KendallPenn
New Member
Miriam
Miriam awoke to the sound of an expertly thrown newspaper colliding with the front door. For a few frantic seconds Miriam registered her surroundings, unsure of where she was. All it took was a glance at her favorite belonging, a portrait of her father, and Miriam was instantly calm, no longer afraid she had been relocated in her sleep. As she slowly wiped her sleep-encrusted eyes, she was greeted by the yellow-gray light of early morning. Knowing it couldn’t be any later than five A.M., Miriam settled back against her pillows, accompanied only by her thoughts and her own shallow breathing.
Play dates always made Miriam anxious, filled her with a sense of impending doom. She had never enjoyed them like other children her age. An agreement between mothers, a nutritious snack, and Miriam was forced to play host to a classmate she didn’t particularly like for a few hours some Saturday afternoon.
Miriam decided not to dwell on her rising panic or the unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach. Instead she rolled over in her small bed and tucked her blue flower quilt under her chin. Miriam stayed that way for a long time listening to the sounds of her mother’s morning rituals, and watching the bright yellow light rise higher on her pale bedroom walls.
It was at this moment that Miriam’s older twelve-year-old brother, David, burst into her bedroom half dressed, pancake in fist. Miriam wasn’t at all surprised by this noisy intrusion as David always mistook Miriam’s room for his own next door. Without so much as an apology, David left the room as quickly as he had come. Miriam took this as her cue to get out of bed.
Miriam threw on an oversized, thread-worn sweatshirt, her father’s favorite, and a pair of well-worn jeans. She plodded in stocking feet to the bathroom where she splashed cold water on her pale, heart-shaped face and ran a wet comb through her dark hair, attempting to remove the tangles in the ends.
Before joining her mother and brother at the small table in the corner of the living room that served as both dining room and study, Miriam made a quick stop at the front door to retrieve the much-neglected newspaper. As her mother didn’t enjoy the news, finding it altogether too violent and depressing, and her brother preferred illiterate entertainment, Miriam was the sole reader. Her mother often contemplated canceling the family’s subscription ever since her husband, an avid reader of the Sports section, had died. In the three years since she could never bring herself to do it.
“Miriam, I’d really rather you didn’t wear that shirt anymore. It’s much too big for you and full of all those nasty holes,” Miriam’s mother said between sips of coffee. “Let me take you into town and buy you something decent to wear.”
Miriam ignored her mother as she always did when the subject of the sweatshirt came up. It was odd, Miriam often thought, that her mother couldn’t muster up the same amount of sentimentality for a sweatshirt as she could for a newspaper.
Miriam didn’t care if the sweatshirt was too big or that the lettering was so faded that the only reason she knew what it read is because she had memorized it years ago:
She was jerked out of her thoughts by a loud belch issued forth from the gaping jaw of her brother.
“Young man, say excuse me and cover your mouth next time,” their mother said sharply, more out of habit than actual anger.
As she sat at the table, Miriam began to thumb through the newspaper. She usually skipped the World Events page unless the headlines announced some spectacular event, like Bomb Dropped on Bangladesh. She found she didn’t understand the more boring, albeit more relevant, articles about foreign elections or health crises. Flipping casually through the Sports section and then State and Local, Miriam found the section she had been searching for, the Word Jumbles.
Miriam had once heard that an active mind is a healthy mind and she found the jumbles to be as accurate a test of intelligence as anything out there. She would allow herself a minute per jumble. Any jumble that took longer than sixty seconds was obviously beyond the reaches of human deduction, and she would move on. Sometimes the answer to a particularly hard jumble would come to her hours later. She could be doing anything, walking down the hall or combing her hair and all of a sudden she would blurt out the word, surprised at how quickly it had traveled from the recesses of her mind to the very forefront of her consciousness. It was at moments like these that she knew what it meant to be alive.
The first two were easy:
SEUOH HOUSE
DCLO COLD
The third TRCEEAH put up a bit of resistance, but after thirty-nine seconds yielded to her unmatched mental skills and became TEACHER.
EBRTIT
Miriam never had a chance to attempt the fourth.
“Oh my, it’s nine already. Miriam, your little friend is going to be here in less than an hour and this place is a mess and I’m not even dressed yet,” Miriam’s mother said, working herself into a panic.
Miriam shot her mother a deadly look for even insinuating that she would deign to associate with a child as insufferable as Veronica Sharp.
“Now don’t you give me that look,” Miriam’s mother warned in an icy voice. “Veronica is a lovely girl. The two of you could be such friends and her mother is involved in so many important organizations….” She trailed off as she intently began to search for a pair of pantyhose she could’ve sworn was drying on a clothes rack next to the couch. Having located them crumpled on the floor, she moodily folded the rack and hid it from public view.
Overcome with earlier apprehension, Miriam struggled to find a way out of this predicament. She knew that trying to convince her mother to break the date was out of the question. They had this fight nearly every Saturday, regardless if Miriam was to play host or guest, but she always ended up trapped, playing nursemaid to a plastic doll with flossy blonde hair.
