Daily Short Story: Monday Edition

Riding Red


"Don't go into the woods," whisper the flutter of wings in the dovecote rafters. The words fall dry and cool to the floor, mingling with feathers and stale straw. 

The doves are mimicking Rosie's aunts. On this side of the mountains, Rosie has heard, they're mimicking-birds, and they always mock the voice they hear the most. On Jonagold Farm, that is certainly the voices of her three aunts.

"Dangerous. Dark trees, no straight paths."

"Terrible wild animals."

"Poor Amos," whispers Aunt Miranda through tightly pursed lips. "Leaving his child fatherless."

"My father died in the woods," Rosie tells the boy. It's dark in the dovecote. All she can see is his nose, outlined in moonlight, and his eyes gleaming silver. Everything else is shadow. 

"It's not dangerous," he says.

Rosie holds her breath when his hand touches hers, his palm as rough as a stone. 

"I'll show you the way."

Just a little bit starry-eyed

Can I just pause for a moment and talk about what a lovely weekend this has been?

Last weekend had some pretty horrendous aspects to it, discounting the Easter Vigil and its beauty. I had another paper due, and it was consuming my life. There's something kind of awful about being so busy that eating, sleeping, and bathing are no longer priorities. But, yes, that's the way college life sometimes goes.

But this weekend. Oh my.

My blog has gotten more and more personal lately, but I'm going to allow it to swing that way for a moment.

On Friday, I headed to Pittsburgh with some friends for an Owl City concert. There is something surreal about seeing someone who inspires you so much only fifteen feet away.

But get this--Saturday night was even better.

It's totally unprofessional to talk about this online, right? The internet is forever, after all, and I'm supposed to be blogging about writerish things. So I'll make it a story.

Once upon a time, a really nice boy asked a semilonely girl out. Since they were college freshmen and not permitted to have cars, he borrowed his roommate's. She borrowed a floral dress from a friend (isn't it helpful to live with so many other girls?) and skipped other commitments to get ready, long before she actually had to. By the time 6:00 rolled around, she was pacing back and forth and nervously chipping away her nail polish. 

She uses the word 'lovely' a lot when she writes, but it's so suitable. Especially for this evening. 

While I Should be Sleeping....

Today, I was drifting around my room trying to clean, and I started thinking about The Default Sweater. Draft two is coming along, slowly--I have my roommate yelling at me to finish, but right now I'm working through it backwards.

Yeah. Backwards.

I guess TDS sort of falls into a romance category. If it were a movie, it would probably be a rom-com, but I feel odd about that. I think if I approached the story with a romantic comedy attitude, I would come away feeling awkward and embarrassed and stumbling over my own feet. Though I've dated a couple guys, romance has always been a bit of a mystery to me, so the story would be silly, straight from my imagination. The thought of imaging Erin as some desperate woman on a manhunt makes me cringe.

In a way, this goes back to several posts ago, where I talked about female characters. I don't think I set out, exactly, to write a typical romance story. At the time I started TDS, I was a junior in high school. I didn't have a boyfriend. I was significantly younger than the protagonist. The only thing I really had to power the story was a familiarity with the vulnerable feeling of wanting to be loved, and wanting to learn about boys and romance and, yes, Erin's hangup, kissing. However, her preoccupation with getting her first kiss is not just to pass a milestone, and that's why she ultimately doesn't want it from just anybody.

(On a side note, I could write a whole blog post on the invention of the kiss. Kisses are so unappreciated and underestimated. What were they thinking when they tried it out for the first time? And what do you do with something that makes no sense and yet means so much?

This is why the conflict in TDS is perfect for me.)

That, therefore, is my Erin. I don't think it's a "rom-com" as much as a heart story, maybe even a bit of a fairy tale. Erin has a preoccupation with those, too! I love the idea of a contemporary, real-world story that can be written as a fairy tale, taking a measure of that sugary sweetness into a place that's so often unromantic. I love the idea that everything can mean something. There's a reason fairy tales endure, after all. We still understand them in the knock of our nitty-gritty reality, and there's that one grain of truth, and we read it, and think ahhh, there it is. 

