a decent collection of art supplies like the ones you have there,” and then interrupts herself, “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good,” says one board member, glue stick in hand. Another pipes in: “I haven't cut with little scissors like this in years!” Everyone laughs.

“Part of what we want to accomplish today,” Viv says, “Is to take you back to art experiences you had as a child, so you can remember what it feels like to cut paper, to glue, to work with color.”

Morgan is surprised to notice that many school board members are quite intent on their creations. But two sit with their arms crossed over their suits and ties.

“Now this would never happen in an art class, especially not in elementary school. But I want you to hold up your collages.” The board members hold up their work, some shyly, some proudly. They’re a disorganized jumble of images with little to grab the eye.

Viv starts on the far left and points at the first piece. “I'd give that a D,” she says.

The audience shuffles uncomfortably, and the board member looks like she was punched. Morgan jumps to her feet while Viv grades the rest of the collages pointing as she makes her way across the room: “F. F. D. C minus. F. F. B minus, you must have some arts education,” she says.

Heat rises from Morgan’s chest to her face, and she steps forward to take over. Viv holds her hand up to stop her. “There is nothing wrong with what you all did,” she placates. “Exploring new materials is part of art.” She draws herself upright and takes a deep breath. “But I don't want you to think for a moment that having access to art supplies in elementary school is anywhere near enough. What made the difference for me and Ines in the shelter was an art teacher who came in and taught us skills and gave us challenging tasks to try.”

“What if in addition to these art materials, you had an art teacher to guide you? Someone who could suggest that you think of a theme that matters to you and that you use that theme as a way to choose images? Imagine if an art teacher showed you the importance of a focal point? Looking at your materials now, is there a large or bright or eye-catching image you might choose as a focal point? Where would you place the focal point? In the middle? Off center?”

The board members rifle through their materials.

“Now what if you had some instruction on color theory so that you could choose colors that complement each other or colors that when paired together grab the eye?”

The school board and the audience listen, rapt.

“What might you create if you were encouraged to make a self-portrait using only the materials you have in front of you?” she says. “That's a problem, a challenging creative problem that might stick with you in ways that filling out a worksheet with addition and multiplication problems might not.”

Someone near the back of the room says, “That’s right!”

One of the business men on the board leans toward his mic. “This is all well and good but given the economy and our budget, I think we need to funnel all our funds to the basics.”

Another board member nods. “Scott and I agree that we should recommend that schools only cut extracurriculars.”

Viv winces at the word “extracurricular,” but won’t yield the floor. “Art and art teachers are the heart of elementary schools,” Viv says, her voice rising. Ines can tell by the way Viv is tugging on her hair that she’s getting upset. “That art teacher made us feel safe,  like we had some control over our lives. That with nothing but a few magazines scraps and some color paper, we could shape our reality.”

Ines grabs Viv’s hand and leans toward the microphone  “It’s really hard when you don't have housing to carry much with you from place to place.”  After giving Viv’s hand a squeeze, she digs something out of her bag. “But art can be a lifeline.”

Ines holds up a collage on cardstock, slightly tattered and worn. She rotates it slowly so everyone can see. “Viv here made this when she was nine years old,” she says.

Everyone, even the people in the back can make out what Viv had created: a whirlpool of green magazines scraps that pull the eye inward like a wormhole to a bright red house at its center.

Viv blinks helplessly at Ines with a mixture of pride and shame and frustration as her best friend mutters into the mic, “Please save the arts in our schools.”

 

Art Lesson Take Two

The room remains hushed as Viv and Ines take their seats. The school board chair leans forward to her mic. “I think we have closing remarks from the head of the Council of PTA presidents.”

Morgan doesn’t move.

“Ms. Miller?”

Morgan nods and rises with a dazed expression.

“I had a speech prepared…summarizing the effects of budget cuts on schools.” She pauses, collecting her thoughts. “But I need to offer some context on the last presentation.”

Morgan never goes off-script, and she feels a bit like she’s about to drive off a ledge. But she also feels like she did as a teenager, when she first thrust her hands into a bag of clay.

