The Assignment: Write a story in the first-person POV, with attention to vivid, concrete imagery.
A/N: It was a great effort for me to post this in its original, unedited version. I already have changes I want to make. But I will post each draft (even if there's only two) just for consistency--and honesty's--sake. This is one of those moments in which I must be humble and post something I'm not delighted with (though, to be honest, I hate my first draft of "Deception" as well).
Furthermore, this story IS based on real experiences and real people, but some parts--situations, conversations, reactions, characteristics--are original to the story. This was how I separated it from myself while still keeping it on a topic I could speak with some authority on.
Finally--PLEASE give me feedback on things to be improved (you can say positive things as well, but I need to know what isn't working...I think kids in my writing class are too afraid of ruffling feathers). And be specific, please. If I ask you questions about why you said something, it's not me being defensive...it's me trying to pinpoint exactly what needs to change.
Thanks, and happy reading!* Never *
“I think this batch is ready,” I say as heat rolls out of the cracked oven door. “Hand me the mitts.”
“Get them yourself, lazy.”
I straighten and fix you with a glare, fisting a hand on my hip. “Boy,” I say in my best (and worst) Southern accent, “hand me dem oven mitts, or you won’ get no turkey pot pie!”
“It’s gingerbread, not pie, doofus.” Still, you set aside your cell phone and throw a green shamrock-patterned mitt at my face. I toss another dirty look your way, but you’re already walking over to the CD player where the Dean Martin Christmas Tunes have reached their end. As you shuffle through a stack of CDs, I remove the cookie sheet from the oven and set it on the crowded counter. I have to shove aside the rolling pin and cookie cutters to do so.
“Are those other ones ready yet?” you ask over your shoulder. “Aha! Here it is...”
“Um...yeah, they’ve cooled off. You about done over there? Pretty sure Christmas won’t die just because you can’t pick the perfect music.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming! Jeez, bossy...” Some sort of folksy song begins to play, followed by cartoonish voices.
“You listen to the weirdest music,” I say with a shake of my head as I start moving cooled gingerbread men from the cooling rack to the opposite counter where icing and candies eagerly await. But in truth, I’m not really surprised by your quirky tastes anymore.
“It’s just not Christmas without John Denver and the Muppets, Kahlan,” you admonish me. I roll my eyes but make no reply as we begin decorating to the sound of Miss Piggy’s crooning in the background.
“Look!” I exclaim delightedly after a few minutes, holding up my creation.
“What
is it?” you reply, puzzling over the messy icing squiggles, goofy eyes, and stupid grin.
“It’s you!” Like it should be inherently obvious.
You grab my wrist to hold my hand steady so you can get a closer look at it. Then, without warning, you lean closer and bite the head off.
“Gavin!” You smirk and I gape at you in mock-indignation as you chew and swallow. “That was my masterpiece! I can’t believe you did that!”
“Shut up. You know you love me.”
“Much to my eternal dismay,” I shoot back. You just laugh and turn back to your own culinary mess.
“Last time we made gingerbread, Melissa was with us. Remember how she insisted on using the heart-shaped cookie cutter?”
“That’s Melissa for you.”
“Yeah...it still seems weird not to have her around during a school break.”
“She has John now,” I say. No further explanation needed.
You’re silent at this, pursing your lips thoughtfully. I’m sure you’re about to say something profound when you open your mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a high-pitched,
“‘John!’” You hold up two gingerbread men in “conversation,” one with outrageously generous icing-lips and the other sporting a unibrow. “‘Oh, Johnny-poo, can you believe we’ve been together for almost four months now? Oh, I love you so much! Kiss me, you fool!’” You smash to cookies together in a mess of candy and icing and crumbs; I’m too busy laughing to even care about the mess you’re making.
“I had to find some way to cheer you up in a hurry,” you explain, handing me one of the cookies. I nod. It’s the kind of thing you do, one of those things that made me purposely avoid you back in high school.
* * * * *
It was a sort of unspoken, mutual discomfort we had regarding one another. You didn’t bother to care too much about me because I was yet another one of you best friend’s crushes. Scott had a new one every few weeks, it seemed, and I was his “lucky pick” for the last few moths of our senior year. And to me, you were one
weird kid. When I think back on it, you probably weren’t so weird...you just disregarded the expected norms of most high school students. And being the “new kid” senior year made you stand out a lot already.
We saw a lot of each other on account of having so many mutual friends, and we spent more than one summer party as the “odd ones out”—two singles amongst dating couples. It wasn’t until Freshman Orientation, however, that we actually took a step towards friendship.
