Our House in the Middle of Our Street

Our house it has a crowd
There's always something happening
And it's usually quite loud
Our mum she's so house-proud
Nothing ever slows her down
And a mess is not allowed

Mrs. Taylor loves our house. She walks in and tells us how she adores the carpet in the foyer and the dark red walls in our dining room and the skylights in the kitchen. Mom loves it too, because it's exactly the way she wanted it. Daddy says he loves it, but it's hard to believe him when he's so insistent on moving 3000 miles away to a house that's falling apart.

I remember the remodel. I even remember the house before the remodel. Allison doesn't. I remember the architects coming over when I was four and talking with my parents about different kinds of windows and walls and how to expand the kitchen and if it was safe to build a room above the garage. I remember the sticky blue wallpaper with white flowers that used to be in the kitchen, and the dirty white carpets that used to cover our entire house. I remember mom prying up the carpets, telling us not to step because we'd hurt our bare feet on the splinters and staples on the floor. I remember sharing a room with Allison, and having comforters that were yellow on one side and blue on the other, and beds that stacked on top of each other if we wanted them to be bunk beds, but mom wouldn't let us because we were too little and whoever was on top would surely fall off. And I remember going into that room for a time out, together with Allison because we'd both done something wrong, and Allison was so mad about being in time out that she started peeling the Sesame Street wallpaper off of the walls, and I remember telling her not to, not because I wanted to be a good kid but because I loved that wallpaper, and I remember mom coming in to tell us we were done with  time out and seeing all the wallpaper on the ground and becoming furious, and of course not believing that I had nothing to do with it, and saying we would never have wallpaper again. Boy was I angry. I also remember the playroom, just a bit. I remember that yellow ball we used to have with neon pink and orange and green spikes that stuck out, that made noises as Allison and I threw it to each other. I remember playing with it in the carpeted playroom, with the TV on top of some tall piece of furniture, some nights watching Bill Nye the Science Guy with dad and mom and Allison. I remember being really excited about the show, but Allison didn't like Bill Nye and she was sooooo boredddddd and Erin will you please come play with me? Erin you're such a mean sister. Erin this is a grown up show. Erin you're so boring. Erin Erin Erin and taking my favorite favorite blankey so I had to get off of daddy's lap and chase after her.

