Short story

I've decided to give short fiction another try. Working on novels is kind of exhausting, and I'm getting a little tired of my characters. I remember having a lot of fun writing short stories in high school. So I'm going to set a goal (yay for setting goals) to write a short story every [recurring time period]. Every week? Every day? Every other day? Some regular time. To be figured out later. And I'm not going to worry about making these polished works of art. I'm just going to have fun. Here's the first one, clocking in at 928 words. Tell me if you like it.


Being the new kid at school sucks balls, but it isn’t all bad. You can reinvent yourself, but you have to be careful of the way the people at school want to interpret you. Halfway through my first day, things were looking pretty good. No one had decided to beat me up, and there was a certain someone I already had my eye one. Shelby Barnes. Blond hair, bright blue eyes, great body. I was already in love. We had two classes together. In the second one, English, two minutes before ending bell, I finally got up the nerve to make my move.

“Hey, your name’s Shelby, right?”

“Yeah. Hey, you’re new, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I just moved from two towns away with my mom and sister.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you. I hope you like it here.”

The bell rang, then, and we all gathered our things to go.

“See you later, bro!” Shelby said.

Oh my gosh. He thinks I’m a dude.

GIANT PAUSE IN THE STORY

Okay, I should admit, this shouldn’t have surprised me that much. I’m just writing down what was going through my head at the time, but I’ll admit that, if I had stopped to think about it, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised that he mistook me for a guy.

But it hurt. And that made it shocking.

BACK TO THE MAIN STORY

He thinks I’m a dude. He thinks I’m a dude. Crap. Now what?

Now we go and slink off to the nearest bathroom. The girl’s bathroom. And find some sympathetic female to commiserate with.

Only there was no one in there. And, now that I was a little calmer, I doubt many girls would have anything useful or sympathetic to say about my situation. I am probably the only girl in the history of the universe that has been mistaken for a guy by the guy she likes. So. What to do.

I could see a few options:

1.Tell him I’m a girl.

2.Don’t tell him I’m a girl, and hope he figures it out on his own.

3.Pretend to be a guy to get closer to him.

a.Then tell him I’m a girl

b.Never tell him I’m a girl and love him from afar (across that great gender divide).

c.Hope he’s gay.

None of these appealed to me. Number one would make everything awkward and he would probably hate me. Number two will probably never happen, and just turn into number three, which has no happy endings.

I flushed the toilet for appearances and went to gym, brooding over my fate.
Once there, several other people mistook me for a dude, despite that fact that I very clearly came out of the girl’s locker room. It came to a head when I was sitting next to the fat, asthmatic kid after twisting my ankle during dodgeball.

“Hey, bro, what’s up?” he said politely.

“I am NOT a bro!” I shouted, halting the game for a few seconds. I lowered my head, turtle-like, into my shirt, and play resumed. Crap. I was never going to live that down. The fat kid blinked at me.

“Oh. Huh. I guess not. Now that I’m really looking, I can see—”

“Aw, look, just shut up, okay. It’s not like I didn’t sort of invite this reaction with my behavior.” Somehow I was now pouring my heart out to the fat kid. How did that happen? “I mean, I guess it’s to be expected that people will treat you differently if you refuse to conform to the accepted social norms. But I’m not trying to be a rebel. I just want to be comfortable. Is there anything wrong with not wanting to have to worry about doing my hair or choosing an outfit in the morning? It’s not my fault I also have no curves. At all. Ever.”

Great, now I’d worked myself up into a depression. Smart move, Jennings.

“Well, hey, have you ever thought about changing your appearance to be a little more… girly, without being more uncomfortable?”

The suggestion made sense, but something in me just rebelled against the idea.

“I dunno. How would I do that?”

“Well, you could try wearing more girly colors?”

“Then I’d just look gay.”

“You could try wearing tighter clothes, to show off your feminine curves.”

“I just said I don’t have any!”

“What about skirts?”

“What? No, those are way too girly.”

“No, there are ways to wear skirts that aren’t too girly. For one thing, you wear them over pants. Not like tights, but like jeans and stuff.”

“Hm.” I considered it. I didn’t have any immediate objections. “But will that make me look more like a girl? Or just stupid.”

“We could go shopping and see?”

I turned to look at him. “You and me?” Incredulousness painted my voice. “Are you serious?”

