Defective

Riordan Bo was ten years old when he finally began to grasp the concept of his Companion Band. Those words had been said a million times since his birth in Colorado Springs and he had only just begun hating them. It felt less like a band and more like a clock embedded in the inside of his wrist, meant to display a countdown in flickering black numbers, accurate down to the second. One of his friends bragged to him at the top of the slide yesterday about how he only had two more years left, and proceeded to whip out his wrist for all to behold. Other boys in their awed semi-circle cried out in words mixed of jealousy and congratulations.

Riordan turned from the group and pulled up his sleeve to stare down at his own numbers, his face darkening. The grim, ever-present digits gawked back at him, five pairs of dead eyes.

00:00:00:00:00

“Marietta Sykes, you’re next, dear,” the school counselor called into the waiting room. Marietta skittered after her through the office door and perched in a plaid chair opposite another, which the counselor came to occupy. A sigh pushed through the woman’s nostrils as she regarded Marietta.

“Mrs. Meyhue tells me you’re being teased again.”

Marietta lowered her head, blinking at her knobby knees.

“Are those girls still saying mean things to you? About your Companion Band?”

Marietta nodded in small rapid jerks, this Michigan mitten keychain she’d clipped to her shoelaces jostling with the motion. Her eyes remained on her knees.

“I didn’t want to have to say this, but you might need to consider wearing gloves, or even a watch – something to cover it up. I wish I could tell you different, Marietta, but you’ll be graduating from elementary school and going to middle school after the summer. If you don’t do something to prevent the teasing, it will only get worse.”

Marietta brought her wrist up to her eyes, skimming her thumb over the digits. They held no pulse.

00:00:00:00:00

Riordan gazed at his reflection in the remnants of breakfast. The bowl quivered in the hum of the dishwasher against the countertop, and his face was distorted in the rippling milk.

“Mom?” he asked, dumping his dish in the sink. “What happened when your numbers ran out?”

“Hmm?” she replied, her gaze flickering over to him for a second. One hand held a mug of steaming tea and the other cradled her newest obsession – an iPad. “Oh, on my Companion Band? You really must call it what it is, darling, or else you’ll get people confused.” She took a liberal sip of the herbal mixture and sighed dreamily. “They stopped when I first met your father, of course. Don’t they teach you about your Bands in school? They must have by now – you're already thirteen, for goodness sake!”

“Yeah, Mom, they have,” he said. “Did you…did you like any other guys before you met dad? Did you date anyone else?”

A horrified expression overcame her delicate features. “Gracious, no! Riordan, where on earth are you getting these ideas? Companion Bands only come in pairs. I didn’t know what your father looked like or who he was, but I knew when I would meet him. No one dates anymore, Riordan, you know that. We just wait for our Companions, and that’s it.”

“Okay,” he said, but his mind drifted elsewhere. Scratching his wrist, he wandered back to his room to don his soccer gear.

00:00:00:00:00

Marietta sat in the dust that called home to the vacant side stairwell of Vicksburg High School, sniffling and shredding her nose with the rough fabric of her favorite Charlotte Russe hoodie. A garment she never left home without, the thick black sleeves hung past her fingers, shielding her Companion Band from searching eyes. Even the heat wave telling of summer’s arrival hadn’t deterred her from donning it that morning. The cuff, flawless in its sole duty, did not prevent the murmurs and stares, and tokens from elementary school pierced the fabric as if it had never existed.

The door shimmied open and Marietta startled, only settling down when she realized it was her friend Jimmie.

“Oh, Mar, what’s happened this time?” she cooed, taking a seat next to the girl and wrapping her arms around her shoulders. Marietta leaned into the familiar presence and worried the sleeve’s worn hem.

“I was in that stupid career planning workshop with Mr. Whitt. He asked us to write down our goals in life and told us to start thinking about how we might get there and achieve them, or whatever. So I wrote mine down and Darcy, the fathead, was sitting next to me, and she snorted in my ear! She stole my paper and told me to keep dreaming! Then she called me defective and I didn’t want to hear any more of it, so I left.”

“What did you write?”

Mar wrung her wrist and sucked back more tears ready to fall.

“To love,” she whispered, voice trembling, “and be loved in return.”