Anyway, I remember the remodel. I remember moving into that little house on the same street, and the builders saying it would only take six months and then mom becoming frustrated as they increased it to eight... ten... twelve... and finally finished the house fifteen months later. I remember the tall chairs in that house, how the whole thing was dark and brown and the kitchen was tiny and the backyard didn't fit a swingset. I remember how we put those beds together into a bunk bed in that house because they barely fit in our room when we put them side by side. I remember how we found out that Allison was allergic to dust mites so she got to get her own room with special pillows and blankets and I had to share with Charles, and he was still in diapers. I remember how then I was always on the top bunk because of course Charles would fall off, and that once Allison and I got Charles up there when Lizzie was babysitting and she told us that if we got him up there, we'd have to get him down, and how my parents never asked her to babysit after that. I remember watching the remodel, watching as our nice front lawn turned into a huge pile of dirt, and walking through the house a year into it, seeing the framework for the second floor and wondering how it could ever be turned back into a house again.
But now it is a house, and that was twelve years ago and it is hard to imagine it looking any different. It's not that our house is that big, but it's big enough to fit us and we love it because it's so us, so ours. It's this nice piece of art work-- the mural in the dining room that was supposed to be a painting of the farm in maryland? You know it because it's where we always take pictures before dances, but that mural took our family friend a whole summer to paint. It has rolling hills and bright blue sky and a pretty tire swing and other aspects with little resemblance the the hot, flat, buggy Maryland that I know. It shows a successful Christmas tree farm, one that in real life has never sold very many trees, and the tiny beginnings of a vineyard that has grown tremendously in the seven or so years since the mural was painted. There's a piece of art in the living room too, a more unique piece that can't quite be classified under any one medium, squares of texture stick out from it and I look at it differently every time I see it. It matches the big, light brown sofa with the green and red pillows and the white blanket. Our baby grand piano is also in that room and it doesn't match anything, but I never notice that because it's a piano and that's where it works best, and to whine about such an istrument would be a sin. And the backyard, I love the backyard. We have those two identical houses, the playhouse and the shed, and I remember that summer when dad painted them yellow and orange and green and used the extra paint to draw on the fence; circles and squares and triangles, the word BIG in big block letters and below it little in smaller lettering. The fence facing it has names of aunts and uncles and cousins, still in extra paint from the playhouses. But that was a decade ago and dad repainted the playhouse and the shed five years ago so the fences don't match anything, and Allison and her friends have spent the last two summers painting random names and inside jokes in pink and purple over the yellow and green on the fences so it's hard to tell what anything says anymore. People always ask about it, why our fence says "Kitaly" and "This is not my shirt" and under them "Big" and "Aunt Karen." They looked alright when we had a swingset in our yard, but we gave that away when Charles came home for break and now we have a nice yard and colorful fences. And to me, there is nothing wrong with that.
The rooms, they took a little more getting used to. Mine is the littlest, which offended me when we moved back because I'm the oldest, but daddy said they made the room especially for me. Of course I didn't like it, it was too small to fit the desk and the bed so Allison got my desk, and it had a random area in the corner that was supposed to be for a second closet but why would I need two closets? So there were no doors put on that area and it stuck out uncomfortably, irritably, as we tried to find wallpaper and bedding that might work. I used by grandmother's old dresser for a couple years and then one day daddy came out of the garage with a big grid of wood, all put together and painted, and asked if I could help him take it upstairs. MY DRESSER! Drawers taken out of course, but daddy had built me a dresser! And later a bookshelf, and repainted the bed...
We have a guest living with us for the next two weeks, a family friend from Australia. She's Allison's age and she'll be in my room, and I have trouble permitting that. I don't mind sleeping on the couch, but that's my dresser and my book shelf and I picked the wall paper. Really we're sharing it and she just happens to be the one sleeping in it, but will she be okay with it, will she like the little jewelry box from San Francisco and the 12x18 inch painting of a dragon flying through the sky, a gift from Charles last Christmas? How can she appreciate the drawing of my grandmother or the plastic horse that my parents call clutter? Then again, how could she appreciate the clutter in the play room either? Or all the games in the living room, and the advent calendar in the dining room? I do not think it is clutter, I think it is a home. I think it is a house that has been lived in and loved in, and it would not make sense to take out the piano or my book shelf or the patriotic carpet in the playroom. Even wth the remodel of my parents' dreams, it has funny places that stick out and clutter everywhere and it is never clean enough for guests--no house is ever clean enough for guests--but it is big enough for us and clean enough for us and colorful enough for us and that's the way I love it.

A clean house is a sign of a wasted life.

Lightening

Julia has been telling me to post for a couple weeks now and I keep starting posts and not finishing them. Well here's a finished one. It's funny how easy it is to think of things to write about when you have a stats project due the next day...

Fifteen-year-old girl struck by lightening, the NBC news banner says, killed instantly. The announcer discusses the story with an expected amount of distance--a girl she has never met hit by lightening, probably being ignorant, doing something she shouldn't have, just like every other death she discusses on local news. Within 90 seconds she's moved on to a local car robbery, but I stare at the screen, as if by gazing at it long enough I can pull back the lightening story, maybe even bring back the girl in it. Jenna always wanted to be on TV, I think, how tragically ironic that her time should come in this way. Chance of being struck by lightening? One in 280,000. That's 0.000357%. My statistics teacher, Mr. Moncada, calls numbers like this insignificant-- so small that we don't even bother to mention they exist. Round to zero, because it's basically the same thing. I know better. This is not zero. Chance of getting my sister back? That's zero. Getting struck my lightening cannot be insignificant, statistically or otherwise. It happened, I don't care how unlikely that is to have occurred, and Jenna was anything but insignificant.

