Live Writing Exercise 20

Whoops, nearly lost complete interest there.  Wouldn't be the first time . . . this month.

***

            “Do you believe in the supernatural, Daddy?” Tanissa asked, as she and her father pulled his truck up to the drive-thru ATM at the bank that evening.

            “What, like ghosts and stuff?”

            “And stuff, yeah.”

            “Nope.  No ghosts.  No aliens.  No honest Republicans.”

            “But what about, like, psychics and hypnotists and stuff?”

            “Uh, psychics no.  Hypnotists, yes,” he said, getting cash out of the machine.  “How about you?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “You believe in ghosts, Tannie?”

            “Me?  Oh, I don’t know.  But how about Bigful, and Nessie, and mermaids?”

            “No, yes, and no.”  Her father pushed Transaction Finished on the ATM.

            “You believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Dad?”

            “Oh, is that what that is?  Then, no.”  He patted her back.  “Why do you ask?”

            “No reason.  But let’s say you were a hypnotic guy—“”

            “A hypnotist?”

            “Yeah, and you could hypnotize anybody, just by waving your hand.”

            “Like Ben Kenobi?”

            “I don’t know, yeah.  And anybody would do what you say,” she said.  “Would you use it?”

            “My hypnotic hand wave?  Sure.  Wouldn’t you?”

            “Use it, like, to steal, and get out of work, and get straight A’s without studying?”

            “Um, no to the first one or the last one, but work, hell yeah.  If I could hypnotize my boss into thinking I came in, you and me could spend all day together, drive to down to Oakland, see the sights, a fair or something.  And I’d hypnotize those idiots in baggage to watch where they put luggage, scan every one, and bother to read labels.  And actually work for a change.”

            Tanissa nodded.  It was only natural he’d say that, but she wasn’t sure even doing that was alright.  She’d never seen Brekkyn Mannion sing somebody into working harder, or being nicer to their kids.  It was always selfish stuff, stuff that filled her room and her belly with thngs she wanted but didn’t really need.  She thought of the iPod still in the orange bag in her room, and felt guilty.

 

***

     

            Sure enough, Brekkyn was at her door the next morning, as soon as Dad left for work.  She was again dressed like a little kid, but wearing the hat she’d purchased (“purchased”) the day before.  Tanissa had to admit that, when she heard the knock at the door, she had groaned aloud.  All girls were self-absorbed and shallow and talked too much, but she just wasn’t sure if she could stand spending another day with Brekkyn the Quarter Mermaid.

            “Hey there, big sister!” she exclaimed, which made Tanissa wonder if she had any brothers or sisters out there, and whether they could do what she did.

            “Hey.”

            “You ready for a night on the town?”

            “Night?”  It was eight-fifty in the morning.

            “We can watch TV for a while.”  Tanissa remembered the girl’s awful taste in television and declined.  “Let’s finish that game then.”

            When they’d last played Barbie Monopoly, Brekkyn had just gotten the Malibu Dream House, which was like Park Place.  Tanissa said she didn’t feel like it, but Brekkyn started to cajole her, and Tanissa grabbed her shoes and key.

            They took the elevator down to the lower apartment (it was only two floors, but Brekkyn liked the elevator), and Tanissa could immediately smell that smoky stink in the bathroom again.  Apparently, Brekkyn smelled it too.

            “Mom!?” the girl shouted, not sounding like a kid anymore, but like an irate parent.

            The toilet flushed, and the bathroom fan went on.  “In a minute!”

            A moment later, Mrs. Conlee came out, putting on a smile, but her eyes were red, and it might not have been from crying. 

            Brekkyn looked at Tanissa, reddening herself.  “Go in my room and put the board up.  Don’t mess up the piles.”

            Tanissa did what she was told, but heard her begin to chew out her mother (stepmother?  Foster mother?) before she could get the door closed.  “You were doing it again, weren’t you, Mom?”