 Working with clay had started out as physical therapy. She had trained desperately in high school to win a crew scholarship to Santa Clara University. But an injury to her hand in the first year threatened to jeopardize everything. To her surprise, clay therapy became, secretly, so much more. Working with clay got her through the stress of juggling college classes, rowing varsity crew, and facing microaggressions on campus.

Suddenly everything she’s read or heard about the power of art flashes before her. “What Viv and Ines were trying to tell you is true. I’ve read research that found that students who make art feel less anger and are less likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, and helplessness,” she begins. “But the benefits go much farther.” Sometime her brain works like a mind map, and she remembers a pattern of five, four, three. “Kids with art in school are five times less likely to drop out; four times more likely to excel academically; and three times more likely to pursue a bachelor's degree.”

The reporters type furiously to keep up.

“Arts education helps student at every socio-economic level, every age level, and for all races and all genders.”

Morgan’s not sure what’s come over her. She has been lobbying the school board and state legislature for adequate school funding since her son Keon entered kindergarten nearly a decade years ago. But something has shifted for her today. She feels deep in the bones of her hands, in her back, and in her shoulder blades, how vital art has been to her survival as a Black person in so many white worlds.

Looking directly at the pair of school board members who gave Viv such a hard time, she says: “Art is not an extracurricular—it is essential. We need to reverse the cuts to arts education and invest in this powerful tool.”  She breathes deeply as if she just completed a regatta.

When the chair realizes Morgan has nothing more to say, she raps her gavel and thanks everyone for coming. “We’ll take all this under advisement.”

As Morgan heads back to the parents and educators, some gape at her stunned, mystified and even angry that she shifted the discussion to the arts. Viv and Ines also stare at her in surprise.

Morgan and Viv’s eyes meet. “You were…” they both say.

 “Amazing,” Viv finishes.

Ines mumbles, “I wish there was more we could do.”

12/8  This post contains my revised/edited version of Chapter One.  The first draft is located in an older post:   The edits were made to adhere to a stronger POV with only a soft literary omniscient voice.

JUST GLORIOUS is a YA, historical coming-of-age novel with significant adult crossover and strong cinematic promise. Though it functions as a complete standalone, it is envisioned as the first book in a potential multi-novel series tracing Glorious Gardner’s journey from ordinary to extraordinary.

 

 

Hook: Glorious Gardner has carried her name like a burden, too bright and too hopeful for a girl raised in a prairie town where secrets fester, gossip is gospel, and her family’s shrouded past sits on the tip of everyone’s tongue. When a school essay forces her to confront the rumors surrounding her brother Frankie’s death and her family’s troubled past, she begins to unearth the truth the adults in her life have long kept buried. With her journal as witness and her words as courage, Glorious writes the essay that propels her into the national spotlight. But fame only sharpens the questions she’s tried to outrun: Who is her family, really? Who is she? And can an ordinary girl grow into a name that promises something far more than ordinary, something glorious?

 (revised) Chapter One: Once Upon a Prairie

Gloria often wondered if anyone would bother telling the story of an ordinary girl, like her, growing up in a small, stagnant town, surrounded by practical, plain-as-prairie people. But every once in a while, she would let her heart wander like the westerly winds that whipped through Chippewa Creek, blowing away the dust of time, exposing the most ordinary of lives as something extraordinarily unusual, something kind of glorious.

Agnes liked to say that some people come into your life as a blessing, some as a lesson. Gloria wasn’t entirely sure what her role was in anyone’s story, including her own. But wisdom found her willing, even in her youthful folly. It was observational wisdom, the kind she gathered by paying close attention to what people did or didn’t do. She listened to their words, turned her ear towards the tone of their voices, and let those everyday interactions shape her conclusions. Faithfully, she made a record of them in one of the many notebooks of reflections and verdicts born from her own partialities.

She had spent her entire life in a small town. The rolling, unending prairie littered with tangled, parched coulee riverbeds and the rowdy waters of Chippewa Creek was her native habitat. At just shy of fifteen, her innocence, slightly marred, had already taught her the unwritten rules of small-town living. She had plenty of practice navigating the swell of stormy secrets and tumbleweed tales that strung across the prairie.

