Years ago I bought a southern styled blanket, and wanted terra cotta floor tiles, purchased western art and cactus for my home and loved the look. Then, very soon after, the whole of North America decided to go southwestern styled... I died inside. I was no longer unique and original... time for a change. So you must see how difficult it would be to continue to write a book that someone else may have already written...
Now the difficult task prevails - change my idea entirely - study something altogether new? Stick with the same timelines (first century AD) and storylines and pick new characters and develop the story on my own? or... bring the character into the year 2010 and write the story as if it were happening now.... hmmm....
I wrote a short story not too long ago. It isn't pretty but it is real. I thought I would perhaps continue that story and write a novel based on a female character. She is very interesting to me. Perhaps I will continue her stories for some time...
Here is the short story for your reading pleasure:
I Live for
the Nights I can’t Remember
“Shit! OMG! Don’t you have Norm’s cell?” Angie
fumbles with her cell phone, scrolling through the list of names, as Catherine leans
over to belch into the soiled green toilet. Catherine’s long red hair is
already tangled and matted from being tied behind her head so it won’t fall
into the soup of pizza, vodka, and some other ungodly ingredients. Angie pounds
out another text to Joe Picalo “Joe WTF! Need help here :P”. Joe had a car. He could take Catherine to a safe place, if only
he would answer.
“I can’t stand to watch this Angie.
It is freaking me out, and so disgusting!
David has been like, waiting forever.” Lena looks into the mirror, blinks
at herself, and pulls out a stick of heavy black mascara to top up her long eye
lashes and flips her flawlessly straight, bleached blond hair back as she gives
Angie a long hard look. Lena was David’s
pick of the week.
“Fine. Whatever. Go Whore.” Angie gives
Lena a perfectly sarcastic smile. She
didn’t like being left to care for Catherine alone but there wasn’t much to
gain in arguing with Lena.
“No point in both our nights being
ruined” she quipped, as Lena left the room.
“I was getting a good buzz on too” Angie
said aloud, to no one who cared.
***
Earlier that day Angie Marie
Spencer had convinced Steve Smith to go on a liquor run and buy her a 40 of
vodka. Steve had graduated from high
school last year, and he stood over six feet tall. He was never carded at the Liquor Store. Angie had texted him what she had wanted. Along
with her two girlfriends, Lena Michaels and Catherine Binder, Angie loved the
vodka shots. Taking a couple shots of
vodka made you feel like you were warm and fuzzy, beautiful and sexy,
wanted. There was nothing in the world
more important to Angie, than to feel wanted. Once the girls arrived at the
party Angie had handed Steve $40 bucks for the bottle of booze. Angie posts, “The Start of a crazyyyy night!”
She had been waiting all week for this night. To Angie, school sucked more than
anything. She got by, that was true
enough, but she would really have to pull up her socks this semester if she was
ever going to see the inside of a college or, better yet, a university. She worked on Friday nights to make money to
pay for the important things like her hair, her clothes, and her cell phone. The only thing she lived for was the weekend,
and the Saturday night parties. “Do what
makes you happy, right?” Angie grabbed a towel from underneath the cupboard and
wiped the yellow bile dripping off of Catherine’s chin.
“Urgh”, Catherine moaned. “I am a mess. This is so embarrassing. Did Jonas see me?”
“No one saw”, Angie lied. Catherine
groaned and leaned back over the bowl. Angie
had seen Jonas laughing, but she wasn’t about to hurt Catherine’s feelings by
telling her so. Catherine was love sick
for Jonas Kane. He was a great looking guy
with sandy blond hair and big blue eyes.
He seemed funny and kind and hung out all the time. Catherine and Angie spent endless days texting
back and forth, trying to figure out why he just wouldn’t commit to a
relationship.
“We need a love potion!” Angie had
joked.
“We need a ‘drop dead gorgeous’
potion too!” Catherine would plead. Poor
Cat. When she wasn’t yellow and green leaning over a toilet bowl, she was a beautiful
girl with curly red locks, thousands of freckles and the brightest green eyes. She never needed to wear much make up and
always looked amazing. Angie would try
to look as beautiful and natural as Catherine by using bronzer and eye
shadows. It never seemed to be good
enough.
***
“Why isn’t anyone answering me tonight!!!”
Angie yelled out to the unresponsive phone and the empty green bathroom. Furiously she continued to text Lena what was
happening, and sent random texts to people she knew with cars. Angie needed a plan
to get Catherine out of this mess, and get back into that party!
***
Just moments earlier
Angie had been in the prime seat of the house.
