Sunday, January 25, 2015

#NovelSnip

#NovelSnip is a tiny piece of my fiction writing project.  This week, it's the conclusion of Alice's highway walking incident.  I skipped a little dialogue from the middle when she first gets into the police car.  I'm not sure about that part, and I don't have time to edit right this moment at our hockey tournament, where I've gotten far less done than I planned. Anyway, here's #NovelSnip:

Alice was sure that there would be an investigation.  Perhaps charges of neglect.  Awkward questions.  An uncovering of a situation that Alice and Ethan knew wasn’t quite right.

“But, I didn’t practice,” Alice admitted, slumping down, steeling against the scenario she imagined.  “This is the exit,” she said, pointing.  “I knew how to get home,” she muttered, turning her face to the window.  It was as if to say, “It wasn’t that dangerous.  It was my fault.”

The officer, though, seemed uninterested in the details of her particular situation. His questions, after some head-shaking over Alice’s trek on the overpass, veered toward bland and neutral.  “Where do you go to school?” “What grade are you in?”   She sat wide-eyed in the car, which pulled benignly into the driveway of her well-kept suburban home.  Alice expected the man to cut the ignition and lumber out after her,  walk her to the door, ring the bell, and discover something about her father - the thing that Alice knew, but that other people didn’t, or alternatively pretended not to notice.

But, the officer merely turned his head to her, his belly still pointed casually toward the steering wheel.  His right hand resting nonchalantly on the center console.  “Take care,” he said.

“Thanks,” Alice mumbled, clicking open the passenger door and stepping out onto her asphalt driveway.  She stumbled numbly past the garage, not daring to look back at the car, arms tingling with what felt like a near miss and also a missed opportunity.

It's #NovelSnip!  Next week has a  jump to a time five years later, back to that trip to Florida Alice started a couple of weeks ago.

3 comments:

LH said...

I've been waiting all week.

Fabuloso! I'm hooked.

Anonymous said...

So alarming that the officer just dropped Alice off. You can feel the tension building. What does not feel quite right to Alice and Ethan...the tension is building! Looking forward to the next installment. Love, mom

mm said...

"...his belly still pointed casually toward the steering wheel." Like it!