How fitting, I think, that she should go like this. A burst of electricity. A shock. Too much energy even for her. It doesn't seem right to wonder, to want to know just how she died, but I do. I wonder if she did a split jump like she always does at home when something really excites her. Always did. Past tense. Did she somehow realize it was coming? Was she even worried about the storm overhead as she walked home from the bus stop in the rain? I doubt it, not Jenna. I'll bet she was dancing in the rain, practicing spins and turns and... maybe not. Maybe I'm already romanticizing the past. Maybe her hips hurt and her feet were blistered the way they always were and she was all too aware of the rain and the cold and she just kept thinking to herself how much it sucked, how much she just wanted to get home, sit by the fire with us... with me...

God, what kind of a self-centered sister am I? Why would she be thinking of me? Maybe she was thinking of the next episode of House, or whether or not to apply to Duke, or that cute guy in chem class... Was Jenna even taking chemistry? Did she have any guys in her life? Any almosts? How much I don't know about the girl I lived with for almost all of my life within memory... And now I'll never know. I'll hear what her friends tell me, maybe I'll know a bit more about her love life or her babysitting jobs, or maybe people will think it's disrespectful to talk about her and won't tell me anything. Maybe everyone else will romanticize the past just like me and all I'll hear are those generic clichés like "she could make the best out of any situation" or "she really put her best effort into all aspects of her life." These are lies. I must remind myself now of the actual truth because five years from now I won't be able to tell right from wrong. Jenna may or may not have been able to make the best of every situation, but she certainly didn't put much effort into doing so. Countless times I've left the house long past dark to go on a late night walk because I'd rather be outside on streets that my mother calls unsafe than inside hearing my mother and sister screaming, hearing them detest each other, watching my family fall apart. Or that one time when I made mom a birthday cake and before we ate it mom and Jenna had such a big argument that she threw my masterpiece at our mother in big, messy chunks of over sweet yellow cake and bright green frosting.

What if I only remember her like that, remember all the times she switched schools because she was intolerant of one or the other, remember her begging for expensive presents and then discarding them within a month, remember her whining and screaming and ignoring and lying and stealing and all those times she told our parents it was me who did it when really it was her? What if in my attempt at honesty, I forget the girl who brought home flowers just to remind us that spring had come? Will I forget her love for design, for art and architecture, how she used to spend hours drawing ideas for dresses and patterns on her binders even when she knew it would come to nothing? Will I forget all the people she was, the gymnast, the excellent student, the dancer, the artist, the model, the photographer, the flirt, the baker, the unforgettable sister? God, I hope she'll live up to that. Unforgettable, I mean. Will I forget how she used to make animal noises when she was stressed, or when she was excited, or just when the house was too quiet? Won't I remember all those school nights when she'd put a romantic comedy into the dvd player and insist that I watch it with her even if we both had tests the next day? Will I remember how some days she'd tell me everything about her life, put off everything else to talk to me, and then half an hour later act like she didn't know me, like I was just in the way? Do I want to remember that? Is it wrong of me to remember only what I want to remember?

And what if I see this five years from now, this random selection of goods and bads and in betweens, and I wonder to myself if she was actually bipolar, if somehow we'd never diagnosed her being actually insane? What if in my memory I exaggerate the past, only remember the extremes, the defining moments, the semi-random photo albums that are supposed to constitute an entire life, and the test scores and accomplishments that can be written down? What if I lose my memories of her, one by one, until some day, sixty years down the road, my granddaughter asks me about my sister and I ask her "what sister?"

Professor Cross was talking about truth in fiction early on... my sister has not been struck by lightening and I don't think she's ever brought home flowers, but you have no idea how much truth is in this story.