Gloria figured that most city folk couldn’t understand small-town living. When she visited Cities like Ponderosa Springs, she felt overwhelmed by the city dwellers, as Papa called them. The city rumbled with energy, automobiles dodging, people dashing about with fast walkers, and even faster talkers. But small towns like hers lumbered along, like the slow roll of the Missouri River. Every day in Chippewa Creek was, well, every day same. The town folk were predictable, hard-working, dependable, normal, church-goin’ sinners. About town, there were functional families, broken families, and secrets well kept. In Gloria’s corner of it all, chaos, confusion, and heartache flooded her soul more often than she liked. She couldn’t yet grasp how deeply those moments were settling under her skin, but she felt them starting to guide her sensibilities, sharpen her clever eye, and spit-shine her gritty soul—for the most part

Chippewa Creek was an old prairie schooner town. Gloria loved her town, and she knew all the stories: A long time ago, the town just sort of happened. After a long line of covered wagons, on their way to the Pacific Northwest, by accident… and a little luck, found their way off the well-worn trail, made camp, and stayed for a while. The small town built its way up from campfires and baked beans into a rowdy western trading post, finally settling down as a peaceful prairie town.

By 1956, it claimed 1,514 official residents. Gloria once overheard Grandma Gardner say something about small towns and small minds, but she thought Grandma was too harsh about the place she called home. “Ipné·kes, my little bird, It’s not for me, that place is a field gone wild. Perhaps you can find a few sunflowers, but it’s mostly tangled with tumbleweeds and tares.” Grandma would insist. Depending on the day, Gloria would agree with her critique. Sometimes she only saw the beauty that flourished in her small world; other times she rambled around like a tumbleweed, on her worst days, the tares tangled around her like bindweed.

Gloria especially loved Chippewa Creek near the end of summer. Some of her best memories were helping Papa, Frankie, and Grandma during harvest. Her favorite moments were found rumbling along the patchwork prairie with Papa, cutting rows of grain in Grandpa’s old International Harvester. They would move the golden cargo from fence post to fence post, finally dumping the tiny threshing of wheat and barley at Papa’s Co-Op. “I’m the landlord of the county’s tallest prairie skyscraper!” Papa would tease.

But like all good things Gloria had come to know, the crisp autumn air was only a brief reprieve, right before winter’s thick chill would arrive and sock everyone in. It slowed her down, it slowed everyone and everything down, except for the constant neighborly chit-chat, and pot stirring by some of Chippewa Creek’s finest provocateurs. But just like grandma, she knew talk was cheap, but eyebrow-raising gossip was a highly traded commodity.

 

“Alright, class, your assignment for winter break is to research your family tree. Before you leave today, take a hand-drawn family tree. I made a carbon copy for each of you. You will notice that there are lines for both your mother’s side, or maternal relatives, and your father’s side, or paternal relatives. You can go back three generations on the tree. Take special note of old photographs, baptismal records, or family letters. This assignment will be tied to an exciting opportunity for you, so please do your best. Some of you may find you have family crests or tartans. You may even find out that you are royalty, imagine that!”

Gloria raised her hand. “Yes, Gloria?” “Mrs. Handswell, how will I know if I am related to royalty?” Mrs. Handswell’s eyebrows marched up, smacking her forehead. “Gloria, you have no worry of that. I am certain your family tree was never planted in that rich of soil!” A hand darted up from the back. “Yes, Henry?” “What if we have weird relatives, or crooks or thieves in our family, or plain boring people?” A squawky voice cut across the room, “You should ask Gloria; she got ‘em all!” Mikey taunted, then darted his eyes around, looking for an accomplice. “Mikey, keep your opinions to yourself, even if they have validity. Please include only proper memories of your family. No need to dig up old bones.” She quickly pointed a stern finger at Mikey.

Gloria didn’t truly expect royal blood; she just wanted to discuss the possibility of something exciting, something encouraging. She knew a roundabout insult when she heard one. Mrs. Handswell always had a way of turning lessons into little jabs, especially when Gloria was involved. She was often the target of her teacher’s discourteous nature. She pulled out her small leather journal from her desk and wrote down Mrs. Handswell’s insult, word for word, right under a quote from Benjamin Franklin she had read in Harper’s Bazaar. “Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.” She doodled Mike Olsen’s face with crossed eyes and a dunce hat. Her little leather journal was pushing volume 4 now. Each one was crammed with things she noticed or read, and little sayings that struck her sensibilities.