So maybe it's something in between--not a fairy tale, perhaps, but distinctly fairylike.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I am on cloud nine today, for a lot of reasons, and life is a big Easter bunch of wonderfulness.

I was struck by the difference between my own feelings and the rest of the world's when I got onto Figment today and saw their Easter wishes--for Easter bunnies and candy and pastels and pretty things. It didn't offend me, because it's a writing website, not a Church organization, and besides, a lot of people celebrate Easter, but it definitely struck me.

It's amazing, this high holy holiday of ours. All through Lent I've kind of been lost in a muddle, with lots of anxiety about the future and the present, so that life felt Lenten even when I wasn't focusing on penance. It's been a long winter. The sun never came out. Homework grew mountainous, fasting made me grumpy, prayer felt forced, and Easter would never come.

Last night during the Easter vigil (when Easter did come, after all!), I was so struck, so moved, by an abundance of feeling that I can't describe. I was feeling something for the first time in weeks, and it was beautiful and painful, and in the candlelight and the knowledge that when I feel dead and bored with life, there will be a resurrection, I was able to truly say, "Alleluia, Alleluia!"

I'm going to still a quote from a friend of mine, because I don't think he'll mind, and because, you know, it's kinda unbearably beautiful:

The Easter Vigil is one of those miraculous glorious magnificent occurrences that makes water seem more wet, that makes walls seem more solid, and makes romance take on an even more brilliant shade of romantic. That is, life seems more real, more filled, more glorious, for Jesus Christ has risen.

Today, life is very, very beautiful. Everything good has arrived--color and sunshine, good food and smiles. Life is back, and it reminds me that my God is a God of life. 

A very happy Easter to all of you. :) 

Girls with Gumption

As I've been rewriting TDS, I've been taking stock of my female characters. I'm pleased that, to a large degree, they're different people and don't fall into any sort of stereotype. Because girls are not stereotypical.

Erin, I think, is certainly not a typical heroine. While posting my first draft on Figment, I was pretty pleasantly surprised by readers' reactions to her. Honestly, I wondered if I should expect complaints along the lines of "she's not strong enough" or "she's too vulnerable". But overall, people seemed to like dipping into the mind of an atypical heroine, who, I believe, is a pretty normal girl.

This led me to a question--where are the feminine heroines? 

The standard YA heroine now (though I'm not sure I can classify TDS as YA, as it deals with a much older protagonist) is independent, aggressive, and confident. She needs no one. She's a Katniss, an Arya, an Alianne. She knows what she wants and is fearless about getting it.

And that is great. We need girls like that, because books should be about real characters. We need to show girls who can be leaders, who are tough and gutsy. However, not all girls are that. We can't embrace only this kind of heroine and say to girls, "This is what you must be to be a woman".

Why can't girls be real and brave and feminine all at the same time? Do we equate being womanly with being weak? A writer friend made the comment to me some months ago: "[A heroine] can wear a dress, but she can't enjoy it". She can lead a kingdom, but she can't yearn for a king at her side.

I know all sorts of girls--loud girls and quiet girls, girls who wear sweatpants and girls who prefer summer dresses but feel at home at a table of ten boys.

Shouldn't our heroines be like that?

They should be real girls--funny and girly and confused and vulnerable and hopeful and brave.

Thoughts on the Dance Floor

On Sunday nights, the university sponsors swing dancing in the student union. The music blares, the doors are flung open, and couples hit the floor.

I will give it to the guys there--they do their best. They go out of their way to make sure that no girl is without a partner, that each one is comfortable and enjoying herself. It's witnessing things like that--the best and most attractive dancer in the room inviting a shy, bespectacled freshman girl out onto the dance floor--that make me think, I like nice men. 

It's something I increasingly take for granted, chivalrous men. After all, I go to a small, conservative, Christian university where old-school values are still going strong. There are all sorts of people here, of course, but for the most part, the men are beautiful.

There's something really cool about men, well, being men. 

So I think--shouldn't I take it for granted?

Shouldn't this be our standard, this manly, courteous, gentle, thoughtful kind of man?

So, swing dancing.

I headed over to the student union late last night, never expecting to get roped into dancing. When I got there, I found a friend of mine--we'll call him John--standing on the sidelines and watching the action. On seeing me, his face brightened and he bounded over, holding out his hand.

