I can’t believe it’s been a month since I started; It feels like a week. But nonetheless, I have been doing my best to stay excited. I say this because there are times I feel like I’m ready to stop all this introspection and write the story itself. But then I have to remind myself how much more I know my character Dara since starting this.
In my free writing time I have been fleshing out the summary. It is a summary, right? I don’t feel right calling it an outline- It’s a condensed form of the story, with bits of quotes and too much time spent on feelings.
The prompt I am showing for today: “One thing you still need to know about me”
I struggle with rules. I’m not saying I don’t like order—I love when things go as they should. But rules reject reality. Everything is in flux, yet rules demand you stay in a lane that doesn’t fit. Rules are handcuffs. And I don’t tolerate people who think they know better than everyone else, just like I don’t tolerate people messing with my hair. Reen eventually stopped trying to fix the mess.
Perhaps its because I struggle with rules, or perhaps its just because I’m an asshole, but before Lyon and Teddy were ripped out of my life, I had made a wish that they’d never entered it. I didn’t mean it, but I was in that kind of mood where the world owed me something, and I aimed to collect. That’s how Malik put it, though I never understood what I was meant to collect.
The world did owe me though. It owed me a mom. It owed me my home. It owed me a normal childhood. Instead, that evening, it gave me a best friend who—when Malik called us back to camp—said, “Yes, sir,” and ran back like an obedient dog.
“But there’s water on the other side of this hill!” I yelled, climbing.
Malik was on me in an instant. “Get back here!”
I was not so quick to obey. Malik leaned into a run to catch up, demanding I stop that very moment. Then, just as I reached the peak, his hand clamped around my wrist and yanked me down. My eyes locked on the scene below.
A cement basin shimmered faintly under moonlight, water glittering like stolen jewels. Sleeping bodies littered the banks—too still to be anything but “sleeping bodies.”
Two soldiers stood at the edge, their rifles slung low, postures stiff but slack at the same time. Weary, maybe. Or just bored. One of them shifted, scanning the horizon with empty, unhurried eyes.
Malik shoved me flat as the soldier’s gaze swept past us. His hand clamped over my mouth, his breath burning in my ear. When the moment passed, we crawled backward until we were below the ridge. Then he hauled me up, gripping my arm like a vice, and we ran.
By the time we packed our camp, Malik and Reen were arguing. They walked just ahead of us kids, their packs and half of ours slung over their shoulders, arguing about my influence and whether I was going to get them all killed. I heard Reen’s voice, low, and sharp, slicing through the air saying she had to get her kids away. “Good.” I thought, “go away.”
That’s when I wish we had never found them. I wished I had never thrown a fit demanding Malik let them join us. As long as her perfect kids were around I was always going to be the bad one.
Later, too tired to keep walking, we set up camp under a gnarled tree.
When I woke, I had gotten my wish.
The others were gone—no faint breaths, no rustling blankets. Just silence. Reen’s silhouette sat stiffly by the fire, her back to me. She turned as I sat up. Her face pale as she whispered, “I’m sorry, Dara. Lyon and Teddy are gone; they won’t have to struggle anymore.”
I knew what that meant. I wasn’t stupid. I always knew that sleeping bodies weren’t sleeping, and I heard the expression ‘they won’t suffer anymore’ so many times, I sometimes wish I could lay down and become a sleeping body. So of course, I knew Lyon and Teddy had died, but her words didn’t make sense. They weren’t sick. How could they both be gone? Why wasn’t I woken? Why didn’t Malik or Reen say more? How could a nine-year-old’s wish kill two people in their sleep? And what had kept me from dying?
I asked Reen. With pity in her eyes and yet, somehow mockingly, she said, “They were too good to be here.”
I should have been suspicious. There were too many clues, like how Malik ignored the memorial we set up for them. I should have known there was more they weren’t telling me. But instead, I focused on two things, I had wished my best friend dead, and its the good people who die.
I will be missing next week, being in NY for the SCBWI winter conference. And I argue, if I am missing a week, I’m already breaking the write every day rule…so why not break them all and just write the story??!!
Well see how strong I am in February when I return. 🙂
Annie Harmon 