“Remember to complete your assignments; they will be due two weeks after we reassemble back at school. Don’t forget your books, hats, jackets, and overshoes. DO NOT leave any food; we don’t need a science experiment to come back to. Thank you for all the gifts, have a great Christmas. ”

The 3 O’clock sun slumbered on top of High Timber Butte, waiting for the frosty December day to end. Winter break was officially on. Chippewa Creek was buzzing with holiday energy. The school playground was littered with red-cheeked youths, mittens, and flying snowballs. The high school kids were gathered around the parking lot, exchanging gossip and holiday plans. Gloria thought about going home, but the truth was she didn’t want warmth or chores any more than it seemed the rest of them did. She left whatever cleverness and competence she had between the rows of lockers and the cold brick hallways. Right now, she wanted to linger a little while longer and not think too hard about anything at all.

Gloria loitered around the swings, spotting her older sister Peggy gathered with a few girlfriends. The stylish set milled about, batting their eyes and teasing the senior boys with their aloofness. She avoided her sister’s domain, knowing she would only be ignored. It was hard being a 14-year-old underclassman; it had been hard since 13. Adults did not see them as notable; the upperclassmen acted annoyed with them, or anyone, for that matter, and at 14, she felt much too mature to hang out with childish 11 and 12-year-olds. Gloria moved in and out through clusters of unmannerly kids. “Hey Gloria, guess what I heard?” Mikey Olsen popped her in the back with a snowball. “Knock it off, you big ape!” She snapped, feeling the sting through her oversized jacket. “I heard they found an old man’s scalp out at your grandma’s place. They are planning to arrest her for murder! You can write about that in your assignment!” Gloria’s eyes struggled to set sight on Mikey. Her face contorted in anger, mashing her eyelids into the tops of her cheeks. “You leave my grandma alone, you big dumb ape! Leave my family alone!” “What ya gonna do, get Frankie to come beat me up? Oh yeah, almost forgot, he can’t!” Mikey tilted his head back, his limp tongue slid out the side of his lips, and his eyes rolled slowly into their sockets. Gloria’s face unfolded. Her schoolbooks slapped the ground, sliding away on the hard-packed snow. Her arms started swinging. A right hook met up with his slimy, red, bulbous nose, followed immediately by a left hook to his chin. One-two, and down he went, his eyes still firmly rolled back in his head. A sticky red river trickled from his nose, down his chin, staining the white snow.

“She killed him! Gloria killed him!” A redheaded third grader cried while a girl in a green checkered coat ran towards the school entrance. A few kids cheered; everyone else hovered over him and waited, staring at the crimson snow. “GET UP! GET UP!” Gloria stood over him, partly ordering him back to life and partly ordering him back to the battle. His eyes fluttered. He wiped his chin, grazing his nose. “You broke my nose! A girl broke my nose!” He blubbered. The girl in the green coat ran up with Mr. Stanford, while Mrs. Handswell scooted on the slick snow, close behind. “See, child, there is no one dead here, just some unfortunate fella with a bloody nose.” Mr. Stanford reassured the onlookers. “Explain yourself, Miss Gardner!” Mrs. Handswell demanded as she yanked her shoulders. “She broke my nose!” Mikey wailed. Mr. Stanford investigated. “Your nose is not broken, son, only your pride. Now let’s get you in the bathroom and clean up your face.” “Not until I get to the bottom of this and Gloria apologizes to him!” Mrs. Hansdwell barked. “I will never, ever apologize to him! He is the worst ever. He made fun of Frankie being dead and said my grandma murdered someone.” Gloria’s eyes filled with salty tears. A chorus of knitted heads started bobbing up and down in unison. “He did, I heard it!” one small voice came from the back. Miss Handswell released her and jabbed her finger at Mikey. “What did I tell you? Use a little discretion. Not everything you think needs to be said out loud! Gloria, if you don’t apologize, I will call your parents to the school now!” A tall, slender body in a lavender coat pushed through the small children. She stuck her hand out towards Gloria. “Come on, Gloria, we are going home, you don’t need to apologize. I overheard the whole thing. She might be my sister, but it’s obvious she was defending herself. As for you, Mikey Big-Nose Olsen, maybe it’s true that not everything you think needs to be said because maybe everything you think is wrong and full of stinkin’ lies.” She glanced back at Mrs. Handswell. “I’m telling my parents what he said and what you did not say! I know what you are really saying about my family. You and Mikey’s mom are two peas in a pod. My dad is right; you both are members of the Chippewa Creek Ladies’ Auxiliary of Malfunctioned Mouths!” Peggy’s nostrils flared as she tightly gripped Gloria’s hand during her tirade. “Pick up your books, Gloria, let’s go!” Sara Peters and a few others had already started gathering her books. Mrs. Handswell snarled and fussed, yanking Mikey to his feet. The crowd stood frozen. Some kids stared wide-eyed; others hid their laughter behind their mittens. “Wow, what a punch, she knocked his lights out,” a young boy let slip. “Yeah, but her sister gave the teacher a what-for! And look at Mikey, he looks like a deranged Rudolph the Red-Nosed-Reindeer!” The red-headed third grader added, delighted.