            “Brekkyn, honey--”

            And then, Tanissa could distinctly hear the singing begin.  She felt her stomach tighten, and she wanted to get out of there, not just from the room, but the whole building, get to the airport and try to help her dad.  The walls were lined with bookshelves, each filled with another kind of toy or doll or stuffed animal.  There were more than a hundred My Little Ponys displayed around the window, pegged or hanging or glued. 

            No Little Mermaid items, though, could be found in the room, which would have been the most obvious.  There were three crystal--glass?--dolphins on the wall above the reading lamp, and there was strange writing on them that might have been—

            Brekkyn came back into the room, closing the door softly behind her.  “Sorry about that,” she said, which was the first and only time she’d heard her apologize.  “She can be so stupid.”

            Tanissa nodded, but not very enthusiastically.

            “You like your mom?” Brekkyn asked her.  It was a pretty personal question, but not out of character.

            “Sure.  I mean, we fight sometimes, but . . .”  But what?  She still loved her mother, and now that she was away from her for weeks, that love was somehow multiplied.  Maybe that’s why she preferred her dad’s company, because she saw him less.

            “Your dad seems cool,” Brekkyn mentioned, though whether it was fishing for something or just something to say wasn’t clear. 

            Suddenly, there came a slamming sound elsewhere in the apartment.  Brekkyn tensed.  She glanced at the Monopoly board, then at her guest, and finally stood up.  “We’d better go,” she decided.

            “Go?” repeated the older girl, but wasn’t sure she wanted to stay.

            “Sun’s already shining,” Brekkyn said, as if that explained everything.  “We’ll finish the game after.”

            They left the girl’s room, walked through the apartment, and out the door.  Brekkyn’s mother was nowhere around.

            As they made their way out of the building, Tanissa realized she’d not left a note for her dad to let him know what she was doing (something her mother would not have forgiven or forgotten).  Brekkyn, of course, hadn’t even announced they were leaving, and she took the girl’s lead and kept on walking.

Rish Outcast 9: Mick Attends An Elementary School Carnival

So, this was the one that was supposed to drop last time.  Sorry, y'all.

Also, sorry about this story's title, though I am a little less sorry.

Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

Rish

Live Writing Exercise 19

I've written quite a bit on this thing now (including a bit ahead, and some revisions you can't see), and I noticed that Marshal, who is also doing this little exercise, has been keeping track of how many words he writes each day and how many he's written total.

I'm not gonna go that far (it's hard enough to just hit "Publish," as I've already said), but I did do a word count, and when I did, I was well over eleven thousand words.  I mentioned that to Big, who is going like gangbusters on his project, who was just over ten thousand.  I challenged him to work a little bit longer on his, to try to pass me by, and he got up to twelve.  This is not a competition, but good for him.

As it stands, the halfway point of my story is somewhere around now, when Tanissa realizes that Brekkyn has used her power on her more than once, and has absolutely no qualms about doing it again and again.  When I first discussed this story with Big back in February or so, I thought, "How hopeless must the story be to get it where I want it to get?  Is it alright for the neighbor girl to simply be amoral and apathetic, or does she actually have to be evil?"

That's a question only I could answer, and I settled on a line that had to be drawn in the story.  If she crosses that line, you can't call her spoiled or bratty or just sociopathic anymore.  We'll see how that goes.

***

            They got back to Brekkyn’s apartment.  Her mother had made macaroni casserole, which Tanissa had never tried before.  The woman still looked stressed and tired, and there was a smell in the bathroom that made her think about marijuana smoke, which her neighbors back home used to smoke.

           “Is Pepsi alright?” Mrs. Mannion (or rather, Mrs. Conlee) asked.

            “What?”

            “Or do you like Coke?”

            “Either is fine,” she said, remembering to add, “Thank you.”

            Brekkyn insisted they eat their dinner on the couch, with the television on, while the woman washed the dishes.  There was a reality show on about college freshmen documenting losing their virginity on spring break.  Tanissa enjoyed the casserole, but not the entertainment.

