Yes, I do teach creative writing: Writing Group Rejects
I’ve led a private novel-writing group for 20 years. I have chosen every member from students I’ve cherry-picked from my classes, and the group is never larger than 8. This gives each of us a chance to read a chapter a month. We meet every week, two people reading per night. This has allowed me to write ten novels even though I’m a full-time English teacher. I can’t recommend writing groups enough just as an impetus to write and to get good feedback. The average member stays about 5 years, some longer, but some don’t last and some don’t make the cut after the first couple of visits. What makes us reject members? Here’s the plain truth:
1. People who can’t or won’t critique aren’t assets to the group. It’s okay if they start out not knowing the language of analysis in fiction. But they have to learn to talk about plot, character, point of view, setting, dialog, style, tone, imagery, etc. No one is eloquent at first; that comes with practice. It starts with a willingness to engage in another person’s writing, the guts to have an opinion, the daring to put it out there. Ideally we want to go deeply into each other’s worlds and have lively conversation about them, with insight, humor, and intensity. It just doesn’t work if not everyone there is able to be part of it.
2. Prima donna’s don’t last. What happens sometimes is that new members bring fairly developed first drafts to group and then are unwilling to take the critique that would force them to give up big chunks of what they’ve written or change characters significantly. They spend their energy defending their writing choices instead of listening to advice about developing characters or avoiding cliched plots. It’s especially disappointing when they come back with their next chapter having ignored everything that was suggested. If you don’t trust the critique, what’s the point of being in the group? Gradually there is a drawing away and everyone can sense it.
3. It’s about writing. It’s not about whose turn it is to bring snack or whether group members’ personal lives match up well. I’ve seen “off-page” issues destroy other writing groups. I’ve counseled writing group leaders who tell me about members who don’t get along. Then their group implodes. I even saw one group pick up and leave one member behind, reinventing themselves secretly to avoid her. For this reason, you have to make it difficult to join your group. We have a three visit minimum, a 50 page submission requirement, and then a vote before admitting a new member, and it has to be unanimous. Some wannabe members of my group have told me that our admission requirements are too strict. Nope. This is what keeps my group dynamic, productive, positive, and task-oriented. Have we ever had some duds? Yes, including people who regularly didn’t produce work during their turn. I had to be the bad guy and give them the warning. Three warnings and they were asked politely and sympathetically to consider their priorities. Sometimes this leads to a member amending their ways. More often it gives them permission to leave the group. In the end, you have to ask yourself, “What kind of group do we want?”
4. The group comes first. Hopefully everyone in the group identifies as a writer foremost. That’s who I am. My family knows this and lovingly accepts it. I don’t think my colleagues at work know this, but it’s true. It’s not a hobby, it’s who we are, and we lovingly tend our novels. Sometimes members realize that they are in fact meant to be painters or poets or world travelers. We wish them well. We remain in the group, steadfast, devoted, intent. We encourage each other to submit query letters and we occasionally go to writing conferences together and yes, we celebrate birthdays with drinks. We have a scroll with names on them for those who have finished one novel, two novels, three novels. We aren’t best friends and we don’t need to hang out much -- but dang, we see each other once a week, which is more than most good friends do. This is the kind of group I run and this is how I like it to work. Maybe your group will do things differently.
Please feel free to ask me if you want advice about starting or maintaining a novel-writing group.
Stop making your main characters white and male (yes, I do teach creative writing)
Okay, I am probably not talking to *you*, so cool your jets. *You* are woke and understand that just as the real world has people of every color and all along the gender spectrum, fiction should too. TV has not figured this out yet. If it had, one in five characters in America-set stories would be black, one in ten Asian, and three in ten would be Latino. Fully half would be female (and of those females, only one in five would be a hot chick instead of 4 out of 5). Movies are about the same. Unfortunately a lot of fiction writers emulate what they’ve seen on the screen. Many’s the time I’ve asked one of my writing students where the female characters are, what the ethnicity of their characters are, and how race and gender affect their characters. Sometimes students will tell me that they are “colorblind” or that gender shouldn’t matter. (Yet how many times have I read that the hero’s eyes are “cerulean” -- pardon me while I throw up a little in my mouth.) Other times students tell me that because they’re white, they don’t feel comfortable creating black, Asian, or otherwise non-white characters.
Here’s what I have to say to these weak excuses: it’s not cultural appropriation if you’re white and write non-white characters, so long as you give those characters depth, heart, and originality. Don’t stereotype. Don’t make up Indian legends (a la Stephenie Meyer). Avoid tropes. DO look at your four main characters and make sure some are women in power (NOT victims), add some depth and variety to your characters’ sexuality, and make no more than half of them white. Embrace the conflict that this may add to your fiction, and do investigate how that would realistically play out, add to your story’s depth, and affect the symbolism, themes, and setting.
Why is this important? It is up to us writers to change the landscape of fiction in this new century. I am astonished by the continuing whiteness and maleness of TV. Every new show that comes on, I see four white guys, the black/Asian token, the diverse, mostly non-speaking support team, and a hot chick. Sometimes two hot chicks. Sometimes there’s a black woman president or other background power figure to reassure us that the writing team cares. But the main characters? White, and dominated by males. Props to Shonda Rhimes. Make your cast of characters look like her TV shows.
