Samples
Obviously, the day by day writing project has been given up. On a more unfortunate note, all writing has been given up recently. With nothing more to offer except for writing from the past few months, FREE SAMPLES (free as in free for reading, not free for taking):
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Amanda
Alice is my sister, my best friend, my twin, my competition. I can’t say that she’s beautiful without seeming conceited because we’re mostly identical. But the things that I think are truly special about her are the things that no one else notices unless you look closely with the intention of noticing our discrepancies.
She has three freckles above her left elbow that, when connected, form an equilateral triangle; there was always a triangle floating right above her elbow because people couldn’t seem to resist drawing the three, short simple lines, to make the dots have a purpose. She has a tattoo of a strawberry on her left hip. She had it done when I told her that I thought tattoos were trashy and would never get one. Her eyes have more green in them than mine do and at the top of her ears, the curve of the cartilage is bumpy and jagged, as if someone took a slice of cartilage off whenever she was little.
These were all of the things I told the police when I woke up the morning after she had left and my parents were meeting with two officers at our breakfast table and they asked me for any information I might be able to supply that would help them find her.
“Be serious, Amanda,” Mom scolded. “We need real facts. What was she wearing yesterday? You saw her. Don’t you remember?”
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Alice
I used to call her Mandy when we were younger until she put her bossy pants and her snooty voice on and authoritatively commanded me to stop. She was always bossy but I was always the boss. I decided what we would do, how much was too far, where we would go, and just what needed to be said to get us out of trouble. When she started to get snippy and tried to lay down some orders of her own, sometimes I would follow them to give her a little sense of power and control, and sometimes I wouldn’t, just to remind her who had the real backbone of steel. I could always get her to back down first, no matter what the occasion or emotion.
When she realized she would never be able to direct me to do her bidding, she settled for being the better twin in every way. She was the prettier, smarter, sweeter, faster twin; she wore confidence like this insult-proof rain slicker, she studied like nobody’s business but only when she thought people weren’t paying attention so that it seemed as if it all came naturally, nobody knew better than Amanda it was easier to catch boys with honey than with vinegar, and she could pick up on subtext in a second and begin to defuse the situation while I continued to bumble around awkwardly.
My hair was ash blonde, cut short and shaggy at my shoulders with bangs that hadn’t been trimmed in months and always hung in my eyes but Amanda somehow managed to keep the sun-bleached golden tint from the summer with her all year round. She grew it long and curled it perfectly every morning so that it looked effortless and natural. Her eyes were sparkling blue, almond-shaped with thick, dark eyelashes, while mine were mixed with green and never settled down on a precise color. We had the same average height and build; for me, the slight curve and bend to my frame was in all the wrong places but Amanda worked it like a pin-up model.
No matter what Amanda says, I wasn’t always the bad one. I was merely discontent, stubborn, independent. Amanda might be the golden child when graded by the report card and the shining example of hard work and good attitude but, when she let loose, it was hard to control her.
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Amanda
Do you know where she is? Do you know where she’s gone? Why didn’t she tell you? I thought she told you everything. What’s going on? Why’d she leave? What aren’t you saying?
I was so bombarded with questions every time I walked out of my room that it was all I could do to keep from screaming and walking right back in to shut and lock the door and stay holed up for another few hours. From our parents, from our siblings, from her ex-boyfriend that she had never formally broken up with but was assuming that their relationship was over the way that she had left without saying goodbye, from her best friends, from our shared close friends, from her boss; they all wanted to talk to me, but only so that I would answer their question, to make it my number one priority to find an answer for them.
I wanted to tell them all to go to hell and leave me alone but that was exactly what Alice would’ve done and we had spent our whole lives doing things just to contradict the others’ personality and demeanor. But even with all of the effort we put into pushing ourselves to opposite ends of the spectrum that was the one thing that tied us together, forever and for always: that we were complete and extreme polar opposites.
In the house, breakfast had become the most oppressing affair of the day. It was one of the two times that I was forced to sit in close proximity to my parents for a sustained amount of time and it was the first thing that happened when I woke up.
During the summer, Mom had always made it a point to go in later to work so that she could enjoy breakfast with all me and Alice and Dad. During the school year, things were too hectic and our mornings too rushed to try and make time for this family bonding; we were lucky sometimes if we got to see her at all in the evenings or even more so if we got to sit down and have family dinner together.
