Final Piece of work: Flight by Charlotte Tenebrini Steckart
Chapter 1 – The Inevitable
“No, we can’t.”
“Yes, we can!”
“No dipshit, your skull is going to connect with the water and from this high it’ll go splat.” Jeremy expresses this by slapping the palms of his hands together.
They are sitting in a circle on top of the local cliff diving hangout passing around a joint that Ben had brought them.
Lily scoffs, “Jeremy, I can do it I know I can! Just because you are going to puss out on us does not mean we are all going to listen.”
Jeremy rolls his eyes and stretches out on top of the warm sandstone cliff. “How does that saying go Lily? Do not jump off cliff just to follow your friends.”
Ben laughs loudly, “Dude you’re zooted, it doesn’t go like that.” Jeremy laughs
“Fuck off Ben, you’re just as high as I am.”
Lily has had enough of today. All she wants is to go swimming and if the guys are not going to join her, she will go by herself. She stands stretching her arms up in the air, gives them all a quick salute, a cheeky grin, then turns around and takes a running jump off the edge of the cliff.
She hears Ben yell after her, “You’re fucking crazy Lily Barns!”
She did a cannon ball just in case her head did go splat. She floats back up to the top and spots the two heads of Jeremy and Ben looking down at her. She laughs and floats on her back. Summer is over and it is back to university September 1s. She cherishes these last few days. Ben and Jeremy have been her two best friends since they were all in diapers. It’s always hard to say goodbye, and every year they talk less and less. Summer is golden and magical. Summer feels like it is never ending, but like everything it inevitably does. Sometimes she wishes she could pour all her feelings into a bottle and put them on a shelf out of reach to collect dust in the back of a kitchen. Feelings are complicated. Jeremy and Ben can be complicated. Lily wants to escape. School starts and again she is overwhelmed with the work that piles on like the snow on top of her car. The waitressing job is dull and sucks the life out of any moment she has away. Sleep comes with winter. Winter is the season that takes the most out of her life.
The light is filtering through her eyelids creating stained glass. She can hear Ben and Jeremy laughing obnoxiously through the water around her ears. She starts to swim back to shore, instead of mulling over the cold creeping into her bones. Toes finally touch the rocky bottom, and she rings her hair out before climbing back up the side of the cliff.
“There you are Lils, thought the sharks found you.” Jermey says.
Lily drops with a thud back onto her blanket letting herself air dry in the afternoon heat.
“The only sharks around Lake Superior are you two boneheads” She shoots backs.
Her high is starting to wear off. The feeling of wasted time starts to settle over her. Productivity is the thief of her generation.
Chapter 2 – Pack up your thought's girl.
Jeremy and Ben are sprawled out on their couch. Brothers. You would never guess the two were related based on personality alone; they are opposites. Jermey is a “tough guy,” or at least he thinks he is. But in truth the boy could not hurt a fly. Ben is the smarter one, the more conniving and dangerous. He mostly uses his powers of persuasion for good. Unless it is on unsuspecting shop clerks. He will always be the last to admit though that he has a problem thus the pet's name for him, Klepto. And where did Lily fit into their group? Well, she was there to keep their heads on straight for the most part, even though she suffers from delusions of a white picket fence and a golden retriever. But she knows they are delusions; merely fantasies she dreams up to waste her own time.
Lily sticks her hand back in the almost empty box of cheerios and keeps snacking. Dry cereal is heaven sent. She can feel them coating her stomach and relishes the feeling of being satiated. The time is creeping up on them. The sun is trying to say goodnight, but Lily does not want to because it means goodbye. It was the last day today; she kept thinking to herself. Again, it will be time to hit the road again. The last time until next time.
Ben yawns, startling Lily from loathing herself. “Guys, I’m about ready to hit the hay as they say.” Jeremy meets Lily’s eyes, but she does not give away what he knows she is thinking.
“Alright you two, I should head out. I still have a few things I need to pack before hitting the road tomorrow.” Lie. Sometimes she scares herself on how easy lying is for her. She stands up and starts walking towards the door trying not to look back at the two boyish grown men. Ben gets up and follows her outside.
Jermey yells from his perch on the couch, “see ya next time Barns,” and gives her a little solute.
She knows that is all she will get from him, a goodbye without ceremony. She loves that about Jeremy. Ben follows her outside into the muggy end of August heat; a final farewell from summer. She unlocks her car door and slides into the driver's seat, starts the car, and rolls the window down. Ben leans up against the door and sticks his head through the window.
“Lily, if you need money, I’m just a phone call away.” he says, knowing that she would never ask. “I know your sleeping in your car.” Sometimes Ben did not know when to leave things unsaid.
She clears her throat and grips the steering wheel. “I can handle myself; I always have.”
He sighs, “It doesn’t mean you have to.”
She put the car in reverse, “I’ll see you at Christmas time, okay? Now step back before you let all the skeeters into the Wagon” Ben steps aways from the car and just nods. Pulling out of the driveway, she looks back. Ben’s face is her favorite, she can always tell what he is thinking based on his eyebrows. She tries not to think about what he is thinking now. Lily does not cry, but on the drive back home, she wept.