            “How come nobody ever sees mermaids anymore, like getting pictures of them?” Tanissa asked during a commercial.

            “Like on satellites and stuff?”

            “Right.  Or underwater cameras.  Or the ones that pick up heat.”

            “Because they live places where the cameras don’t see.  Like deep down.”

            “Alright,” she said, though it didn’t make sense to Tanissa.  “But there’s, like, cities down there, with thousands of mer-people living in th--”

            “Not thousands.  Hundreds.”

            “Okay, hundre--”

            “Alright, probably thousands.”

            “But if there’s that many--”

            Brekkyn finally muted the television and turned her full attention on her friend.  “I know what you’re saying, but it’s real simple.  To a camera or a scuba diver or something, they just look like fish or a dolphin or something.”

            “Why is that?”

            “Or a mass of fish like in Finding Nemo.  It’s how my people have survived for so long, by blending in and not being obvious.  You understand now?”

            “Okay.  Yes,” she said, letting it drop. 

            “Anymore questions you just gotta have answered this minute?” Brekkyn asked, unpleasantly.

             “I gotta go,” she said, making a conscious note of the time. 

            “No, we’re not done,” whined Brekkyn.  “This show’s an hour.”

            “It’s not really my thing.”

            “Well, we never finished our Monopoly game, remember?  I’ve still got the board set up in my ro--”

            “Tomorrow.  My dad’s coming home soon.  I just left my pajamas on the floor and stuff.”

            “So?”

            “I . . .”  How could she explain it?  She didn’t want Dad to walk in and think she was a pig.  She didn’t want to make her father clean up after her, she just . . . she just wanted to see him, spend time with him.  He was her dad.  “I miss him,” she said finally.  “I just get two weeks with him and I don’t want to--”  Waste them.  “--miss out on my time with him.”

            Brekkyn scowled, studying her.  She seemed about to say—sing?—something.  “Okay, tomorrow then.”

            “Tomorrow,” Tanissa said, and headed out, remembering to thank Mrs. Conlee for the meal, who reminded her to call her Muriel. 

            Then, she grabbed Tanissa’s arm with a thin hand and whispered, “Be careful, sweetie.  With . . .”  And her eyes rolled in the direction of her daughter.

            On the couch, Brekkyn was watching the TV intently, where the super-religious teen from Notre Dame was getting to third base in front of the cameras.  She didn’t glance back.

            “Careful?” she asked, but she thought she knew damn well what the woman was talking about.

            “Sometimes,” the poor, sad, scared woman muttered, “she can be cruel.”

            Tanissa had no doubt of that.

***

Live Writing Exercise 18

I got called into work early yesterday, which is no excuse, but hey, work is work.  I also chose to record some chapters for Abigail Hilton's book last night until the wee hours today, and that also took the place of writing and blogging.

Big mentioned the next episode of That Gets My Goat, which somehow I never started on, despite finishing a Dunesteef episode that's apparently not due until August.  Whoops.

But I will take a few minutes now and get some of this out there.

***

            They were sitting at something called the GalleriAtrium, where there were arranged benches, a fountain, and enclosed trees with recorded birdsong playing in them.  Brekkyn was showing Tanissa how to send songs from one iPod to the other, and how they could link up to play games either together or competitively.

            “Can you just record a song off the radio?” Tanissa asked, pulling up the voice memo application.

            “You can, but the quality’s crap,” Brekkyn said.  “I’ll just get you an iTunes card.”

            At that, Tanissa realized she’d lost time again, and put two and two together.  “How do you do it?” she asked, and apparently the tone of her voice told Brekkyn exactly what ‘it’ was.

            The younger girl smiled, going back to a fond memory.  “It was an accident, the first time.  I’d been trying to remember words--Pacifican words--for like, all my life, and it was all going away, but it occurred to me that when I sang, I remembered words I’d forgotten when I tried to speak to them.  I dunno why.  I’m singing to myself, but my nanny is there, and suddenly, she starts to walk away, stiff and dreamlike, like sleepwalking.  She walked right into the wall!  Then she went out of the room and kept going, walking in that direction until I finally stopped her.”