00:00:00:00:00

There's a Crack in My Crystal Ball

The entirety of last week, I was deeply unhappy; my soul possessed a supreme discontentment – even the bits of soul down in my pinky toes felt it! And the worst part? I couldn’t even put to words why. Thoughts could not embody this disturbance in my being. It drove me crazy.

For days, I woke up with a frown that barely shifted with each passing hour. A reason to pin this crappiness on would have been marvelous, but it took a while for me to properly interpret it.

As most of you know, I am in college finishing up my junior year with a double major in Psychology and Creative Writing. The double major had been something I was 100% certain of even before I set foot on campus in the fall of 2012, as well as plans to go on and get a Master’s in Psych. Freshly 18 years old, I had the next 6 to 8 years of my life planned out as far as academics, and at least 4 years of that I was undoubtedly sure of.

Now that I am on the cusp of finishing my 3^rd year out of 4 in undergraduate studies, the post-graduation future is looming and the pressure of that unfortunately has pushed me to be the most stressed out I have ever been in my life, and I do not say that lightly. I do not get stressed because I don’t allow myself to, but over that week I had to admit that I was discontent with something and stressed out about it. But what the heck was it? I needed more variables to fill in this equation – thus far it was all question marks.

I had been doing what every decent Christian does – pray. Most of my prayers that week consisted of me asking for clarity about my future, about where I was supposed to go and what to do. A couple weeks before that ultimate-stress-week, I had been telling God to make it obvious when He lets me in on my future plans, because I know I’m not the best at interpreting between my feelings and God’s intentions. I distinctly recall saying during family prayer time for God to sledgehammer the obviousness into my head if need be.

Careful what you pray for, kids.

Stress-week was emotionally and spiritually painful (sledgehammer to the soul?). Wednesday night I finally found a faint glimmer of clarity: I didn’t want to go to grad school in Psychology anymore.

It was a feeling before it was a verbalized concept, one that presented itself in tears before words.

There was an acute internal trigger, and through the sniffles I verbalized to myself why I was so discontent. I had realized I didn’t want to go to grad school in Psychology and I had to tell myself it was okay. It’s okay when plans change – now is much better than later, too; for instance, in the middle of a Master’s program for Psych I sure as heck would not have wanted this realization. And anyway, it didn’t currently change much, although initially I thought it changed everything (more stress).

I wanted to write. As soon as I admitted that to myself, I was rushed with alleviation. I wanted to get an MFA, go to a graduate school program that would better my skills. Writing is my passion and has been solidly since 2010, but the seed was planted years before that. Writing is something I cannot live without, while psychology can remain dormant without much fuss – there are so many indicators of this that I feel a fool for not seeing them. Last semester I didn’t have any creative writing classes whatsoever and didn’t have any time to write creatively, so academic papers took over. By the end of the semester, I was crazy with the need to write something, anything creative.

Over spring break (February 28^th to March 8^th) I was home with my parents, and the very first day I was there, my dad and I had a lengthy conversation about the future. At that point I had still been sure about my Master’s-in-Psych decision, and I told this to him. He squinted his eyes a little and gave a small smile, saying he thought years ago that my idea was that creative writing is the capstone and psychology was going to be a helper in that realm. Writing was the Pacific Ocean and psychology was just one of the many rivers that eventually leads into it. Instead, psychology had taken over, in retrospect I think because I had career-minded thinking and had already written off using a creative writing major as a potential future career.

Funny how people on the outside have more insight into my own mind.

Later in the realization week I got Chinese take out for dinner. I happened to walk out with two fortune cookies and for some reason only cracked open one. The fortunes was unsurprisingly inconsequential and irrelevant.

On Sunday I got the urge to crack open the other one, just because. I hadn’t even planned to eat it. The message inside made me roll my eyes and smile.

God finds himself hilarious.

And I blessedly find myself in the arms of pure contentment. 

Il Fine: My Return from Italy

Heyo~

(by the way, the title is pronounced "ill feen-ay" - it's Italian, obviously ;) )

Well I feel like quite a dunce. How did I think it was okay to write all these blogposts about my adventures in Italy and then not write one last post about my journey home, to wrap things up? Silly, that’s what it is – extremely silly.