Peggy yanked Gloria down past the other gawkers. Sara Peters draped her arm around Gloria’s shoulder, then turned back just long enough to stick her tongue out at Mikey. The three of them, knotted together, marched towards the street, safely out of sight. Peggy stopped short, her smile loving but her forehead firmly compressed. “You will not tell Mama and Papa what happened. They do not need to be upset because of these dumb motor mouths.” She pulled together Gloria’s jacket and zipped it up past her chin. “I’ll take your books home, stay away from the school, stay with Sara. Remember, don’t give them any reason to say anything else about you…about us!” “Thanks, Peggy, thanks for being so nice.” Gloria’s limp red lips tightened as the saline trickled down from her eyes. “Of course, Gloria, that’s what big sisters are for!”

Gloria snuggled into her coat. It was red and black buffalo plaid. The wool had been sufficiently worn to a warm, fuzzy layer. It was a few sizes too big, but that only lent to more coziness. The coat had belonged to Frankie; she could still smell the lingering scent of horses, hay, and his aftershave. She really missed Frankie.

“I can’t believe Peggy said that to Mrs. Handswell! I want to be brave like that. Wow, it was amazing seeing Mikey’s nose bleed. You’re lucky to have a sister, Gloria.” Gloria eked out a smile. “Sara, if Frankie were here, he would have pummeled Mikey into the ground!” Her feistiness quickly melted away, realizing that if Frankie were here, she would never have needed to punch his lights out. Sara bumped her hip, hoping to knock the smile back onto Gloria’s face. “Hey, Grandma Lettie is coming by train for Christmas this year. Seth and I are picking her up on Friday at Ponderosa Springs Depot. Do you want to ride along? Remember how she took us to Harvey’s diner for cheeseburgers and milkshakes the last time she came to town?”

Grandma Lettie was one of Gloria’s favorite people. Sara’s family was kind, funny, and normal; Grandma Lettie was all of those things, except normal. She lived to be memorable, to make sunshine out of rain and lemons into lemon pie! “Oh sure, you betchya! I can’t wait to see her. I wonder what she will bring you for Christmas? Maybe a new dress from the Paris Toggery or new records for the record player she sent on your birthday?” Gloria had no emotional attachment to Christmas or any celebrations. She was never jealous of what others had. Her friend Agnes once said that it took measurable character to find joy in the mundane, and she understood firsthand that happiness was fleeting, so she took care to be happy for the good fortune of others. “Well, I didn’t really ask for anything.” Sarah fretted while she blew on her cold, mitten-less hands. “I bet she will bring you something too. She thinks you are charming, and she knows all about charm; she was a debutante and went to finishing school!” Gloria shook her head. “Finishing school, what did she have to finish?” “Finishing school is like charm school, where you learn to be interesting, polite, and act like a lady. She learned to be charming and fancy, I guess.” Sara paused. “I wonder if she has royalty in her family tree, and if she does, I could be royalty!” “And I could be best friends with a princess. Princess of the Prairie Sara Peters.” Gloria patted Sarah on the back. “See ya Friday, Prairie Princess!”