Readers want to see themselves reflected on the pages of the books they choose. Yet we are trained to read about/watch white men, especially as heroes, and we need to start changing that narrative. Think about a young black woman growing up with no hero that looks like her to daydream about. That sucks. It’s even worse for Asian readers in America.
Now look at your story, the one you’re working on or getting ready to work on. And look at the diversity of your characters. And ask yourself, “How will this story change if it reflects the real world? If my main character is an Asian girl, or a black man?” It’s not going to wreck your story. It’s going to make your story more interesting. Do it. Now.
You cannot make up an interesting story by sitting in a chair. Sitting in a chair makes your brain cells grow sluggish. Where do you do your fantasizing? (If you don’t fantasize, that’s a bigger problem and I might not be able to help you.) When you’re washing the dishes, taking a shower, folding laundry? Anything where the body is busy but the mind is free. I walk in the woods almost every day (luckily, my backyard). I dedicate those walks. “In this walk, I shall think about Caleb and his need to turn into a troll and bite Sybele’s head off.” The faster I walk, the more imagination I have. Sometimes, I stop and just ponder. How mad is Caleb? How scared is Sybele? Does she run for her car, or threaten him? Or both? When I get back from my walk, THAT’S WHEN I SIT DOWN. Stop sitting. Start walking . . . or doing something.
Students and inexperienced writers are constantly asking me where to get good ideas. You get them out of your own fertile imagination, not from video games, not from fanfic, not from your favorite TV shows. Those may not be bad ideas, but they aren’t YOUR ideas. You have to start with a grain of an image, something your body experiences. For me, it always starts with a threat or a moment of captivity, and it always leads to freedom or courage. But that moment starts in the body. It’s the feeling of being tied up, or starved, or locked up, or blindfolded. No, I’m not fetishist; it’s the body moment that leads out to character development and a plot. Maybe for you it’s running through the woods, or pulling out a knife, or reaching out to touch someone’s neck, or locking a door. Find that potent body image and build on it.
WARNING: your body image is NEVER GOING TO BE sitting in a chair. Cuz nobody wants to read a story about that. Unless you’re tied up in it. That might be a good story . . . .
In my family 84 years later we still tell the story of The Cheese Worm.
Little Jack watched his tall and severe grandfather take down the hand-joined wooden box from the high cupboard after dinner and unlock it with a tiny key. It opened with a pungent surge of smell, for it held a portion of a wheel of runny white cheese that drove the rest of the family to the other end of the house. Jackie knew if he were quiet and just hung around in the kitchen, sometimes his grandfather would cut him off a little piece. It tasted so much better than it smelled. This was one of those rare times when he was passed a healthy chunk, but as Jackie was lifting the cheese to his lips, he recoiled. It was alive with writhing white worms.
“Ew,” he complained, and tossed the cheese onto the counter.
His grandfather bent his old white head to inspect it and frowned with Lutheran judgment. “Boy, those worms were born in that cheese. They’ve eaten nothing but cheese their whole lives. They’re made of cheese. Those are cheese worms. Eat it.”
Jackie had no choice but to eat it under his grandfather’s watchful eye.
Underhill at Equinox, Chapter 9: In which Caleb, a shy gay nerd, turns into a troll.
Chapter Nine
When Mac got to his fourth floor room, he dropped his backpack inside the door, grateful that his roommate wasn’t there. He had to think. Figure this out, this impossible mountain of records on students that went back for decades. Eric had papered half the walls in posters of the lamest death metal bands, and his electronics had cords snaking to every outlet. His bed wasn’t made and his big stinking shoes were scattered everywhere, like a pile of breeding guinea pigs. The guy had mounted a huge mirror next to his wardrobe above a side table so covered with body sprays and hair products that it looked like a shrine. He’d known Eric for eight days, and already they couldn’t stand each other.
Mac crossed the invisible line into the tidy, spare side of the room that was his, threw himself onto his bed and looked at the folder.
Sylver had been keeping this folder on him since ninth grade. There were seven pages of notes inside, the flowery blue handwriting hard to make out. The words he could read were strange: “indigo ohm-lari flowered 1x.” That was on page six, dated a year ago. The next line read, “Distinct blue aura three cm.”
Okay, so Sylver knew he had a blue aura. That wasn’t a surprise, what with the pictures showing it. Then his gaze fell on the word immediately beneath, underlined twice in a deeply inscribed stroke.
Aedifex.
Wasn’t that the word the old custodian had used? He’d said something like “cambiarus and adifex.”
What the hell was an aedifex?
His computer had bit the dust, and Grandma Marian hadn’t been able to afford to buy him a new one. Mac searched his roommate’s side of the room until he found his laptop. Eric would be in class for a couple of hours yet, but just in case, he put a chair under the door before he turned the sleek little machine on. Of course it was blocked with a password. “Megadeth” didn’t work.