I figure it’s better than nothing to write about it now, because there was quite a lot that went on that I think would make a good story (in the way that my traipsing through Italy, totally lost, with wet and cold shoes for hours is a “good story”) however, there will probably be some details that I’ll leave out simply because it’s been months. I must say, though, that I do remember very much about the 24 hours revolving around and during my trip, I suppose because I was hyper vigilant and super excited to be getting home.

I guess let’s begin, shall we?

The week of May 25^th was finals week, and I was determined to blast through all of them no sweat (and I did). Two were on Monday, and the other two were back-to-back Wednesday morning, so I was completely and officially done with the academic realm of my semester abroad at 11:30AM, two and a half entire days before my flight. Honestly, and I told some of my classmates this when they asked me if I was staying longer, if I had known my last final was Wednesday before noon, I would have had my plane ticket booked for the earliest flight after that on Wednesday. However, I didn’t know the exam schedule, and neither did I know when I bought the plane tickets that I’d be wanting to get home so bad to see a certain someone and my family. I played it safe and scheduled the flight well after finals would be over.

Well, that left me two and a half days to pack and sleep and essentially just wait for the blasted time for me to leave for the airport.

I ended up packing the afternoon of Wednesday, because I was just that excited by the prospect, even though I was exhausted from my morning of exams. My big bag, carry on, and back pack were preliminarily packed before I even ate lunch!

What in the heck was I supposed to do all day Thursday AND most of the day Friday?!

It was maddening, truly.

Wednesday evening I went out to get pizza with my two closest friends I had made while abroad (the Argentinian, Sophia, and the Australian, Elizabeth) as a sort of farewell after exams, since everything was wrapping up. I ate so much.

I regret nothing.

Thursday morning I got up at noon. What? Sleep made the time go faster, and also, I like sleep, though it doesn’t seem to like me as much.

That day I wrote up a to-do list and it consisted of very basic things, but it kept me a little busy, at least. Using the remaining food tickets I had, I wandered to the grocery store only a four-minute walk from my apartment and bought a bunch of Italian goodies to bring home and bestow upon my family. I’d bought some fun trinkets in Venice, like magnets and such, but these were consumables. Tasty, tasty consumables.

I mainly bought a ton of Lindt chocolate bars (dark chocolate, the 85% stuff for my parents and brother, because they go through it like crazy), these chocolate and hazelnut bars called “bueno bars” (they really like the flavor hazelnut in Italy, I found), and two 750ml bottles of the best, most delicious olive oil I had cooked with, for my mom, because she started being an olive oil snob so I figured some 100% Italian, made-in-Italy oil would make her happy (these bottles were thick glass and also very heavy). I wish I could have safely brought back some Italian Coca-Cola, because that stuff was heavenly, somehow even better than the stuff in Peru (sorry! Inca Cola still holds my heart though <3 o:p="">

After bringing all that home, I rearranged my bags a little to fit everything in, so I was already at the point of only needing to pack my toiletries and other last-minute items that I still needed to use before I set off on Friday evening.

Using the remaining olive oil I had bought for the kitchen, I decided to do a homemade olive oil hair treatment that supposedly helps keep it healthy and makes it feel nice (confirmed: it does). So I sat for a while at my computer with a towel around my shoulders like a cape and a plastic bag wrapping up my hair.

I made lunch (pasta – surprise!) and played Pokémon Yellow on an emulator while watching old episodes of the original Pokémon series online before showering for a nice long while and rinsing out the olive oil.

I basically bided my time by Pokémoning for hours and hours until I got tired enough to fall asleep. Friday morning I awoke with nervous and excited energy vibrating in my limbs. The hours until lift off were counting down, and that’s when I realized that time is actually pretty reliable – it will always move forward. Sometimes it will feel slower or faster, but it will never go backward, it will always continue, and I clutched to this idea. Steadfastly.

I had to force myself to eat lunch before I finalized packing and making sure everything was weighed decently. This is when things started to get…interesting.

Using the scales I had dragged out of the bathroom, I hefted up my bags one at a time to see around what they weighed in at, and both my carry on (which would actually serve as my second checked bag) and my massive bag were each either right at 50lbs or a little over, and this made me nervous. I didn’t want to leave anything behind (there wasn’t really anything I could without feeling bad) so I prayed the lady at the check in counter in the airport wouldn’t be so focused on the exactness of the weight. When I checked in to go to Italy back in February, seeing how much my bags weighed seemed to be the least of their worries, so I desperately hoped this remained the case.