Mama was sitting in her sewing chair near the big picture window. Papa’s work shirts lay rumpled across her lap. Mama sat still and quiet, attempting to thread a needle. Peggy was at the kitchen table peeling potatoes for dinner. She raised the knife to her lips and exhaled a very soft shhh, reminding Gloria of her stern warning earlier. “I know.” Gloria mouthed. “Dinner is almost ready; someone needs to set the table.” Peggy urged. Gloria pulled out 3 dishes from the cabinet, placing them around Peggy’s potato mess.

“Mama, I’m going to Ponderosa Springs on Friday to pick up Grandma Lettie at the depot.” “She’s not your grandma. You don’t have a grandma.” Mama’s words labored in a dull tone. “Grandma Gardner is my grandma. I have at least one grandma who is still alive!” Gloria was already growing tired of this conversation. Mama’s mood was up and down, but to Gloria her responses were always predictable, cold, and hard-laced. “Grandma Gardner is a bitter old woman. She is hardly grandmotherly. My mama never had the chance to be a grandma.” She spoke hauntingly. “I know Grandma Gardner is that way, but she still is my grandma. Papa says she is just tired, tired from raising 10 kids. It’s not that she doesn’t love us; she is worn out after Grandpa died and left her to handle the farm. Papa said that it was all she could take; being an outsider, having 10 kids, and then being left all alone. Anyway, she always bakes my favorite strawberry and rhubarb pie when I go out there with Papa, so that is her way of loving me!” Gloria sat on the floor and grabbed the needle and thread from Mama, slipped the thread into the needle’s eye, sorted through the shirts on the floor, choosing his yellow snap shirt to mend.

Mama leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and looked down at Gloria, her eyes harshly hovering over her. “You defend that woman to no end. What has she ever done for you, for us? You ought to realize that she does not bake those pies for you. That pie is your father’s favorite, and the only reason he gets it is because he spends so much time out there doing her duties, taking care of her farm. We could have had a farm of our own, but he spends too much time relieving her of her responsibilities. The rest of her brood all moved off, took care of their own, not your father; he split his loyalties long ago. Anyway, she never wanted him to marry me. She thought he was too good for me! Ha! Imagine that. A half-breed farm boy with an Indian mother, too good for me!” Gloria winced back, losing her balance. “Mama, Papa said we are to never say those words! He said it’s cruel and uncouth to say such things!” Mama whipped the shirt out of Gloria’s hands; the needle pierced into Gloria’s palm. “Mama, I’m trying to help you. Why are you so angry?” She bleated. “How come you don’t have anything nice to say about my mother? Why are you so defensive of your father’s family and never talk about mine?” Gloria noticed a tear forming in Mama’s eye. Softly, she put her hand on Mama’s knee. “Mama, you never talk about Grandma Riona Cara. I don’t know anything about her. Every time her name comes up, you get upset and cry. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I would love to learn more about her. I bet she would make me my favorite pie if she were still alive.” Gloria stood to hug her, meeting Mama’s harsh shoulder. “I have to do a family tree assignment over Christmas break. Maybe you can tell me more about her. Do you have any pictures or paperwork?” “I have nothing. I don’t even have that many memories of her. After you were born and all the trouble that came, well, my memories have grown fainter. I don’t even know if she is dead; your Grandma Riona Cara is gone somewhere, up and gone for good.” Gloria didn’t know who needed comforting more, her or her mama. This was a new version of the story. The first time she heard Mama suggest that Grandma Riona Cara might still be alive. She quickly changed the subject.