Spanish Foods

Professor Cross was talking today about how we need to do research for our stories, and I definitely spent a good week looking up different Spanish foods. I did eat gazpacho, paella, and tortilla in Spain (and not to ruin the story for you, but I actually don't care for rice and raw tomatoes hurt my stomach, so I avoided gazpacho and paella most of the time), but I never had alfajor (the Moroccan Christmas cookie), jamon serrano, rice pudding, or of course Sangria. Hence, a large part of the story was based on research. I intentionally picked foods that are common in Andalucia, the autonomous community (Spain's version of states or provinces) that takes up all of Spain's southern coast and goes pretty far inland as well. Part of this was because it's the region I'm familiar with, but another part was because there is a lot of food that is specific to Andalucia, and there are Moroccan influences and unique aspects of the culture that you don't find in Madrid or Barcelona. So here are the dishes from a more American standpoint:
Gazpacho: a tomato-based sort of soup served cold. Claire interpreted it as a guacamole, which concerned me because I did say that it was peach colored, but it's also a different texture. I've only seen it served in cups or mugs, and in that light it's more of a vegetable juice than a soup, though I think of a juice as something refreshing and thirst quenching, and gazpacho is much more significant for its flavor than for any sort of relief from the heat. It's served cold because it would be silly to heat it up in Spain, but not because it is a refreshment. Gazpacho varies a ton in different regions and the one I described was a more Andalucian variety, though some aspects were more typical of Valencia or other parts of Spain. It did, however, surprise me that gazpacho was made of so many different ingredients, and that something made entirely of fresh vegetables (or less-than-fresh tomatoes and bread) would be that texture.

Alfajor: I did not have alfajor in Spain (partially because I was not around for Christmas), but my host family was good friends with quite a few Moroccan families and I got plenty of other Moroccan breads and cookies. There is a tremendous Moroccan influence on Andalucia and I felt I would be doing an injustice to the culture if I failed to mention any Moroccan food in my story.

Arroz con leche (rice pudding): This is the one I have the least explanation for; it is also a Christmas dish and a food common in Andalucia, and I thought I'd be overdoing it with metaphors if every food I included had some symbolism to it. I initially had the pudding splatter on mama's painting, but that created unnecessary conflict (conflict? Or just messynessss) so I cut it and then... there wasn't any reason to change rice pudding to another food and I thought it was mundane enough that the reader would not be overwhelmed with foodyness, but it was still Spanish.

Jamon serrano: Braised ham? Is that the English word? Braised? Spain has delicious meats and they are especially good with pork, which is surprising because Morocco has such a strong influence on their cuisine and Muslims don't eat pork. My host family actually went to a Moroccan butcher so I never had jamon, but I felt I ought to include some kind of a meat. Now that I look at it, though, it seems silly to have included it because it is in a scene that already has tortilla and it doesn't add anything to the scene. *Cuts from story*

Tortilla: It is simple. Lourdes doesn't like to cook, and this is meant to show Mama as someone who really enjoyed cooking, not just that all Spanish people cook delicious meals all the time. [Nearly] anyone can make an omlette, and this is a food that is different enough to make it distinctly Spanish and something she remembers, but it's also a basic egg and potato dish that tastes good without being a ton of work.

Sangria: Because of my vast knowledge of wines (yeah, you think I'm kidding) and the significance of various alcoholic drinks in Spanish culture, I thought I ought to include something alcoholic. However, Monica went to Boston for college and by the time she was old enough to have been drinking alcohol on any sort of a regular basis (around thirteen, I was surprised by how young this was but maybe I'm a naive prism child and there are people in the US who do the same thing), her mom had Parkinson's. In any case, it wouldn't have made sense to write a flashback about drinking wine with her mother, but Sangria is very Spanish and alcohol is a pretty significant part of Spanish culture, so the fact that Monica is unwilling to touch it after talking to Lourdes (a point that I don't think I emphasized as much as I would have liked to) is both a part of her avoiding Spanish culture and on a more personal level an attempt to avoid her parents' mistakes.

