The Classic Scene

* Young adult fiction. How…charming. For this prompt, I chose a fairly recent book. It’s the first five pages of Endure by Carrie Jones, the fourth, and last, in her series Need (which I would not recommend). Warning, major spoilers. Anyway, the scene I chose to do is classic. Let me boil it down to the essentials: see there’s this guy Nick, who is of course a werewolf, and his girlfriend, Zara, has become a pixie, which of course werewolves, and Nick in particular, despise. For this exercise I kept the setting and dialouge, but changed points of view. I've decided to explore what's in Nick's thick head. Feel free to critique until your fingers hurt. I'm tough; I can take it. Happy writing everyone! *

Nick dumped the noodles in the strainer. Water drained, hitting the sink like a sporadic rain. Each drip was a crack in the thick silence. The sharp sound reminded him of snapping bones. He ground his molars and set the strainer in the sink with exaggerated care. Even that miniscule movement was loud to his hypersensitive ears. Perks of being a werewolf. At the moment it was less than advantageous. Everything was too loud in this horrible quite. His breath was magnified to heavy pants and he could hear his heart thudding rapidly in his chest. Worse, he could hear her heart.

It was far too fast for a human.

Zara was perched on the dinning room chair not five feet away from him. Her back was ramrod straight and her hands were clenched tightly in her lap. She looked so deceptively fragile, as if one hard blow of unforgiving wind would shatter her. He remembered when he first saw her, ill-dressed and slipping in ice at the school’s parking lot. He remembered her bewildered, grateful smile when he had helped her get to the school’s entrance, the way her cheeks had flushed and her eyes had sparkled. She’d been so innocent with her peace signs and tattered jeans, determined to save the world one Amnesty International letter at a time.

Nick grieved for that girl. This—thing in front of him couldn’t be the girl he had loved. She was a pixie hiding her true face behind a glamour. He tried to picture her with her mask gone. Tried to image her skin a deep blue, her nails sharpened to claws, her mouth full of vicious teeth. She had once been terrified of becoming one of the very things they fought.

Now she was one, and he despised her for it.

He prepared a plate of pasta for himself. His knuckles clenched on the wooden spoon, and he forced his grip to loosen before it snapped. Werewolf strength. Another perk of changing into a wolf. As a pixie, Zara was now as strong, if not stronger, than him.

He needed to stop thinking.

“Do you want some more spaghetti?” he grated abruptly. He hadn’t intended to ask her and only did so to break the heavy silence. He knew she didn’t want more; she had hardly touched the food on her plate. She didn’t need to consume food like he did to keep her energy. Pixies, they had witnessed first hand, could steal the energy of others to quench their need. And now she was one of them.

Zara startled at his voice, flinching in her chair. He raked a hand through his hair, wet from the cold Maine snow, and wondered why the hell he had agreed to come over. Why did everyone think they would work it out? They knew his hatred of pixies, and yet they constantly forced him into contact with one. Who didn’t matter in comparison to what.

“I’m good for now, thanks,” she said with stiff politeness. He wished she’d snap or yell at him for his distance. Anything was better than this stunted half-conversation and crackling tension.

He grunted to acknowledge her words, delaying the inevitable conversation. She said nothing as he took his seat, but he could feel her eyes on him. He avoided concentrated on his dinner. The bright yellow of her plate could be seen from the corner of his eyes.

She flipped over her bamboo fork on the edge of her plate and said, “You know, you can hate me and still talk to me.”

Nick flicked her a glance.

“I mean, you hated Ian and you talked to him. I hated Megan and I talked to her,” she continued, referencing two of their past adversaries. Both had been pixies. “Evil pixies,” Zara would have corrected him, but Nick didn’t differentiate. What pixie wasn’t evil?

“Hate and rudeness don’t have to go hand in hand.”

Zara sounded so stiff. Her fork fell off her plate at the end of her sentence. It landed with a sharp clack. He studied her while she picked it up, searching for traces of the girl he’d once loved. Every aspect of her appearance was the same. If he couldn’t hear her too-rapid heart, if he couldn’t smell her sickly sweet scent cut with a jagged spice, if the beast inside didn’t recoil at the sight of her, then maybe he would be fooled. But he wasn’t, and he never would be.

“I don’t hate you, Zara.” Nick lied. He didn’t know why. Maybe some small part of him refused to let go of the affection he’d held for her as a human. He should have admitted his loathing. Instead he heard himself continue. “I hate this situation. I hate that when you first got here you were this normal, depressed, pacifist girl who cared about human rights and peace and now you’re this…Now you spend your nights hunting down evil.” Meaning other pixies. “Now you kill without blinking an eye and it’s just part of your routine. I hate what you’ve become.” I hate what you are.

