Since I’ve been trying to heal sick people (and then myself) this week, I’ve no time for a fun, witty entry. Instead, I’m posting something from my WIP (which is titled, and in the revision stages).
Meet Jaden and Parker: they’ve been assigned to work together on a project for their English class. Needless to say they’re not getting along very well.
I stared at him in disbelief. What? Who is this guy? I thought to myself. I looked at him, taking in everything—the black shirt and jacket, the dark hair—either brown or black—I wasn’t sure because it was gelled in the front, and still had that “wet look” to it—and his piercing dark eyes. There was something strangely familiar about him—his strong jaw line and the few, tiny freckles splashed across his nose. Suddenly I realized: Parker Whalen was good-looking. Hot, even.
“Well?” he asked.
I snapped back to attention. “Um, yeah, okay. So we’ll pick something we haven’t read.”
“Are you saying that you typically do projects on books you already know about?” he asked.
“I was just suggesting that if we picked a book we were already familiar with then this project might not be so complicated. We’d at least have some vague idea of what we were doing.” I skimmed through the list of titles.
“Are you saying you’re clueless?”
I ignored this. “How about Pride and Prejudice?” I suggested.
“No.”
“Why not?” I demanded to know.
He sat forward. “Because you’ve already read it.”
“You don’t know that,” I muttered.
“Please,” he said, rolling his eyes. “A senior girl in high school . . . somewhat ‘bookish’ I guess you would say. . . .”
“You can call me a nerd if you want,” I interrupted. “I don’t take offense.”
“Fine. A nerd . . . not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, so don’t go all hostile on me, all right?”
“Fine.”
“I’m just saying that you can’t expect me to believe that you haven’t read one of the supposed greatest romances in all of history. Even if your tenth grade Honors English teacher didn’t assign it . . . you read it on your own.”
“Okay, whatever,” I said, giving up. “What about Jane Eyre?”
He smiled. “You’ve read that one, too.”
I tossed my list on the table in front of him and threw my hands up in exasperation. “Then why don’t you start naming books that you think I haven’t read and we’ll go from there?” I sat back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest. This was getting ridiculous. Picking a book shouldn’t be this hard.
Parker perused the list of titles. “Books you haven’t read . . . let’s see.” Then he began spouting off names. “Catcher in the Rye. The Color Purple. Lord of the Flies.” He looked up at me. “Am I getting warmer?”
I didn’t answer.
“The Jungle. 1984 . . . basically anything on this list that isn’t a romance you haven’t read. So we can throw out Austen, most of the Shakespearean Comedies, the Bronte sisters. . . .”
“Wuthering Heights is not a romance,” I interrupted.
“That depends on how you look at it,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“Yeah, it’s a romance; because Heathcliff’s undying love for Cathy
didn’t make him completely depraved.” I rolled my eyes.
“Why not?”
I scoffed. “What are you smoking?”
“I’m not smoking anything. Why is it so hard to believe that a person could love someone so much it would drive him insane? Make him do things he’d never considered?”
“Because it’s not . . . normal.”
Parker laughed. “And your Mr. Darcy is what you’d call normal?”
“Mr. Darcy is a gentleman,” I explained.
“Mr. Darcy is a narcissist,” Parker replied.
“Look, I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you all afternoon. So pick a book, and let’s go.”
So you know: they finally pick a book and start working on their project. Drama ensues.
Happy Friday!