He stared at the screen and said aloud, “I am going to type the right password.” Then he just let his fingers fly, ten strokes, some combination of capitals and numbers and letters, and hit Enter.
A screensaver of the band KISS in their black and white clown makeup suddenly appeared. He was in! The password floated through his head for a second: RQCK5T@R.
Let Nikki Ervin doubt him. His fingers had just typed a password he didn’t know, simply because he’d wanted them to. The feeling that was welling up in his chest, foaming and frothed with excitement, was of confirmation. Rightness. It didn’t matter that it had never worked like this before, no possibility of coincidence. He’d known for a long time that he could do it. That he would do it, eventually. And “eventually” was now, apparently.
Smiling, triumphant, he pulled up a dictionary website on the laptop and typed in the word “Aedifex.” Zero results. So he tried a couple of other spellings, and when that didn’t work any better, he found a translation website. It wasn’t Spanish. Not French.
Latin. It meant creator, fabricator, constructor, maker. And “cambiarus” meant changer.
Understanding filled him like light. He was the maker. He could make his wishes into actions with a thought . . . sometimes. And Nikki was the changer. She’d somehow made everyone’s aura bigger. He knew it. But could he convince her?
With shaking hands, Mac closed down the laptop and put it back where he’d found it. He began to pace his room. Cambiarus. Aedifex. She was yellow and he was blue. What about all the others? All the ones with the pink auras? What were they? All the blazing pink auras, bursting into blossom suddenly. And the biggest of all? Caleb’s, like a sun going nova. Even before the earthquake, he’d been lit up. And he’d been sick.
Mac stopped in mid-step, suddenly worried. The aura was real. Framed in his roommate’s vanity mirror, it glowed around him, a blue circle centered around his head, huger than he’d ever seen it. But Caleb’s pink glow had covered his whole body.
The old custodian’s accusing finger, the command to Get Out, clearly a warning.
Maybe they were all sick. Aedifex could be a disease. Sylver might have been trying to quarantine them, or form some sort of support group for people who were sick, maybe even dying. Jeremy and Victoria, Bryony’s brother and sister, dead. A hereditary disease would explain all the family trees.
And Caleb had no idea. Within seconds Mac was out the door and down the hallway, worry making him walk faster. He stood outside Caleb’s door, six rooms down from his own. The kid was almost certain to be inside.
Mac’s rapping was met with silence, and he reconsidered. Caleb might have felt well enough to go to his next class.
The closed door reproached him. A disease support group was about as unlikely as all of them being crazy. He was just about to turn back down the hall when he heard a very small sound from inside, a gasp, really, fluttery and tentative.
Mac tried the door. It was unlocked. He stepped into darkness, the curtains drawn over the windows. In the light seeping in from the hall, he could see that one side of the room looked a lot like his roommate’s, even some of the same posters. The other side was decorated with a few nice framed paintings and a bedspread and lamp that all looked like a mom had picked them. The bed was made. The wardrobe doors were shut. The entire room was empty.
Yet he could feel it: someone was there.
“Caleb?” Mac called softly.
A groan of pain came from under the bed.
Mac got down on his hands and knees. Yeah, maybe Caleb could fit under there – but not many other high school boys could. The space was so dark that he couldn’t make out anything, but still there was a sense. A presence, black holding denser black. But strangely, no aura.
Mac reached up and switched on the bedside lamp. From under the bed came a whimper, another gasp, a piteous plea to “Thurn it oth.”
“Caleb, it’s me,” Mac said, leaving the light on. It was the only way he was going to be able to see what the kid was doing under the bed. “It’s Mac Balthasar. Are you okay?”
After a long moment, a snuffly sound was followed by, “No. I not othay.”
Caleb’s voice sounded strange, like he had a rag in his mouth. Mac leaned down, blinked, and called upon his Sight. It washed into place, everything going a charcoal gray except for a sudden pink light blazing from beneath the bed. Again, the Sight had come at his command.
A minute ago, he’d seen nothing of Caleb’s aura. Only his Sight had brought it out. What was going on? The light was so bright it was hard to see the huddled form squashing itself to the back wall.
“Come on. Crawl on out of there, dude.” Mac used his friendliest voice. “Listen, I’ll make sure you get to the nurse’s office okay. And I’ll even stay with you.”
The tiniest sound of movement, a scrabbling like Caleb was digging his fingernails into the floor. “I not coming outh. And I not going anywhere.”
Mac sat down sideways on Caleb’s bed and propped his pillow against the wall so he could lean back. He had time. He could wait the kid out. “Hey, this is a great pillow,” he said conversationally, as if they were just hanging out. “Is this that memory foam stuff?”
“Go away,” Caleb begged. Another slight scrabbling sound, another snuffle.
Mac leaned over, blinked back into normal Sight, and took a peek beneath the bed.
Bulging, huge eyes met his. Between them, a deep, furrowed crease unlike anything found on a human face. What the hell was that?
Mac straightened, swallowing his shock. “Um, anything under there with you?”