“Can I have dinner at the Creekside Cafe tonight with Agnes and Mr. Benton? Agnes wants me to come along, so that her meeting with Mr. Benton does not look like they are courting and carrying on.” “Will she pay you to go to dinner with her? I think she should, it’s just the same as you taking care of all her issues after school!” Gloria was already on her way to being perturbed by the last few minutes of conversation with Mama. She didn’t want an argument; she just really wanted to leave the house, even if it was to have dinner with Agnes and Mr. Benton. “I don’t know, Mama, maybe. It really isn’t the same, having dinner and helping Agnes in her wheelchair, washing her laundry, and cleaning her house. I don’t want to ask for money just to sit and eat and be their chaperone!” “Chaperon, how ridiculous!” Mama grunted. Gloria also couldn’t imagine that anyone would think Agnes and Ol’ Mr. Benton were carrying on. It was obvious to her that they were just two old lonely people passing the time together. Whatever gossip was whispered, she knew there was nothing lewd or sordid happening, in the least. “I just want to help her. I like all their stories, and Mr. Benton can sing. He always sings Mona Lisa to me. He was in a Barber-Shop quartet when he was young.” Gloria had a heart to help and a warm ear to listen to their stories, but more than that, she just wanted time away from home; away felt better than all the fussing and carrying on she often experienced.

The western sun was clinging to the horizon as Papa drove up the drive. He had come from helping Mrs. Carter install a new wood-burning stove in her house. Papa took on all sorts of odd jobs during the winter, when the grain elevator was in hibernation. He was handy with a hammer and nails and could fix just about any engine around. Frankie said he was a jack of all trades. Gloria once heard Agnes refer to him as a Renaissance man. She liked that version better; it gave him stature in her eyes.

Gloria headed to the back porch, sat down on the rough wooden steps, and pulled out her little leather notebook. She reread the line she copied from Mrs. Handswell. She knew it was true; they weren’t rich or normal. She probably didn’t have a single rich relative, dead or alive. And now, after Mama’s casual confession about Grandma Riona Cara, she doubted all that she knew to be true of her own family. She hunched over to lace up her over-boots. Papa walked in the back door, kicking the snow off his feet. “Where you headed off to, Glorious?” Papa always called her by her given name. When he spoke her name, his usual cadence would lilt slightly as his eyebrows reached for his hairline. “Having dinner with Agnes and Mr. Benton down at the cafe. Papa, when I get back, can you help me find old photographs of Grandma and Grandpa Gardner? I need anything that tells me who they are and who we are all related to?” “I’ll have to think about that. Not sure what I have. What’s this sudden interest in your genealogy?” Papa asked skeptically. “Mrs. Handswell assigned us to research our family tree. We have to fill out this paper tree and turn in any documents, photos, or proof of royalty to her. I already asked Mama. She got upset and said Grandma Riona Cara may not even be dead!” Peggy peeked through the back door, presenting a plate of brownies she had made in Home Economics class. Papa surveyed the bounty and snatched the biggest brownie. “Mm…mm, these smell mighty good, Peggy. You will make a man fat and happy someday!” “Who’s not dead? I didn’t even know someone died!” Peggy’s eyes darted back and forth between Gloria and Papa, while genially helping herself to a brownie. “No one died; I’m just talking about Grandma Riona Cara. Mama said she may not be dead, I don’t know why she would say that!” “Oh, Gloria, you are so gullible. Mama was pulling your leg. Of course, she is dead. I think I went to her funeral when I was little!” Peggy nibbled her brownie. “Not so, pretty Peg. Your grandma died when your mom was a young girl, like 5 or 6. As for you, little miss Glorious, I will see what I can scratch up, but I’m pretty sure no one in this small town has any royal claims. Heck, I’m not even sure our family trees forks!” Papa hooted. Gloria eyeballed Peggy, confused as to why Papa found humor in talk about death, family trees, or forks.

HEARTLESS

Chapter 1 (Opening, first 1000 words to include sample dialogue)

Harbrook University students commit to protecting their own safety and the safety of all romantic entanglements by agreeing to the following:

• I agree to not take any unnatural action to expedite or encourage the expulsion of mine or another’s heart.
• I agree to return my heart to my chest immediately following a cardiac event.
• I agree to report any observed heart malfeasance to the school medics, including but not limited to the following: improper heart removal, reckless heart endangerment, stealing or harboring hearts, and organ dissection, experimentation, or dismemberment.

As Mac stared at the policy in her shaking hands, she knew one thing for certain: she was making a huge mistake. 

It felt far from pleasant to finally admit this to herself, impatiently bouncing her knee up and down in the waiting room of her college counselor’s office on her first day at Harbrook University. She was already on campus after all, past the point of no return. Within the next hour, she would have a course schedule in-hand and be helplessly swept into her mediocre life. 

