Want to read the first page (and a half) of my new WIP, THE PUNCTUATION BETWEEN? Click the 'read more' button to check it out! You can also find the snippet on my Facebook page, along with other updates and information about this project's progress. So what are you waiting for? Click below, give it a read, and share your thoughts in the comments! “Shut up, Brenda,” I spit without looking over my shoulder. Brenda wheeze-clicks out what I can only assume is a laugh while she pokes her pincers into my shoulders.
“The house is going to burn down if you leave with the dryer on,” she chides me, but I’m not going to give in to her. I know the house will be fine. The house is always fine. Just as it’s always fine when I forget to blow out a candle, or the cookies burn in the oven. “I’m not in the mood today. I’m going to Finch’s and I’m not going to think about you.” Finch always helps to take my mind off Brenda. I can almost forget that she’s there, un-squishable no matter how hard I try. And I try. “What if your mother comes home to a burned-down house? Where will you live? She would never forgive you. She told you to stay, and you’re ungrateful for leaving. Don’t do that to her, Lex. She doesn’t deserve to go through so much hardship.” Her voice is an ungreased motor in my ear, and the very sound of it is enough to make my spine curl. I decide not to dignify Brenda with a response. I should probably make a practice of that, but sometimes talking back to her is the only way I can remind myself I’m not insane--that she’s the one talking my brain in the circles I try so hard to unknot. Now I just need my phone. I scour the room, twisting my head a little so I don’t have the stupid fingerprint smudge ruining the effectiveness of my glasses. I try my jeans first, sitting on top of a precarious mound of clothes on what used to be my desk chair, and is now the home to a depression-pile of clothes that are in various stages of clean. No phone there. “Maybe you left it at school. You’re always so twisted around--you forgot it and now someone else has it. You can’t afford a new one--tsk tsk, Lex. Mommy will be quite disappointed in you.” “Fuck. Off,” I hiss, leaning against the wall and giving my shoulders a little twist. I know it doesn’t work. Try as I might, I can’t pry her off of my shoulders or crush her black exoskeleton. All the bug spray does is stain my clothes. No, I'm stuck with Brenda, but that doesn’t mean I have to listen. I move to the bed next, trying to make a point to ignore the black ink-stains from where Susan touched last night. I can hear her squelching beneath my bed as I ruffle the bedspread, knowing it had to be somewhere. One particularly aggravated flick sends my phone skittering to the floor, face-down, with a sickening smack. “Maybe it would have been better off staying lost.”
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