“No. Juth me.” This was followed by what sounded like a sob.
Something had happened to Caleb.
Mac almost said, “Hey, it’s going to be okay.” Then he remembered what it had been like after his mom died, when he was the kid whose mother was killed in an accident, whose dad was a cripple, the oddball that everyone whispered about and watched and tried to say something nice to, meaningless pats on the shoulder, promises that it was going to be okay.
It was better to be honest. “You look like hell, man.”
From under the bed, “I know, right?” Caleb almost sounded like himself for a moment.
The door to the dorm room flew open. Josh Doakes came striding in, his face full of surprise at the sight of Mac. “What are you doing here? Where’s the dweeb?” Doakes paced around, changing a sweat-soaked PE shirt, kicking Caleb’s backpack out of his path. “Man, what stinks? It smells like a wet dog in here.”
Mac hated it when guys were jerks. What would Doakes say if he got a look at what was under the bed? He couldn’t let that happen. He stood up and walked straight toward Josh Doakes, putting his face so close to the other guy’s that he could count the blackheads on his nose. “Caleb and I have been talking. We’ve decided to switch rooms.”
Doakes’ face lit up. “Now we’re talking.”
Mac didn’t let him get rolling. “You’ll be the one leaving. I’m moving in. We want you packed and out by tonight.”
Josh Doakes started to say, “Wha--?”
“You’ll like my current roomie. Eric MacMillan. He’s into metal too.”
Doakes began nodding. “Eric. Yeah, he’s okay.”
Mac nodded along with him. “But right now, you’re going to get out and let Caleb rest.”
Doakes looked around. “Rest? Where is he?”
Mac pointed his chin at the door. “You know that flu that’s been going around? He’s down in the bathroom hurling, but he’ll be back any minute.”
The look of alarm on Doakes’ face would have been comical if Mac hadn’t wanted him to get out so badly. When he was gone, the door shut behind him, Mac locked it, then sat back down and leaned against the pillow again.
“Dude, you have to talk to me.” He tried to keep his tone light. “What happened to you?”
Caleb sighed, a brave, ragged sound. “I doan know. I sthick. I theel ther’ble, and thomething’s happening thu me.”
“Can you come out?”
“I’ll thry. Buth the light hurths my eyeths. And under here theels . . . well, ith’s the only plathe that feelths thafe.”
Mac switched off the lamp, leaving only the faint light creeping through the side of the shades. The whole dorm was quiet. The passing period must have ended. Everyone would be in class again. “Come on. I’m here to help.”
The sound of nails on wood began, like claws scrabbling. Mac found he was holding his breath.
The head that emerged didn’t look like Caleb’s, and the only resemblance the stocky body had to Caleb’s was its approximate height – still small. It bulged in the wrong places. Four spindly limbs came out at odd angles. And there was hair. A lot of it, like a short, cream-colored fur.
The face that looked up at him wasn’t human. Mac felt his expression freeze in the encouraging smile he’d put on to greet his friend with. Caleb’s mouth was now a piranha’s maw, so wide that it wrapped around his face and almost reached his ears, thin-lipped, full of a lot of little jutting teeth. He had hardly any chin at all, just a massive jaw. His eyes were large, protruding, with pouches hanging beneath them. The whites rolled toward him, their dark centers fixing on him, tears leaking into the reddening bags beneath. And that wasn’t a human nose, not with the rough, charcoal-black nostrils pushed up and flattened against his face like a bulldog’s. Caleb snuffled at him and the mouth fell open, slobbering, a huge, flat tongue lolling out. His ears cocked. They were pointed now, and higher on his head, with flaps that fell forward, but they lifted in what seemed like hope as Caleb watched him, his head tilted, his narrow chest heaving.
Mac searched for the right words. “Are you wearing a mask?” seemed like the safest way to begin.
Caleb slowly shook his head. Slobber ran off his tongue and dripped onto the floor. His clothes were a pool at his feet, but at least he had feet, though they were flat and wide and covered in short, stiff hair. And he had hands, because he lifted them to his face and buried it in them. His stubby fingers were tipped in black claws. Caleb had transformed into something else. What he was now, Mac wasn’t sure. But it didn’t look human.
Yes, I do teach creative writing: Love and live your characters
You have one character who is interesting and conflicted, who has goals and desires. The rest are flat and boring, tropes or cliches or caricatures. You have committed the sin of withholding your love. By love I mean you have to get into the characters, live them, realize them, care about them as much as your main character. Get out of your chair, out of your car, out of your room,away from your desk. Walk down to the pond or into the woods or find a lovely park and walk around PRETENDING to be that character. Feel some conflict. Desire something. Argue with someone. (You have to do this in private so no one will see you and make you self-conscious. If you have a really, really good friend, you can stage some mock action with them. I have had my significant other put their hands around my neck while screaming at me before. Can’t do that in public.) Now keep it up. Go to the grocery store and be that character buying stuff. Villain: “Here is the innocuous drink I shall hide the poison in.” (This is me -- maybe not you.) Sometimes the unthinkable happens, and that formerly flat, background character rises up and takes over and becomes your favorite character. That’s a much more fun problem to deal with than a bunch of boring villains and otherwise meaningless names and faces.
