The "I Can't Say It!" Blogfest

I must beg your, and Shelley's, forgiveness for posting this entry into the "I Can't Say It" blogfest a teensy bit early before midnight- I got my dates mixed up and I have a promise to keep in posting an interview Wednesday and I didn't want to post this late on Thursday so I decided to just post it tonight.

If posting early somehow disqualifies me I apologize- this is my first blogfest and I don't plan to make a habit of posting early. If ya like you can just ignore me and keep going but do check out the others in the blogfest!

This is taken from my second novel which I wrote at the end of last year and is still in revision. I looked at a lot of different pieces considering them for this- and this one is what I've settled on. I hope that you all enjoy it.

Not a lot I can say as far as back story on this one- just that it might not make much sense unless you realize that the female main character (in her thirties) is having a conversation with an unusual teenaged boy (they are NOT romantically involved at ALL.) He'd just loaned her his jacket in the cold- so she is wearing it here.

Back in a bit with another interview segment!

~bru
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She sank down to the rock ledge beside him, her long legs dangling over just as his were. The face was sharp with jagged edges, she could feel them up against her skin and cutting her it seemed, even through the tough material of her jeans.

She frowned a moment, wondering why her legs stung so bad when she’d barely touched them to the stone. Druid looked at her, eyes questioning.

“You okay?”

She nodded, trying her best to dismiss the pain that was so much greater than she thought it should be. “You?”

He sighed. “As I ever am.”

This answer concerned her. She put her hands into the pocket of his jacket to warm them and her fingers ran over the thin slips of paper he’d stuffed in there earlier: his prescription slips from Dr. Faraday.

“But you’re not always. Are you?”

Dru didn’t speak. He merely unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, all the way to the elbow. His hands clenched involuntarily into fists as he turned his arms over and held them out on display.

The strange sensation she’d felt when her arm had looped through his earlier instantly made sense.

She had thought that his sleeve must have a wide, low-quality seam. Now she understood that it was his skin, not his shirt, that bore the evidence of having been hastily sewn together.

“God! Dru…” She hadn’t meant to exclaim her sorrow so adamantly. He was struck by it, though he knew it shouldn’t surprise him. It was, after all, the way that most people reacted.

Coming from her, it was more than just a response of recoiling in horror at the sight. It was clear that she was sorry, not only for the scars but because he’d ever felt so desperate. That second emotion was one so strong he could almost touch it, and it made all the difference in the world.

He slowly unrolled his sleeves and rebuttoned his cuffs, concealing again the damage he’d done in past rampages against himself. “God?” His voice was gently taunting. “I thought you were an atheist.”

She blinked. “How did you know that?”

“I’ve learned a few things about you, Annabeth Shaw.”

“Have you.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? Don’t go back to one word sentences on me now, boy!” She nudged him with her elbow.

“Sorry. It’s-" his deep, kohl-rimmed eyes stared out across the water once more. The wind lapped at their hair and tugged on their collars, chilling them all over again. “It’s not the easiest thing in the world to talk about.”

“Look at it this way,” Annabeth droned, as her eyes followed his along the changing horizon. The snow continued to sift down on them in intermittent wafting gales, seemingly impossible against the backdrop of the wide and distant sea. “Even if you tell me now I probably won’t remember an hour from now. Cause I swear to...” She gestured out toward the water with an open palm, “Poseidon, or Triton or The Little freakin’ Mermaid if you prefer I won’t remember it by tonight. Hell, I don’t remember writing half the shit I’ve seen since I got here.”

“Maybe because you’re not writing anything. Maybe this is just where you live now.”

“In a fictional town I created with Benjamin and in which the only person who knows I’m alive is you.”

“Yeah.”

It seemed strange to her suddenly that he didn’t question her as to who Benjamin was.

She looked towards the sky, feeling brighter rays of sun beginning to break through the clouds again. She closed her eyes. A deep, rushing sadness poured down over her, colder and sharper than the tiny ground shards of ice masquerading as snow still glinting in the dimming daylight.

“She used to, you know, sing me this song,” Dru volunteered suddenly, and when he did, the light of the sun seemed to strengthen even further. For the first time since they’d arrived here, the wind seemed to die down a little, and Annabeth’s shivering slowed.

“Your grandmother?”

He nodded. “Veronica.”

Annabeth felt her stomach clench, hearing the emotion in the way he spoke her name. “Veronica.”

“Veronica sang a song about feeding the birds,” he continued, eyes still seeking something in the distance that she knew he’d never find there, no matter how deeply he stared into it.

She’d tried herself in the past and found you could never recapture the spirit of someone you’d loved and lost by looking for them in the sky, or the stars.

“She sang about a woman sitting outside a cathedral and asking people to feed them too. I…”

Annabeth opened her eyes just in time to see him close his. He thought she was still shutting herself inside her own head, and didn’t suspect that she could see him now.

“I used to fall asleep to her voice, singing it when I was little. She never-” he stopped.

“She never what, Dru?” Annabeth pressed, feeling that he needed to finish his thought even more than she needed to hear it.

“She never quit. She sang me that song, every night I slept under her roof, until the day that she died.”

He reached out toward her, pulled the zipper of his jacket down and began searching the inside breast pocket. Annabeth was about to object to his ‘friendly’ gesture until she realized what it was exactly he was digging for.

He pulled the empty pack of cigarettes out and swore under his breath. He crumpled it up and shoved the remains into his pants pocket along with the bag that had held the bird food.

His expression changed, melting away in anger from bitterness to heartbreak. His eyes reflected such utter dejection she was afraid she was going to watch him break in two, right before her.

“I can’t remember the lyrics,” he said. “I go to look them up, but I can’t bring myself to read them.” He shook his head and his dyed, jet-black hair shone like an otherworldly halo in the glimmering light. “They’re meant to be sung. To be remembered as a song. Not as flat, dead words on a goddamn screen.”

Annabeth wondered if she should say what she was about to say next. She hesitated, and that moment was all it took.

He opened his eyes and stared at her as if she’d just announced that she understood the secret answer to life, the universe and everything.

“You know them, don’t you?”

She wanted to lie to him, but she could not. “Dru…”

“You know that song.” He jumped to his feet and paced the edge of the rock face, far too close to the precipice for Annabeth’s liking given the scars she’d seen on his arms.

She knew that he had the propensity to hurt himself; she didn’t want to add any more fuel to an already sparking pile of kindling. "Dru,"

“You know all the words.”

“Druid-”

“The words.”

She lowered her head.

He reached down and held his hand out to her, his unnaturally long fingers trembling with the effort. “I promise you, I will do everything I can do to help you figure out why the hell you’re here and how to get back where you want to go, if you will only help me remember the words to that song so I can finally sleep at night.”

~February Grace