She had been right beside David Bennett – THE hottest guy on the
planet. Christine Coady, who didn’t
normally hang with this crowd, got to hear of the predicament through Angie’s posts,
“Chrissy! Phone call tonight? BBM me! I am with a bbbbabe
:) :)”. Angie had leaned into David as
he joked about last weekend. David was
making fun of some guy he had beat in a beer pong match. Angie giggled. His eyes were a deep sea blue, and his hair
was chocolate mousse waves waiting for her hands to swim through them. He smelled like fresh peppermint and clean cotton
linens. She could breathe him in
forever.
“HaHa, have another, Angel”, he teased. David had picked up Angie’s vodka bottle and
poured another round of shots. She would
have hated being called Angel by anyone else, but David was different. She’d swallow her pride. She felt like a goddess when she was around
him. She knew they still had a thing
even though he went with other girls. He
always texted her first so she knew he still cared. If only he wasn’t such a player. If only he could be satisfied with her. It
didn’t matter that he had started dating her girlfriend Lena this week. Angie knew it wouldn’t last. She could wait.
“Keep ‘em comin” Angie smiled back at
him. David’s dimples were enough to make your heart swoon as if you were
floating over a vast canyon. If he would
continue to smile at her like that, she would never stop drinking. Angie slugged back the shot and felt the burn
of it in her chest. Angie punches in a
new status into her cell phone, “I don’t get drunk. I get Awesome. That is my new mottoooo.”
The party began to roll along exactly
as expected. All the coolest people had
arrived. Angie had been ignoring Lena’s flirtatious
bantering and most especially Lena’s perfectly manicured French nails draping over
David’s shoulder, when all of a sudden Lena gasped, “Oh!!, look at Catherine!!” Angie looked over to see Catherine, red faced
and groaning, reaching over to grab the side of the sofa. Bill Johnson, the guy who owned the place,
was panicking. “No F-in way man!
Somebody get her into the bathroom!”
Catherine’s hands tried to cover her mouth as the river of too much forced
its way out of her body, through her fingers and sprayed everywhere. A girl named Jenna with creamy light brown hair
and a brand new spray on tan jumped up from the sofa and screamed. The guys carried Catherine into the basement
bathroom as Angie and Lena trailed behind to make sure she’d be okay. The room stank like a football team locker
room and looked as if no mother had ever lived there. “It stinks in here!” Lena howled. “Damn! Now I’m gunna puke too!” Angie
complained. The lid to the toilet seat
was already up and yellow spots lined the rim of the bowl. “Ugh!” Catherine moaned as they laid her
beside the bowl. The painful burn of the
alcohol coming back up brought tears to her eyes. Angie grabbed a handful of toilet paper and
wiped the rim of the lime green 70s styled toilet bowl. Pulling an orange scrunchie out of her bag,
she gathered Catherine’s hair and tied it up behind her head just seconds
before Catherine let loose a full stomach of regurgitated grub and rot.
***
The minutes in the
bathroom seemed like an eternity had passed.
Angie could hear the mumblings of the party going on in the other room
and cursed Catherine for making her miss everything. Texting wildly she was trying to get in touch
with anyone who could offer some help.
Joe Picalo still wasn’t answering.
He was just mad that she ditched him last week. It was no big deal and he shouldn’t hold a
grudge so long. She had also tried Warren
but he just kept repeating “hahaha LMFAO”.
Sandy had her mom’s car but she was working until ten that night. “Can’t you get off a little earlier?” Angie
begged. “Maybe… TTYL” Sandy replied. “Damn”.
Angie knew she should have taken Norm’s number when he offered it but at
the time she needed to show him that she wasn’t interested. Norm would have helped her get Catherine out
of there. “I’m worried Cat”, Angie
noticed that Catherine was overheating, perspiration dripping down her
neck. She took a new towel and ran some
cold water over it. Dabbing the back of
Catherine’s neck and forehead, Angie looked up and noticed a tattered old black
and white poster of Marilyn Monroe.
“Well hello Marilyn”, Angie chipped.
Marilyn did not reply but instead
stared at Angie, giving her a look of “you know you love me”. “That is exactly what I want to look like”,
Angie thought out loud. Except Angie had
black hair and tanned skin, thin lips and brown eyes. Staring at the photograph, it suddenly
occurred to Angie, like the click of a door latch just before it opens. It wasn’t her appearance that Angie
wanted. It wasn’t her lips or her hair,
or her clothes. It was her attitude.
“You don’t take no for an answer,
do you?” Angie questioned Marilyn.
“Of course you don’t. You want a man, you set your mind on him and
you are so confident and assured that of course you win his heart.” Angie laughed despite herself. She had spent so long trying to be sexy and
attractive so that David would notice her.
“Catherine, I’ve got the
answer. We need a confidence
potion!”
Catherine had finally stopped
vomiting but she was looking pale and weary.
“You’d better not pass out here!” Angie yelled at her. Just then, Bill
Johnson burst into the bathroom, “You got to get that bitch the hell out of my
house! Get her outta here now girl”.