Underhill at Equinox, Chapter 8: In which Mac and Nikki are in denial
Mac couldn’t believe the others were just sitting down, rummaging through their packs, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened to all of them.
It didn’t add up. Gil Norton was leaning toward Caleb, the two of them whispering back and forth, Gil obviously more concerned about Caleb’s pale, sweat-beaded face than the freaking earthquake. Kuki was playing a game on her phone. Milo was picking out a tune on his guitar without a care in the world. Marta was soothing the little sister she took everywhere with her. The little girl was quiet and well-behaved, but no one else ever gave her a second look. Mac was still wondering why Nikki hadn’t said anything about bringing a child to class every day.
Bryony was even smiling a little, lost in watching the trees outside, the wind making their upper branches sway. Only Nikki had the look of someone who has just seen something unbelievable. Her eyes were wide and frightened, her back rigid. She looked like she was going to vomit or faint.
“This is some sick shit.” The voice belonged to Marta. She was standing now, hands on hips, her little sister still cowering at her desk. “You all really like playing games, don’t you? I seen you, talking to each other.” She was pointing at Nikki and Mac. “Been planning this for a while?” Something was happening with her aura. The pink had gone violet, three colors now with the threads of silver. And she was furious. “I don’t know how you did it – the tunnel and the dirt and all – but I don’t like being messed with.”
“Hey, Caleb is really sick,” Gil interrupted, his voice urgent. He put his arm around Caleb’s shoulders and helped him stand. “I’m going to walk him back to the nurse’s office.”
One by one, they all got up, gathered their stuff and filed out, Marta stomping off with an accusing glare for Nikki.
Mac wanted to stop Bryony, to ask her where she was going, but really, even though they’d been eating meals together in the cafeteria, she wasn’t his girlfriend, and he didn’t have the right to keep tabs on her, whether or not she was surrounded by a huge pink halo. It was bigger than it had been, and as each person passed through the doorway, he saw them all glowing like headlights. Mac rubbed his eyes. These auras hadn’t been this big an hour ago.
He was alone in the classroom. Even Nikki was gone. He stepped into the hallway, wondering why he was the last one left, and caught the fading sound of someone’s feet on the stairs down to the basement. So Nikki had stayed behind. He needed some face time with her.
Mac found her outside of Sylver’s office, fumbling with the key to the door. She wouldn’t look at him, but her yellow aura seemed to pulse with distress. He put his hand on her arm and watched his own blue aura blaze a little brighter. “We have to talk about this.”
With a quick glance at him, she got the door open and pushed inside. She didn’t turn on the light switch, so neither did he. He would have liked some light. The room was gloomy and a little spooky, and way too quiet. Sylver’s chair squealed as she sank into it, her hands clasped between her knees. “He died right here, you know.” She was staring at the carpet, biting her lip.
And how the hell would she know that? A tendril of suspicion snaked through his head. Mac slouched into the armchair, his thoughts tripping over themselves. His power had been growing for days. He could feel it, but what did that mean? What was he supposed to do with it?
“Professor Sylver called them coronas,” Nikki whispered. “He said most people can’t see them.”
Mac waited until she looked him in the eyes. “He’s gone. We can’t ask him anything. So we’re going to have to find out what they are ourselves.”
Her gaze narrowed. “We search his office? Okay.” Feeling his way, he added, “Sylver rounded us all up for his senior seminar. And the earthquake made the auras all get bigger, just now, did you see?” Saying it aloud made it real. He checked her face, saw the reflection of knowledge on it.
“We’re not the only ones.” Nikki pulled her hands away from his. “The guy I work for, Lenny, has a purple one. And a bunch of juniors – little thin auras, but they’re there.”
Mac gave a reluctant nod. “Okay, a few of them, but a lot smaller.” Discussing this helped him take a deeper breath. “All pink, right? Except for yours. And mine. But the principal and the teachers, everyone in town – no one else has them.” He felt like he was working out a formula with too many variables, and it chilled him. “Sylver picked us for this class. How did he know who was going to have these auras?”
Nikki pulled open a heavy desk drawer and took out the old, dinged-up Polaroid camera that he recognized from every visit he’d had with Professor Sylver. She set it on the desk between them with a clunk. “Remember this? How he’s been taking our pictures for years? They show our auras.” She reached across the desk and pulled a stack of manila folders toward him. “Check out your file.”
His pulse leapt as he picked up the files and began to sort through them, recognizing in the photos clipped to the front younger versions of everyone in the Senior Seminar, their middle school faces haloed in pink.
Auras. Right there in the photos. He picked up his own file, his 13-year-old face staring back at him, closed off and guarded. “What’s so important about an aura?”
Nikki didn’t answer. When he glanced up at her, he was surprised to see her eyes looking shiny and vague. His next breath was filled with a flowery stink. Since when had there been so many vines hanging down from that shelf? He couldn’t remember seeing all the blossoms there behind Nikki, bunches of them, blue and yellow, sharp leaves silhouetted in the filtered light. Flowery runners stretched over the bookshelves and all the way to the desk, like they were reaching for him in slow motion.