            “I don’t get it.  What direction?”

            “You know, to the ocean?  The song I was singing was about the western, uh, reefs or whatever, where the water is warm.  It’s where you go when the rains come, I dunno.  It works as a song.”

            “And you knew it was your singing that made her walk into the wall?”

            “Not at first.  I tried to remember other songs, and those didn’t do anything.  But when I went back to that song, things just started to happen.”

            “How?  How does it work?”

            “Magic, duh,” she snorted.

            That was no answer.  “Don’t you know?”

            The pale girl stiffened.  “Of course I know, I just don’t discuss it with people.”

            Tanissa nodded, but she didn’t know how a subject like this could just be ignored. 
“You really are part mermaid.”

            “No shit.  That’s what I told you,” Brekkyn said, fake annoyed.  Finally, she stuffed her new iPod in her orange bag, and looked at her.  “Well, you’re my best friend, so I might as well tell you about it.  The tune is a sad one, about longing to go where it’s warm, where it’s better.”

            “Under the sea,” Tanissa mumbled.

            “Right, right,” Brekkyn said.  “It’s, like, a song to make you want to do something, and it works on people, if you change the words.”

            “Wow,” Tanissa said, but she didn’t feel one hundred percent enthusiastic about it, remembering how she felt when watching the girl weave her spell.  “Do you ever feel bad, making people do stuff without them knowing?”

            “Bad?  No.  Why should I?  If somebody can play the piano so good that people cry from it, should she feel bad that they cry?”

            “Well, I--”

            “And if you knew how to paint so good that people wanted you to paint their families and portraits and stuff, do you feel bad for making money from it?”

            Tanissa said nothing.  It wasn’t even close to the same thing, but she didn’t know how to explain that.  Finally, though, she said, “If you are my friend, you won’t use it to make me do things I don’t want to do.”

            Brekkyn glared at her, and Tanissa steeled herself for some kind of nasty retort (or worse), but finally, the girl said, calmly and collectedly, “You’re just jealous.  But because we’re friends, alright.”

            And that was that.

            They shopped for another couple of hours, and Brekkyn used the siren song twice more, to get a serious-faced street performer to play the My Little Pony theme, and getting them matching bracelets.  Tanissa didn’t need a bracelet, but it was pretty, and Brekkyn’s attitude was one that didn’t broach dissension.

           Knowing that she had this power, and that she was so cavalier about using it, made Tanissa not want to be around her anymore.  How often did she sing that little song?  How many times did she accept “No” for an answer, or compromise on anything, when she could just sing and get her way?

            Tanissa wondered how she would act, if she had an ability like that.  She hoped she’d be more responsible, to use the power only when she had no other alternative.  But she didn’t know.

            “I know where we can go tomorrow,” Brekkyn began, as they drank Orangades out of curly straws and walked toward the bus stop.

            Tanissa nipped it in the bud.  They’d had a fine day, but she did not want to do this again.  “My Dad’s off tomorrow,” she lied.  “So I don’t think we’ll be able to--”

            “You’re not a very good liar,” Brekkyn interrupted.  “Your eyes go all shifty.”

            The older girl didn’t know if this was true, but she did try not to be dishonest, if she could help it.  “I’m here to visit my dad,” she said.  “I don’t see him very much anymore.”

            “Your parents are divorced, right?”

            “Right.”

            “That’s cool,” she said, which was a strange comment, but not out of character. 

            “If we can be home early, what do you want to do tomorrow?” Tanissa said at last.

            “There’s an aquarium on Regency Drive.  They just put in one of those tunnels where the sharks swim around you, you know?”

            Tanissa didn’t know what that was, but she nodded.  A girl who was part mermaid might get something else out of going to an aquarium than the rest of us.         “Can you breathe underwater?” she asked.