With every word her face paled. She blinked wounded eyes at him, and he could tell she was struggling not to react. Her heart raced from the sudden rush of adrenaline he could smell on her. Her hand clenched on her fork. Nick wondered if she was battling the urge to stab him with it. He’d seen her do worse; he wouldn’t put it beneath her.

He stood abruptly. The metal of his fork scratched the ceramic of his plate as he scraped the rest of his uneaten pasta in the trash. “I’ll clean up,” he said. “You go get ready. It’s our night to patrol.”

Nick hoped they ran across some pixies. He ached to tear something apart with his claws. The sight of Zara—of this pixie not five feet from him—had his beast craving escape.

“We need more people to help us patrol,” Zara said, her tone edged with annoyance.

It was a familiar argument, one they’d had a dozen times in the last two days. Nick wanted to growl at her.

“It would just put them at risk. Humans can’t fight pixies.” She should know that. She used to be human.

But she didn’t give up. “We could make an army, train them. Devyn and I have been talking about it a lot.”

When had Devyn, his best friend and a fellow were, talked to Zara? Why couldn’t everyone else understand that she wasn’t Zara anymore? She was a damned pixie, not the peace-loving human she used to be. Nick swallowed and forced his muscles to relax. He was anxious giving a pixie his back, but he couldn’t bring himself to face her.

“You’d be sending them to slaughter.”

Zara was quiet as she watched him run his plate under hot water. He wondered what she was thinking. What did pixies think about other than killing? Her sickly sweet scent grew as she drew closer. His muscles wound tight enough to snap.

She put her plate on the counter. “It feels like you hate me,” she said.

He considered a thousand things to say, but finally grated, “Well, I don’t.”

 

There was a brief pause. A desperate hope had entered Zara’s eyes. He loathed the sight almost as much as her smell. He knew she would try to talk again later, and his stomach clenched with dread.

“Let’s go patrol,” she suggested.

He gave her a clipped nod and wondered why he had lied.

Tragic but Convenient

Hey, everybody!  Here is my not-so-great Hunger-Games-inspired attempt at this prompt.  I tried to make it so it would mostly make sense even if you haven't read the books, but, that being said, if you haven't read the books, it also gives some stuff away (nothing major though, I think) from Part I of the first book, so if you care about spoilers, just be forewarned.  Anyway, please feel free to critique if you are so inclined and I can't wait to see what you all post!

            My hands fold and unfold restlessly in my lap, my pulse throbbing in my fingertips.  For a moment, my head feels cold and numb, and I can't tell if I'm on the verge of passing out from anxiety, or if it's just the Capitol climate control.  I decide on the latter, tell myself that I am not panicking because this is not a big deal.  I just need to tell a near-stranger the details of my long-standing, unrequited love for a girl who may already be plotting my murder.  Compared with what awaits me at tomorrow's interview—and then, of course, in the Games after that—this should be nothing.

            Haymitch should be here by now, counseling me on the best methods to win over the crowd during my interview so that they will be more inclined to send me food if I find myself starving in the arena, or a weapon if they are deluded enough to think that I'm capable of using it.  He is late, unsurprisingly.  As I wait for him to decide whether trying to save my life is worth the effort, my eyes bounce around the sitting room on the twelfth floor of the Training Center, trying to find something even mildly comforting in the stark blue-white lighting and the perfectly polished lines of the sleek, neon-hued furniture.  Under the fluorescent lights, even my own hands have become eerily pale and unfamiliar, and the futon beneath me, with its lavender leather and strange golden sheen, exudes an air of irritation over my marring its beauty by sitting on it.  I find myself calculating idly how many dead people have sat here before me.  Seventy-three Games times two District 12 tributes, plus two extra from the second Quarter Quell, minus one Haymitch, leaves one hundred forty-seven.  I wonder how often they change the furniture.

            Only now does it occur to me that my anxieties may be misplaced.  In less than a week, most likely, I'll have made that number one hundred forty-eight, and I'm sitting here nearly faint over the prospect of discussing my feelings.  Then again, we all know my death is inevitable—unless I happen to be provided the opportunity to bake the other tributes to death—so it's probably best that I'm not dwelling on it anyway.

            A cough from the doorway behind me.  Haymitch has apparently determined that my life may have some worth.  "Well, then..." he says, easing onto the couch opposite me, leaning back casually.  "Not feeling the love for your District 12 buddy anymore, hmm?"

            It had occurred to me that my request for individual training for the interview might be interpreted this way, as an acknowledgement of Katniss as my enemy, so I had been prepared for this kind of reception, but the irony of Haymitch's wording snags unexpectedly in my brain and makes me falter anyway.  "Actually, I—I have a plan.  For both of us, I mean."

            Haymitch's eyes narrow almost imperceptibly as he waits for me to explain why, in that case, only one of us is here.  He gives off the impression of having just quietly decided that I may be insane.