Nikki blinked sleepily. “I have no idea. Some project he was doing.” She gestured at the file cabinet in the corner. “He wanted me to note things down in the files. He was going to explain it to me when . . . .” Her words died away.
Mac toyed with a blue flower petal as he tried to puzzle it out. A stack of eight files on the desk. How many were in the file cabinet? Maybe all the rejects with no auras? He got up heavily and went over to it, pulling the top drawer open.
It was crammed with hanging folders labeled by year, each holding ten or a dozen files. Just this one drawer held a decade’s worth of files. No, he realized, walking his fingers through the files, more like almost three decades. He pulled one random file from the back.
Niska, Robert. 1993. The Polaroid photo was faded, but the pink aura was clear. The kid who grinned up at him had freckles and a mullet, a Guns n Roses t-shirt. He opened the file. Six pages of notes, each dated in sequential years starting in 1988. He glanced over the first page, trying to decipher Sylver’s writing. Robert Niska had been eleven. Something about “pink aura 1 cm,” with later entries chronicling its growth. The final page noted, “uneventful extraction, seven min. office visit.” A yellow Post-it note stuck to the page added, “1997 married Emily Maxwell, Grivian line. Check offspring.”
None of it made sense. He put the file back and let his gaze travel over the names. The year 1995 included Emily Maxwell’s file. He didn’t pull it out, but thought for a moment. If Robert and Emily had children, they might be high school age by now. Hadn’t there been a Niska going to Mt. Lehr a couple of years ago?
Niska, Thomas. The file was stuck into the 2014 folder at the front of the drawer.
“What are you looking at?” Nikki was standing, staring at him.
Mac closed the top file drawer and opened the second one. Two more decades hung in sequential folders. Forty-five years of files in two drawers. Sylver was old, but had he really been at Mt. Lehr over forty years? He reached for a file in the back and opened it, expecting different handwriting. But it was the same old-fashioned script with its jagged, leaning letters in blue fountain pen.
He forced himself to take a breath and bent to pull out the bottom drawer. A quick scan of the folders told him the files went back to the 1940s.
As soon as he pulled out the last file, Nikki held out her hand. “Let me see that.”
Engels, Beverly. 1943. The same handwriting. No Polaroid this time but a single processed color photo of a teen-aged girl in old-fashioned clothes, around her a tell-tale pink aura.
“How can this be possible?” Nikki held up the file and shook it at Mac. She seemed almost mad. “These can’t be Sylver’s.”
Mac shrugged. “Maybe he was a lot older than he looked. A really good plastic surgeon?”
The attempt at a joke fell flat. Nikki was shaking her head. “It’s impossible. The handwriting’s the same.”
The scent from the flowers was making him dizzier by the minute. Mac wiped his hand down his face. “Whether he wrote it or someone else did, there’s some reason all these kids with auras have been tracked.”
Sitting there in Sylver’s chair, Nikki looked so confused that he was afraid to tell her everything. She would scoff, label him crazy, and he would never get any closer to finding out what he was. But he had to try.
How to begin? He looked around the quiet office, hoping for inspiration, and finally just gave in. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been able to do things. To make certain things happen.” It was so freaking difficult to explain. More than anything else, he wanted her to understand. But she was watching him like she expected him to burst into flames. He tried another approach. “My Grandma Marian knows about me, about what I can do. She’s always told me to keep it a secret. No one else – well, my mom, I think, but she died before she could talk to me about it.”
In the dim light from the windows, Nikki’s expression was hard to read, but her brows furrowed as she listened, head slightly tilted. “You were seven when your mom died.” She looked down at her hands. “My mom . . . I haven’t spent much time with my mom. Not time I enjoyed, anyway.”
He recognized the walled-off look on her face. “Yeah, well, the good times went out the window when that car wreck happened. We don’t even put up a Christmas tree.” In his room, pinned to the bulletin board above his desk, there was an old photograph of his mother sitting next to a lit-up tree, holding Mac as a four-year-old in her lap. He had his arms around a dump truck the size of his head, fierce glee on his face. He could almost remember that moment, but he wasn’t sure if he actually remembered, or if it was from looking at the picture so many times. It was the only one he had brought of the two of them together.
Nikki was watching him with furrowed brows. “You said you can do things? What kind of things?”
He was not going to say the word magic. She would laugh at him. So he used his private word. “Wishing, I guess. I can sometimes make things sort of work better. Or work right. And I can see things in a different way.” He added lamely, “It’s getting stronger.”
“Stronger? Wishing?” Disbelief in her voice.
He charged ahead. “You saw it, down here in the basement. The tunnel – I think I did that. I was wishing we were all somewhere else. Then it all changed.” To her silence, he demanded, “Tell me what you saw.”
She lowered her head, not meeting his eyes. “You go first,” she finally got out. “Just one thing. Say one thing you saw that changed.”