The thought of spending another moment similarly trapped sickened Miriam. Without thinking, she pushed her chair back, mumbled something about straightening up, and dashed to her room, the newspaper in her hand.
Miriam sat on the edge of her bed, contemplating various routes of escape. A glance at her small window provided nothing promising. She was on the second floor with no way down but to jump and pray gravity would be forgiving. At best she’d break some limb she had two of. At worst, she’d land on her head.
Maybe she could escape through the front door. Once she got to the bottom of the stairs she would have a clear shot. The only problem was that the living room and kitchen were on either side of the strip of hallway she would be forced to travel. Her mother was bound to be in one of them. Six to eight weeks in a cast was looking more promising as the seconds passed.
Gripped by a feeling of total and utter despair, Miriam let the sheet of newspaper she held clenched in her fist, flutter to the floor. With her head in her hands, Miriam violently rubbed her eyes hoping that when she opened them the situation would be clearer. Instead she was greeted by the sight of blurry newsprint between her feet.
As her eyes came back into focus, she noticed a small article that had gone unnoticed. The headline, “Author to Uncover 100-year-old Tale,” immediately captured Miriam’s attention. Being an avid lover of the written word, Miriam found literacy to be the only thing of use taught in primary school. Books of every size, subject, and varying states of shabbiness filled her room.
As Miriam read the article, her heart thumped in her chest.
Author to Uncover 100-year-old Tale
Best selling children’s author, Joan Pembrook, scheduled to arrive in Rockport on Friday to investigate the drowning death of 18-year-old Zora Drake, nearly a century ago. While mystery engulfs this case, Pembrook hopes to develop the story into an upcoming book. Joan Pembrook is the author of such acclaimed children’s books as, Terrence and the Ten Ton Toad and The Cupcake Brigade. Ms. Pembrook will be at the Rockport beach Saturday through Sunday, and encourages anyone interested to come on down.
Miriam read the article a few times in quick succession. She could barely believe it. Terrence and the Ten Ton Toad was the first book she had read without assistance, under the watchful eye of her father. The Cupcake Brigade had inspired her to do nothing but bake for three straight weeks.
She had always wanted to meet a real author, and Miriam knew this might be her only chance. Screwing up every ounce of courage she had, Miriam bolted down the stairs and out the front door, deaf to the screams of protest from her mother.
The formatting is a bit off, but I hope still readable. Any comments/criticisms would be extremely helpful and welcome.
Thanks!
Kendall
Miriam awoke to the sound of an expertly thrown newspaper colliding with the front door. For a few frantic seconds Miriam registered her surroundings, unsure of where she was. All it took was a glance at her favorite belonging, a portrait of her father, and Miriam was instantly calm, no longer afraid she had been relocated in her sleep. As she slowly wiped her sleep-encrusted eyes, she was greeted by the yellow-gray light of early morning. Knowing it couldn’t be any later than five A.M., Miriam settled back against her pillows, accompanied only by her thoughts and her own shallow breathing.
Play dates always made Miriam anxious, filled her with a sense of impending doom. She had never enjoyed them like other children her age. An agreement between mothers, a nutritious snack, and Miriam was forced to play host to a classmate she didn’t particularly like for a few hours some Saturday afternoon.
Miriam decided not to dwell on her rising panic or the unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach. Instead she rolled over in her small bed and tucked her blue flower quilt under her chin. Miriam stayed that way for a long time listening to the sounds of her mother’s morning rituals, and watching the bright yellow light rise higher on her pale bedroom walls.
It was at this moment that Miriam’s older twelve-year-old brother, David, burst into her bedroom half dressed, pancake in fist. Miriam wasn’t at all surprised by this noisy intrusion as David always mistook Miriam’s room for his own next door. Without so much as an apology, David left the room as quickly as he had come. Miriam took this as her cue to get out of bed.
Miriam threw on an oversized, thread-worn sweatshirt, her father’s favorite, and a pair of well-worn jeans. She plodded in stocking feet to the bathroom where she splashed cold water on her pale, heart-shaped face and ran a wet comb through her dark hair, attempting to remove the tangles in the ends.
Before joining her mother and brother at the small table in the corner of the living room that served as both dining room and study, Miriam made a quick stop at the front door to retrieve the much-neglected newspaper. As her mother didn’t enjoy the news, finding it altogether too violent and depressing, and her brother preferred illiterate entertainment, Miriam was the sole reader. Her mother often contemplated canceling the family’s subscription ever since her husband, an avid reader of the Sports section, had died. In the three years since she could never bring herself to do it.
“Miriam, I’d really rather you didn’t wear that shirt anymore. It’s much too big for you and full of all those nasty holes,” Miriam’s mother said between sips of coffee. “Let me take you into town and buy you something decent to wear.”
Miriam ignored her mother as she always did when the subject of the sweatshirt came up. It was odd, Miriam often thought, that her mother couldn’t muster up the same amount of sentimentality for a sweatshirt as she could for a newspaper.