Most of our friends went to schools back home...the University of Minnesota, Bemidji State, St. John’s, or other places. We both ended up out at Colorado State University, tossed in with about 25,000 other students. It was madness—the overstimulation of a college campus combined with the fear of the unknown drew us to one another. We both needed the reassurance that something of our past lives was real and that we wouldn’t be facing certain doom alone.
You forced me to try out for the fall musical with you. I dragged you with to audition for choir. Neither of our endeavors were very successful, but our failure allowed us time for other things (like watching “The Office” every week without fail). Freshman year gave us the chance not only to meet new friends, but also to become close friends with each other.
That summer and the year that followed were much the same. We hung out a lot with our friends from high school, like Scott and Melissa, but also quite a bit with just each other. Trips to the wave pool or Mall of America, bonfires, and late-night movies consumed our months off, and classes, homework, and your applications to study abroad devoured sophomore year. I was torn between congratulating you and crying when you received your acceptance to a program to study in Sydney in the fall.
“But what will I
do all semester? Do you have any idea how
boring this place will be without you?”
“Hey, you still have your roommate,” you pointed out consolingly.
“Jessica is going to study in London next year,” I sighed. “I’ll have some random new roommate.”
“I’m sorry, Kahlan.”
“No, you’re not.” I wasn’t trying to accuse you. I was just being matter-of-fact.
“You’re right,” you admitted. “I’m not sorry I’m going. But I
am sorry that you’re sad about it.” I sighed again, and you nudged me. “Hey, lighten up! There’s like, twenty-five
thousand students here.
One of them should have enough pity to be your friend.”
I whacked you with my pillow for that, then shouted when you tried to retaliate and knocked over the precarious stack of books and papers set aside for my various essays and finals. At least all of the busy school work got my mind of your impending departure. I think you tried to distract me over summer break, and it worked to a point—I didn’t realize until a few days prior that you’d really be flying halfway across the world and that I’d be going back to CSU alone. A heavy, reluctant farewell, and I went back to my old dorm room and new roommate.
She was pretty nice, I guess. Her name was Danielle. A bit quiet and reserved, but at least she didn’t blast music at eight in the morning or leave her clothes strewn everywhere. For all her sweetness, though, she seemed hopelessly confused when everything fell apart for me mid-semester.
It had been a fairly mild fall up until that point. I’d been utterly bored without our ridiculous antics, but I’d made an effort to get closer to my other friends on campus. It was good to get out of my dorm and do stuff once in a while, but I never felt I could talk as comfortably with any of them as I could with you. Normally I would have called Melissa to talk, but she’d started dating some senior named John and was impossible to get a hold of.
Midterms were late that semester—the first week of November—and I felt like I was buried in research papers, class presentations, and exams. I was halfway done with a project about social norms expressed in the American media and a quarter of the way done with a philosophy paper on Plato’s “Five Dialogues,” both of which were due the following day. However, instead of sitting in the library and diligently working on my assignments, I was pulling a shift at Starbucks. The day was already going poorly; I had a bad cold that gave me a constant headache, and I was fairly certain that I’d failed my Biology exam that morning. I couldn’t stop obsessing over pointless thoughts:
Did I write ‘osmosis’ or ‘mitosis’? Or ‘miosis’?...I haven’t heard from Gavin in a while. I wonder what he’s up to. He has final exams soon. Australia sure is on a weird schedule. Starting at about three, people who came in were lightly dusted with snowflakes on their jackets. This itself was nothing out of the ordinary. There were usually a few days with random bouts of snowflakes before the real winter weather began. When a woman who came in at four-thirty commented, “Can you believe this weather? I hope it doesn’t get any worse out there!” I craned my neck to see out the front door. It wasn’t too bad, really. A steady snow, but nothing extraordinary. It was a man who came in at five-thirty muttering expletives and brushing off the dense blanket of white fluff on his head and shoulders that finally made me decide to text Danielle and ask her what the forecast was. Snow, she responded. Lots of it. A blizzard.
The manager didn’t seem to want to be trapped in the store with a couple college-aged baristas. She closed early and sent us away. I emerged from the store and blinked at the thick whiteness that nearly obscured everything. My car was buried in at least four inches of snow; I cleaned it off as best I could before beginning my short but cautious drive back to campus, hunched over the wheel in an effort to see the road better.
