Sunday, April 19, 2015

#NovelSnip

Here's some craziness: I've been writing in order for all of April.  All Norah, in chronological order.  This feels like some sort of breakthrough, like maybe I could write all of the characters in order and see when and where they intersect. Anyway, last week, I wrote about the C Norah got on her Hamlet paper.  Here's the conclusion of that scene.  It starts right where the last one left off.


“How’d you do?” Donna leaned in from her right.  Norah instinctively pulled the paper toward her chest.

“Horrible,” she said, looking down.  “Just horrible!”

“Yeah,” Donna said, curling her mouth up in a wry smile, “I got a B too.  It stinks.”

Norah slid out of her desk and grabbed her backpack, still clutching her paper.  “See you later,” she mumbled, and hurried out of the room, rocketing blindly for the door of the building.  In the quad, she felt her lips start to quiver and tears spill from her lower lids. She didn’t look up once - not on the sidewalk, not at the entrance of Mother Mary, not on the stairs, not even once she entered room 316. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, sobs overtaking her, a high wailing emanating from her throat.

“No, no, no,” Norah moaned.  “I can’t do this.”  She dropped her backpack next to her desk and sunk to the floor, tipping forward from her knees and pressing her face against the cool linoleum.  For many minutes, Norah lost herself, feeling only the clammy wet of her cheeks.  “I can’t do this,” she mumbled.  “I can’t do this.”  She balled the Hamlet paper in her right hand.  Finally, she pushed herself back to her hands and knees and inched toward her bed. Norah pawed the pillow from its head and stuffed it under her metal bed frame. She crawled in after it, curling up against the cinder block wall.

After this, her roommate comes back and helps her, thank goodness.  She does recover from this episode; however, I think we can agree her moment-by-moment coping skills might need work.

4 comments:

mm said...

All of this over a C? What's she going to do if she ever gets an F?

KC said...

mm, yes. exactly.

Anonymous said...

I can see it and I can feel it......great description! Mom

LH said...

Poor Kid. That other student with her B really sealed the deal.