Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion
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Weekly Short Story Contests
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Week 14 (July 7th-July 14th) Contest DONE!!
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You'll think of somethin cool. You always do. :]
Kay, here's my story:There is one day in a person’s life that they would give anything to return to. Twenty-four blissful hours which are immortalized in dreams and memories, which live on with a kind of golden brilliance. A wedding day, the birth of your child, the day that you won the lottery — those are the usual contenders.
My day wasn’t anything like that. It wasn’t full of euphoria or celebration. No, my brightest hours were painfully ordinary. Dull, monotonous. But I had them. That was more than I ever could have hoped for, even if I had thought to ask.
~ * ~
I woke to the persistent poking of my shoulder. I swatted the offending hand away and tried to force my sluggish brain back into unconsciousness.
“Will,” hissed an all too familiar voice. “Wake up. Come on, we’re going to miss the birds.”
I rolled over to glare at Maddy, opening my eyes. The first thing I saw was the window. There was no sun. Still dark. The second thing was my light-up digital clock. 5:30 am.
“What the heck, Maddy?” I croaked. “What are you doing here?”
She rolled her eyes, though her smile didn’t falter. Perkiness before noon should be punishable by law. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m waking you up.” Maddy sat down by my feet, bouncing a couple times. “You’re not cooperating very well, though.”
“Yeah, I get like that at five in the morning.”
“Will, get up! We’re going to miss all the nature.” After giving my foot a few fruitless shoves, Maddy came to stand at the head of my bed. A glass of water was in her hand and a manic glint in her eyes. “I have water and I know how to use it,” she threatened, tipping the cup just a little bit.
An icy drop of water landed on my forehead.
“Okay, I’m up. Jeez, Maddy, you’re acting like my mom.”
Ten painful minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Maddy’s beat up old suburban. It was ancient, a brown medley of spare parts and duct taped windows. The interior smelled like coffee and gym socks, with a hint of bubble gum. Maddy had long ago christened it the Thing.
“Where exactly are we going?” I asked coolly, not yet having forgiven her for waking me at this unholy hour.
“Kayaking,” she said, undisguised glee in her voice. “On the little river that’s behind the gas station.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see the birds. There are otters, too. At least, I think there are.” Maddy tucked a springy curl behind her ear.
“And the birds won’t be there after the sun rises?” I asked, about ready to smack her.
“Nope,” she told me pleasantly. “And I know you’re wondering why I brought you. It’s simple, really. My dad said I couldn’t go by myself.”
“So you decide to torture your best friend?” Typical Maddy.
“Yes.”
While we were talking, Maddy had pulled over at the side of the road. Hopping out of the Thing, she called over her shoulder, “You can carry the kayak. I’ll show you where to go.”
She skipped ahead, as I struggled with her two-person kayak. Dragging it behind me, I followed her to the edge of the river.
Maddy deigned to help me slide it into the slow moving water, but made me hold it while she settled herself in the front. I climbed in after her, a little alarmed at how wobbly the little vessel was.
“Let’s go,” she said, dipping her paddle into the clear water. I bit back a sigh and followed suit.
“Don’t talk,” Maddy told me loudly. “It’ll scare the birds away.”
“Why can’t you just go to a zoo like a normal person?” I asked her, flinching away from the splash from her paddle.
“Shh!” Maddy turned and gave me a narrow-eyed glare to top off the scolding.
I did as she said, even though it felt mysteriously like admitting weakness. But if Maddy wanted to see the birds, who was I to stop her? My efforts turned out to be wasted, though. After five minutes of birdless silence, Maddy heaved an almighty sigh and said, “Will, you’re never this quiet. Talk to me — I’m bored.”
“You just told me not to talk,” I complained, knowing it was pointless.
“Yeah, but there weren’t any birds. They must all have slept in.”
“Smart birds.”
Maddy laughed merrily. “I’d like to be a bird.”
“Really? Why? You’d have to eat worms.” We ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch.
“Hmm, that’s something to think about.” She yanked on one of her curls, pulling it straight, and then watching it spring back into shape. Maddy had corkscrew curls down to her shoulders, dark brown and the epitome of frizz. She never tried to tame them, as far as I could tell, and the look completely suited her.
“Bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly,” she informed me suddenly.