            “Random much?” Brekkyn smirked, almost certainly a quote from a movie or TV show.  “Not anymore,” she confided, disappointed with herself.

            Tanissa sighed.  It wasn’t that she didn’t believe her, but it was hard to process.  If mermaids were real, then everything people said was make-believe might be real.  She had a hard enough time believing in the Lord and the Bible stories, let alone fairies and witches and yetis and stuff.

            They rode the bus--Tanissa insisted on paying, mostly as a test to see what the girl would do--and sat together on the second row.  “Your mom?” she asked.

            “What?”

            “Your mom that was half-mermaid?  Where is she?”

            “I don’t know,” Brekkyn mumbled, showing obvious discomfort at this topic.  “She’s probably dead somewhere.”

            “Oh.”

***

Live Writing Exercise 17

I talked to Big about how his exercise is going, and he seemed quite exuberant.  He says that, as soon as his current story is finished, he's going to start on the next one the same way.  His theory is, if people are bugging him about continuing, he's far less likely to abandon a story halfway through (which I don't think was a dig at me, although I do currently hold the title--and trophy--of Champion of Unfinished Stories).

I don't know if I'm keen to do this a second time (at least not soon), but I am anxious to share more of my work, if I can.  I need to train myself to follow David Allan Grier's advice (okay, I know it's Dean Wesley Smith, I just have a mental block with his name) and publish every one of my stories myself, so that people can buy them if they want to.  So far, I still approach it kicking and screaming.

***

***

 

            When Brekkyn hailed a taxi--a white one instead of yellow like in the movies—and sang something to the cabdriver, so he’d drive them to the galleria for free . . . Tanissa started to connect the dots.  The girl had done something similar the day before, but she had forgotten about it, for some reason.

            They were dropped off right in front of the galleria, which was apparently another mall.  It was very nice, half indoor and half outdoor, with several boutiques selling clothing, jewelry, windchimes, and one weird store that only sold colored contact lenses (and vampire teeth, but that didn’t really count).  Things were, like the day before, way too expensive, even though they looked nicer than what you’d find at Target or a cheaper mall.  But there were a few people in every store, all of them clean and made-up, and dressed as though they might run into somebody important there.  It made Tanissa feel insecure, as if people would see her and realize she had no money, and had never been there before.  She didn’t know the word “pretentious,” but she didn’t like that the stores were called boutiques, or that their names were either in French, Italian, or deliberately misspelled English words (for some reason).

            Tanissa did know the word “snob,” however, which was the word to describe the employees of these boutiques, who assessed each customer with arrogant bored eyes, and squinted at Tanissa like she was a well-known shoplifter.

            “Do you come here a lot?” she muttered to Brekkyn.

            “Every week,” the girl boasted.  “It’s like my church.”

            Right.  Tanissa had been to church with her parents, and it was nothing . . . well, in some ways, it was a lot like this.  Even so, she could see how proud the girl was of this place, pointing out cute shops and trendy wares, happy to have a friend to take on the tour. 

            “That would look so sweet on you!” Brekkyn remarked, and then pretty much forced Tanissa to try the top on.

            It wasn’t her, but she looked at herself in the fitting room mirror and realized it was the same color as Brekkyn’s hair.  She came out to explain, and the younger girl had “a sick hat” to show her, rudely reminding her that the girl was originally from Los Angeles.

            They went into a music shop, where a hit song from a boy band (which sounded identical to the last hit song by that boy band) was playing, manic LED lights blinking in time with it.  The store’s name was Pet Soundz, but Tanissa saw no birds or dogs or cats.  A young hipster with grey hair stepped in front of them as soon as they were in the door.  “Anything I can assist you with?” he offered, but his tone said, “Show me your money.”

            “Um, where are your iPods?” Brekkyn asked, just a little intimidated, at least.

            The clerk took them over to a display case where the fancy music players were imprisoned, each one more expensive than anything Tanissa owned, including her straightened teeth.