When she got back to her house, the tears were dry. She opened the front door to find her dad still passed out in the armchair. She left an envelope with cash on the refrigerator and a note that said “try not to spend it all on booze this time. See you in a couple of months, Lils.” She grabbed her single backpack and sleeping bag and piled into her car, ready to drive away. She was gone before he woke up.
Chapter 3 – Gas guzzler
Her car is flashing its oil light again. Never knowing if it is a concern or if it is just on to screw with her anxiety, she looks for the nearest exit sign with a gas station. Knowing to check the oil has become one of the routines in her life that has stuck with her. Lily’s dad never amounted to much more than a self-taught mechanic and a drunk, but at least he taught her something; always check the oil and always aim for arteries. She signaled towards the next exit the steady ticking of the turn signals bringing her back from darker thoughts. Pulling into the gas station she parks the old station wagon near the closest exit. Paranoia is there for a reason. 20-year-old women driving across the country have and always will be in unspoken danger. Another risk that was calculated on her part. Worth getting as far away from that old town in Michigan as her the Wagon could get her.
Pocketing her knife in her belt Lily unlocks the door and steps out into the afternoon heat of rural Georgia. She opens the back door and tears off a piece of old newspaper. Popping the trunk, she examines the engine and then pulls the dipstick out, wiping it down with the paper, puts it in and pulls it back out again. Full. A sigh of relief washes over her. The gas station she chose for this mini detour is not exactly what she would call a Kwick Trip, but more of a side road for hunters where anything can happen to you if you are not a local. Lily has always prided herself though on being smart. Feeling the weight of the knife tucked away at her side is a small comfort. Hopping back into the car and locking the doors, Lily pulls out of the gas station and is back on the road. She has always enjoyed this drive, it feels like pausing time, traveling never counts as real life.
The summer had been bittersweet. Every year it is the same when she leaves, she changes, but at home it will always stagnate. She swears her dad was right where she left him earlier that year of winter break; on the same old couch with a bottle of jack half empty and football on the tv. How the fuck does he even feed himself, a question she never has found the answer for. Every time she pulls up her long windy driveway guilt washes over her. A constant battle with herself, you get to leave, you are leaving him. Jeremy and Ben are the only reason she comes back, she tells herself. But there is a small part buried deep down that knows it is to check on her dad.
The road keeps going on ahead; Lily feels lightheaded from the hunger, but money for gas is all she can afford.
3 Revised in Class Prompts
Prompt #5
My special ability is bullshit. I can tell anyone anything and they will believe me. The key is to figure out what they want to hear and tell them that. It is that simple. For example, someone asks you to do the dishes, you tell them you do. Now the key here is to do at least one dish, that is it. When the person comes back and asks you why you have not done the dishes, you say, I did. Because you did. The secret is in the wording. They did not say all the dishes, only do the dishes. That is my secret ability.
Prompt #7
The smell coats my nostrils, suffocating my senses. I look down at my hands, red from the cold. When did my fingers turn wrinkly. It is like one day I woke up and did not recognize my own hands anymore. My own hands, the first thing to touch my daughter were these hands. I feel like my stomach is going to fall out of me and sink into the ground below. I start to feel my legs shake and that is when I know if I do not start running I will my legs will never work again. My body moves without my control, feet rhythmically slapping against the cement. I make it to the bus stop. The snow begins to fall.
Prompt #10
Staring at the now cold coffee in front of her she thinks back to a few weeks ago. He left without saying goodbye. They had been together for 5 years. Sure, they had their minor arguments like every young couple does, but this one was different. It had been a long day in the office, coming home late had been the usual for the past couple of months because her company was working on something new. It was a game changer in the industry. The previous night Derek had confronted her; he told her all she cared about was work. He accused her of not loving him anymore and he felt like he was the third wheel in their relationship with her job being the second and her being the first. “A good explanation of a tricycle” she told him, but not their relationship. Of course, she tried to explain that this new project was the most important thing in her life right now, the outcome would affect the rest of her career. It could not fail. He slept on the couch that night. When she got home from work the next night, all his things were gone. Now sitting on the couch, she could not feel anything except the empty space he left behind.
A Process Analysis/Reflection which you discuss:
I think that as an artist I have found my voice and the type of writing style I like to use. I used to start a lot of pieces and never finish them because I got bored with them or did not think it was that good. This class is the first time I have ever felt confident in my abilities to paint pictures of my own characters. My characters have more depth than they ever had purely because I started to narrate stories in my own voice and not try to be something else. I used a lot of my own feelings for inspiration and that works best for me. I do not feel like I have stayed the same because of all of this. I think in the future I want to carry on with some of the prompts I used in class, especially the ones I am submitting in my portfolio. The one I feel could go the farthest right now is Flight and I am excited to continue working on it. What worked best for me in this class is working outside of the classroom on my writing. I am the type of person that must be in the mood to create or not. A lot of the time I find myself waiting for inspiration, but the prompts really helped. Lastly, I feel the person that helped me the most in this class was you because you pushed me to keep adding to my workshop piece and the feedback, I got from you was the most valuable. I felt that a lot of my peers did not understand my story, so their feedback was not valuable to me. Thank you so much for an excellent semester. I took one of your classes before in my freshman year, which is why I signed up for it. I love the way you teach English and provide a lot of freedom for your students to grow as writers and write about what they are interested in.
Comments