When I pulled into the parking lot by the dorm, I was still concentrating on the road so intently that I failed to pay attention to the light post until I was practically at it. I yelled and slammed my brakes, but they did little good on the unplowed surface, and the passenger side of my Maxima had a rather unpleasant meeting with a metal pole encased in a cement column. I sat there with my car running for several minutes, trying to recover from my surprise and catch my breath. Coherent thought was lost. I tried three times to dial your number with shaking hands before even remembering that you were in a different country.
After a couple more minutes of deep breathing, I cut the engine and stepped from my car into the snow. Logically, I knew I should look at the damage, call Campus Security, call my dad, something, but I merely checked to see if my car was positioned adequately enough in what could be considered a “parking space” before turning my back on it and heading up to my room.
“Kahlan, what’s wrong?” Danielle asked immediately upon seeing me. Emotionlessly, I dropped my purse and keys on my chair, then sat listlessly on my bed. “Kahlan?”
“I have a headache.”
“Oh. Do you want some Tylenol?”
I shrugged. She got up from her desk, presumably to grab some.
“It’s snowing,” I added. After a brief pause, more words came tumbling forth, without my consciously having decided to voice them.
“I’m exhausted. I think I wrote ‘osmosis’ instead of ‘mitosis’ for my entire essay exam today. I have two assignments due tomorrow, neither of which are done, I just smashed up the front of my car, and I can’t just call my best friend because he’s in Australia!”
Danielle stared at me for a moment, shifting her weight uncomfortably before perching on the bed next to me and asking, “Kahlan? Do...you need a hug?”
“I need
Gavin!” I cried, flopping over on my side and burying my face in a pillow so she wouldn’t see the tears threatening to spill from my eyes. She patted my leg awkwardly, then stood abruptly.
“Um, classes are cancelled tomorrow. Because of the storm. So...yeah.”
I felt like I should have stayed awake and done some work on my projects, even if the due date was postponed, but the thought was too exhausting. All of the little frustrations I’d been ignoring all semester had finally burst forth like water from a broken dam.
I think shy Danielle was relieved that I remained in bed as well...I’d pulled her out of her comfort zone enough for one day.
The rest of the month was uneventful. I flew home for Thanksgiving, grateful that I wouldn’t have to make the long drive alone again like at the start of the semester. The typical, rowdy Thanksgiving dinner with all my cousins gave way to a calm Friday spent at home. I was just making some instant apple cider using a powder mix when the doorbell rang and my mom answered it.
“Can Kahlan come out to play?”
I froze for an instant, then abandoned my mug and raced out to the front hall. You were wiping your feet on the rug and taking off your jacket as if your presence was the most natural thing in the world.
I don’t remember running to the door. One second I was staring at you as if you were an alien and the next I was crushing your ribs in the tightest hug I could manage. “What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice muffled by your sweater.
“Surprised?”
I pulled back and looked up at you. “Yes, I’m surprised.” Then I punched you as hard as I could in the arm. “You said you were staying until sometime in December so you could have lots of time to travel and enjoy the weather after exams!”
“I lied,” you grinned, rubbing the place I hit you, even though it couldn’t have hurt very much. “I wanted to surprise you. And it was so worth it. You’re a lot easier to fool than Melissa.”
We teased back and forth for a while, and it reminded me of how inseparable we’d been the last two years and how much I’d missed having you around; how badly I’d needed someone I felt I could rely on. You were the friend I knew would always make the time for me, the friend who could help me out of any problem, the friend that I’d never have to worry about losing. And you were home.
* * * * *
A door slams.
“I’m home!” a voice yells.
“Yay,” I mutter sarcastically as I put another smile on a gingerbread man.
“Hey, it smells good in here!” My brother peeks his head around the corner, then swaggers into the kitchen and grabs a cookie, eating half of it in one bite.
“Not bad, ‘K’” he mumbles around the crumbs. “Gavin must’ve made ‘em.”
“Out, before I brand you with icing!” I threaten, holding up the can.”
“Chill, sis. It’s Christmas. Hey, Gavin, when do I get to meet that new girl of yours?”
“She’s coming out to visit in January.” You nudge me. “I’ll need your help figuring out where to bring her around the Cities, Kahlan. You know places better than I do.”
“M-hmm,” I murmur noncommitally, concentrating on cookie decorating.
“So you met her in Australia?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, she goes to CSU, but I didn’t meet her until last semester. We were in the same program.”
The two of you continue your casual conversation. I respond and nod as you ask me advice on possible date locations. Maybe the Old Spaghetti Factory, I suggest, intent on candy buttons.
You were the friend I’d never have to worry about losing.
Things change.
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callie_acu's journal
depressed
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