Most days this summer, or at least since Alice had left, I succeeded in avoiding my parents for the majority of my day. I would wake up, endure family breakfast if I couldn’t escape it by feigning sleep every time my dad tried to shake me awake, then resign to my room for some chore or task that I would make up on the spot when my parents asked me what I was doing with my day, like sorting my sock drawer or rearranging the furniture in my room. Afternoons I spent on the roof of the carport, tanning and forcing myself to struggle through a book from Alice’s bookshelves, which were full of mostly classic literature.
In the evenings, I said I was going out with friends but instead, most nights, I drove out to the park and walked the trails or went for long drives in my dad’s car through the country, trips that took me nowhere, almost like I was trying to work up the courage to strike out and follow my sister. I never made it further than the Exxon just before the highway entrance ramp.
“What are you doing today, champ,” my father asked affably as he picked up our cereal bowls and took them to the sink.
Mom watched me with narrowed, suspicious eyes from the head of the table, as if any second I was going to bolt for the window—doors being too obvious and childish for someone of my capabilities—and disappear, just like Alice. I couldn’t remember the last time I had heard her say something to me, not even a ‘good morning’ or ‘I love you.’ I think it might’ve been last Tuesday.
I looked up and stared first at my mother, then at my father and said words that came out of nowhere, “I’m going looking for a job.”
Mom frowned and fiddled with the spoon that rested just to the right of her coffee mug that ironically read WORLD’S GREATEST MOM. She looked like she wanted to say something to me but had set a personal goal to go a full week without saying one word to me. Dad shot a concerned look at Mom, then turned back to me to give me an encouraging grin.
“That sounds great, pumpkin,” he said. “Do you want me to give you a ride to the mall?”
The weight of my statement hit me as I realized that this wasn’t a lie I could play off as having completed, like organizing my sock drawer or sorting through my closet.
“Do you want me to see if you can have your old job back at the firm,” Mom offered hesitantly, looking at me quickly then letting her eyes skitter away, back to focusing on the vase in the middle of the table.
“I,” I choked on the words. “I’ll figure something out on my own.” I shoved away from the table and bolted upstairs like the shy new girl on the first day of class.
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Alice
When I first heard the story of the prodigal son, I was totally on the side of the son that stayed behind. Why did the other son get to go out and party and have everything he wanted without ever having to suffer or work for it while the other one stayed behind and slaved away without so much as calf to feed to his friends? It took many homilies and Sunday school classes and explanations to finally get that the story wasn’t about loyalty and service at all, or not really, because it was more about forgiveness above everything else. I figured it was just an indicator at how bad at forgiveness I was.
Now, the story of the prodigal son applied to me more than I had ever expected it to. I had always imagined that I would be the one to stay put; that I would never even have the opportunity to walk out dramatically. Things like that, I could always be confident that Amanda would take care of.
Still, the story was one of the first things that came to mind as I cruised at an easy 70 mph out of town and on to the highway. I envisioned the faces of my family and friends when I walked back into their lives after so brusquely and rudely disappearing weeks earlier. Would my mother cry? Would my father even talk to me? The only thing that I could see as unchanging was Amanda.
As I considered everyone else’s reactions, a part of me felt like panicking; I had never been this far out on my own without some sort of idea of the direction I was heading on or a clear destination at the end of the road. The fear was so overwhelming I almost turned around and drove back home where I could sneak back inside, climb back into bed, and no one would ever have known how close I was to walking out except for Amanda. The stubborn, incorrigible part of me told me that no way would I ever go back now until I had found what I had set out looking for, which was, a part of myself.
For hours I drove, thinking about anything and everything in between. The simplest and most direct route to the next port where I would be forced to make another decision on direction was to stay on Business 59 and drive straight all the way to Houston. I considered taking a plane to Maine or Florida or Jamaica but then I had to cross off the last one because I didn’t have my passport with me.