Angie had no idea where to take her. She couldn’t carry her and she wasn’t going
to be able to walk like this. “Grab her
legs!” some guy yelled out. Bill Johnson
and the other boys carried the flopping limp body of Catherine out into the street. They crossed over and sat her down on the
cement block that circled the front of the grocery store. It was long closed now and the overhead
lamppost flickered in and out.
Angie began to panic. No one was responding to her texts. Lena was occupied with David, and David had
kept her vodka bottle. “What the hell!!”
she yelled out. She couldn’t even go
home.
***
Earlier that
morning Angie’s mom had been cleaning up the house, getting ready to host a
Saturday dinner party. “Angie” her mom
hollered up the stairs, “I could use a little help in the kitchen. Can you come
down to help please?” Angie groaned and
rolled over in her bed. It was her
weekend. Her day off. Why can’t her mother give her one day of
rest? She goes to school all week. She worked Friday night. She doesn’t deserve to be gotten up on her
only day off. Angie hated that her
mother didn’t understand.
Angie’s phone beeps twice. She opened her eyes to peek at the texts that
had come in. It was David. “We are chillin tonight. You in?”
“KK. gotta break outta this place.”
Angie knows her mom will say
no. She was asked to babysit that
night. For God’s sake, it is SATURDAY
night. How can her mother possibly
expect her to cancel her life for babysitting! She calls Lena. “Hi Lena, we have to work on that…um… project
we have due for English, wanna chill for dinner tonight?”
“um, ya. Let me ask my mom”, Lena puts the phone down
and her footsteps disappear to another room where she goes to ask her mom if Angie
and her could hang out for dinner that night.
Angie hears her clicking steps as she returns to the phone, Lena replies
“Ya, she said okay, so come for 5?”
Feeling confident about the new
plan, Angie ventured downstairs, grabbed a bagel and threw it in the
toaster. She looked over at her mother
setting up the living room for guests.
“I’m going to Lena’s for dinner tonight” Angie informs her mom.
“Not tonight Angie. I need you here. You already know this… as soon as you are
done that bagel I need you to…”
Angie cuts her mom off before she
finishes her morning demands, “Mom!! I’ve got an English exam on Tuesday to
study for. Tonight is the only chance
Lena and I have!! I’ll be home early, as I do want to get a good night’s
sleep”. Angie uses her loud convincing
voice as she grabs two cookies out of the container on the counter.
“Angie, please. Not now.
Right now I need you to…”
“You are always trying to control
me! I NEED to study for my exam! You tell me you want me to have good grades
but then you won’t let me go work on what I need to with my friends!” Angie
storms away bagel and cookie in hand.
“F-ing bitch won’t let me go” she
texts Lena.
“Just leave haha” Lena writes.
“Need a ride” Angie texts to David.
“Be there in 20 minutes” came the
response. Angie’s heart skips a beat.
She has twenty minutes to be
ready. There is no way she is missing
out on seeing David tonight. Her mom
will have to deal with it. She runs to
the bathroom and runs the shower. Angie
runs through her to do list. She needs
to text Catherine to tell her where they are chillin. She can’t forget to take her change of
clothes and her straightener for morning because she won’t be coming back
tonight. She knows Lena’s dad won’t care
if she stays there tonight. He never did.
The honk outside told Angie that David
had arrived. “Guess who?” read the
text. She took a final look in the
mirror and frowned. Her black hair still
had a wave in it but she didn’t have any more time to straighten it. Her white shadow around her eyes had started
to smear and she had just used up all of her black eye liner. She would never look as perfect as Lena.
“Angie, what are you doing? You and
I both know you aren’t going to study.
You are making a big mistake…” Angie ignored the manipulation coming
from her mother. She wasn’t going to
ruin her night. Angie knew exactly what
she was doing and had full control and responsibility. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She would study on Monday. Tonight was for
David. As she slammed the door behind
her, Angie sang under her breath, “Tonight’s goina be a good nite” and walked
out to the car.
“You want a cig?” David asks.
“You have to ask?”, Angie takes the
cigarette, pulls the lighter out of her pocket and laughs at the memory of a
posting she had totally related to: “Lollipops turn into cigarettes…. innocent
ones turn into sluts”
“Imma ready”, Catherine texts
Angie.
“Let’s swing by and pick up Cat”,
Angie offers to David. He circled around
the court and headed over towards the far side of the park where Catherine
lived. She was supposed to be grounded
after last weekend, but she wasn’t going to be controlled by her mother
either. Lena’s dad had plenty of room at
his place anyways.
