5Perhaps the best definition I can give is that this story is about an adolescent girl, and what it means to be human. What can I say?
.memoir.
She wrote in her journal; Yesterday is fading away like blushed twilight...
She took the uncapped pen to her lips, chewed on the end.
Why do people like cliches, anyway? Mick wondered. Then the answer came to her, and she thought it out slowly. People like to read cliches because they want to read something that is happening far, far away from them, in a whole other world. They want to disappear from their own world in land in one that is full of endless possibilities. They want to...
But this didn't seem quite right, so she crossed it out from her mind.
People want to read cliches...because cliches always have a grain of reality in them, a grain of hope. And people connect with cliches because someday it may happen it them; it's not a wholly different world, and one day, a handsome prince may come along, and...
Yes. That sounded better. She transferred it onto her journal, using less words and still struggling with its meaning. When she was done she looked down and was satisfied. That ought to do it. She slowly stood on her scabby knees and went over to her wooden balcony. The door creaked something awful. She embraced the journal in her arms and looked out into the sunset. Somehow making this entry, her first entry, something everlasting was important to her. She closed her eyes and tried to seal the memory.
Three years later, Mick Drew was entering her first day sophomore year, and things couldn't be less cliche-y.
She held onto her ragtag corduroy bookbag, the one she'd had since third grade, three pairs of secondhand books, one fresh pencil, and two notebooks. Her lunch was propped up on her elbows, swinging jauntily on its nearly ripped-through black strap.
She skipped, not because she was excited, but because she felt happy. The air was unaccountably warm from the thermals of the ocean, and the sun shone despite the heavy rains of last week. If there was anything she'd be feeling right now, it would be serene.
Mick tugged at the Band-Aid at her cheeks. Serene. Yes. That was the word for it. Her mother would call this type of weather uncharacteristic. Barker would say it was a perfect day for a game of swingball. Her father would tell she was fishing for words, and was she still this obsessed with wanting to be an author when she grew up?
Yes, she decided. Authors knew words. They knew exactly which word was suitable for which situation, and would never mix up the word "deferent" for the definition "indifferent." Lascivious would describe the boy by the candy store who was rumored to have slept with the thirty-year-old lady down the street. Unctuous would define the salesclerk, fully equipped with a lazy smile and dandruff-white shoulders. And serene would describe this day, this day full of smell in the air and a rising glow in her chest. Mick smiled. Authors knew.
The bell rang distantly as the first call to class. Mick decided she'd rather enjoy the outside and think of words rather than hurry along the dusty playground. Besides, the mulch could easily get into her free-toed sandals.
Along the road ran the twins, two hap-dashery red-haired boys who were in the same grade as her. Kids, she could not help to think, when they jostled to who was first at reaching the slide.
Blair, the boy nearest to her, turned back and gave her a grin. The freckles were white against his tan. "Oy, Mick. Gotta hurry up there. Misses Misty ain't gonna run you soft for the first day."
Mick chose purposely not to mind him. She enjoyed the swish of her lunchbag against her arms, much like how a more sophisticated girl enjoyed the swish of her skirt along her ankles. Mick could only wear her only pair of shorts, a pair of frayed green Been's, but she was not thinking of this. She walked sedately, vaguely hearing the boy's shouts far ahead of her.
She closed her eyes as she reached the double doors. The parking lot was nearly empty this way. The school was small, and the parking lot was speckled with dull cars. Mick drew open the double doors, and stepped inside with her right foot - superstition, her mother called it, though Mick preferred 'propensity.' Inside was cool and clean. The floors gleamed after a recent polishing. The walls were studded with new papers and new announcements, though they already looked half-hearted, having been through the stampede of indifferent high-schoolers.
These high schoolers were later on arrival. Mick walked the long, cool hall and presently reached her locker. It was a different one from last year and during the summer she'd secretly come to the school several times to make sure she would find it. She shrugged through the lock and opened the door and put her things inside. On the wall above her locker was a heart with the initials R and M across of it. Mick wrinkled her nose and shut her locker. She tugged on her Band-Aid. Her old sneakers barely made any sound through the linoleum.
She opened the door and was swallowed by the new schoolyear.
It just feels...right to write this way. The words flow easier, somehow, maybe because Mick reminds me strongly of myself. I've just finished "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers. You can guess which character represents who.
I'm not going to worry about reviews. I am going to simply relax, lay back, and write. Somehow I feel more fortunate than those who write on a tight schedule, smattered with thousands of reviews. I think it's better this way.
(How different from Fanfiction, where readers are armed with pitchforks and knives to coerce me into updating). Well, obviously, it's better this way.
Don't mind me. I'm babbling.
-S.