First, I'll say that, though I did stop about 1500 words short of yesterday's goal, I'm very thankful to the Wrimo community on Twitter for getting me this far. Not only have the #NaNoWordSprints helped me to increase my wordcount, but the prompts given by @NaNoWordSprints and the simultaneous support of Wrimos on Twitter and the Nano website helped me to overcome a block that I was feeling. I was wondering if there was anything worth writing in my story and they helped to show me that there was.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna stick with a silly little excerpt that I wrote one sleep deprived night. Enjoy.
Peter and I walk hand in hand down the street. It’s nice to relax like this, just us away from the rest of the riders.
“Dinner was amazing. I need to take you with me more often when I travel, I say to him. You can be my persoanl tour guide .”
“Oh, I dont’ know about tour guide. But I will agree with you about dinner. This place is incredible. That’s why I always love to come here when I’m in the area. I’m glad you like it, though. I was worried that sushi might not be your thing.”
I scoff at him. “Sushi is definitely my thing. I think I got my taste for it from my Mom, so there’s one popular misconception derailed.”
“What’s that?”
I smile at my own joke. “That nothing good can come from my mm.”
“Oh, you’re just being hard on her. Every mom has something you can hate them for.”
I tisk and shake my head. “Wrong on two counts. First: I’m not the first to ever say anything about my mom. ‘Nothing good comes from Eugenia’ was my PTA’s rally cry. Not literally, but they all hated her. Second: What do you hate about your mom?”
“That’s easy, Del. You want to find out about someone’s faults, you ask people they live with. My mom doesn’t always discipline the younger kids. I guess she got tired of doing it with the first few. She watches tv way too loud.”
“No, no. Those are just peeves. I dont’ mean the little annoying things that bother you about someone. I mean, think of one thing about your mom that could drive reasonable people away from friendship with her.”
He grins. “You don’t want to let this go.”
“Well, come on. Tell me there’s something hateable about your mother.”
“Okay, she likes to change rules on people. Like if other parents don’t allow snacking between meals or violent cartoons, my mom is still fine with their kids doing those things in our house. She likes to say that their rules are fine in their own home but not in ours.”
“That’s not so bad,” I sigh. “I would have loved to hang out at your house as a kid. My mother was always super strict and she’s say crazy things like ‘The Bible says that if you Trick or Treat you’ll go to Hell’. And ‘Scary books are the devil’s tools’. I know that wouldn’t be so bizarre if she were a strict religious woman, but she’s not. She doesn’t read the Bible or believe in a devil. She just takes whatever is most convenient and uses it against other people. The thing is, she likes to be in control. And if she has to wrongfully quote someone with authority to do it, then she will.”
“Okay, fine. You win the bad mom contest.”
“Hey wait a second. How do I win? M mother’s worse? That doens’t make me a winner. It makes me a loser.”
“You’re not a loser,” he laughs.
I look up into his deep green eyes and get so lost. He tilts his head slowly—so slowly, and I do the same. Just as I can feel his warm breath on my mouth, we’re bowled over.
“Watch where you’re going!” I snap at the stranger.
“Terribly sorry,” he says. His accent is British and he’s wearing a red bowtie. That’s not the first thing that I notice about him, however.
Peter and I gawk at this British stranger, who stands in front of us with one hand closed around what looks like a toy wand and the other gripping a large white towel to his body.
“You’re naked,” I say in shock.
“No I’m not,” he says. He looks at me as though I’ve accused him of being Hitler.
“Yes you are. You’re naked,” I say again.
“I’m wearing towel,” he corrects.
“But—but you’re not wearing anything underneath.”
“Well, what are you wearing under your clothes?”
I don’t know what to say to that, because he’s got a point.
“I dont’ think it’s legal to run in public like that.”
“Why not?” He looks down at himself approvingly. What are the laws like where this guy is from? Is it really acceptabel to just run through the streets in a towel? Well, I have heard that they have topless beraches in Europe. “I dont’ see anything wrong with this,” he insists. “I know the bowtie is a little old fashioned. But they’re snazzy. Bowties are cool.”
“No, not the—did you say ‘snazzy’?”
Peter, who’d not contributed anythig to the conversation at this point, runed to me and said. “Dont’ make fun of the man’s vocabulary. Snazzy’s a good word.”
“Now if you could just point me in the general direction of—” the man walked himself in a circle. “There was a thing!”
“A thing?” Peter and I ask together.
“Yes, yes,” he affirms impatiently. “A great big thing with,” he spread his arms to his sides and waves them up and down like a monkey. “And it had a huge-- there were two very unusual—” He motions with his hands, but I’m not understanding any of the clues in his bizarre version of charades.
I look at him, wondering what’s wrong with him and what he’s going on about.
“I think it went that way,” Peter says, motioning in the direction the man originally came from.
“Thank you.”
The man started off in that direction and turned around to look at us. “What are your names?”
“What’s it matter?” I ask.
“I’m Peter. She’s Delta.”
“Ooh, Delta,” British Guy muses. “What a marvelous name. Delta I’ll remember.”
I grin at Peter, urging him to ask, “What about me?”
“Oh, Peter. There are millions of Peters. Fewer Deltas.”
He turns away again, looks into a shop window, and looks back at us, his face shining like a little kid who just got a puppy. He darts into the shop and I can't contain my curiosity.
“What was he looking at?” Peter asks when I peek inside.
“A fez,” I laugh. “I guess he thinks those are cool, too.”
Off to do many things, including writing a potential 6k!
--Britni M
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