Writing Club: Random Words

Random Words Prompt (We each submitted 3 words and then had to include all the words in a short selection):

TRAILER, FLABBERGASTED, MISSPELL, DETECTIVE, RIVAL, REVERBERATE, ENEMY, AXLE, PREMONITION, CANOLA, INTRUDER, COUNTRY-FRIED


"SMOKE SIGNALS"

Day #37 of my captivity
If you’re reading this, HELP! I can’t take it anymore. I know that sometimes in the past I haven’t always been the nicest girl, but I didn’t think I had any real enemies. So why won’t you help me? I’m trapped! Forced to do manual labor against my will! Woman down, people, save me! Seriously. Child labor laws and edicts against cruel and unusual punishment and yet still I sit here, rotting away, “thinking about what I did”. Like three months grounding is going to UNDO any of it. Psh, what am I saying? I’d do it again, anyway. Oh, I’m thinking about what I did all right, pops...and savoring every sweet morsel of the memory!

See, it all started about four months ago when Derek Slainey moved here. OMG, I totally had some SERIOUS premonitions about that guy! And I was RIGHT! I was sitting in homeroom talking to Hallie when in he struts, running his pale fingers through his dark, scraggly hair. His pockmarked face was sheen with a thin layer of oil—shiny, like canola—and his lanky arms swayed awkwardly at his side with every swagger. He SO wouldn’t have been much to look at, except for those EYES. Emerald green and oh-so-entrancing, it’s like some god of good looks started to work his magic on Derek but then got caught up doing touch-up work on Zac Efron and just sort of...forgot to finish. But Derek doesn’t seem to notice, or at least not to mind, because with that hair and those eyes he’s still got a dozen girls rivaling for his affections. Hallie, of course, is one of them. (But when has there been a guy she HASN’T fallen head-over-heels for at first sight?)

As the disrupting whispers of this newcomer danced around his footsteps, his very presence seemed to reverberate off the locker-lined walls. Hallie immediately sent me to the usual detective work—

“Welcome to Baylor High! Where’d you get displaced from? Do you have any pets? What’s your favorite music? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you want one?”

Pitiful.

Well, I can take one for the team, especially for Hallie, I mean, hey, what are BFF’s for, right? But this guy gave me the creeps from day one, and I did NOT want to do my BFF duty this time around. It was with fear and much trepidation that I approached Derek at lunchtime, offering him a place to sit.

The problem with almost-cute guys is that they’re still unsure of exactly how attractive they are, even if they fake it otherwise, so they eat up any compliment you pay them and if you’re not careful they assume you’re in love with them by the end of the conversation. Derek was just another “guy”, which in my opinion wasn’t really saying much, Hallie could TOTALLY do better than having some pod-person intruder into our already slammin’ rhythm, y’know? But whatev. She’s a big girl, she can handle herself. Derek’s too-smooth-for-you lines did nothing to me, so I escaped and ran off to tell Hallie everything I’d uncovered.

If only I’d known how such innocent events and everyday happenings at Derek’s arrival were going to set in motion such a strange and perilous snowball effect.

Day #38 of my weary and depressing exile
“I’ll call you,” Derek told me that afternoon in what could only be described as a scene from a lame preteen movie trailer. He even held his hands, pinky and thumb outstretched, to the side of his head, like he was the guy who had invented hand gestures and therefore I must worship him. (I gave him a few of my own once his back was turned.)

It was when he DID call that I was flabbergasted. He called me at 6:02. Then, when he went for dinner at 6:37, he was back on the phone by 6:42 and he talked to me until 9:21. HE talked. I didn’t even get a word in, but I couldn’t hang up. It was like mind-control, I’d lost all power over my motor skills, like a wheel without an axle my mind was meandering, rolling, spinning, wobbling, idling, dying. Paralysis of will. I’d misspell my own name, if I’d had power to write it. What was he doing? What was he saying? Why couldn’t I just HANG UP the FREAKING PHONE already?!

It was the next day in homeroom, as he waltzed by and I could smell the country-fried steak on his breath from yesterday, that I decided I didn’t need all the answers. I needed to act. NOW. Whatever creepster magic this kid had power to cast, I wasn’t going to be the girl caught in its web. And neither was Hallie. There was no thought, only instinct: Derek had to disappear.

TO BE CONTINUED…