Rules of the Road
Okay, Blog…
So I’ve been thinking (I know, gasp!) about this whole “writing career” thing, and I’ve come up with some rules (for me) to write by. They are sort of wonky and of questionable value to anyone beyond my doorstep. Nevertheless, I am compelled to scratch them into the collective psyche.
Here goes:
1. THE MUSES DICTATE; I JUST TRANSCRIBE.
This idea may sound ludicrous to non-writers (I get the funniest looks when I explain that a certain vulgar phrase cannot be deleted, because the way it’s written is the way the narrator expressed it to me), but I consider myself more of a medium than an author: stories come THROUGH me, not FROM me. This is as it should be, and I have no intention of strong-arming my imaginary friends into speaking/acting/thinking as I’d like them to. They are who they are, and I accept them unconditionally.
2. THE CHARACTERS SPEAK; IT’S MY JOB TO LISTEN.
See #1. Characters have free rein. They can (and should) be funny, annoying, heartwarming, outrageous, diabolical, full of themselves, shy, sassy, immoral, stuck-up, lovable, and, most importantly, REAL.
3. REALITY IS NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT.
I hereby vow to never create a prettied-up, rose-colored (per)version of reality. Life is messy and I intend to tell the truth about it even–scratch that, especially–concerning the hard (and sometimes offensive) stuff.
4. HONOR THY READER.
There’s not much point in writing if the reader is not PRIORITY #1. Duh. (This translates into young adult novels that, I hope, teens will enjoy. Parents may differ.)
5. APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE.
My muses are naughty, I admit. I have little or no control over them. If I could invite only chaste, respectful, nicey-nice characters to populate my imagination, maybe I would (though I doubt it, because I would be BORED. TO. TEARS).
To those who find my muses childish, frustrating, obscene, etc. (?), I can only say: thank you for your opinions. You are entitled to them, and I respect that.
Pleas re-read #1 through #3.
As you can see, my hands are tied.
*** END OF CRAZY-WRITER RANT ***
Your reward for suffering through my psychoses? A new installment of my work-in-progress: Cassandra McCoy, Voodoo Princess Extraordinaire. I hope it makes you smile. 
Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.
chapter 3 (FIRST DRAFT)
I didn’t expect Mr. Smith to look so frail, so when Ian wheeled him to the head of the guest-of-honor table, I did a double-take.
“That’s him?” I ask Haley, elbowing her in the ribs as we slosh plastic pitchers full of ice water at the prep sink.
“Yep,” she replies without looking up.
“Didn’t he used to be…taller?”
“He’s in a wheelchair. What’d you expect? You said yourself that he was gonna die soon.”
I hoist a number of pitchers onto a serving tray and steel my shaky grip to avoid taking an unintended bath. “I said he could die,” I clarify. “He might die. I’m not in the business of predicting tragedy.”
Haley opens her mouth to say something, but before she gets it out, our mother floats in between us and starts lathering her hands with antibacterial soap. “You girls doin’ okay?” she asks. “Everything under control?”
It’s weird to see Mom at the restaurant, since she usually works behind-the-scenes at home, keeping the books, cutting the checks, paying the bills, and engaging in screaming phone fights with vendors over late deliveries and spoiled product. “Should I put the donation box out now?” I ask. “It’s getting busy.”
The cover charge for this shindig is ten bucks a head, every cent of which goes directly into Mr. Smith’s pocket. Beyond that, guests are encouraged to give what they can to help ease his physical and financial pain. From the looks of the yellow-green raccoon mask around his eyes and the grayish tint of his lips and fingertips, though, it’s going to take quite a wad of cash to put Ian’s dad back in ship-shape.
Mom offers to set up the donation box—or basket, as it were—in a special spot by the entrance that is decorated with a spray of red and white streamers left over from Milford High’s victory in the state football championships, leaving Haley and me on waitress duty.
As Haley weaves through the dining room with her tray of water, Ian catches my eye with a nonchalant wave. I unload three of my four pitchers en route to his side. “So…?” I say, feeling a self-satisfied rush as I top off Mr. Smith’s glass. “What do you think?”