Paella: Pie-eh-yuh. Double L is a y sound, like in tortilla. I definitely have a lot more memories of paella than I do of gazpacho. As in the story, Sunday is paella day for quite a bit of Southern Spain. It does tend to have seafood-- ours had mostly shrimp and snail but it varies-- and it does take all day to cook. I was surprised to find that I initially liked paella despite not liking rice, and it was because of the mixture of flavors and because it didn't really taste like rice. I did eventually get annoyed with the peppers and the fact that shrimp retained their eyes when cooked, but it is a dish for which I can find no equivalent and it's a huge part of Andalucian cuisine.

"Swimmer" Flashback

Wow, I'm having a hard time remembering the story because we've read so many stories in between then and now [Guys, this is interference and decay. Yes, I am learning something in psych =P]. Well I'm posting it anyway. As a refresher, Ned is the protagonist and Lucinda is his wife. Other characters are daughters whose names I made up

Page 403: "Japanese lanterns that Mrs. Levy had bought in Kyoto the year before last, or the year before that?"

It was going to be a long storm. Ned sat in the gazebo and entertained himself with his dreams. Once he swam the Lucinda River, he could show it to his daughter, Marie. Ne let his mind wander to the summers when he used to take her out to the beach. Marie loved the water-- she'd swim far, far out until Lucinda worried she'd never make it back. Ned thought of Lucinda calling out to Marie as Hayley and Emma built sand castles. Even at five months pregnant and shouting to Marie, Lucinda was so beautiul. "You get back here, Marie!" she'd called. "It's not safe out there!" In his mind's ear, Ned could hear Marie's childish giggle. Who was her mother to say what was safe and what wasn't? He recalled her swimming back, little head bobbing up and down. He recalled Hayley and Emma carving out a moat for their masterpiece. He recalled Lucinda worrying each time Mare's head went under water and then... the memory stopped there. He didn't remember her making it back to the shore. He didn't remember the drive home. He couldn't conjure up any more memoris of taking her to the beach. Certainly everything had turned out fine... right?

"He stayed in the Levy's gazebo until the storm passed"

Sharon Creech

Our exchange student recently asked me what my favorite book was. I told her To Kill a Mockingbird, which is accurate, but she was looking for a book to read and I realized that it requires way too much understanding of American history and of context for her to be ale to read it without asking a lot of questions. Not that she shouldn't ask questions, just that she'd probably be very confused. So I went to my second favorite book, Walk Two Moons. If you haven't read it, put down your Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo (yeah, I'm getting through Les Miserables. I started it three years ago...) and read just a little Sharon Creech. The conversation inspired me to reread Heartbeat, which is a book in poem form. Like Dante, except not about hell (or purgatory. Or heaven.), and not with a specific rhyme and rhythm, and not using grotesque imagery, and not written to spite anyone, and not in Italian. So basically not like Dante at all. I enjoy reading Heartbeat, but I'm becoming suspicious that part of why I like Sharon Creech so much is because she writes about things I enjoy, like cooking, and running, and poetry, and travelling to Europe. Then I realize her books are also about dealing with death and spending summers on farms and that these are things I have a particular aversion to, so maybe I just really like Sharon Creech. ~Researches~ There is a sequel to Love That Dog called Hate That Cat. Wow I am so impressed. Except she's probably kidding about hating cats.

This is why I enjoy it:

one l-e-a-p over to the bank

up the hill

past the old barn faded red

one side curved inward

like a big dimple

around the pasture

newly mown

smell of growing grass

slim green blades sticking

to our feet bare and brown

until we reach the red bench

beside the sycamore tree

with its mottled trunk

and wide yellow leaves

while Max checks his time

on his grandpa's pocket watch

and he looks displeased

and says we will have to

pick up the pace on the way back

and I tell him

he can pick up his own pace

but my pace is fine

thank you very much

and he says I will never get anywhere

if I don't pick up my pace

and I tell him

I don't need to go anywhere

She has good detail. And good voice. And good everything. And it makes me smile. And I realize this blog is not about book recommendations, but it is about creative writing and I felt this was something you (plural-vosotros form :P) could benefit from.