I said, "Huh?"

Then his intention grew clear: I was to go out onto the floor with him, amid the couple twirling in graceful circles like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and dance.

Don't get me wrong. I like to dance. I would even say that I'm a decent dancer. Growing up, I took a lot of dance lessons, mostly ballroom stuff, but it's all been filed away in my memory now. I do not like looking silly, and as I didn't know what I was doing, I pretty soon found myself being forcibly bereft of my wallet and coat and carried onto the dance floor. I probably fought a little, but I'm five foot two, and no match for two guys.

John said, "Take some risks. It's an adventure."

So I shut up. And just a side note--to John, who will never read this blog post--you are a fantastic leader. You relaxed me, you helped me follow and made me laugh. It was lovely.

I was enjoying it in spite of myself, if I ignored the couples around us who were, quite literally, flying through the air. When the dance was over, John kissed my hand (!!) and left me. A moment later he was spinning fearlessly with another partner.

Someone else asked me to dance. It was different, dancing with a total stranger (OK, not a stranger. We actually met last semester during a Pittsburgh ministry, but he didn't remember, so I didn't remind him). There was a lot more talking than twirling. When the song was over, he said, "May I have another dance? I'm really enjoying talking to you."

Whoa.

And even though I fumbled, he kept me laughing. When I left at 11:30, I still couldn't banish my smile. The exercise had done me good, and I felt flushed walking out into the chilly evening.

I know people say chivalry is dead. A lot of them even say good riddance. I get it. I do. At the same time, I think we've lost so much by doing away with that courtesy, that measure of respect for one another. There I was, standing uncomfortably on the sidelines with my clumsy shoes and my shambled heart, and the attention of these two boys--one a friend, the other a (semi-)stranger--made me feel feminine and pretty. And I even had fun.

This is why we treasure the princes of fairy tales and fall in love with story heroes. To those boys who dare to be chivalrous, thank you. You don't know how much we girls ache for real men.

The Creature that Wanders the Halls

You know the look that people in the student union coffee shop give you?

That someone-left a paper-late look, that I-know-this-is-your-third-cup-of-coffee-today look?

I got that this week. I shrank beneath it, murmured a thanks so soft and ashamed it could have been mistaken for a cough, and escaped.

If I learned a difficult lesson from that night, it was to never venture back into the land of caffeine. Then my brain catches up, and I think, Maybe you should rethink that double major. 

Goodbye for now, coffee cup. I know we will meet again.

Up until now, I've never been able to track down anything that really gives me a jolt. It's possible I reached some level of homeostasis from too many years of black tea. Then, last weekend, my friend Joe asked me to run to the cafe and get him a coffee.

Perchance I should have learned my lesson there. I should have told him to get his own dang cup of coffee.

(Just kidding. If I remember correctly, I offered to treat.)

Then he uttered the fateful words, "Tell them to add a shot of espresso."

The words stayed in my mind, and Wednesday night, when I walked over to get something before starting my paper, I thought I'd try it.

At 2:30 AM, when I decided to take a break from writing my conclusion, I wandered the halls of the dorm, pondering the sleeping breaths of my 300 fellow residents. Across the piazza, the windows of Louis Hall were dark. That was eerie.

But in the wee hours, nothing. No sound. No rustle. No boys bursting into one another's rooms to yell and wrestle. No shouts from the lobby. No girls calling to one another for hairpins, homework help, clothes, advice. None of the myriad of other sounds that constantly echo down the halls at college.

I was a ghost, just the slip of a spirit, made corporeal by coffee.

Because I could, I did a couple of pirouettes down the eerie halls. Maybe, I thought, I should do some jumping jacks. I had a teacher in high school who hauled us up for jumping jacks whenever he sensed the class was mentally less than present. Just the thought of moving that much after only dregs of sleep and too much coffee made my stomach roil.

I wandered on, caught, like Hamlet's father, in my caffeine purgatory.

At long last, I snatched four and a half desperate hours of sleep and thought, never again. 

But I can hear it, that sniggering voice, the jolt of caffeine in my veins.

"Don't wait up," it says. "I'll be back soon."