Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Live-Writing Exercise: ALSV 3

It's not that I didn't write today--I did, for nearly an hour--but it was semi-impossible to type it all up today.  Still, I will spend a couple of minutes now, so I have something to show for it.

***


            Tanissa saw her suitcase come out of the machine.  “Can I come here and work with you?”  She’d seen the inner workings of the luggage department, the conveyor belots, the baggage handlers, the walkie talkies . . . it was kind of great, actually.

            “Sorry, baby, but I can’t.  Supervisor’s gotta, I don’t know, obey the rules more than everybody else.”

            “So, what do I do?”

            “First do not tell your mother.  She’s mad at me already.”

            “Why is she mad at--”

            “Please, Tanissa, don’t tell her.  I’m off at five, which means by five-thirty, I’m all yours.”

            “Okay.  Don’t worry.”  Tanissa liked her dad more than her mother, so it was easy to agree to. 

            She grabbed her suitcase as it slowly passed in front of her.  Dad took her suitcase from her without a word and steered her toward the exit. 

            “Second?”

            “What?” he asked.

            “What’s second?”

            “I don’t remember.  But you can watch TV, hang out, read a book, sleep, for three days.  The rest of the time, we’ll hit the town, eat ice cream, go do laser tag, see scary movies, whatever.”

            “Can we go to the beach?”  The ocean was only a few minutes away; she’d seen it from the plane.

            “Sure,” he said, then, “I thought you didn’t swim.”

            “Nobody swims at the beach, Dad.”

            He didn’t know what that meant, but simply nodded, and reminded her to send her mother a text to let her know she had landed alright.  “And don’t mention the other thing.”

            “I won’t.”

            “Oh,” he remembered, “there might be a couple of girls in the complex you can play with.  I don’t know.”

            “Alright,” she told him.  “But let’s hit the gift shop.  I’ll get a big, boring new book.”

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