Welcome to the very first part of Shook! Hope you enjoy…
Shook Chapter 1: The Challenge (part 1 of 2)
“It was a blue summer sky. Spirit was walking down the street when a bird flew towards her-no, that’s unrealistic. Birds don't fly to people. She noticed that the sky was blue and… no, the sky is always blue!”
Dyan huffed and erased the first line on her notebook page for what seemed like the 100th time. She closed her notebook and slammed the table with her fist, making her lunch tray squiggle and earning her mean looks from the kids sitting around her. Writing a book was so frustrating!
Lunch time was one of the only times in the day Dyan was free to work on her book. It was her time to think while sharing a snack with her best friend, Kayla. Today Dyan sat with a hand supporting her cheek as she stared out the window with a frown on her face. She grabbed another grape from Kayla’s snack bag and crunched on it miserably.
“My Mom says that playing sports can ease stress,” Kayla told Dyan, yelling over the constant roar of the cafeteria. “Maybe you should try to get on the school girls basketball team or something.”
“Sports!?” Dyan looked at Kayla with wide eyes. “I’ve already told you, I’m not doing sports! Just tossing some type of ball around until I get injured does not sound fun. It’d probably give me more stress rather than relieve it!”
“Okay, okay!” Kayla put her hands up like she was a caught criminal. “You don’t have to get all mad at me. What about your book is even stressing you out this bad?”
“It’s my main character,” said Dyan.
“What about them? You can’t figure out who it should be or something?” Kayla asked before tossing a grape into her mouth.
“No, I know exactly who my main character is,” Dyan answered. Dyan smiled as she flipped through her notebook to her favorite page.
Dyan had learned in school that a biography is a book someone makes about the life of another person, so Dyan had created a biography page, which was a page she had dedicated to the life of her main character named Spirit.
On this page was a drawing of a girl with her stick hands bent on her hips, and to the side of her were facts and paragraphs describing her life.
Dyan smiled at Kayla. “Her name is Spirit! She’s eleven, so she’s one year older than us. She’s got a Mom, Dad and a playful dog. She lives in North Carolina, also like us, but not in Raleigh. She lives in a nice town in a big mansion and has her own room!” said Dyan.
Spirit’s life was nothing close to Dyan’s real life, and Dyan wanted to keep it that way. Dyan would never make Spirit a sad ten-year-old with no Mom, Dad or dog, who instead shared a home with a bunch of annoying kids and one mean guardian who couldn’t remember much about her. That was Dyan’s reality.
Dyan continued on. “Spirit’s courageous and adventurous. She’s not afraid of anything, not even bugs or talking back to a grown-up.”
“If finding out your main character isn’t the problem, then what is?” Kayla asked as the two of them reached for more grapes.
Dyan sighed. “It’s that fact that Spirit’s life is, well, boring. She gets up, goes to school, goes to the park, and goes home. This sounds fine in real life, but when I write it, it sounds dull. Everything I write seems to be absolute garbage.” Dyan slumped and rested her chin on the table. “Maybe my story idea wasn’t good enough.”
Kayla got quiet for a moment, then turned to face Dyan, the pink beads in her braided hair clanking together. “Maybe it’s boring because her life is too normal. Every kid can go to the park. Maybe, when she goes to the park, you should make her get attacked by aliens!”
“What!?” Dyan turned to Kayla with a concerned face. Was she crazy? “Aliens aren’t real, Kayla. They don’t appear in my book.”
“Then make them appear! I mean, this is a book, so really anything can happen!” Kayla now turned her whole body to face Dyan, her hands up and spread out as she acted out the scene. “Think about it, Dyan! One day, Spirit is at the park on the swings or something, when aliens reach out and grab her!”
“Come on, Kayla. Spirit’s parents would never let that happen. They always sit on the bench and watch her play when she’s at the park.”
“Then make her parents not around at the time. Or, make her like you! Maybe-” Kayla glanced at Dyan a moment before she continued. She mainly tried to avoid talking about foster care or Dyan’s whole foster-kid situation as it made things get awkward. But when she ended up talking about it, she usually said little and tried to keep the topic quick.
“-Maybe she’s a foster kid- with a very forgetful caregiver! The caregiver forgot to watch Spirit play at the park that day, so she would be unsupervised at the time. That way her situation is unpredictable, but still believable.” said Kayla.
Dyan looked down. “But being in foster care sucks, and aliens invading Earth sounds too crazy! I want Spirit’s life to be normal. Better than normal actually. Her life has to be amazing.”
"So basically the opposite of your life, huh?”
The kids sitting across from Dyan began to chuckle, and Dyan turned around to see the girl who had said the comment, smiling right back at them. Dyan was at level with her face even from sitting down at the table.
Kayla rolled her eyes. “Leave us alone, Cecilia . No one wants to hear you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have sat at our end of the table.” Cecilia said, using her hand to swipe some weave braids off her shoulder. She sat right across from Dyan with her friends and began to mumble. Though Dyan heard her name brought up a few times in this mumbling, she ignored Cecilia.
“Anyway, Spirit’s life is awesome, and it’s gonna be cool the whole story,” Dyan gave Spirit’s info page one last glance before closing her notebook.
“Then you already know what you want her life to be like,” Kayla said, halfway done with her sandwich. “So why are you still stuck on chapter 2?”
“Because she just feels so plain! What can I do to change that?” Dyan faced Kayla, genuinely wanting an answer.
That's when a tiny brown bug fluttered in between them.
Dyan shrieked. She got out of her seat and ran to the edge of the table. Gross, disgusting bugs! What if it landed on her!? She despised thinking of it crawling on her, tickling her arm as it ran up her skin. Everyone else at the lunch table grew quiet and looked around to find the cause of Dyan’s outburst. Some others even stood up from their seats as well.
Kayla was visibly trying to tell Dyan something, so she stopped screaming to hear. “Dyan, calm down, it's just a moth!” She yelled, her hand extended to point at it. The moth had landed in Dyan’s seat. It fluttered its wings slowly every so often.
Kayla took off her shoe and slowly rose it above her head. Then, when her dark brown eyes had locked on the bug, she slammed it.
Dyan un-cringed herself and looked around at the whole lunchroom staring back at her.
Something needed to be said to explain her whole overreaction. But… what exactly?
Find out what happens to Dyan in the next part, coming soon!
Hey there! I’m Shila! I’ve loved books since I could read, and decided I would write books I wanted to see written for others! Check my children’s book Imagination on Amazon!
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Thanks for reading!