He let the memory surge through him. The ground had shaken, rumbling. And then the experience came back with a jolt: “One minute we were in the basement, down the hall. The next, the walls were dirt, with roots hanging down from the ceiling, like we were in some kind of old mining tunnel. I wasn’t wishing for that.”
Nikki’s voice followed his, weaving in her experience. “There were coins on the floor. What looked like jewels in the walls.”
“I saw the coins. I didn’t notice the jewels.” He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. “There were these old-style torches way down at the end. And the ceiling was braced up with wooden trusses.”
“There was a noise.”
“A screaming noise,” Mac affirmed. His body was giving him away, going cold and trembling. “It was all around us.”
Nikki hands were gripping the arms of the chair. “That’s what I saw too.”
His throat was tight with relief, yet the feeling warred with the knowledge that it had all really happened. “What about the others?”
She slowly shook her head. “I think they saw, or heard, or felt . . . something. But not that. Did you notice how quiet they were? How they all rushed out? Even Bryony?”
He tried to imagine what they had experienced. “Maybe to them it was just a small tremor. Marta’s little sister wasn’t even that scared.”
“Little sister?” Nikki looked confused.
“You know, the little girl she always brings with her to class.”
Nikki’s face stayed blank, and a sickening dread filled Mac as she said, “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
He couldn’t even think about how to answer.
Nikki leaned back in her chair, digging into the pocket of her skirt. She pulled out a fist tightly wrapped about something, but when she turned her palm up, it was just one of the red knobs from the old vending machine. In a tight voice, she said, “This was a ruby. I dug it out of the wall.” She held it out to him. “Were we hallucinating? The whole thing?”
The small screw in the center of the red knob was like an eye staring at them, daring them to deny its form. Mac felt a bubble of emotion climbing up his throat, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “God, I feel like I’m going crazy.” The stench from the flowers was getting to him. A vine full of blue blossoms was wrapped around the top of Sylver’s computer monitor. He hadn’t even noticed it until now. Why hadn’t the professor cut it back?
Nikki put the knob back into her pocket and then seemed to notice a watering can sitting near her feet. She picked it up. “You said you wished it? So it’s all about you? Did you wish us to have auras? For me to . . . for Professor Sylver to die?”
Slowly, he found the words, “Maybe the auras getting bigger means my . . . power . . . is getting stronger. The earthquake could be a sign.”
She pinned him with a level stare. “It wasn’t just you.” She stood suddenly, reaching for a step-ladder in the corner. “This started long before you and I got to this school. Those files – I don’t know how Professor Sylver would have explained them to me.” She set up the ladder against the window. “Come on, I need to get some water for these plants. Walk down the hall with me.”
He followed her into the cool, deserted corridor. The air was fresher, and as the flower smell receded, Mac felt like he was waking up a little. The narrow corridor was lined with stacked boxes, almost blocking another door halfway down the hall. He tried its handle, but it was locked. He considered a moment using his gift to unlock it. “Do you know anything about what’s in here?”
Nikki seemed to see the door for the first time. She set down the watering can and pulled the key out of her pocket, examining it before she stuck it in the lock on the knob and turned it. The click was clearly audible in the silent hallway. When she’d pulled the door open, Mac reached inside and felt for a light switch. Above them, a bulb in a plain fixture flickered into life, revealing a long, narrow room. It was filled with filing cabinets, each one an older model, the closest made of painted gray steel. Midway down the row were a couple made of oak, and the furthest was a large, heavy piece with glass windows. Six in all.
Pushing down a growing fear, Mac opened the top drawer of the nearest one and began to scan through the folders. The files went back to the early 1900s. He began to recognize the last names as he saw them repeated. Mortensen, Travers, McCurdy, Dale.
Dale? That was Bryony’s last name.
Nikki squeezed past him and opened the next filing cabinet. “Mac, look.” She held up a large, rolled-up piece of paper with a rubber band on it. A label on the outside read, “Pierce.” The file drawer was stacked with them, dozens in a pile. He reached in and sifted through, telling his fingers to find “Dale.”
He pulled out the roll of paper after three tries. The rubber band was rotten with age and broke easily. The page fell open, curling a little at the bottom as he took one top corner and Nikki held the other. Inked in great detail on the paper was a family tree dating back to 1871. Mac scanned down to the bottom, finding a Randall Dale married to Renee Engels. They had four children: Victoria, Jeremy, Bryony and Addison. Bryony and Addison had birthdates. Victoria and Jeremy had both birth and death dates. Victoria had been twenty-one when she died in 2014. Jeremy had died two years ago at nineteen.
He glanced at Nikki.
She was waiting for the look. “Bryony doesn’t talk about it, but they were close.”
Silently, Mac rolled the page up and put it back in the drawer. Nikki moved to the next file cabinet and opened the drawer in the middle. More scrolls, tied with dusty ribbon. She skipped then to the last cabinet with the glass doors and lifted one. It screeched in protest, the hinges rusty, revealing another pile of scrolls. Turning to Mac, she skewered him with her stare. “What is all this?”