            "I didn't think she would... agree with it."  To state things mildly.

            He laughs wryly, as if her disagreement was a given.  "Okay, well, try me.  What've you got?"

            My heart is in my fingertips again, and the harsh lighting makes Haymitch look harsher than usual, and unsympathetic.  Not the kind of person I'd normally turn to with my innermost secrets and emotions.  On the upside, I'll be dead within the week, and that at least has some liberating consequences.

            "I tell them I'm in love with her," I say.  "That I've had a crush on her for years, but she never noticed me, and now that she has..."  I trail off, staring at the pristine white floor and trying futilely to distance myself from the situation.  "You know.  All this.  It should drum up some sympathy for both of us."

            A smile has slipped onto Haymitch's face, and it makes me feel like a conspirator in a particularly crafty plot.  It is decidedly unsettling.  "It should?" he asks.  "It will!  You will be all everyone's talking about.  And with your interview last"—a brief laugh interrupts—"you'll knock the other tributes right out of all the tiny Capitol brains.  It's perfect.  You'll both have sponsors before you even clear the Cornucopia."

            His enthusiasm, verging on giddiness, puts a sickening feeling in the core of my stomach.  Of course I had known that my plan was perfect.  Of course I had known that he would be overjoyed with it.  But as he rambles about the best timing for my bombshell and the various types of small talk I should engage in before it, I can't help but feel that he is happy for my tragedy.  It will make his job much easier.

            "So, details," he says.  "Let's get your story straight."  As if I am making this up.

            I think of the things that I can't tell all of Panem.  I can't talk about that day in the rain, how she looked then, independent but desperately alone.  I can't talk about burning the bread so I could throw it out in her sight, give her something without raising my mother's suspicions, choosing our most expensive kind, with the golden raisins and walnuts, because it had the most energy to give a starving family.  I can't talk about all the years after that, watching from the kitchen when she would come to the door to sell my father an illegally hunted squirrel or an illegally gathered bunch of berries, looking like she had just conquered the world and was carrying it around in her game sack.

            "We're in the same class at school," I say finally.  "I always wanted to talk to her, get to know her better, but I never had the nerve."

            "Good," Haymitch nods thoughtfully.  "Simple and unglamorous, but relatable.  I like the approach."

            He moves on, discussing my supposed sense of humor and natural charm.  His matter-of-fact compliments would make me uncomfortable if I were paying any attention, but I'm still stuck in front of the kitchen stove back home, with two loaves of bread in my hands and a girl starving outside.  It was so easy then, protecting her.

            When the four hours of training for the interview are over, Haymitch leads the way to lunch, but pauses in the doorway of the dining room, a thought just now occurring to him.  He turns to face me and lowers his voice.  "Hey, umm... you're not actually in love with her, are you?"

            I can't say anything.

            He looks pale and weary in the fluorescent light.  "Damn."

Relevant

Sentimentality

Dead Fish Afternoon! I miss you all so much. It was so great to work with you over the past week, and I could not be more proud of you all. I hope that many of you will stay involved with the blog and with each other. My email address is mitchellr@susqu.edu and you are all welcome to email me any time you like, for any reason. If you all want to add your email address as comments to this post, we can get a good contact list together. Alright! Here we go, the first writing exercise in the post-camp era.

Since I'm feeling so sentimental, I thought we could take a look at sentimentality in fiction. Where better to look, then, than to young adult fiction. We all had plenty of laughs at the melodrama of Twilight last week, lines like this beauty, "It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape." We can all laugh because we know, looking from the outside, we can see how sentimental these lines can be. But, sadly, these are mistakes we can make ourselves. We can all write lame lines, even characters. Your challenge this week is to take a character from young adult fiction, Twilight, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games,  anything from the genre, and write a scene (scene, scene, scene!) that reveals character and motivation in an earned and felt way, rather than cheaply or melodramatically. I think this should be a fun one. Be ambitious. Be imaginative. Be writers.

Oh, and one more thing, in the spirit of this exercise, I'm jumping head first into The Hunger Games today.

Bobby doesn't always...

Princeton Voice

Hey guys! I miss you all like crazy. Bobby, bring on the prompt! Can't wait to see what everyone posts.

If you want to see our site, the Princeton Voice, in its initial phases, please visit www.princetonvoice.com. As of now, it only has my work on it (which isn't very good, to be quite honest) but it should give you an idea of the basic skeleton. We're still working on a log-in page and the submit work column.

Please let me know if you would like to contribute work! If you have anything that's ready, send it to me in an email (anithaahmed@gmail.com) and I'll put it up right away. I'd like to have a solid base of work before I make it totally public.

Miss you guys tons and tons!
Love,
Anitha