We insecure writers have to stick together.
I know insecure: my latest book is thick with cyber-cobwebs!
It's cheap, ah, inexpensive, with 13 interior pictures and everything! :-)
The IWSG helps all of us to persevere.
So I am shouting out the WEP February writing challenge in which the IWSG is participating.
HOW?
Letting you guys see my own WEP post a bit early to whet your interest to join in.
So meet Hazy:
FIRST TWENTY-EIGHT
{995 words}
High School is a
spork.
It's a crappy spoon and a crappy
fork. In the end, it’s only an exercise in keeping your temper while what you want
slips away.
Most people call me Hazy as if it were original with
them. Mother never has, not even in her
worst “Dirty Thirties.”
What are those? I wish I didn’t know myself. I’ll tell you later.
Mother always calls
me “Hon.” Unless she’s sizzling furious, then she calls me …
“Hazel Lee
Hunnicutt!”
Jeez, the feces just
kamikazed into the fan … again.
I eased into the
front room to face the lioness without one chair or whip. Not that it would have mattered.
When the caveman looked up at the lightning in
the skies and thought MOTHER Nature,
he must have had a mother like mine.
But the only home I’ve
ever known is Mother. I would deal with
it.
She was in this
alone, too. I bet I came with no book of
instructions.
Father left the day I was born.
He must have used up all his cojones with the sperm deposit that sparked
me.
Mother was shaking her
cell phone in a fist.
“I’ve just had to
beg … beg! … Dean Reynolds of Laughton
Academy to accept you back!”
What she said in one
of her “Dirty Thirties” and decided not to say was:
“After I had to sell my
wedding ring to pay for your tuition!”
That stung. I didn’t know that when I smarted off to the school
counselor.
Her voice sank to
that whisper I dreaded. “What did you say to the counselor?”
“S-She asked me what
I made at my last school.”
Mother groaned, “Oh,
God.”
“I told her: ‘mostly mistakes and inappropriate comments.’”
She lunged at me. I didn’t move.
You see, I’m a freak
… not in body but in mind. I see ahead
in time 30 seconds. Think that’s cool?
It sucks.
Time isn’t a
river.
It flows into a thousand tributaries
all shaped by the erratic decisions of unfocused minds. I see 30 variations of the same springboard
moment.
No cell phones for
me: I hear 30 different replies. There’s
no way for me to know which one to answer.
I know what I must
look like. I’m keeping track of what’s
happening, what’s likely to happen, deciding what isn’t likely to happen, all
in a window of a few seconds.
I stiffened as
Mother’s knuckles rapped the top of my head.
“Oh, Hon, I know you put up a wall of snark to keep sane.”
She sighed, “But
tomorrow is my first day teaching at the university. I have to impress my Dean just as much as you need to impress yours.”
She said, “People make up their minds about us
after the first 28 days of interaction …”
(Mother’s a
psychologist so she uses words like that with a straight face.)
“We have under a
month to win over those who could make life … hard for us. You understand?”
“No Do-Over’s.”
Mother patted my
cheek, murmuring,
“This is it for us, Hon. I spent the last penny of … our savings on
your school uniform. I could only afford
the one. Take care of it. Play it safe,
hear?”
“I will.”
I swear at the time
I meant it.
The next day I trudged
into school with all the joy of going to my execution.
No matter the high school, your status
depends on who you’re able to persecute.
I was usually the first rung on everyone’s ladder.
Walking into a
crowded hallway was true hell what with thirty different views of each moment
to
navigate through.
Oh, God, let me not
walk into anybody important or worse into …
“Crazy Hazy!”
God must hate me.
The Elite Petites from junior high: Beverly
and her two cohorts, Stacy and Ciss.
What
sneezing was to surgeons, Beverly Philips was to me: not life-threatening but
extremely annoying.
Beware girls in threes. They were all so tanned they looked like 3 Rotisserie
chickens in pleated skirts.
Beverly gave me a
glare that would have cowed lesser girls … much lesser … like 3rd
graders.
“Oh, Hazy, what an almost
adequate uniform your mother could barely afford.”
“Bev, can you die of
constipation? I ask because I’m worried about how full of shit you are.”
In a “Dirty Thirty,” I saw her lunge, ripping
my jacket. I twisted aside, thumping
into a tall man. I looked up.
Dean Reynolds. He undressed me with a disapproving eye-caress. Obviously, I wasn’t his type. I was so disappointed.
“Honeycutt, you’re
late for Gym. A bad start.”
In another “Dirty
Thirty,” I heard Bev say,
“That’s right, Old Man. You better back me up. In my locker I have copies of your trophy
photos of our intimate consultation
as you called it. I bet your wife would
just love to receive those in the mail.”
Even Bev wasn’t
stupid enough to choose to say it. What
she did say as she started to unlock her locker was to me:
“I’ll see you in Gym
class. Too bad your uniform won’t
survive it.”
I lost it, starting
for her throat. I pulled up short, “seeing” Dean Reynolds expelling me for
attacking a fellow student … just like Bev planned.
Bev winked,
confident that she would get rid of me yet.
The eddies of students rushing to classes swirled about me. What to do?
I smiled wide.
I’d seen the combination to Bev’s locker in that
last “Dirty Thirty.” I let the hall go
empty. I walked to Bev’s locker.
With the photographs
in my inside jacket pocket, I turned to go see the Nurse.
Female
trouble I would say. It would be …
for Bev and the Dean … after I did a little Show
and Tell for Mother when she picked me up.
Twenty-eight days to
make a lasting impression? I’d do it in
the next twenty-eight minutes.
Want more of
Hazy?
$2.99 Kindle; $7.97 Paperback
In the lagniappe
short story at the end of RAZOR VALENTINE is a 6,000 word adventure from her
sophomore year:
One by one the girls of Laughton Academy are disappearing
without a trace
and Hazy’s mother fears her daughter will be next.
The bad news: her mother is right.