“I don’t know.” He couldn’t hide the tightness in his voice. “But it’s all the same handwriting.”
He didn’t want to see any more. Nikki followed him as he backed out of the room, turned off the light and locked the door.
She almost tripped over the watering can. He caught her by the arm until she could regain her balance.
“Thanks.” Nikki straightened, a little unsteady, and carried the can down the hall to a janitor’s sink tucked into an alcove. Twisting one of the taps, she leaned against the top edge of the sink as water gushed into the can. When she turned off the water and faced him, her face was etched in worry. “Is there anyone else who knows about this, do you think?”
Her tone made him scared. Had Mrs. Barrett ever set foot down here?
Nikki hefted the dripping watering can back down the hall, her voice going strangely conversational. “You’re going to need to help me with this. Some of these plants have sharp edges. One of them cut me last Monday when . . . when I watered them.” She set the watering can down on the carpet. When she looked up at him again, her eyes were filled with emotion he couldn’t name. “Those files. So many names. And we’re all part of it.”
“Sylver called me extraordinary,” Mac began, but then stopped to consider. Why Gil Norton? He’d always been standoffish, superior, laughing at things as if he were above it all. But he didn’t seem unique or especially talented at anything. And why bring a girl over to the school from juvenile hall? What was so special about her? Besides the invisible little sister?
Nikki was waiting for him to sum it all up. He tried, “We’re different. All of us.”
She stepped up onto the little ladder. “Maybe these auras of Professor Sylver’s are a measure of whether someone’s different. Maybe this class of his was supposed to be some kind of group therapy.”
From the open doorway behind Mac came a single ragged word: “No.”
Nikki’s eyes widened. Mac spun around.
The old custodian was standing there, a look of horror on his face. “Get. Out.” He pointed one long, bony finger at Nikki. “Don’t give . . . them water.” His voice was creaky but clear, with some sort of European accent. The command was unmistakable.
Mac stood up, putting himself between the strange old man and Nikki. “Why don’t you step away from the door.” He said it firmly.
The old man seemed to see him for the first time. His gaze lingered on the blossoms covering the monitor, and his wispy white eyebrows rose. “Adifex,” he whispered as if amazed. “Cambiarus and adifex. Whom do you serve?” Even as he asked, Carroway took a slow step backward.
Nikki came down from the stepladder and plunked the still-full watering can on Sylver’s desk, breathing fast. She reached slowly for her bag. Mac picked up his backpack, grabbed her hand and yanked her forward. They slid through the door of Sylver’s office side by side, neither of them willing to touch the old man watching them so fiercely.
Then they were running down the hallway, skidding around the corner, leaving the custodian behind.
Mac was still holding her hand. It was damp and warm. The connection between them made him feel like he was plugged into a power source. “Is he following?”
They stood listening for a moment. No sound came from down the corridor. The custodian might still be standing in the doorway of Professor Sylver’s office.
Nikki’s eyes darted around. She was breathing hard. “God, I feel like I’m just waking up from a dream. My head . . . .” She pulled her hand away and cradled her brow. “And this basement. This is where we were, and it’s just a hallway. No coins, no jewels, no dirt, no roots.” She turned a slow circle, her face stricken. “That’s just a vending machine, and I thought the stupid wooden knob was a ruby! Am I crazy? You saw that old man back there; he’s crazy too.” A look of horrified realization washed over her face. “Professor Sylver collected crazy people. Maybe he was bringing us together to help us.”
He didn’t even have to consider it. “It’s crazy to think one person kept files for over a hundred years. But you saw them.” He felt sick to his stomach. “We need to get out of here. We need fresh air.” Taking her arm, he guided her up the basement stairs. They’d missed third period. “Let’s just walk outside for a while.”
She was nodding, leaning on him a little. “I want go back to the dorm. I haven’t been sleeping, and –“
“Siesta, then. Just for an hour.” It occurred to him as they got outside and headed across the courtyard that Bryony might be wondering where he was. They had started sitting together in English. But he’d he find her at lunch . . . and say what? Every explanation would have to begin with Nikki and I. Somehow he doubted that was going to go over well. He wasn’t going to lie to himself and pretend it wasn’t happening. Bryony liked him and he liked her. And here he was walking down the sidewalk with his arm around Nikki’s shoulders. Trying to be casual, he let it slide off.
She stopped in mid-stride and gave him a once-over. “Don’t worry, Mac. Nobody’s seen us. It’s not like you’ll have to explain to anyone that you’re tight with a colored girl.” Turning her face from him, she began to stride forward on her own.
“But –“ he called after her. He wanted to say that they were tight, that she was important to him. But that was something you said to someone’s face, not their back.
I’m pretty new to Tumblr. I’ve been hoping to find readers for my novel, which I’m serializing. No chapter has gotten more than three notes. Sigh. I started sharing writing tips, and have been really excited about one that’s gotten over 800 notes so far. Then today I saw a two-second gif of a pretty marble, and it’s gotten 43,000 notes. Double sigh. The big irony is that I am going to reblog that freaking gorgeous marble too!