But you don't know me

Whenever people ask about my brother, they seem worried that it's a touchy subject. I guess I can appreciate this, that people are sensitive and they don't want to seem intrusive, but my brother is a human being and a pretty fantastic one at that, and it doesn't bother me to talk about him at all. It bothers me more to talk about Maryland, or my relationship with my mom, or my dad's entire side of the family, or our finances, or... it's funny. My family on the surface is so different from what we are on a deeper level, but it's not that I think I have a particularly odd family, or that I would label myself as someone who's been put in any sort of difficult situation. I haven't, and my family is completely normal... in an entirely abnormal sort of way.

My dad is smart. Not just bright, but smart. Very intelligent. You guys are prism kids, you know the difference. My dad got a 14 something on the SAT when it was out of 1600, which is not all that impressive unless you consider the fact that he fell asleep in the middle due to a hangover. Yeah. That kind of smart. It's okay, I've never seen him drunk, a fact that is probably as impressive as his SAT score when you consider that our family owns a vineyard, but we'll get to that. My parents are from the East coast, by all those fantastic monuments that look way cooler on postcards than they do in person. I guess some people get a thrill out of the National Mall, out of walking around the nation's capital and thinking how spectacularly lucky they are to be able to go there. For me, it is a place of heat and humidity, a place where in August when I was seven (and my sister and brother were six and three, respectively), my parents took us out to telll us all they knew about Washington DC and all three of us thought we were going to die of heat stroke. It is a place of yucky water and humidity and mosquitoes. It is a place of myriad arguments within my immediate and extended family. It is uncomfortable conversations with grandparents and unwanted work on an unwanted farm.

Daddy loves the DC area and actually, I can appreciate it when I'm just with him. I can enjoy taking the subway from the Vienna station to the one right by the Mall and walking around on July 4th and talking about how he used to do this every year on July 4th and watching as everyone else runs away when a little rain hits but daddy says "We're from Seattle, we're not afraid of rain," and so we stay and the rain goes away and we get a great spot for fireworks. I can enjoy sitting on the porch at the farm, eating lunch with daddy and grandpa and Great Uncle Pete and the two mennonite boys who help out, and talking about business in Southern Maryland and whether the Sangiovese will be ripe in two weeks or three, and how to mend that hole in the netting in lot four, and who said they could put a Charles Lollar campaign poster on our property? Don't you know we don't support Republicans? I'll appreciate driving down to Virginia in grandpa's truck, hearing Sam tell grandpa he's a redneck even though she has no right because he practically raised her and she turned out alright, laughing as she complains every time he forgets to turn on his turn signal, asking if the two of us can sit in the bed of the truck instead of crammed in the back, just this once grandpa, just for ten minutes on the freeway. There aren't any police in Southern Maryland, nobody would even notice. "No, Sam, your mother would kill me," and the argument ends at that. And even though I despise the fact that dad's gonna move back out there as soon as my sister graduates and take mom with him and that he'd rather spend September and October harvesting grapes than being a good father to his daughters, not to mention his son, I have too much respect for him to let that get in the way of anything. Funny how I'm so quick to forgive him...

I won't discuss my mom or my sister. Not here, not now. Maybe because I'm not as quick to forgive them, or because I know that there's still plenty that will happen in those relationships for which I'll need to be forgiven, or because talking about them feels like gossip, or because many of you actually know my sister, or because I really am trying to avoid making too many mistakes in my relationship with my mom, but maybe I'll still be writing on this blog in a few years and we'll talk about it then.