By around 4pm I was as happy as I would ever be with packing, and started the final preparations before leaving, which meant taking out the garbage and recycling as well as cleaning out the fridge of things that would go bad. I grabbed up my bags, and by quarter to 5, I was outta there.

And so, with a 50lb bag handle grasped in each hand and a 20lb backpack slung over my shoulders, I was rolling down the street on my way to the metro.

Here’s where things get a little complicated.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the public transportation system in Italy is known for strikes, and one just so happened to pop up on Friday. The day I needed the metro to be functioning fine to get to the train station to get to the airport.

It turns out that the metro was only going to be operating between about 3 and 6pm all day. That was it. My flight would leave after midnight, so I only needed to be at the airport by 9. This provided a frustratingly tiny, and early, window for me.

So I built up my courage, and lugged those bags like it was nothing down the sidewalk and down the stairs into the metro. I stuffed myself like the Ricotta cheese inside of Manicotti in the train car with my massive bulk, which earned me many a frown, but I seriously could not care less, because I was in the process of getting home, and no one would scare me out of doing that successfully.

When it was my stop, I shoved my way through everyone before the doors locked me in. There was no elevator at this stop, so I bolstered all my 110lb strength (yes the combined weight of all my bags outweighed me) and dragged them up the steps. There was a man behind me on the train, probably only a few years older than me, who was walking up the stairs and he gave me a look, shook his head as he muttered a soft Italian word, and grabbed the handle of my biggest bag to help me get it up the steps.

I was sweating profusely already, and was very appreciative of his help. My arms were already screaming at me, and while the hardest part of the journey was over, there was still much to come. I was managing okay, and yes, I could have been smarter about this whole thing. Oh well.

I waited in line at the train station, and of course as I’m rolling along I am getting all these strange looks because the sight really must have been amusing and yet terrifying. Got my ticket, and off toward the turnstiles I went.

I had to time sliding the ticket into the slot with ramming my bags between the automatic swinging doors because the window was small (obviously they assume there only needs to be enough time for one body to get through), so I hurriedly jammed myself through without much fault.

Except for the fact that I left my ticket on the other side.

I had learned from my experience on this train coming into Italy from the airport that you needed it to verify to the guys that came around checking tickets that you had legitimately bought one and weren’t just taking a free ride, so of course I started panicking. What would they do if they realized I didn’t have a ticket? I had the receipt of the purchase, but would that be enough to explain my cause? Could they toss me off the train at the nearest stop? Could they send me back? What would they do?

It must have been rush hour for the train, because there were absolutely no seats left in any of the cars, and it was standing room only (barely). I ended up cramming my bags into the designated area for luggage, and actually sat on top of them underneath the rack, so that I was under the window and all I could see was knees and feet. I hoped that the fact I was in with the luggage would deter anyone from looking for me there, so I wouldn’t have to show a ticket. It was a weak argument, I know, but I was desperate. Aside from that, I prayed the entire way that no one would come around verifying tickets. Honestly it was way too packed for them to have gotten to everyone, anyway. I grasped to this.

I had been trembling more or less since the threshold of my apartment, with excitement and also blatant nervousness. There were so many variables at play in getting from my apartment to the airport that many things could easily go wrong, and I was deathly afraid of this. All I wanted was to get home, but it wasn’t so easy as clicking some high heels together and hoping with all my heart.

Thankfully I made it to the airport stop without having to cry and explain myself to the train guys, so in my relief, I rolled off the train with tired arms and banged up knees and up the elevator, following signs for Aeroflot and where the check in desk would be for my flight.

It was maybe 6-7pm when I got there and found a place to settle in, sit down, and take a breather. I had several hours to kill before my plane would take off, so I turned on my iPod and watched a movie I had loaded onto it (Eat, Pray, Love – how fitting, right?). After a couple hours of rest, I wandered upstairs to the check in desks and found some chairs right by where Aeroflot would be once the time came, found some wifi, and excitedly logged on to report to my parents how things were going.

(^^ Casually-taken "selfie" at the airport.)

It was quarter to 11pm when the desk finally opened and I got checked in. This didn’t leave me enough time to comfortably get through security, but I couldn’t do much about it.

