{3} June 13, 2013 9:05 a.m.
Cameron blushed. How could she have forgotten a pen? She didn’t like asking people for things .
“Nicole, do you have an extra pen?” she asked the girl to her right.
“No, sorry. I only brought one today. Why don’t you ask Mr. Yates? I’m sure he has plenty.” Nicole turned back to Elaine, who was describing her creek after last night’s rain storm.
Cameron shoved her hands into the deep pockets of her basketball shorts and sheepishly asked for a pen. Mr. Yates gave her a teasing frown and then handed her a jar of writing utensils as he prepped the screen projector. Cameron grabbed a metal pen, the kind that you twist to open, and put the jar back on the desk. She always liked pens better than pencils. Pencils made an irritating scratching noise and the mechanical kind always ran out of graphite at the most inconvenient times. Pens wrote smoothly and it was so satisfying to scribble out mistakes.
Five minutes later, her embarrassment was lost in the labyrinth of words. She elaborated on simple sentences like ‘The house was big.’ and composed a scene with two long lost brothers forgiving each other. She loved stories, especially the ones where magic was involved or children were kidnapped. On long car rides, she would stare out the window and imagine other worlds and their histories, but she could hardly ever write them down. As soon as she held a pen the ideas seemed to stop, like the path from her mind to the page was clogged with ideas. She hoped that this class would equip her to document all the wonderful tales her imagination had bottled up.
Just before break, though, the pen ran out of ink. When Mr. Yates was out of the room, she swapped the dead pen for another on his desk, so she wouldn’t have to ask a second time. It looked old and worn, but other than that, Cameron didn’t give it much thought. Then she joined Elaine by the window.
“It’s so sunny outside.” Elaine smiled contentedly. “You couldn’t guess that it rained four inches last night. After the workshop, I’m going to sit by the creek in my backyard and sing.”
“That sounds nice.” Cameron sighed. “After this workshop, I’m going to an open gym with some basketball friends.”
“Alright, let’s bring it back together.” Mr. Yates’ voice reminded Cameron of a T.V. announcer. Always loud, always intense, as if everything deserved one hundred percent excitement. But there wasn’t much to bring back together with only four students.
It turned out that Cameron didn’t even need another pen for the last hour of class. They read scenes they themselves had written and critiqued them, then Mr. Yates explained the concept of beats in a scene. They looked at several examples from books and two movie clips. Mr. Yates assigned them a short story to write for the next day and dismissed the class. Mind swimming with ideas, Cameron didn’t think about the notebook and pen she threw into her sinch-pack.
Basketball took her mind off of the morning. She shot free-throws and scrimmaged with her friends. She was glad for sports to give her mind a break. She wasn’t bad at school, but there were so many rules and formulas and standards to follow. She just wanted to have fun.
That night after dinner, Cameron unpacked her bag to find Mr. Yates’ pen. She sighed and hoped he wouldn’t notice it was missing. She flopped on her bed to write her assigned story. Might as well use the pen, now that I have it, she thought. The assignment was to write a scene about a family gathering with conflict. Cameron already was imagining the rebellious brother who eloped and brought home the girl for Christmas. She was about to write, “They all squirmed in their seats when Jeremy walked in with her.” but instead wrote, “It was a still night, except for one man who sat on his bed, wide awake.” Cameron took her hand from the page. That was weird. Where had that sentence come from? Maybe she was just tired. She needed to focus. She tried to cross the sentence out, but, as if her hand was being controlled by someone else’s brain, it wrote, “His eyes were open wide, like he could pierce the darkness if he mustered enough concentration.” Again, she pulled her hand away and stared dumbstruck at what she had written. She yawned and glanced at her clock. 9:02. She know a lot of her friends could stay up as late as one in the morning, but she had sports practices in the morning, which meant early to bed and early to rise. Was it because she was so sleepy that she couldn’t write what she meant?
After splashing her face with cold water, Cameron resumed her seat on the bed with renewed determination. She would finish this scene and then she would get some sleep.
“Then, a single ray of light cut thro-” Cameron was frustrated now. What was going on? Why wouldn’t her hand form the letters she wanted? She had had trouble with writing before, but always because she didn’t know where to begin, not because she didn’t know how to stop.
Perhaps my subconscious is trying to tell me something. Perhaps I’ll learn that I have a super power or can use magic.
Now very curious, Cameron touched the pen to the page and read as she wrote:
“ugh the darkness as easily as one cuts through jelly. The man walked to his window, impatient for the day to begin.”
The story went on to describe, in great detail, the sunrise and farm country. Cameron was so enraptured with the quaint barns in the pale morning light, she almost forgot the man sitting at the window until the story shifted from what he saw, to what he did. The story said he was so eager to get somewhere, that for the first time since he was sixteen, the man wore a three piece suit instead of lederhosens. Cameron wondered where and when this man lived to have worn lederhosens all his life, but when she wrote, “Suddenly remembering this, he grabbed his lederhosens from the drawer, stared at them a moment, then stuffed them back, anxious to start moving.” A sound somewhere between a click of a pen and several people snapping in unison caught her attention.
Jolted out of the strange story, Cameron looked around herself. But nothing was there. Just her dresser, a box of old stuffed animals, and dirty laundry on the floor.
Wait. She thought. Dirty laundry? I never leave laundry on the floor. That’s disgusting.
She rolled off her bed to examine what had caught her eye. They were like suspenders, but with an extra fold of material in the front. Cameron dropped the thing as a shiver ran up her spine. Lederhosens.
Her heart rate must have doubled. Lederhosens. Just like in the story. Even with the faded embroidery on the edges. Before, lederhosens just made her laugh. They looked so funny, she couldn’t take anyone seriously if they wore them. But now, and afterwards, lederhosens terrified her. Did she write them out of the story, like people could read things out in Inkheart? Cameron smiled. This was... she searched for the right word, but all she could think was ‘epic.’
And then, much too soon, the lederhosens disappeared soundlessly. Cameron blinked. “No! No, it was here. It was.” She ran all over her room, trying to find them, to prove she wasn’t crazy, but they were gone. Disappointed and exhausted, she crawled under her bed covers. She was tired and was probably sleep walking.
As she closed her eyes, Cameron couldn’t help but feel upset with the stupid lederhosens for disappearing.
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