The sickening feeling of disappointment was stirring in her gut, so she hastily scribbled her signature on the policy document and diverted her attention to the rest of the waiting room. She took a deep breath and was hit with the familiar scent of industrial floor cleaner and fresh ink from an overused copy machine. 

Plastered across the walls of the counseling center were inspirational posters— some of your standard offenders, such as “Hang in there!” with a kitten clutching a rope, but worse were the ones trying to be modern in their sense of humor. Directly above the receptionist’s head was a poster of an anatomical heart with the bold text:

Aorta tell you how bloody proud I am of you!

Mac did her best to refrain from rolling her eyes. Directly next to the “humorous” heart poster was a notice that read:

CALL 888 TO REPORT ANY HEART MALFEASANCE TO THE HARBROOK CENTER OF HEART AFFAIRS IMMEDIATELY.

She felt her breath catch in her throat. Without thinking, her hand wandered back to the top of her sternum to rub the scar barely peeking out from her oversized sweater, at this point just a faint white line stretching the few inches from her heart to her collarbone. 

The wound had healed months ago, but she still chose to wear her heather gray hoodie to hide any possible traces of it. Though the outfit was casual, she added a sweep of eyeliner and a dash of mascara to frame her large green eyes and draw attention away from her messy brown curls that she could never seem to fully untangle. 

Heart affairs were the last thing she wanted to think about today. Letting her heart make terrible decisions was what had gotten her here in the first place.

Mac forced her attention back to the room, taking in the vinyl flooring spotted with yellowed stains. The out-dated afterthoughts of decor were exactly what she expected given Harbrook’s unsavory reputation as a struggling state school. Though her mom insisted they had a remarkable arts program, Mac refused to believe any college her mom attended could be taken seriously. 

She should have been grateful that her mom’s alumni status helped her get into Harbrook with only weeks before the semester started, but she only felt resigned as she clocked the other freshmen awaiting their first semester schedules. Nervous energy seemed to radiate from every student she saw, the dull thudding of the receptionist’s keyboard like a symphony to accompany their anxiety. Mac caught herself subconsciously settling into the rhythm of those around her, instinctively tapping her toes onto the cheap flooring. 

There was a small chuckle to her right, and Mac whipped her head around to see the girl sitting next to her watching her curiously. The girl leaned back comfortably in the blue plastic chair, an upbeat pop tune leaking through the bright purple headphones stretched across her perfectly straight, jet-black hair. 

She tapped her bright red boots to the beat of her music and locked eyes with Mac, flashing her a quick grin before nudging the headphones back to her neck.

“You look nervous. First time?”

Mac blinked. “For what?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “It was a joke. Since we’re all freshmen?”

“Oh, right.” Mac huffed a nervous laugh before quickly averting her gaze down to the orientation schedule resting on her lap. 

Meeting with the college counselor was the first task of orientation day, and unsurprisingly, Mac awoke before her alarm to beat the crowd of freshmen that would be arriving at any moment. She met uncertainty with preparation, and developed her own version of the freshman orientation schedule weeks before arriving on campus. 

Mac planned to arrive exactly seventeen minutes early to each event planned for the day to give herself ample time to navigate between buildings, and to get the best spot in every line. She loathed waiting in lines— it simply gave her more time alone with her own thoughts, which was especially unacceptable on a day like today.

Because today, she was making the one cliche mistake that she, of all people, should have known better not to make. 

She was throwing away her future because of a boy, and she hated herself for it.

“Mackenzie Webster? Ms. Rivas will see you now,” the receptionist called from the front of the room. 

Mac felt her chest scar twinge with pain, and forced an awkward smile to hide her grimace. She zipped her hoodie up an extra inch and hastily gathered her backpack.

“Go get ‘em, heartbreaker,” the girl with the red boots called. “And watch out for the blood stains.”

 Mac jolted as she looked at the ground, imagining pools of blood creeping toward her pant legs. Instead, all she saw was the sad off-white flooring, covered in…brownish yellow stains.

Too much dried blood for industrial cleaners to erase.

“Thanks for the heads up.” Mac nodded to the girl and gingerly tip-toed across the room as fast as she could, darting into the counselor’s office where her future would be decided.