Ian appraises the crowd and nods. “Sweet,” he says. “You really came through.”
I take a goofy bow, the serving tray tucked behind me like a tail-feather. “My pleasure.” I stare at Ian’s dad—who looks even worse up close—for a long moment, then turn my head and whisper, “Is he—uh—up to this?” I mean, it’s not like the man has to dance a jig, but for his sake, it would be best if he could remain upright.
“I tried to talk him out of coming,” Ian tells me with a shrug, “but he insisted. He said it wouldn’t be proper to have a benefit without him making an appearance.”
“You guys want some more bread?” I ask, noticing that the wicker plate one of the real waitresses has brought is now empty.
An elderly woman seated across from Mr. Smith pipes up. “Would you, dear?”
“Sure thing.” I give Ian a happy pat on the shoulder, snatch the plate and flit back to the kitchen.
As I enter, Mom presses a bouquet of wildflowers at me. “Here,” she says. “I forgot about these. Drop ‘em at the Smiths’ table for me?”
I got my platinum hair and ghostly blue-grey eyes from my mother, a fact that, had she lost the heart attack battle, would’ve haunted me in the mirror. “Yeah,” I say, pushing the vase back, “just gimme a sec.” I twirl around and deposit the tray on the counter, refill the bread plate and then collect the flowers with a smile.
With a bump of my knee, I swing the kitchen door open. This is awesome, I think, surveying the crowd. Ian’s dad will be okay now; Ian will be able to relax.
Then the chaos starts.
“Quick! Help!” a chorus of voices shouts. There’s a rush of movement through the dining room, in the direction of the Smiths’ table. “Call an ambulance!”
I slide the vase onto a vacant chair, bob my head around to catch a glimpse of the commotion. But I can’t make out what’s happening.
Until…
A husky gentleman in a brown tweed suit steps out of my line of sight, revealing Mr. Smith, slumped forward in his wheelchair, his milky eyes tacked open as he tries—but fails—to draw a breath. Oh, God, I think. Don’t let it be his heart. Mom was lucky. Most people don’t survive.
“He’s choking!” a muffled voice proclaims.
I make momentary eye contact with Ian, who looks crushed with panic. “Not on my watch,” I murmur. Even though my powers are limited (and, in most cases, spotty in their reliability), they do exist. The proof? Something told me to bring the voodoo doll—which is currently tucked in my apron pocket, behind my ticket pad—with me today.
But I’m running out of time.
As a trio of helpful guests, including a buff, twenty-something-year-old guy who may very well be a paramedic, struggles to deliver the Heimlich maneuver to a wheelchair-bound liver patient already on death’s door, I drop to the floor, abandon the bread plate in a sea of sensible shoes and clutch around the ticket pad until I get a pinch of my fuzzy little friend (not to mention a bunch of dastardly paper cuts).
I pull the doll out and give it a once-over, flashes of my marathon knitting session racing through my mind. When I made this thing, I was hoping to raise George from the dead just long enough to bare my soul (because a zombie boyfriend is not exactly on my bucket list). Now I’m praying that it might stop Mr. Smith from bumping up against George in the great beyond.
I’ve only successfully employed this tchotchke once, and that was to rouse Haley from a Robitussin coma (okay, so maybe she was just extra tired) when she had the flu. And I’ve never tried it on a virtual stranger.
But…
I lock my gaze on Mr. Smith’s head—or slightly above it, to be precise—at the spot where, if he were an angel, his halo would hover. This is where I get the best read of a person’s aura, a.k.a. the wiggly field of energy surrounding all living things.
Mr. Smith’s aura is even sicker than his complexion lets on: a pool of dusky grey, flecked with bursts of twinkling, snow-white light—the sign of imminent death.
The buff guest hoists Mr. Smith from his wheelchair with an overgrown meat-hook of an arm; meanwhile, I begin pinching the doll’s midsection betwixt my thumb and forefinger, making it perform fast-motion sit-ups. Come on, come on, come on, I plead. Cough it up.