            “How much is a 6^th Generation iPod Touch??”

            “What size?” he asked.

            “48?” Brekkyn said, which meant nothing to Tanissa.

            “They’re on special for three-hundred.”

            “Great.  I’ll take two.  Do they come in pink?”

            “Certainly,” the clerk said, and typed a little code on the case, unlocking it. 

            Tanissa made the connection and her ears began to burn.  “No, no, Brekkyn, it’s too much.”

            “Don’t worry about it.”

            “Really.  I don’t need an iPod.”

            ‘Sure you do.  They play movies, record and play sound, surf, take pictures.  You can download a million games, I’ll show you.”

            “I can’t afford it, and I can’t let you buy it for me.”  She was trying to be discreet, but it was hard to sound serious without raising her voice.

            “Hey, we both need one,” Brekkyn smiled, and there was something so ugly in it that she wanted to take a step back.  No, she didn’t need one.  Maybe a librarian or a cyclist or a toll booth operator needed one, and even then, a cheap radio or mp3 player would do just as well.  The only reason to buy a brand new top-of-the-line name brand electronic--in pink, no less--was to show it off to those around you.

            The grey haired clerk held one in each hand.  “Only two we have left,” he commented, but again, there was something so judgey about him that Tanissa was tempted to just leave and go home, leaving Brekkyn with her new friend to talk about earbuds.

            And then, the girl began to sing.  It was the same tune as before, and a couple of the lyrics were familiar to Tanissa by now, though it still sounded like no language spoken by man. 

            The clerk’s eyes brightened, a jolt of caffeine after not enough sleep.  “What a darling song,” he exclaimed, and Tanissa realized this guy was genuinely like that.

            Brekkyn sang another line or two, and the clerk looked from girl to girl, giving them a wink.  “What are you telling him?” she asked, but Brekkyn didn’t stop, singing one more breathful of syllables, before snapping, “Don’t interrupt.”

            “Oh, girls,” the clerk said, handing each of them a music player.  “I’m simply mortified we sold them all.  I’d be happy to call you when the next shipment comes in.”

            “Uh--” Tanissa began, and the clerk turned.  “Do you want bags?  We have these little orange bags with cords, if you’re going to be around the galleria for long.”  He didn’t wait for an answer, just scampered off to fetch them.

            “Brekkyn, I don’t need an iPod.  I can’t take this.”

            “You were fine with everything else,” Brekkyn said, essentially calling her a hypocrite.

            “But this is stealing.”

            “You were fine with everything else,” the girl said again, only slower and more deliberate, addressing a disabled child.

            “The bus was going anyway, the movie was playing anyway.  I--”

            And again, Brekkyn began her song.

***

Live Writing Exercise 16

I have friends who--okay, I know people who--publish entire books on their blogs, either in audio form, or the way I'm doing this now.  And they invariably claim that those books still sell afterward, even to people who read/listened for free.  That makes me want to try podcasting a longer piece, just to see if it might work.  Or I could keep doing this.

I will keep working on this, though, but I keep finding areas to expand or contract, and have gone back and fixed stuff I didn't catch when I "published" it here.  I do think, though, that podcasting a long piece like this would be more satisfying than what I'm doing now, since I could maybe say that I'd do a couple of chapters a week, put them out on a set schedule, then edit the whole batch together when I was done and sell it on Audible.

Man, I wish I were ambitious enough to do that.

***

            When her dad came home, he brought a pizza (it had sausage on it, though, and she hated sausage), and they talked about her day.  When Dad heard about the bus and the movie, he apologized for not leaving Tanissa some cash, but she told him they got in free.

            “Free?”  Dad had warned her many a time that in real life, nobody gets a trophy just for showing up, and that the only lottery she’d ever win was to be born in America, in the time that she did. 

            “I . . . I guess so.”  It did seem like she’d left out an important part of the story.  “Guess she knows the ticket guy,” Tanissa said, and then, “And the bus driver.”  Drivers, plural.  Strange.

