This is a short excerpt from the second chapter of a book I've been failing to work on for about a year. I'm not sure I'm a good enough writer to pull it off, yet.
I got the idea driving home from school one day. There was a yellow line on the road on 295 from a paint truck accident, between exits 3 and 7 or so. The next day it had already been completely wiped out except for a scoremark. Very few people had a chance to know it was there. The line in my story is more like a cross between the bell in The Polar Express and the wardrobe to Narnia.I chose to share this excerpt because I read it over and I think it is the most interesting. (The name Bunny is, um, explained earlier. XD) Enjoy!“We seem to have a case of lazy dish elves again, Bunny,” her mother said holding a vegetable strainer, slightly grimy, up in front of her face.
Dishes were not Bunny’s favorite chore, and she avoided them as much as possible. But she was good at them. Her father was the “lazy dish elf” in the family but her mother didn’t know that. She sighed and decided not to argue it. “I’ll call the exterminator tomorrow,” she said, taking the colander from her mother and a scrubby sponge from the edge of the counter.
“Thank you dear.” Her mother smiled and limped up the stairs to her bedroom, kicking her heels off halfway up and carrying them. Bunny scrubbed the colander with grapefruit scented dish soap and hot water and poked around the kitchen for other misplaced or dirty dishes. She decided to start dinner, since mom didn’t seem to be reappearing and dad was on another kick of “dieting.” She preheated the oven and began filling a pot to boil some pasta. Watching the water rush into the pan she thought about the line. It was so weird that no one else seemed to know about it. She decided she would have to ask everyone she could think of the next day.
“I’m going to order pizza for dinner,” her mom said. She’d changed out of her suit and into ill-fitting pajamas. “What do you want?” Bunny eyed the chicken she had just started to coat in breadcrumbs and muttered “Anything you want is fine, mum.”
* * *
The next morning when Bunny looked bleary eyed out the window of her third floor bedroom, the green sunburst and the line leading down the road were still there. But gathered in the street was a collection of cats, some she recognized and others she did not, sitting at attention, eyes focused on one of them. She had never seen so many cats doing the same thing at one time. She shifted her attention to the one cat that had been singled out. It was a very large cat she had never noticed before, black with white mittens and what looked like a smudge of white on its belly. His fur was sleek in the early morning sun, and he was circling the manhole cover warily.
She tapped on her window and some of their heads whipped around. One of them gave a strained “meow” that made Bunny wonder if it was a signal of some sort. In a moment all of them were gone. No. The one who had been in the center remained. She felt like he was waiting for her to leave.
“Bunny! I’m leaving your lunch money on the table but I have to get going! I’ll see you tonight, okay?” her mother called up the stairs. Bunny just looked away for an instant, but when she looked back outside the cat was gone. For a split second she thought she could see the end of its tail over the manhole cover, but she couldn’t be sure. She was still, she knew, at the edge of sleep. She shook her head slightly and started to clamber into her school clothes.
Thanks for reading,Katherine
Posts