I counted up all of the cities I could reach by car that had friends in them who would be willing to take me in, no questions asked, or join me in my aimless, purposeless quest. Then, when I had reached the staggering number of five, I began counting all of the places I could reach by plane and the likelihood that I wanted to spend that sort of money on last minute airfare if my parents were just going to track down the debit card charges and try and convince me to come back. I thought of all of the places I had wanted to go as a kid but Disney World seemed sort of ineffective for soul searching and Paris was really far away and probably too expensive.
My bank account balance was probably somewhere around $300: enough to get me to Dallas or Louisiana comfortably but not much further. There was a neat little stack of graduation checks in the bottom drawer of my desk back at home, waiting to be taken and cashed at Wells Fargo, a task my mother had been expecting me to do this morning, before I had left.
The one check that I was most preoccupied with was one from my grandparents for $15,000, a good chunk of my inheritance and a gift that they bestowed on all of their grandchildren upon their high school graduation with the intention of it being used on their college education. It could get me all the way to Disney World and keep me there comfortably for the rest of the summer. However, while my time to be absent was still a hazy question mark I didn’t want to be gone all summer but I wasn’t heading back home sooner than two weeks.
It was a slow, creeping sensation that tickled at the back of my neck, the logic I thought I had left behind on Business 59 when I had flown through the brief town of Edna. I had no money, no verifiable or semi-distinguishable plan, no friends and I had screwed things up with my family so irreparably that not even in my dreams could I envision things ever going back to the semblance of normal.
When my phone began to ring I finished it out of the front pocket of my school backpack; usually packed with papers, books and pens, it was now crammed with things I never imagined it might hold like shampoo, a toothbrush, and underwear. “Hello,” I sang when I flipped the phone open and pressed to my ear with my shoulder while I held one hand on the wheel and fumbled with the other to turn down the radio volume.
“Alice,” the voice on the other end of the line said coolly and with little emotion. “This is your mother.”
“Oh shit,” I yelped, dropping the phone in my panic.
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Amanda
“Anyway,” Alice said, finally seeming to come back to the present, the melty-smile in her voice gone. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Shoot,” I grunted, narrowly missing taking out the hand I was using the steady the box as I stabbed at it ineffectively with the scissors.
“I need you to cash that check,” she said quickly, “the one from the grandparents.”
“Alice,” I scolded with a slight gasp, momentarily distracted from my task. “That’s for college, not financing your spur-of-the-moment quest as a vagabond.”
“Just do it, okay,” she snapped. “I’ll worry about college and all that stuff when I get there. Besides, I’m not planning on spending all of it, I just need it for gas and food and incidentals and stuff. And to buy you souvenirs, of course.”
“I tell you what,” I sighed. “Since I doubt you authenticated them before you left and I’m going to have to forge your signature, I’m going to call the shots. I’ll cash all your other graduation checks, you probably have a couple thousand in there all together, and I’ll give you my graduation checks, too. But the grandparents’ check isn’t going to be touched until you get back. If you go to college, you’ll thank me later and pay me back for the rest of the money. If you don’t, then a chunk of that goes to pay me back and the rest is for you and Mom to fight over.” There was silence as she struggled to accept the rationality of my plan. “Fine,” she huffed. “But if I run out of money, or get thrown in jail or have to pay hospital bills, I’m expecting you to bail me out, and with that money too; I hate owing you anything.” “You owe me your life,” I scoffed. “Get used to it.” “Amanda,” Julian said, sticking his head around the corner into the break room, which was more like the broom cubby, but a bit bigger because it was where copiers came to wither away and die. “I need you to—why are you on your phone?” “Sorry,” I grimaced. I held the scissors in one hand, the box between my knees, and slipped the phone from my ear. “It was an emergency. What did you need me to do?” “Man the front while I run some errands real quick.” He didn’t seem too torn up by my breach of common employee protocol and I could hear the bell ringing on the front door as he jogged out. “Where are you at,” Alice demanded curiously. “Nowhere,” I said quickly. “I’ve gotta go, though. I’ll think about it and try and let you know. Where are you, by the way?” “A gas station outside of Beaumont,” she said, her voice sounding distracted and far away, sort of like how Mom’s sometimes got when you called her at work. “I spent a few days in Houston with some friends. I’m going to New Orleans.” “Bring me back something made of alligator,” I instructed. “Love you.” I waited for her to return the sentiments before sliding my phone shut and back into my pocket. <> <> <> <> <> <>