            “Well, I’m glad you made a friend.  I was worried about you all day at work, and when you didn’t answer the phone . . .”

            The girl felt bad about that, but couldn’t help mentioning that if she had a cellphone like Brekkyn did, that wouldn’t have been a problem. 

            “Right,” Dad said, “like you wouldn’t lose a phone in the first day somewhere.”  He had a point; she did tend to misplace things.  But Tanissa didn’t think she’d lose something as important as a phone.  And if she did forget where she put it, they could just call it and listen for the ring like they did when Mama lost hers.

            “We’ll see,” was all Dad could respond to that.
 

***

            The next day was very similar.  Dad got up early, showered, and woke Tanissa to have breakfast with him before heading to the airport.  He made sure to leave her with two tens in case she went out again.

            “I won’t,” she said.  “I’m just gonna read and draw all day.”  He’d brought her a sketchpad with fifty blank pages on it the day before.

            Dad shook his head at that.  He could turn the television to Channel Zero, and it would still be that way when he turned it on again tonight.  “Whose daughter are you?” he joked.

            “Just yours,” she said, something they’d shared before.  “Who’s daddy are you?”

            “Well, yours, and a whole mess of kids I don’t even keep track of.”

            That was new.  Last time he’d said he was the father of three other girls, each one cuter than Tanissa.  He kissed her on the head and went in the bathroom to brush his teeth.  As soon as he was out of the apartment and down the hall, there came a knock at the door.  Tanissa thought she knew who it would be.  She was still at the table, having just lined up her colored pencils.

            The knock came again.  She didn’t want to go out with Brekkyn again, though she couldn’t really say why.  She figured she’d got to the door, and since she was still in her pajamas, tell the younger girl she wasn’t feeling up to hanging out this morning.

 

            Brekkyn was dressed all in purple today—a jogging suit or something—and held two enormous donuts in her hands, the chocolate-covered ones shaped like a foot.  “Gotcha a bearclaw,” the girl said, holding one out. 

            Tanissa shook her head, explaining that she’d just had breakfast, and wasn’t really a morning person.  She didn’t really feel up to a day on the town, that she was just going to lounge about, maybe go back to sleep, or at least . . .

            The pale girl began to sing.  It was eerie little melody, and though Tanissa couldn’t make out the sense of the words, it did wonders for her attitude.

            A moment later, she was changing her clothes in the bathroom, half a donut crammed in her mouth, and listening to the other girl complain about breaking her iPod.

            “. . . not really broken, you know, but the crack goes right through where the song title shows up, and it pisses me off, you know?”

            Tanissa understood.  Every one of her friends had a cracked phone or tablet or mp3 player, and often had to live with it until the next birthday or Christmas.

            “What generation is yours?  You could swap iPods with me, if you want,” the girl was asking from the living room.  Tanissa came out of the bathroom, still putting on her rocks.  “I don’t have an iPod.  I had a little music player last summer, but I don’t remember what I did with it.”

            “No iPod?” Brekkyn asked, as though hearing Tanissa had no bellybutton.  “Well, we’ll have to fix that, huh?”

            The TV was on, Brekkyn sitting at the couch.  It was on the Disney Channel, a show about a teenage boy and girl who are both rock stars, but also secret agents, each keeping it a secret from the other.  Tanissa had seen it once before, and it was so contrived as to be offensive even to a twelve year old.  But Brekkyn seemed to enjoy it.  “Wanna watch this with me?” she asked.  “Kid Investigations is just about to--”

            Tanissa sighed.  “The sun’s shining outside, you know.  We could go for a walk.”

            “I forgot to show you the swap meet place by the galleria yesterday,” Brekkyn remembered, rising to her feet.  “Have you been there?”

            “Yeah, we drove past it the first day.  My dad’s bank is right in front o--”

            “We’re going,” Brekkyn said, leading Tanissa to believe she would’ve said that no matter what.