Miriam didn’t care if the sweatshirt was too big or that the lettering was so faded that the only reason she knew what it read is because she had memorized it years ago:
Whitman's Whaling Expeditions
She was jerked out of her thoughts by a loud belch issued forth from the gaping jaw of her brother.
“Young man, say excuse me and cover your mouth next time,” their mother said sharply, more out of habit than actual anger.
As she sat at the table, Miriam began to thumb through the newspaper. She usually skipped the World Events page unless the headlines announced some spectacular event, like Bomb Dropped on Bangladesh. She found she didn’t understand the more boring, albeit more relevant, articles about foreign elections or health crises. Flipping casually through the Sports section and then State and Local, Miriam found the section she had been searching for, the Word Jumbles.
Miriam had once heard that an active mind is a healthy mind and she found the jumbles to be as accurate a test of intelligence as anything out there. She would allow herself a minute per jumble. Any jumble that took longer than sixty seconds was obviously beyond the reaches of human deduction, and she would move on. Sometimes the answer to a particularly hard jumble would come to her hours later. She could be doing anything, walking down the hall or combing her hair and all of a sudden she would blurt out the word, surprised at how quickly it had traveled from the recesses of her mind to the very forefront of her consciousness. It was at moments like these that she knew what it meant to be alive.
The first two were easy:
SEUOH HOUSE
DCLO COLD
The third TRCEEAH put up a bit of resistance, but after thirty-nine seconds yielded to her unmatched mental skills and became TEACHER.
EBRTIT
Miriam never had a chance to attempt the fourth.
“Oh my, it’s nine already. Miriam, your little friend is going to be here in less than an hour and this place is a mess and I’m not even dressed yet,” Miriam’s mother said, working herself into a panic.
Miriam shot her mother a deadly look for even insinuating that she would deign to associate with a child as insufferable as Veronica Sharp.
“Now don’t you give me that look,” Miriam’s mother warned in an icy voice. “Veronica is a lovely girl. The two of you could be such friends and her mother is involved in so many important organizations….” She trailed off as she intently began to search for a pair of pantyhose she could’ve sworn was drying on a clothes rack next to the couch. Having located them crumpled on the floor, she moodily folded the rack and hid it from public view.
Overcome with earlier apprehension, Miriam struggled to find a way out of this predicament. She knew that trying to convince her mother to break the date was out of the question. They had this fight nearly every Saturday, regardless if Miriam was to play host or guest, but she always ended up trapped, playing nursemaid to a plastic doll with flossy blonde hair.
The thought of spending another moment similarly trapped sickened Miriam. Without thinking, she pushed her chair back, mumbled something about straightening up, and dashed to her room, the newspaper in her hand.
Miriam sat on the edge of her bed, contemplating various routes of escape. A glance at her small window provided nothing promising. She was on the second floor with no way down but to jump and pray gravity would be forgiving. At best she’d break some limb she had two of. At worst, she’d land on her head.
Maybe she could escape through the front door. Once she got to the bottom of the stairs she would have a clear shot. The only problem was that the living room and kitchen were on either side of the strip of hallway she would be forced to travel. Her mother was bound to be in one of them. Six to eight weeks in a cast was looking more promising as the seconds passed.
Gripped by a feeling of total and utter despair, Miriam let the sheet of newspaper she held clenched in her fist, flutter to the floor. With her head in her hands, Miriam violently rubbed her eyes hoping that when she opened them the situation would be clearer. Instead she was greeted by the sight of blurry newsprint between her feet.
As her eyes came back into focus, she noticed a small article that had gone unnoticed. The headline, “Author to Uncover 100-year-old Tale,” immediately captured Miriam’s attention. Being an avid lover of the written word, Miriam found literacy to be the only thing of use taught in primary school. Books of every size, subject, and varying states of shabbiness filled her room.
As Miriam read the article, her heart thumped in her chest.
Author to Uncover 100-year-old Tale
Best selling children’s author, Joan Pembrook, scheduled to arrive in Rockport on Friday to investigate the drowning death of 18-year-old Zora Drake, nearly a century ago. While mystery engulfs this case, Pembrook hopes to develop the story into an upcoming book. Joan Pembrook is the author of such acclaimed children’s books as, Terrence and the Ten Ton Toad and The Cupcake Brigade. Ms. Pembrook will be at the Rockport beach Saturday through Sunday, and encourages anyone interested to come on down.
Miriam read the article a few times in quick succession. She could barely believe it. Terrence and the Ten Ton Toad was the first book she had read without assistance, under the watchful eye of her father. The Cupcake Brigade had inspired her to do nothing but bake for three straight weeks.
She had always wanted to meet a real author, and Miriam knew this might be her only chance. Screwing up every ounce of courage she had, Miriam bolted down the stairs and out the front door, deaf to the screams of protest from her mother.
The formatting is a bit off, but I hope still readable. Any comments/criticisms would be extremely helpful and welcome.
Thanks!
Kendall