I waited in line anxiously, trying to get a reading on how closely the ladies were checking the weight of the bags of people in front of me. The lady I got didn’t give a crap, she told me to load both my checked bags on the scale at the same time, tagged them, and I watched them go. Another relieved breath, and some more tension unraveled from my shoulders.

It took me 14 minutes to breeze through all of security and get to my gate. The airport wasn’t busy whatsoever – I never had to wait in those bothersome lines where people were unlacing their shoes and accidentally walking through the metal detectors with keys and change still in their pockets so that the rest of us become impatient and irate.

Everything was suddenly so uncomplicated, ever since I had let my checked bags go, and I really distinctly felt that I was meant to be going home. Nothing was in my way, and everything that could have very effortlessly gone wrong, did not. A path was being cleared for me and I was sprinting headlong down it.

(Gate "selfie." See that joy? Yeah.)

I watched another movie while waiting at my gate, and thankfully found an outlet to perch by. Once this plane took off, I’d be headed to my long layover in Moscow, but the flight itself didn’t take long at all.

I managed to get some crappy shuteye on the flight, but since I was still so hyped with the nervous/excited energy, I knew sleeping was going to be a tough thing to wrangle up, and anyway, the brevity of the flight didn’t allow me enough time to get very deep.

I got into Moscow and at my next gate somewhere between 6:30-7:30AM Saturday, Moscow time (it was 10:30PM our time, Friday). For three hours, I read a book on my phone and listened to music alongside many others who had arrived for the long layover. It was at this point that I felt my shoulders really beginning to complain about the load of my backpack, as well as the fact that bruises were starting to appear on my shins and knees from kicking around my bags to get them rolling. My arms were limp noodles jammed into my shoulder sockets from dragging those hefty things around.

(Do I look tired?)

Needless to say, I was going to be exceedingly grateful once I finally was able to unpack and say bye bye to those bags for a while.

One of the most quirky and fun things about flying back from Moscow was the fact that my plane was leaving at 10:25AM, Saturday, and I landed in Virginia at noon:50, Saturday. The flight was 10-11 hours long, but I was landing what would seem like two and a half hours later.

Time zones, man.

As we hopped back across the time zones, I experienced 11 o’clock for several hours in a row. It felt like some Doctor Who stuff was going on.

Unsurprisingly, the flight took forever. I knew time would keep moving forward, as I said earlier, but man did it tease me so hard. It was like someone fat-fingered the slow-mo button or something. I tried reading, but that didn’t pass the time like I wanted it to. I tried sleeping, but that was difficult and also didn’t pass the time very well.

My eyes were incredibly dry from the recycled cabin air and the person next to me’s foot kept slipping under the armrest and pressing against my thigh (she was kind of curled up into a ball). The time was ticking by, but it could not come fast enough.

Praise the Lord I landed at 12:30, twenty whole minutes earlier than planned! My fingers were shaking so much as I texted my mom officially declaring that I was back on US soil. My heart thundered in my chest, threatening to pry open my ribs and spring free.

I was so ready to reconnect with them that I honestly had to restrain myself from shoving through people that were moving too slow, because I had waited over 100 days for that day, and I would not sacrifice one more minute if I could help it.

At 1:30, after taxiing, tram-riding, and passport-control-clearing, I got my luggage and wheeled down the hallway, stomach so full to the brim with butterflies it was becoming difficult to breathe properly. I could sense that they were all nearby, and I yearned so hard to round that final corner and see them.

I sped through two propped open double doors into a big room with bright lights, and when I turned, the tears came, and I ran.

My parents and brother were waiting in a little pod not too far away. I ignored my screaming arms, burning eyes, and somersaulting stomach, and booked it across the broad floor. I threw the handles from my hands and jumped into my dad’s arms, the bags falling to the floor with two loud cracks.

It was real. I was home.

I was home.

I hugged my brother and my mother, who held me much like my dad, with strong embraces and tearfully joyous words murmured into my ear.

Italy was great and wonderful, don’t get me wrong – I learned quite a bit about myself, among many other things – but my heart wasn’t completely happy while I was there. Now, standing in the airport, in the company of my family, my heart was dancing uncontrollably on my ribcage doubling as a dance floor. The bliss was so immense, I drowned in it, with pleasure.

Nothing could take that teary smile from my face.

Ciao, Italia, and hello home.

