Author's Notes:
Well, here we go. I'm halfway done the third part of this novella-length story, which will be five parts long (and should approach somewhere in the neighbourhood of 35,000 words at its conclusion). It has a long build-up (nothing technically happens until the second part) and a strange and brisk first part. Might not be worth reading, but hopefully if I put it out there it will at least give me the impetus to finish it.
Indebted thanks to my good friend, who has waded through what I have finished and been altogether very helpful and encouraging throughout the process.
Enjoy!
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PART 1
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It was a late autumn afternoon, and I was sitting in a quaint coffee shop off of Main Street. My head buried in my laptop and the open word processor in front of me. For three days, with little sleep and a great deal of caffeine I had poured over this short story, about a young girl who sought out her father in Ireland after being abandoned by her mother, and, like everything else I'd written in a long time, it too had been rejected from publication. The only indication that someone had even read the manuscript I sent was the scrawled words "too unclear" written on the top of the first page of the physical copy I had at home.
So there I was, like every other failed writer, penning out my great works in a café on my laptop. Normally I hated to be that person, but, as a young woman trying to make it on her own as a professional writer, not having had anything published in nearly a year was something of a problem. Most of my very modest income was made doing editorial work and ghostwriting for internet fluff.
But today I was determined to discover what exactly it was about this story that made it "too unclear".
I sat alone at a corner table, as I always did; hunched into a little ball, as I usually was. Most days I found myself in this small café, though most days I chose the company of a book over my own shortcomings as a writer. I enjoyed the small establishment for its ambience and my status as a regular patron. If people wanted to talk to me, I'd let them. I wasn't unapproachable, in fact as a young, fairly attractive woman, I thought I was fairly inviting—and any other day I would have enjoyed a conversation with someone.
But today there could be no interruptions.
And then Cassandra appeared.
Sitting down at the table nearest to me so that she was within reach of my body, she delicately pulled on a segment of my long, teased blonde hair. I jumped in my seat at her touch, promptly closing the screen of my laptop so she couldn't see what I was doing.
"I love your hair!" she blurted out. Gently she continued to tug on my locks.
"Um ... thank you," I said, tilting my head away from her trying to show that I wanted my hair back. "Are you—"
"Like, I love, love,
love
your hair," she swooned through my words. I was becoming concerned about what her intentions were. Quickly I stole a glance at her hands to make sure there wasn't a pair of scissors lying there in ambush. "It's so long, and soft and ... it's so, so beautiful!" She rubbed my hair against her cheek as if to further test its softness.
I looked around uncomfortably.
There was a table of girls on the other side of the coffee shop, maybe six in number, who were all trying to be quietly oblivious, though their rather obvious laughter made them stand out.
"Thank you," I repeated, this time more sternly. I found myself becoming very quickly annoyed; I wasn't here to be the amusement for some pretentious bitch and her entourage. Again I tried to pull my hair out of her vice-like grip, tilting my head away from her; and, still, she held on to it, stroking my hair with her free hand, like a greedy child who had stolen someone else's candy just to tease them. Determinedly I placed my hand on hers to signal my intentions to reclaim my hair.
And had she been anyone other than Cassandra, she probably would have let go.
For the first time then, I really looked at her. What I wanted do was loudly tell her to let go, but instead, I said nothing. She was a petite girl with strawberry blonde hair and a colourful plaid-style scarf draped around her neck. She smiled at me when I looked at her, and her pale freckled cheeks dimpled as she did. It was her eyes, though—those large dark swirling brown orbs—that kept the words in my throat, and my hand on top of hers.
Suddenly I felt incredibly foolish and guilty.
"How do you keep it so soft?" she asked with innocent guile.
"I, um, I just do—Sorry, who are you?" I asked much too quietly. I took my hand off of hers, letting her hold on to my hair, and found myself considering an apology.
"Oh, right! That might make this more fun!" she laughed. Taking her hands off of my hair she clapped them together. "My name's Cassie, but you look like the kind of girl who's going to call me Cassandra—so you can call me that, if you'd like."
I opened my mouth to speak for a minute, and then decided against it. I didn't know what that meant exactly: what does a kind of girl like me look like? Is it a bad thing? I found myself very worried that it was.
"And you?" she asked with a sweet smile.
`Well—"
"No! Wait! Don't tell me! Let me guess," she said throwing her hands into the air. Cassandra leaned in close to me and whispered. "I'm psychic."
The sweet smell of her perfume flared my nostrils as she leaned towards me and I took a deep breath, trying to inhale as much of the aroma as I could. It smelled of citrus and sugar, and made my nose crinkle as I inhaled. In a way, it smelled like Christmas, and left me feeling warm and bubbly.
Cassandra puttered and purred, a finger pressed to her lips, her brow furrowed as she tried to divine my name from nothing. I looked at her too, examining her more closely. She had style I realized, with an expensive-looking brown fall jacket and a pair of thigh-high dark brown boots that, alone, were probably somewhere in the same price range as my laptop. As I realized just how disparate our incomes were I protectively pulled my laptop closer towards me.
Even still, I found myself amused as she stared at me, her small frame trying to look tough and determined, as if she was staring me down in an interrogation room.
"Hmm," she purred, leaning closer to me. Instinctively I tensed as she neared. I felt nervous. Strange questions raced through my mind. Did I smell okay? Had I showered this morning? Did the cappuccino stain my teeth? Were my teeth already stained?
Her free hand came back to my hair, and she softly stroked it once with the back of her hand. "You're a tough one!" she admitted.
After purring out another sound that must have been crucial to the divination process, she spoke again. "Let me ask you a question: did you buy your top at La Fontaine's?"
I eyed her curiously. The shirt I was wearing was a simple tee, with large horizontal stripes of colour that alternated with thick white stripes. How she knew where I had bought such a mundane item surprised me.
"Yes," I said, trying to sound smooth, as though I expected nothing less from her; instead my voice cracked as I spoke.