And then I have a brother. The other day I was at church choir rehearsal and Katie, who believes that her sister and my brother are destined to fall in love and live happily ever after, asked me when Charles comes home. "Who's Charles?" Ryan asked. "Her little brotherrrrr!" Katie answered. "He's gonna marry Becky and they're going to fall in lovvvvvve and we're gonna call them Beckles because they'll be celebrities and you know how celebrity couples always have those names... we considered Checky but Beckles sounded better—" Ryan cut her off, "you have a brother?" I get that a lot. Everyone knows I have a sister. She's pretty good at making her presence known, and since I was about two years old people have been pointing out that she's the extrovert, and isn't that funny, that the younger sister would be more outgoing, that she would be the bossy one, the one to tell the older sister what to do, the one who gets all the attention—it's like their roles are switched! How odd! Yeah, I guess it is, but I don't need attention to be secure in who I am so I don't really mind anymore. In any case, everyone knows I have a sister, even people like Ryan who probably haven't met her before, but a brother? Really? Yeah, he's off at school. Most people assume this is college, but Ryan has just heard Katie talk about Beckles and Becky is Katie's little sister so he knows better. "Off at school? Where?" "The worst place in the worlddddd," Katie interjects, "because he's not here with Becky!" Needless to say, Charles and Becky have never actually spoken and probably never will. "It's a boarding school a few hours away," I explain. Here's the sensitivity that I was talking about. Ryan pauses before asking, rather awkwardly, why my brother goes to a boarding school. In my head there are a thousand reasons, most of them untrue. Because my parents would rather pay for his middle school than my college. Because he can manage to stay just disobedient enough that they think the school's doing him some good and would rather not have him at home. Because my parents used to have way too much money on their hands and now they can't bring themselves to take him out. Because they want to keep me from singing at every Thanksgiving service so that we can visit him and eat a boarding school feast instead. Because he thinks he's Harry Potter and just deserves to go to a school like this. Because Allison wanted to get rid of him... "My brother's a smart kid," I try to explain. This isn't a touchy subject or some kind of scarred past, but it's still hard for me to put into words. There's a certain kind of judgment that passes subconsciously when you hear that someone goes to a "special" school. Often there's an assumption that there's a mental or physical handicap that explains why. "There's nothing wrong with him, medically or psychologically or anything else. He just... doesn't listen. Ever." I don't know how far to go. Ryan is a good person and he asked an innocent question, but what kind of a judgment will he make if I tell him, for example, that my brother left his WASL blank? Not because he was incompetent, of course, but because he saw no reason to do it. If he'd been thirty years older they would have called it a dignified protest, but in fourth grade it was disobedience to authority and cause for him to be sent to the principal's office, where he went at least biweekly for a majority of his elementary school years. Can I tell Ryan this? That my brother has spent countless afternoons in the principal's office refusing to do simple assignments? Will he think of my brother as that kid? I don't. Charles has friends, he gets along with people well, he's a good leader, he's the fastest middle school mathematician his school has ever seen, and you could spend a week with him and still not understand why my parents would send him hours away at such a young age. Or you could spend an hour with him as a teacher or instructor and understand completely.


Look at us on the surface. Grace has been asking to see my house for months so at the informal practice today we stopped by my house on our run and she just kept saying how nice it was, how it was just the right size, how the house matches our cars, how my family is flawless, how the walls are painted just right and the kitchen is big enough to get lots of use and it just seems so homey and... Grace should know better too. That part in my story where Deanna-or-whatever-I'll-call-her makes a comment about senile mothers wanting to hear from their daughters, not realizing that Monica's mother has dementia? I don't pretend that my family deals with anything as serious as dementia, but it always interests me to see how choatic life is for even the most seemingly put together people. I think short stories (well, and long stories too) are about digging deeper, finding an aspect of a character that you wouldn't learn about them in the first week or month of your acquaintance and then seizing that deeper, more valuable part of them and figuring out how it defines a character.

Spikes

Okay so this one isn't fiction. Sorry. It is creative writing though?

