Nicki

Nicki is the manin character in a novel I'm working on called Swallow.  This is a scene that happens near the end of the book (although I haven't even written the middle of the book yet!).  It might end up being the prologue.  Who knows.  As usual, I don't know where my Outsider Girls will end up.  I just let them speak.

Nicki:  I know this place.  I know the woods we’re entering. 

I know them in spring, when white flowers bloom in clusters among yellow-green leaves.  I know the woods in summer, when the foliage is lush and thick, and you have to know these woods like I do to navigate them.  In spring and summer, these trees -- this woods -- means a private picnic… a time to rest from the sun, lie on the cool moss and be peaceful and alone. It's a happy place.
In the fall I've scooped leaves fallen from these trees.  Penny and I have rolled down this hill.  I've laughed here, in the fall.

I’ve also been at this edge of the woods in winter a thousand times at least, climbing the hill I’m being made to climb right now.  Every winter when I was a kid, I climbed this hill, trudging up the snowy slope, dragging my inner tube or sled or toboggan or whatever came for Christmas that year.

I’ve seen these trees so many times I know the way one tree grows at an angle, toward the right, oddly away from the sun – the little sun that remains on this bitter afternoon.

     The trees I know so well are bare.  Gray stalks with spidery branches.  Familiar.  
     Focusing on the trees calms me down enough so that I can breathe.  I’m scared, but not so scared to death like I was in the car, because I know this place.  It has always been friendly to me.

     Stumbling, I land hard on the frozen ground.

     Lisa grabs me and pulls me up, and her fingernails dig into my arm, but I can’t feel it because I’m too cold.

     “Why are you doing this to me?” I want to know.  I sound like a baby, but who cares?

     “Just keep moving, bitch,” Lisa says.  

Nicki

Nicki is a new Outsider Girl, and the protagonist in my next novel, Swallow.




Nicki:   “Wake up in the morning, feeling like P Diddy…”

     That’s Ke$ha, blaring from my alarm clock, which is also a dock for my iPod.

     “Grab my glasses, I’m out the door…”

     If I don’t get my ass out of bed and turn off my alarm, it’s going to wake up my little brother, and my mother’s going to have a fit. She’s going to say something like, “It’s only six fifteen in the morning, and already you’ve ruined my day,” and then she’s going to rush downstairs to my brother’s room to pick him up, put him on her lap and rock him and tell him everything’s going to be all right, it’s just that Nicki is a teenager and she’s in her own world and she can’t think about the feelings of others right now.

     My mother’s going to tell Tommy that being a teenager is a tough time for a girl, and “we all have to learn to be patient with Nicki.”

     “Pedicure on our toes toes, tryin on all our clothes clothes…“

     My mother thinks she’s being all good and understanding.

     She would never think to ask me why I’m curled up in a ball under the fairy blanket grammy made for me last birthday as if I’m still just a little kid, although it is true I love this blanket, even if I was turning fifteen, and I am too old for flower fairies.

     “Tik tok on the clock…”

     I don’t even like this song, why did I pick it to wake me up—

     “Nikki! Turn your music down!” my mother yells from behind her closed door.

     “It’s my alarm!” I yell back.

     “Ain’t got a care in the world, but got plenty of beer…” Ke$ha sings.

      Tommy starts crying, Waa waa, big baby, Waa waa, the sound getting closer as he comes up the stairs—

     “Nikki!”

     For like a second, I try to ignore it all, try to wrap my quilt closer around my head and drown it all out, but come on, that’s totally ridiculous, so I reach a hand out and slap the snooze button, shutting Ke$sha up. If only everyone else had a snooze button! I just wanna get a handle on the dream I was having. I just wanna stop crying. I cry all the time and its ridiculous.