“Sure. I don’t conform to accepted social norms either.” He grinned at me. I grinned back, slowly. I think I liked this kid.

PAUSE

Not like that.

UNPAUSE

The skirt idea was okay, but we decided that afternoon after consulting our older sisters that simply combing my hair a certain way and wearing different, still comfy, clothes would be the best course of action. The fat kid’s older sister, whose name was Melanie, also advised me to simply be patient. She said I would always have a streamlined figure, but that I would fill out enough to look feminine if I gave it enough time. That was the hardest advice to follow.

Thinking About Books: Rose Daughter

The last few book posts have been about books I just read and had a lot to say about because they were making my mind churn in that delicious way that signals to me "This is a good book." This one is a little different in that it's also one of my all-time favorite, mind-altering, life-changing books and has been since I was 12 or 13.

Rose Daughter is an English garden of a book: cultivated and orderly profusions of flowery chaos. Every time I read it it's like being in a beautiful, lucid fever-dream. Everything is described with gorgeous language. This book sort of defines the word gorgeous for me; not merely "very beautiful," but, "adorned with rich or brilliant colours; sumptuously gay or splendid; magnificent." (Many thanks to the OED.) The gorgeousness of Rose Daughter reminds me that the word shares a root with gorge and engorge, words that mean a delicious amount of too much of something. You could distill the actual things that happen in this book to about four chapters, but instead you get over 200 pages of pure linguistic delight.

I don't remember what I thought when I first read it. I was in Middle School, and Middle School was Hell. I probably was only grateful that it provided an unusually wonderful escape from my life, which is what books were to me then (and still are). Little vacations from life. Rose Daughter is less like going to the beach and more like going into a coma (in a good way). There are some books that almost literally immerse me, to the point that I have to fight my way to the surface and gasp for air when I must come out of them for food or sleep. This is one of them. I read it when I'm sick, in body or in mind, and I come out of it refreshed and strengthened. I believe this was the book that first showed me that words could be put to beautiful purpose. I won't say I wasn't writing before I read it, but I believe most things I've written after have been affected by it. There is a vague standard of quality off in the hazy distance that I try to pursue in my writing, and when I think about it more closely, Rose Daughter is really what I'm striving for. That sumptuous profusion is what I'd like, at least in small measure, to put in my writing. To not merely tell a story, but to tell it gorgeously. I hope I can come half so close.

Because this is ridiculous, not because I care

Dear "Aaron's" Furniture Store:

I am assuming you are a furniture store, based on the content of the ad I found hanging on my door handle a few days ago. I don't know why you thought putting those up around here was a good idea; yes we're married college students, but we're married college students. What makes you think we have the money to be spending on entire, brand-new living rooms sets, no matter how much they're on sale? But fine, whatever, I understand that in order to make money you need people to know about you, and I admit I'd never heard of you until now, so good job, it worked, and I threw that ad in the recycling first chance I got.

This is not the body of my complaint.

My real beef is with whoever was delivering the dang things, because they apparently found it funny/easier/whatever to leave 10 or 15 extra ads under my door mat. WHAT. THE. HECK. I don't even know what to think about that. I'm pretty sure the blame rests entirely on whatever available teenager you roped into delivering these things; it's not like you would have instructed them to do this. (You didn't, did you?) And I know I live on the third floor, and I know that when it's a hot summer day you get lazy, but COME ON. Is it really that hard to just carry the extras back to the trash can or the Aaron's office or whatever? I'm not even mad. It's no skin off my back to dump them in the recycling with the original one. I'm just puzzled and saddened to find that there are people lazy/irresponsible/whatever enough to leave their problem under some stranger's doormat. Also, I actually am annoyed at having to throw them out. Not that it's that much extra work, but it's the principle of the thing!

Anyway, Aaron's, I'm glad you put your contact information directly on the ad, because I think you should be made aware that whoever you're paying $.50 an hour to deliver these things is not earning their paycheck.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. Dear Readers, do you think I should really contact them about it? I'm really not that angry about it. I think it's kind of funny, actually. And I don't want to waste my time and energy complaining about something that not only doesn't matter in the long run, but that really doesn't matter to me right here and now.

P.P.S. Kristina, don't worry, this hasn't put me off all Aarons. Just the ones with furniture stores named after them.