“They’re on the way!” someone squeals, referring to the emergency personnel.
Ian paces by the doorway, his palm clamped over his temple, his eyes searching the lot for the ambulance.
The lump in the center of my forehead, which has been sinking toward my skull since the day after our treasure hunt, suddenly starts stinging. I ignore the pain—and the unsettling burning—and keep pumping away at the voodoo doll’s stomach.
Twenty feet off, the maybe-paramedic grasps Mr. Smith from behind, plants a serious fist in his abdomen and thrusts.
I pump.
He thrusts.
I pump.
He thrusts.
My head stings.
And burns.
I pump.
He thrusts.
I pump.
He thrusts.
Then…
Pop!
The doll’s midsection goes soft, and Mr. Smith chokes a ragged breath. By the door, Ian’s posture turns rubbery.
“What’re you doing?” Haley demands from my side.
I slip the doll into my apron and struggle to my feet. “Huh?”
“I saw you, you know.”
“Yeah? So.”
She throws an arm around my shoulder. “You think it worked?”
“He’s breathing, isn’t he?”
Mom blows by us and rushes the entrance, props the door open for the paramedics, who are just wheeling up out front, ambulance lights blazing and sirens whining. The frantic twittering of voices, which had blurred into a stream of white noise during my “intervention,” seems to escalate. A wave of exhaustion washes over me, and I drop cockeyed into a chair.
Haley flops down beside me, a ghost of a smile on her blackened lips. “It’s kind of ironic, huh?” she says, jerking her head toward Mr. Smith.
I think she means his almost dying at a benefit to save his life. “I guess.”
A female paramedic storms into the restaurant, a walkie-talkie barking from her hip. In her wake scurry her trim, bearded partner and Mom, literally wringing her hands. “That’s right,” Mom chirps, directing the trek from the rear. “He’s over there.” She wags her arm through the air. “Just past my…my banana tree.”
Of course, my mother would mention that fake, dusty monstrosity. I roll my eyes and tap Haley on the knee. “We’d better go help.”
Her eyebrows pinch together. “What for?”
Maybe she’s right: The paramedics seem to have things under control. Then again, Ian looks like he could use a shoulder to lean on. “I’m gonna go…” I say. Haley shoos me off, her mouth twisted into a smirk. I don’t like him, I want to tell her. Not that way. Instead, I say, “Why don’t you check on the guests? Try to calm them down?” I rise and start heading for the guest-of-honor, but then I catch Dad summoning me to the kitchen with a nervous head-bob.
I abruptly change course, nearly spinning out as I shift sideways around Mom’s silk ficus. “What’s up?” I say when I get within my father’s orbit.
“Is he okay?” he asks about Mr. Smith, his nose twitching and eyes darting.
My heart clenches like it did when Mom got sweaty and collapsed on the lawn. “Sure,” I say with a nod. “Disaster averted.” I give him a reassuring grin.
He puffs out a tense breath. “Thank God.”
I met George Brooks by a puddle behind the rear wheel of a box truck, the day his family moved into Willow Crest, the up-and-coming neighborhood to which my parents had—two years earlier—scrimped and saved enough money to relocate Haley and me.
“What’re you doin’?” I asked him through the gap in my six-year-old teeth, the bottom two of which had just fallen out.
He pushed a stone around the puddle with a twig, paused to fix his ponderous brown eyes on me. “None of your beeswax.”
I rose a few inches from my crouched position and glanced over my shoulder, my mother’s watchful form still in sight. “Can I try?”
A doubtful tsking sound burst from his lips. “You don’t know how.”
I rocked on my heels, folded my arms over my knees. “I do so.”
The freckles seemed to rearrange on his face. “You can’t,” he told me flatly. “I made it up.”
We went silent for a while, the way old married folks sometimes do. “I’m good at stories,” I said eventually, his game of stone maneuvering—which was starting to resemble a strategic military exercise (though I couldn’t have voiced such a thing at the time)—entrancing me.
