Hey, guys. For a long time, I have been trying to write this book. It's directed towards middle school aged girls, and I'm really excited to get it finished. Can you guys read this from a little girl's perspective and give me some feed back?
Oh, and watch out, because if you're not careful, you just might end up in my novel. ; )
And not to mention, you better not steal my ideas, you silly goose. : )
***
She sat on honey colored pews without hearing a word that was spoken, yet the message screamed everything she never heard. Like a caffeinated child in a padded candy store during the first five minutes of an unlimited recess, the words conquered every thought, dream, and sorrow. Echoing through every bit of tissue in her mind was the strength to stand. “If nothing else,” she whispered to the invisible smiling angel that sat Indian-style next to her, “I can do that.”
This woman was everything that Hope wishes she could be. That strange boldness woven into every thread of muscle, that painful gentleness poured into every broken Jell-O mold heart. Like those size five jeans that the older girls wore, this woman occupied her every desire of what she was going to grow into one day.
One day. She hated that phrase. Why couldn’t one day be this day? Maybe she didn’t go through exactly what this woman had, but she knew that God, too, had a plan for her life. She would see some little girl crying in the park because her mom was drunk again and couldn’t kiss her good night for the fourth time this week. And in that same day, some little boy would be cowered behind the discount rack at Koolot’s, sneaking a bag of frozen peas in his coat sleeves and a can of tuna in each sock because Dad lost his job for the second time this month. And when she saw that, Hope thought to herself, she would be able to be like the lady her mind was listening to. Then and only then.
Hope clenched every muscle in her body. Her lips looked like the mouth of a brand new balloon, her eyes, a rotted pumpkin on November’s hottest Saturday. Her shoulders were like frozen apples and her forearms, leathered clay. Her abdomen, like an over-dried two-by-four, sat ready to snap, and two elephants stood on her either side, pushing her knees together with their whiskered trunks. Her feet held firm to the ground as if they had been embroidered there ten times in a row. At any moment, she imagined, her body would explode into a shattered pile of unwanted dust for the janitor to clean up. Just like she wanted. Then, in seventy years, she wouldn’t have to own up to what she failed to complete. Once again, she wouldn’t own up to her dreams. “If nothing else,” she whispered to the invisible angel that sat with its face cowered into a crooked wing angled away from her, “I can do that.”
***
“What’s that like? I mean, having a best friend?” She asked the girl in the never-been-washed mirror. “Well,” she heard herself say, “I’ve heard it’s something like the most bestest, wonderfullest, supertaculous day in your life. Whatever that is, that is what having a best friend is like.” This is stupid. How dull can a girl get if her only conversation is with herself in a dirty mirror? Attempts at becoming beautiful were wiped all over her mirrored image. Streaks of red lip gloss marked her skin. Black, blue, brown, purple and every other color eyeliner scribbled frustration over the mess of her image. But when she moved her face, to the left and to the right, the markings stayed put, but her face moved. And the farther she moved to the left or to the right, her face became clean. Washed. Like she had never made an attempt at looking like the other girls at school.
“My favorite day would find me dressed in a glowy-white dress. You could see the shadow of my maturing legs when I blocked the sun low on God’s horizon, but nothing else would be shown. Like a radiating shadowed mystery I would be. My hands would hold another’s and we’d spin with our unpainted, chewed on fingernails locked together until we were so dizzy that our the unbreakable bond our hands formed broke. Our bodies would collapse onto the ground. Lying on our backs, we would make imprints of angels in the long summer grass. No one would know we were there, because only we knew about our special place. All of a sudden, evidence of flowers would begin to grow all around us right before our eyes. In ten minutes, long-stemmed flowers would become like the polka-dots on a million Dalmatian puppies. The flowers would bow down towards us, creating a yellow dome. The flowered ceiling would be a hedge of protection where nothing could pass through. The dome sealed in sunshine that would never leave. Smiles so big would cover our faces and the trapped sunbeams in our mouths would pour through the cracks in our teeth and onto our skin. Right then, our freckles wouldn’t seem like such a big deal anymore, and the homework we knew we had wouldn’t matter so much. Like the dirty laundry and undone dishes in my dad’s house, we know we’d always be there. We’d always be in our yellow daisy place no matter where we go for no other reason than that we were together and always would be."
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