Dreaming Out Loud (Chapter 1)
I must say that I'm really glad the Mayans weren't right about the world ending in 2012 because 2013 has been a good year. Martin Sisters Publishing released Open Mike in May so it's time to get the next one finished.
I've been working on this one for a little while and the working title is Dreaming Out Loud.
Here's the first chapter:
The strangest part about learning to fly is how quickly you forget.
And truthfully, it was not that long ago. A lot can happen in thirty-seven years, but then again, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the years blend together and nothing changes but the calendar. Sometimes can become all the time, and suddenly, somehow, you don’t remember something like real magic.
Nobody should feel sorry for me because I have lived an extraordinary life, one that would make the greatest dreamers jealous. And those great dreamers would be jealous because I held power over other people’s dreams. For a short time, in a very real way, I owned them, played with them, tried them on like they were my own. Yes, I knew this would not last forever, and no, I could not live the rest of my life as the dream thief, but my name is written in history books not found in any school or library.
And the flying part? Completely real. I know the difference. For just as certain as I am that my feet are firmly planted on the ground right now, I know there was a time when they weren’t. I saw with my very own eyes the top of the tallest trees get smaller and smaller. My lungs breathed in air as it got thinner. My skin grew cold as my heart beat faster. I lived this, it’s a part of who I am.
If I had been thinking of this the day before, I would have said it’s a part of who I was. But today is a better day. My name is Nadine Brier-Perkins and I have a story.
So much starts with a friend I made, but I haven’t thought about Renee Acosta in a long time. Most people don’t even believe that I know her, much less could be friends with her. She was my best friend. I miss her.
Renee, however, moved on. I certainly was not surprised. Small town Ohio had no chance to keep her. She chased her dream while I got tackled by the subtle beast called Maturity. It talked me into believing that that the towel around my neck was not a cape, that the stick I held was not a wand, and that a magical place was just a clearing in the woods.
After the beast had beaten me, I never flew again. But in my now-mature mind, I know that I really did fly. The sad part is that I chose not to. Now it’s too late.
Renee still grew up, kind of. And she never had to think about a stick being a magic wand as long as she held a pen. She invited me to her first book signing. It was a good thing she did. Had she not, only three books would have sold.
Two years later she invited me to her second signing, and the room was a lot more crowded. By the time she had me come out to the third I was just a face in a bigger crowd.
I never made it to the fourth.
At this point it became easier to read her columns. And I certainly did not have to look hard for them. After just a few months, Dreaming Out Loud went syndicated. Then all I had to do was open my email and her latest blog post was waiting for me. Her fifth book was just a collection of these columns.
She got paid a lot of money to speak at conferences, conventions, and luncheons. It was her job to sign books, talk, and meet new people. It was her job to be herself.
I went to some of her conferences, and bought all of her books. My little claim to fame in all this came when she dedicated her first novel, A Land Far, Far Away… Right Here to me. She wrote, for my friend Nadine, who took me on my first adventures.
There was a time when I had this book nearly memorized, a story of two girls who imagined a world, only to find it was true all along. But I would have known every word of the book even if I had never read a single page. It was categorized as fiction, but I knew better.
As the years passed, I heard less and less from Renee. And knowing how busy she was, I didn’t bother her. I got married to Bob and we have a son, Bradley. He’s a good boy, even as a teenager, and Bob is a fun guy despite being an accountant. But with a husband at work and a son who doesn’t need mommy, my days are not full of great excitement.
Until, on an otherwise boring day, as I sat on the couch with the television off, I heard my friend. At first I thought I was crazy, but again I knew better. Like she was sitting next to me, like she had so many years ago, she spoke to me from a distance and said, “Nadine, come here now.”
And like that scary night decades ago, I didn’t ask questions, I just went. There was no need to pick up the telephone and call her. I did have to call Bob and tell him something important came up and that I had to go out of town for a short while. Of course he wouldn’t understand that I heard a voice come to me from a thousand of miles away, so I just told him it dealt with important business about Renee. He didn’t question further, and immediately offered help with navigating the trip, getting the car ready, and planning any hotel stays. I convinced him that I was perfectly capable of handling all that.
I told Bradley I would be gone for a few days, and he just told me to have a fun trip in New York. It did not take me long to put together a suitcase, print off directions to what I knew was her address, and get out on the open road.
My friend needed me, and I didn’t have time to wait around. The last time she called me like this, horrible things would have happened had I not acted quickly. And I was in such a place that I could have easily talked myself out of going.
I can’t even imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t gone when I did.