“Yeah, tell me about it. Think how many fewer bee stings there would be if they were limited to the ground.” Ah, the possibilities. I was so used to Maddy’s random changes in the conversations that I didn’t even raise an eyebrow.
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Maddy grabbed onto a branch to stop the kayak, so she could turn and talk to me. “I mean, aerodynamically, bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly. They’re too fat. But I guess bumblebees don’t know that, do they? This scientist once said that the bumblebee achieves flight through the power of its own ignorance.”
Maddy trailed off, letting the kayak continue down the river. Neither of us was paddling then, so the boat floated along, buffeted by the current.
“What do you want to be?” she asked me quietly, her tone a little dreamy.
“You mean when I grow up? You know that — a pilot.” I was stunned. Maddy never forgot anything I told her.
“No. If you could be anything. Like a bed or a plane or a suitcase. What would you be?”
“A suitcase?” I didn’t even try to hold back my laughter. “Where did that come from?”
“I think I’d be a sailboat,” she said, ignoring me. “Not the itty bitty kind. Like the ones in Pirates of the Caribbean. Big, with bedrooms and stuff.” Maddy nodded, as if convincing herself. “Yes, I’d like to be a sailboat.”
“Why?”
“I could travel all over, but I wouldn’t have to work very hard. I think cars would get tired, don’t you? Going so fast. And planes. Planes must get exhausted. Boats just float along, happy as can be.”
“You realize how crazy this sounds, don’t you?” I was getting just a little concerned for her sanity. “You’re talking about inanimate objects like they’re people. Jeez, Maddy, you must be the first person in the world to personify an airplane.”
“Oh, I know,” she said cheerfully. “So what would you be?”
“Um, a baseball?” Who cares? What was the point of that conversation?
“Really?” Maddy’s tone was disapproving. “Why? You’d get whacked at all the time. And you’d get all dirty. And they’d kill cows to make you! And people would always want to sign you….”
I let Maddy ramble on and before I knew it, we had turned the kayak around to paddle against the current. One grueling hour later, we were back in the Thing.
“So, want to get breakfast?” Maddy didn’t even seem bothered by the large wet spot at the seat of her pants, a direct result of her leaky boat.
“Not really. Oh, I have an idea.” I leaned back in my seat, confident that Maddy would agree. It was exactly the type of thing that Maddy would find entertaining.
“What?”
“I’ve always wanted to build a tree house, haven’t you?” I smiled, already planning the structure. “My old man would never help me. We should build a tree house.”
“Oh, my gosh, we should!” Maddy’s brown eyes lit up. “We should paint it, too. White, with little red shutters. And I think we have some old carpet in my garage! It’s blue, though, so it wouldn’t really match. And we could put in window boxes!” “Maddy, it’s a tree house. You don’t put window boxes on a tree house.”
“I want to put window boxes on my tree house,” she whined. “It’ll make it homier.”
“Once again, Maddy. Tree house. Tree houses aren’t supposed to be homey. They’re supposed to be haphazardly nailed together chunks of wood.”
“But I saw once on Discovery Channel a couple that lived in their tree house. It had a door and a welcome mat. That tree house was homey.”
“Whatever,” I said, giving up. There was no reasoning with Maddy when she got like this.
“On second thought…,” Maddy mused. “I do think building a tree house would be an awful lot of work. Maybe we should just go to the meadow.”
The meadow was Maddy’s and my secret. It was deep in the woods behind her house, garnished by poisonous berries and cut through by a little burbling stream. Maddy hadn’t agreed to visit the meadow for a few months. The last time we were there, she had been wading in the creek and sliced a hole in her foot. The gash needed ten stitches, and had only recently become a pinkish scar. Maddy made me look at it every week, to tell her whether it looked manly and cool yet.
I’m not quite sure that Maddy needs to be manly, but that’s just me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go to the meadow.”
We loaded ourselves back into the Thing. Maddy took the wheel; she was a hard-core feminist and wouldn’t let a man drive for any sum of money. I opened the glove box, looking for food. I found a half-eaten Twix, a bag of cookies that had been reduced to crumbs, and the sticky remains of a pop-tart.
“Maddy,” I groaned, wiping the jelly off my hand. “Why can’t you clean this truck every once in a while? This is disgusting!”