Just so you know, spikes are racing shoes with spikes on the front. They make you run on your toes and sometimes not slip in the mud. Like these but mine are prettier. And the actual spikes are detachable so you can put in quarter inch or 3/8ths inch or whatever size spikes are appropriate for the occasion. I think this is all the background info you need.

Sitting on my bed, cleaning out my spikes. I've been avoiding this for a few weeks, avoiding even taking them out of their bag. It's a nice drawstring bag, with blue and white curls all over it. They set it apart from everyone else's black Nike or Adidas bags, and the bag looks much better than the spikes. I take them out, turning the bag inside out to air. It needs it. I consider opening a window to let the air in, but it's raining so I'll deal with the smell. I hit the shoes against each other and dirt falls all over my—crap. No no no no no, I wipe it off as quickly as possible. The sheet is gold, and far too valuable to touch my old spike dust. "Congratulations Erin! You are admitted to Whitworth University for Fall 2011." Of course the sheet only has sentimental value, but it's pretty significant in that. Oh and it's so pretty! I open the card that came with it for what is at least the tenth time. It's so professional, so well done, just so exciting...

Spikes, Erin. Focus. I put the card on my shelf to avoid getting more dirt on it. I find a broken pen and try to clean the dirt out with that. The mud is caked in and there are pieces of grass knotted around each spike. I clean the area around each spike with the pen and shake my shoes over the trash, hitting them together as before. They smell so bad. They used to smell so nice, I remember showing one to Dominique the day after I bought them, insisting that she smell it, smell it, don't you love the smell of new shoe? No, she didn't, and she thought it was pretty weird that I would smell a shoe, even if it hadn't been worn. I remember putting them on for last year's first race, glad to be rid of my old, smelly spikes. Now these are the old, smelly spikes and I am considering getting new ones. No, I won't spend that kind of money for just one season. Keep cleaning grass out. There is dirt caked over grass caked over dirt, and some of it has tiny rocks too. I don't like the rocks- you can't get them out with a pen or with a safety pin, which is what I end up using. Why are there rocks? There weren't rocks at the last race, my last race ever. How weird- ever? Will I never race again? Will I even do track? And what a disappointment that in my last race of high school, I was one place off going to state. Not running there, mind you, but still going. If only I had... No. It's in the past. I can't learn from it and say that this summer I will go to practice every day, that would be a lie. I don't know if I'll run and I can't make that kind of a rule for myself. I don't know if I'll run in college, if only I could... Spikes. I try to take just the individual spikes out using the spike wrench, but they won't budge. They've been stuck in there for too long, caked in with too much mud. Like me last year. Stuck in commitment to the sport, to the team, to the label, caked in with the threat of losing fitness, losing respect, losing that season on a college application. I look up at the gold paper on the shelf- apparently it didn't matter that much. Maybe I should soak the spikes- would that loosen the mud? I think I did that before, but I forget. Professor Wales says we don't forget things, that they just go to a part of the mind that's harder to access. Then again, she says, it's hard to test long term memory. I think she's wrong. I think modern psychology is wrong. I forget things all the time. I forget things I should remember, experiences that I do remember for a few days, that just disappear from my mind after that. But I think I soaked the shoes before and it must have worked. Did I soak them in the sink? How rude of me, people use that to brush their teeth and faces and hands. Well then where did I soak them, if I soaked them? Where should I soak them, if I soak them now? Maybe I shouldn't. They smell terrible... can I put them in the laundry machine? With the spikes still in? What kind of trouble will I get in if I scratch the inside of the laundry machine? My mother and I do not get along, probably a lot of trouble. I do everything I can to clean the shoes, to go through the lines with the safety pin, to shake and hit the tiny rocks out, to apply just the right amount of pressure so the spike wrench doesn't slip, but it's no use. Maybe these shoes are past their time anyway. Maybe I won't do track after all. The shoes shouldn't be the deciding factor though- I don't have to clean them do they? I'll just never change the spikes, leave them caked in forever...