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Shook Chapter 11 Part 2: Quite A Far Drop
The Blues have hiked to the top of the huge rock formation in the desert. Time for pictures! But right at the rocks edge, Maya starts to pass out!
Mr. Blue muttered something under his breath and walked Maya back into the shade.
Dyan’s heart raced. Maya had been fine a second ago! They were just posing for pictures together, and now she was passing out!
That could have been me, couldn’t it? Dyan thought as Maya’s eyelids lowered. Dyan began to imagine if she were the one passing out! Then she remembered what she said she would do in those situations. Sit down. Relax. Drink some water.
“Maya, sit down!” Dyan ran over to Maya and Mr. Blue. “Shouldn’t she relax first!?”
Mr. Blue turned to Dyan, and nodded quickly before setting Maya down in the dirt in the shade.
Dyan sat next to Maya. Passing out wasn’t contagious right? Dyan chose to think not while she sat and watched Maya breath in and out loudly through her mouth.
“You’ve got to calm down, Maya. Relax.” Dyan told her.
“Easy for you to say!” Maya yelled to her. “You’re not the one passing out!”
“Uh, think about…dogs! Like Bear, or even think about…” Dyan searched her brain for calming things to think about. After a second she yelled out anything to take Maya’s mind off passing out. “Think about the time we went to that haunted train station!”
Maya began to laugh. “You yelled, Hey ghost! Come on out! And then screamed like a squirrel on fire when that turn table started to spin.”
Even Dyan couldn’t keep a frown at that memory. She laughed. “And remember how big the trains were?”
Maya nodded. “Like, three of me stacked on top of each other could maybe touch the top of one train! ”
Mr. Blue walked back over to the two and turned to Dyan. “Is she feeling better?”
Dyan looked at Maya, who said “Yeah, I guess.”
“Good. take her down the hill to get some water, will you Dyan?”
Dyan nodded. After all, she had gotten to see the view from the huge hill, and she made sure she would remember it.
Dyan began silently leading Maya down the hill, the only sound was their sneakers crunching through dirt and pebbles.
“I don’t need you to hold me, Dyan,” Maya said, slipping Dyan’s arm off her shoulder. “But thank you for talking me down the hill.”
Dyan thought this was the least she could do for Maya. She wouldn’t even be here in Arizona now if she hadn’t met Maya. If Maya hadn’t asked her to stay with her family for a night back at that bookstore.
“Thanks for inviting me to stay with you and your family,” Dyan looked over to Maya and smiled.
“Don’t mention it. You’re fun to be around Dyan. It’s almost like you make fun things happen.” Maya said between breaths.
Dyan didn’t know where Maya got that idea from. “Me? More like your family! I’ve faced so many fears because of you all! Your family is always doing something fun! You guys are like the perfect family!” Dyan said, remembering all those nights she'd lay in bed and imagine if she had a huge, loving family such as Maya’s.
“You just happened to come around when we were about to go on a family vacation. My family is not even close to perfect. My siblings can be so annoying, you’ll wanna hit them. And Mom and Dad can be mean, they’re just acting all nice because you're here. They’re always yelling that Wild Yonder plays too much video games, or that True is a little drama queen, which is the truth but-” Maya’s eyes widened. “Oops! Forget I said all that. I didn't mean to talk about my family like that.”
“No way. Your life is the best. Those problems all seem minor. At least you have siblings and a roof over your head.”
Maya looked at her angrily. “Look, I know I haven’t had it really bad, but my life isn’t perfect, Dyan! I started middle school this year, and I still don’t have a single friend, and it’s December!”
Dyan was struck silent for a moment.
“Really? But you’re so cool and not like anyone else I’ve ever met. How could you not have any friends?”
“Because people don’t wanna hang out with cool kids. Kids wanna hang out with the popular stupid kids and ‘fit in’. I don’t want to fit in, but when I stand out, I stand alone.”
The two girls were quiet for a moment.
“Well, I’d rather be myself than try to be a popular kid. It isn’t fun trying to impress everyone else.” said Dyan.
“True. I guess I’ll just stay being ‘myself’. Though being myself didn’t make me any friends.”
“Not true,” Dyan turned to Maya. “you made one,”
Maya didn’t even need to ask who. She smiled back.
“You’re right.”
“You two came down early,” said Mrs. Blue. She walked to them, examining the girls’ faces. “What happened?”
“Maya nearly passed out at the top,” Dyan said.
“Oh my! Come here Maya, have some water!” Mrs. Blue began to fuss over Maya, who didn’t even argue with her. Dyan asked for her notebook and sat at a bench nearby.
“Working on your book?” Maya asked when Mrs. Blue finally finished her checkup.
“Mm-hmm,” Dyan’s eyes never left the page. She thought. Maya almost passed out on the hill, but Dyan never wrote that Spirit passed out when they went to a new planet. And Spirit had never really cared about friends or attention. She was just too cool for that. Spirit was too cool for any problem. And that’s when Dyan gasped.
“What?” Maya asked quickly.
“That’s it!” Dyan turned and smiled at her.
Maya’s eyelids lowered. “What’s it?”
“Flaws! Spirit has no flaws! She was always too cool to have struggles and her life was too perfect for problems, but now I realize she’ll never grow or learn anything without facing problems! Finally, I know how to make Spirit’s life not boring!”
Dyan scribbled ‘Spirit’s Struggles’ at the top of the page and underlined it. She put a bullet point and was just about to write ‘wants friends’, but Maya was watching her. Maya couldn’t know about her connection to Spirit. Not yet at least. Maybe when the book was finished, she’d let Maya know the truth. So Dyan wrote ‘loud and noisy’, because whenever Maya looked for attention, she got loud and noisy as well.
“Hmm. Spirit is a lot like me,” Maya said.
Dyan’s heart sped up. “How? Because she’s noisy!?”
“No. I’m not noisy,” Maya glared at Dyan. “Because she has blue hair and is in middle school.” Maya pointed to the left page, where Dyan had written tons of bullet points under Spirit’s personality.
“Oh, yeah, well, I got a lot of inspiration for Spirit from you, so sorry if she’s just like you in some ways.” Dyan said sheepishly.
“Oh, no, it’s fine! I like that I’m the inspiration for the main character in your book! Your description is really good!” Maya said, reading the page again.
“Butter cookie brown skin, yellow sneakers, dark blue overalls with striped rips in the left leg. Can I draw her?”
“Sure!” Dyan said eagerly. Then she cringed as she realized she would have to rip a page out of her precious notebook. Dyan quickly ripped a page out and handed it to Maya.
Maya smiled. “Okay! This is gonna be good.”
As she handed Maya her pencil so she could draw, Dyan thought while she watched birds in the distance. How come Maya had nearly passed out, when Spirit hadn’t? Maybe they weren’t completely connected, so everything that happened to Spirit wasn’t exactly going to happen to Maya, and vice versa. Or maybe this event in Maya’s life was something Dyan hadn’t written yet, but should?
“There is someone else Spirit reminds me of,” Maya said as she lightly sketched the outline of Spirit. “Y’know, besides me.”
Find out what happens next in the next part!
New to Shook? You can find the chapter archive in this post.
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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