“I do clean it,” Maddy told me, as if it were obvious. “Don’t you remember that huge puddle of melted ice cream that used to on the back seat? That’s gone. I wiped it off with your t-shirt.”
“My t-shirt?” I looked down at the shirt I was wearing, as if expecting to see a strawberry stain.
“Yeah, that white one with the stripes and the number on the back.” She pulled off to the side of the road, near the path that led to the meadow.
I gaped. “You used my baseball jersey as a mop?!”
“Oh, that’s what it was!” Maddy pulled off her sweatshirt and threw it in the trunk. “Is it important? Did you need it? Because the ice cream stained and I threw it away.”
I counted to ten in my head before saying anything. “Yes, Maddy. I needed that shirt. I’m on the baseball team—we need jerseys. I asked you a week ago if you knew where it was!”
“You just said ‘baseball jersey.’ I didn’t know what that was. You know I don’t follow sports.” We were walking down the path, tripping over tree roots and rocks to get to the meadow.
Maddy stumbled over her untied shoelace and would have landed flat on her face if I hadn’t grabbed her arm to hold her up.
“Thanks, Will,” she said. Then we walked into the meadow.
It was beautiful today. Since it was still early—way earlier than I would have liked to wake up—the springy grass was still damp with dew. Maddy ignored that, though, and collapsed right onto the ground.
I lay down next to her, staring up at the sky. “Hey, Maddy,” I said, pointing to a cloud. “There’s a lion.”
“No, it’s an octopus. See all the little tendrils coming off it?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. Maddy refused to agree with me about anything, especially clouds. We could argue about a single cloud for hours, long after it had tumbled out of our view. But I really didn’t want to fight with Maddy today. I was too busy trying not to smack her upside her head for ruining my jersey.
“Will?” she asked suddenly, her voice a little quieter than usual.
“Yeah?”
“I love you, you know. I mean, like a brother.” She reached for my hand and held it fast. “I’m moving, Will. We’re going to Florida.”
“Florida?! What on earth will you do in Florida?! Maddy, you can’t go! Stay here with me! Move into my house; Mom loves you, she wouldn’t care!” I wrenched my hand out of hers and stood up.
“Will, I have to go! I’m not going to live with you!” She burst into tears, something that I had never seen her do before. “I’m sorry! It’s just…Dad got a new job and we need to move. My parents said I could still spend summers here!”
I snorted. Summers? Maddy was my best friend year-round. Four pitiful months in the summer wouldn’t be the same.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not able to see her cry. I sank back onto the grass and wrapped an arm around her. “I’m sorry, Madster. Don’t cry. That was really mean of me; I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s okay,” she sniffled. I could tell that she was acting. She obviously wanted me to be comforting and chivalrous, but I didn’t call her on it. She deserved a day of me being kind.
“When do you leave?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“In a month.”
“Well,” I said in my most cheerful voice. “Then we have a month to put off saying ‘goodbye.’”
~ * ~ Fate is a cruel beast, one that enjoys playing terrible jokes on innocent teenage boys. It turned out that Maddy and I never got to say goodbye, because she never moved to Florida. Four days after the wonderful morning in the meadow and on the river, Maddy died. She had been swinging in her backyard, on a rope swing that her father put up. She fell, severing her spinal cord. She died on the operating table.
I was distraught for three days, then pulled myself together and showed up for her funeral. It was pure hell. Hundreds of people were there; teachers, students, her boss at the greenhouses, and hordes of family members.
You would think that some of them were close to Maddy, knew who she really was. No. They talked about how she loved school. Maddy hated it. She hated homework and socializing and teachers.
They talked about her optimism. Maddy was a pessimist in every sense of the word. Sure, she was a little ditzy, but that hardly equated optimism. She never wished people luck, because she thought that if she did, the person would do horribly. She didn’t allow herself to hope, because she might be disappointed.
They were romanticizing her, turning her into a perfect person with her death. I couldn’t bear the lies any longer. I stood up, and made my way to the microphone. I yanked it out of Stella Gregory’s hand (Maddy couldn’t stand Stella) and said, “Hey.”