***
Angie snapped
out of her daydream just long enough to notice the busses still passing outside
of Bill Johnson’s house. Perhaps they
could hop on a bus. “You think you could
get on a bus Cat?” Angie questioned. “Ugh,
ya, I guess, stick your thumb out” Catherine muttered. Angie smiled but was too worried for her
friend to laugh at her jokes now. Under
the dim lighting of the lamppost, Catherine still looked as green as the walls
of that horrid bathroom. Angie felt the
whole world seemed to be crushing down on her shoulders. Everything she believed about tonight had
vanished. It was supposed to be a great
night. David was supposed to fall madly
in love with her. Lena was not a real
friend. She wished for a moment that she could go back to being a little kid
again. Back to when playing pretend and
believing in Santa Clause was all that really mattered. Her mom would have helped her but now she was
too embarrassed and felt ashamed to call her.
“Cat, please tell me you are
going to be okay?” Angie brushed the
hair out of Catherine’s eyes.
“We went too far this time Cat”,
Angie reflected. Next time, only a
couple shots, not so many, she decided.
The wind began
to pick up and Angie started to shiver. They
were dressed in short minis and tank tops, and didn’t bother with leggings as
it was still early October and the days were quite warm. “Bad luck keeps on giving…” Angie muttered as
the temperature was dropping rapidly. If Angie didn’t do something, Catherine
could die out here. Angie was left with no choice. She had to make the awful decision to break
the ultimate friend rule. That thing you
are never supposed to do. She dialed Catherine’s
home number.
“Ah, Hello? Mrs. Binder? Ah, Catherine says she has an
upset stomach and you need to come pick her up.
She is sitting outside by the grocery store on Marx Street…” Angie put on her best innocent voice but Mrs.
Binder was not buying it. “Marx Street?!
What do you mean she is on Marx Street?!”
Mrs. Binder was raising her voice and seemed to becoming angrier by the
second. Angie wasn’t going to listen to
that. She hung up the phone. She’d say
later that her cell phone dropped the connection.
A bus pulled up to the stop in
front of the grocery store and Tommy Jameson walked off “Hey Angie, sup?”
“OMG Catherine is totally ill but…”
Angie bit her lip, “…Her mom is coming”.
“haha. You look worried. You wanna take off? I’ll stay with her. I need the fresh air” He laughed.
“Sookay…”, Catherine slurred, “imma
be fine, sista”. Catherine may have
looked like death but she was still the funniest girl Angie knew. Tommy was a good guy. Angie had no doubt Catherine was in good hands
waiting with him and was more concerned that Cat was going to be okay. She will be grounded for life but at least alive
to tell the story.
Sitting Catherine’s handbag down
beside her, Angie remarked “Okay, I’ll text you later Cat”, and she began to walk
back towards the party.
The sky began to cloud over and the
wind blew again with an awful force. A
storm was rolling in. She thought of how
painful it would be to walk into the party just to see Lena and David hand in
hand. “No point in going back”, she
spoke out loud to the overgrown trees hanging over Marx St. She pulled out a cigarette from her pocket
and lit up. Marilyn wouldn’t have gone
back. She would find a new man to set
her sights on. A man who would give her
the attention she desired, and needed. Angie
drew in the smoke and reflected that maybe this would be the last
cigarette. She had planned to quit and
had told her friends, “Don’t worry, I’m quitting, it takes time you know”. Angie had made progress. She used to smoke every day and now it seemed
if she wanted to, she didn’t have to. So
far though, she really didn’t want to stop.
That was her choice though. It wasn’t like a real addiction. Each drag made her feel a little closer to
reality, or was she back in make believe? It didn’t matter. Her mother thought she was an addict. Her mother didn’t understand. Angie had goals. Real goals and she was going
to achieve them.
Humbled by the dark clouded night,
yearning for some place warm and comforting, tired and worn down lacking in
steam for another round, Angie typed slowly into her phone, “can you come t get
me?”
The response came almost
immediately. “Give me the address.”
Fifteen minutes later, the familiar
brown Volkswagen pulled up. Angie
climbed into the car. They had gone on
many family camping trips in this car.
Angie didn’t say anything to her mom on the way home. Back in her bedroom, Angie logged into her computer
and typed out a final post for the night, “Beauty, is the perspective within each
individual. You can attempt to change yourself, but no matter what, each person
has their own view on what THEY think is attractive. So be yourself, inside and out, smile like
crazy, sing your heart out, and do not be afraid to speak your mind. Try something
new because it makes YOU feel good, be grateful and confident. Don't ever let someone tell you who to be, or
how to look, because when it comes down to it all, if they can't love you for
you, then they don't deserve to have you at all” Catherine was one of the first
friends to like her post. Angie smiled glad
that Cat was now home safe. Secretly, Angie really hoped David would notice her
post and be jealous at how confident she was.
“You know you love me”, Angie whispered,
as she lay down to sleep.