My Writing Journey (So Far)

Hello all~

             Today I added another finished (rough draft) book to my collection, which makes it...six...now....

My first actual novel I began and finished during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is in November - you've got 30 days to write 50,000 words: http://nanowrimo.org/) of 2010, almost four years ago. Let's rewind a bit first - I'm feeling story time! 

I wrote my very first ever chapter story completely from my imagination around Christmas of 2007, and that ended up being 14 pages (7,500 words) in Word, which was monumental for the time and I was very proud (let me put it into perspective - I was thirteen years old). Keep in mind, the stories themselves were pretty dumb, but the essence was cool, at least to my teenage brain. And I didn't stop. I wrote a sequel (9 pages, 5,000 words), a third installment (a whopping 27 pages and 15,000 words!), AND a fourth one (34 pages, 17,600 words), AAAAND I began to write a fifth book but I guess I got busy or something because I just dropped it (only got to be 4,000 words anyway, and if I recall, the story was starting to get suuuuper cray). All of these were written before an entire year passed. When I was 13-14 years old, I dedicated 49,100 words to this idea I had, and I wrote it all in a year. (I hadn't ever actually gone back to see how many words they were or added them up, so this is even very intriguing as well as surprising to me). I can easily say, in writing those dumb stories, I fell completely and utterly in love with writing.

So, back to my first real novel in 2010. Between 2007/2008 and 2010, I wrote little blurbs of things, short stories and whatever. During the summer of 2010, I had the incredible pleasure of participating in the Young Writers Workshop at UVA for 3 intensive weeks of nothing but writing, which is the event in my life that really jump started my serious writing journey. However, I didn't pick up the idea of trying to write a full-length novel until I was introduced to NaNoWriMo that year. I got really excited by the idea and figured what the heck, I'd try it. I'd pledge to write at least 50,000 words on a piece of fiction of mine in a month. Now, before, I had written almost 50,000 words over the course of an entire year. Granted, I had grown up a little since then, but to cram all that work into 30 days? It seemed daunting, incredibly so, at first. But then I started writing on the idea, just kept writing and writing, and I got it done in a month. At it's finished stage, it came out at 53,600 words. My first novel was born, November of 2010. After that, it's obvious that I simply couldn't stop writing.

That next summer, 2011, I wrote a novella, 29,500 words. NaNoWriMo that same year, I wrote another novel, 52,400 words. That next year, 2012, is when things started to get serious. I was becoming tired of writing one-book stories - I needed something more, at least a book and a sequel or something. I had been sketching out and tossing around ideas for three separate books revolving basically around the same idea, within the same universe, for years. Years. (Some of the word documents holding the sketches and ideas dated back to my time in Peru, which was over 3 years ago.) It was NaNoWriMo of 2012, during my very first Freshman semester, that I penned the first idea. It's 92,700 words. I had broken the 50,000 word barrier I was under for the first three; I could never seem to get much past it. So this satisfied me for a while, but then, the sequel grew, and then it grew into a trilogy. The sequel, which I penned last summer (2013), turned out 54,600 words. And, friends, I'm telling you all this, because today marks the day that I finished my first trilogy. The third installment weighed in at 54,500, before I've gotten a chance to read back through it and do some quick revisions and additions. Just a couple hours ago, I declared the rough rough draft complete. I am the proud owner of a trilogy. And you may not care, which is okay with me, because I'm pretty darn pumped about it.

The little take-away from this story (if you’re a writer and you care about these things) I can give you is that starting and finishing that very first full-length novel idea is tough. Goodness, it is sooooo touuuugh. I've started millions of things, and finished only these. Some of them I'd rather pitch, but they're my babies and we're proud of each other. So just write, okay? If you want to write a novel, do it. Don't psych yourself out, don't demoralize yourself - just. do it. That first one is hard, but any after that are so much easier, because you have proved to yourself that yes, you can write a novel, because hey YOU'VE ALREADY DONE IT! NaNoWriMo proved the perfect kick in the pants to motivate me to do just that, so if a countdown helps you, then I encourage you to try that. Now that I'm in college, it's hard to find the time in November to write a novel, so now I just do them over Winter and Summer break ;)

Writing is hard, I know. But to be able to step back and take a look at that rough idea all laid out, well...that's one of the sweetest feelings an author can experience.

Ta!
V