2.8

This semester I am finally in some English classes that I truly care about. Mostly just one that really, really matters to me. Creative Writing (read: Writer's Workshop, collegiate style). Susan Aizenberg is no Dylan Carter, and the Joes and Connors will never, ever be my Michaels. But it's a new experience, new writers from whom I can learn volumes, and new motivation to WRITE EVERY DAY (I'm told this is the secret to being a good writer). As part of the curriculum, we are required to read a textbook which has, scattered about its pages, many "try this" exercises. We are assigned a few per week to write over the course of a few days and are asked to put them in a journal, where we are compiling all our writing from the semester. Even the bad stuff. So I decided that I was going to post them here, as a kind of directed freewrite. Raw, unedited, maybe even unread by myself. In whatever condition they are as soon as my fingers stop typing. You have been warned. So, with that, here is Try This 2.8: describe a terrifying or thrilling experience from your childhood or adolescence.

My heart thud in my chest like a tap dancer hammering out a feverish dance, practicing over and over in an uneven rhythm that threatened to appear in the warm, blushed skin of my chest. “Stop it,” I thought to my treacherous organ, “you’ll give me away.” I glanced at him but my eyes shot away upon meeting his, a smile winking flirtatiously on my lips. A waft of his knowing cologne met my nose and my lungs unconsciously filled themselves with the musky spice of the scent. Our eyes met again. Over the stack of books and top ridge of his laptop, he rumbled something in his mid-timbre range of distraction. I agreed, without fully paying attention. I sipped the crunchy sweetness of my frappuccino, trying my best to fall in love with his favorite beverage, one over-priced and over-sweetened cup at a time. I, of course, had not been making any progress in my reading since he had surreptitiously, masterfully, casually placed his hand on the table close to mine; fingers sharing electric currents but not skin.

The chatter and whirr of the coffee machines gossiping among themselves is the background symphony to our stimulating silence, revealing nothing and everything. I sat staring at the same page, the words swarming across and around and through and over the page like black ants around a forgotten picnic. Nothing is normal in my world of caffeine and adrenaline. Our eyes pull at each other’s like magnets again. He grins and shrugs his shoulders; I smile and bite the corner of my lip in response. I get lost in his forest eyes that dare me to take that step into adventure.

Then, natural as a breath, his warm, rough, oak tree hand covers my cool silk dress fingers. And they intertwine, bark and silk, making promises no two things so different should make.