“Oh, yeah?” he replied, sounding intrigued but skeptical.
I shot him my know-it-all nod. “Uh-huh.”
“How old are you?”
My first lie: “Seven.”
He grimaced. “Nuh-uh. You’re too small.” He gave me an appraising once-over. “I bet you’re five, at the most.”
“Well, you only look four,” I said (my second lie), my face flushing and my eyes starting to sting.
“Don’t cry,” he told me, the confrontational tone disappearing from his voice. He tapped my shin with the twig, then held it up as a peace offering. As I accepted, he said, “I’m George, by the way. And I’m eight, not four.”
I twigged three stones to the edge of the puddle, where I strung them together like pearls. “I’m Cassandra,” I informed him. “But people call me Cassie. Or Cass, for short. I have a baby sister, Haley.” I waited for him to dish the dirt on his siblings, but he just fell back onto his palms like a crab and started kicking at the truck’s enormous tire. “You got a sister? Or a brother?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m adopted.”
I probably wouldn’t have known what adopted meant, except that six months earlier, my parents had deposited Haley with a babysitter and trucked me to a matinee showing of Annie at the discount movie theater. For weeks afterward, I was convinced (and terrified) that Mom and Dad would die, leaving me to scrub floors and starch sheets at the knee of the devious Miss Hannigan. “Since when?” I asked, thinking of Annie, who was older than George when she found her “daddy.”
“Same as you,” he said with a shrug. “Since I was born.”
I wanted to tell George it was okay that he was adopted; it didn’t matter to me. In fact, it was more than okay. It was neat and cool, and it gave him something in common with a movie star. But I couldn’t put this into words, so instead I asked, “Wanna play jump rope?”
He crinkled his brow, then shrugged. “Jump rope?”
“Yeah,” I said with a shy smile. “You can be the swinger, and I’ll jump.”
“Got a rope?”
A wild squawk from Clive jolts me back to the task at hand: cleaning his cage—a job made harder by the fact that I’ve pimped his nest. “Oh, behave!” I chastise, as my bird-friend hops and pecks around the carpet (and occasionally dips under my bed). I withdraw the last branch of his forest, run a feather duster (ironic, I know) over it and set it aside. Most people probably wouldn’t devote so much attention to a rescue-crow, but I can’t help feeling obligated to make Clive’s life as comfortable and pleasant as possible, especially after what happened to Clive-ina (that’s what I call Clive’s poor, deceased mate—God bless her feathered soul).
It takes me another ten minutes to pry the wood chip-covered newspaper from the bottom of the cage, Windex the bare plastic to a scratchy sheen, and re-line the thing with comics (I like to think that one day Clive will learn how to read and appreciate my sense of humor).
I’m in the midst of sprinkling cedar over Snoopy’s profile when bang! bang! bang! goes my door, heralding Haley’s arrival. (I’m not sure why she bothers knocking—or pounding, as it were—since she’s prone to barging in uninvited.)
I shoo Clive into his barren hovel and latch the door behind him. “What?” I say to Haley, agitation rising in my voice as she whips up beside me. I stare past her at the gaping door, unable to stop myself from sighing.
“What’re you doing?” she demands, matching my irritation. She taps her foot and nibbles at her pinkie, her fingernail squeaking as she gnashes it between her teeth.
I freeze her with a serious glare. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
My sister would do well to lose the Elvira hairdo, G.I. Joe footwear, and Marilyn Manson wardrobe (because, honestly, she’s a walking cliché). “Huh?” she says blankly.
“What do you want?” I grouse, my head involuntarily cocking.
She drops onto my bed, bunches my pillow into a ball and tucks it under her chin. “Opal, uh…” she says, trailing off for a few beats, “…she, um, needs you to…”
I roll my eyes. “When?” I ask, knowing what my sister’s friend wants: a supernatural favor.
“Five minutes ago?” she says with a sheepish grin.