“I’m Will Jenson, and I met Maddy in kindergarten. The first thing she did was steal my toy car. When I told her that toy cars were for boys, she told me to…well, let’s just say that five-year-olds should not have that kind of vocabulary.” A teary laugh met this, and I straightened. “Since then, Maddy and I were best friends. I knew her better than almost anyone in this room, so I know all the lies you’ve told. Maddy wasn’t optimistic! She wasn’t a people-person!” The prior speakers were stiffening, offended. “Maddy was the type of person that would skip school to go pick wildflowers, or visit the beach. She spent her free time kayaking down the river and listening to birds, not engaging in heartfelt community service.
“You are turning her into an honor student, the perfect girl! She wasn’t. Maddy was Maddy, and remembering her as anything else is wrong! It’s like putting Hitler up on a pedestal and calling him a saint! We can’t change the dead, or our memories of them. Let’s face it, people. Anyone that knew Maddy knew that she was honest to a fault and just a little bit ditzy.
“She ate peanut butter straight from the jar. She downed five swirl cones with sprinkles a day in the summer. She tripped over painted lines. She lost her keys and looked for them in the freezer. She failed art because she didn’t draw what she was supposed to, even though she was a better artist than the teacher. She played with stuffed animals until she was fourteen. She wore a purple wig for a week straight in ninth grade. That’s how we need to remember her. As a quirky airhead with crazy curls. That’s who Maddy was.”
I made my way off the platform, blushing furiously. There were a few hesitant claps, before an explosion of tears and cheers. I didn’t care. I wasn’t speaking for their benefit. No, I was talking for Maddy.
After the graveside service, I lingered. I stared at Maddy’s grave-marker. It was beautiful, a proud marble stone engraved with elegant cursive script.
Madeleine Jacqueline Twist: Beloved Sister, Daughter, and Friend. 1992-2008.
Those words were all that was left of Maddy.
Suddenly, I felt the heavy weight of a hand on my shoulder. “Son,” Maddy’s father said. “I wanted to thank you. That speech you gave was the best of them all.”
“Thanks,” I replied, tearing up.
Mr. Twist looked at the grave, and the mounds of yellow roses piled on top of the coffin. “No father should have to bury his daughter,” he muttered. “It’s wrong.”
I nodded. No friend should have to bury his other half.
“What really gets me,” Mr. Twist said. “Is that it was so stupid! She could have avoided the whole thing if she just had some damn balance!” With that, the distraught father burst into tears. He was a small man, a few inches shorter than me. I wrapped an arm around his shoulder and started sobbing along with him.
I realized in that moment, crying for Maddy with her father, that I had loved her all along. I loved Madeleine Jacqueline Twist as a sister from the first day I met her. Being so close to her, literally touching her coffin, but not seeing her dark eyes light up, her unruly curls bounce, her small hands gesturing madly, was torture.
I wanted to throw back the lid of the coffin and gather Maddy into my arms. I wanted to hold her, to keep her on earth with all of us. Maddy had gone to Heaven, to a life of eternal bliss. It was different for Mr. Twist, Maddy’s mother and sisters…for me. We were left here, with a gaping hole in our lives. But we had to go on and act normal, without her.
Mr. Twist and I held each other and cried for what seemed like hours. When we finally pulled apart, both of us looked to the sky in unison.
“Maddy,” he said softly, gently. “I love you.” Then he walked away, probably before he could break down again.
“Hey Madster,” I called to the clouds. “Save a spot for me up there!” I choked on unshed tears, but pressed on. “I love you, Maddy. I always have.”
Then I crumpled to the ground and cried. Sobs wracked my body, and I could barely breathe. But it was okay, because Maddy was where she should be. High above us, probably teaching God all about the different bird calls. “Save a spot for me,” I repeated. “Save a spot for me.”
Oh, come on. Post your story, Al! It's no fun without competition!
I LOVED YOUR STORY, HOLLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AND I WANNA READ AL'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Someone else post a story! I feel really self-conscious being the only one!
Yes, please do. Hanzle, you have to post one too. The Great and Powerful Empress Holly of Doom commands it!
I can't write stories, though! :( Only poems.... I'm not a talented story writer.
COME ON AL HURRY UP AL GEEZ COME ON HURRY UP GOSH AL COME ON ALREADY haha.... sorry. bored out of my mind. forgot about this group too... >.<and it's thursday al. thursday.
YEAH, AL! He's right! And it's FRIDAY now! :P Golly, Al.
Good one, Al! :D To your story I mean... :/
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OOO! I already have an idea! :D