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8:30 a.m.
Saturday, March 26
The second she saw him, she knew she’d made a mistake. A monumental
one.
Sure, she wanted to stretch her writing wings, but not beside the son of a
man who’d been shot dead…because of her.
Elise Jenkins steadied her hand against the shoulder strap of her backpack
and made a beeline for an empty desk amid a sea of grey hair and spectacles. Safety
in numbers and all that good stuff.
But it didn’t matter how fast she’d moved, or how many people
she tried to hide behind. He’d recognized her, she was certain of it. The
anger that flashed across his face, as their eyes briefly met, was all the giveaway
she needed.
Jacob Brown may have come to grips with what his father did nine months earlier,
but he certainly hadn’t forgotten the part Elise played in the man’s
death. And that was something she’d have to face, head-on, if they were
going to spend every Saturday morning for the next eight weeks in the same classroom.
“Isn’t this so exciting?”
How she was going to face it head-on was another matter.
“Miss?”
Elise slid the backpack off her shoulder and set it on the floor next to her
desk, her mind willing her eyes not to look backward. Should she talk to him?
Try to make him understand? Apologize for the way it ended? What?
“Miss? Are you alright? You look a bit peaked.”
“What? Oh, I’m sorry.” Elise shook the troublesome questions
from her mind and managed a small smile in the direction of the grey-haired woman
seated at the desk beside her. “Don’t mind me, I tend to…um…daydream
a lot.” She extended her arm across the aisle, gently grasped the woman’s
wrinkled hand. “I’m Elise.”
The face peering back brightened immeasurably. “It’s nice to meet
you, Elise. I’m Madelyn. Madelyn Conner. I’ve been an avid reader
my whole life, never going anywhere without a book.” To demonstrate, the
woman reached into her cavernous purse and extracted the newest Margaret Heights
mystery novel, her fingers gliding across the cover with a sort of reverence.
“Finally, someone at the center said I should try my hand at writing
a book. So,” she swept her arm through the air, “here I am.”
Elise opened her mouth to form some semblance of a polite response, but the
woman continued, her wide pouty lips moving at warp speed.
“This here is Al. Say hello, Al.”
A stocky man in his mid-sixties, seated at the desk in front of Madelyn, turned
in his chair and tipped his Yankees cap in Elise’s direction. “Hello,
Al.”
Madelyn huffed. “This is, Elise. You’re, Al.”
Al smacked the heel of his right palm against his forehead and rolled his
eyes upward. Elise grinned. Maybe there was hope for the class after all.
The man tugged his hat back down on his forehead then extended his hand and
smiled warmly. “Sorry, Elise. I never tire of that joke. Besides, ol’
bossy Madelyn here is fun to tease.”
Madelyn Conner stiffened in her chair. “Bossy? How am I bossy?”
Al laughed. A hearty sound that echoed against the cream-colored cinder block
walls of Ocean Point Community College’s Room #41. “You got me here,
didn’t you?”
Elise sat back in her chair, her mind finally occupied by something other
than Jacob Brown’s presence in the room. Madelyn and Al were a hoot. True
characters if she ever saw some.
Madelyn opened her yellow notebook and placed her pen atop a clean college-ruled
page. “You will thank me for this, Al Nedley, you just watch and see.”
She turned her attention to Elise. “I’ve never met a bigger storyteller
than Al. He could fill multiple novels. In a week. I figured it was my duty to
bring him along.”
Al shook his head, rubbing his stubbled chin with mock seriousness. “And
the reason you brought Janice?”
Madelyn’s cheeks reddened slightly as Al pointed out the cotton-topped
woman at a desk in the front row. “Well…Janice likes to try new things.”
Al nodded, his lips turning upward. “And Paul?”
Madelyn waved away Al’s questions, her lips closing together in defiance.
“Uh huh. That’s what I thought.” He looked at Elise and
shrugged. “It’s like I said, she’s bossy. None of us seniors
stand a chance around this woman. She’d plan our bedtime routines if she
could.”
If looks could kill, Al would be six feet under. Compliments of Madelyn Conner.
Fortunately for Al, the course instructor strode through the door, dropping
a briefcase and a set of keys on a table in the front of the room. “Good
morning, everyone. I’m Hannah Daltry.” The slender woman of about
forty-five stepped backward, perching her body against the edge of the table as
her gaze swept around the room, studying each face before moving on to the next.
“I daresay we have some great characters right here in this room.”
She pointed at Madelyn’s friend, Janice. “If I were going to put you
in a book, I would mention your erect stance. Maybe that small birth mark at the
base of your chin. Or…” Ms. Daltry looked toward the back of the room,
pointed to someone out of Elise’s range of vision. “The way you’re
sitting, young man, with your legs sprawled out and your arms clasped across your
chest…all things that could convey to my reader that you are angry at something.
Or someone.”
As heads around her craned backward, Elise kept her gaze on the teacher. She
didn’t need to look. Didn’t need to see who had prompted the description.
She knew.
“And you,” the teacher pointed at Elise. “Your rigid stance,
and the way you’re forcing your eyes to stay focused forward despite what’s
going on around you, says to me you’re either nervous, scared or guilty.”
“I’d say it’s guilt,” snickered a voice from the back
of the room.
Elise swallowed and looked down at her desk, her hands trembling as she clasped
them together. Any residual doubt as to whether Jacob was angry at her was gone.
Al raised his right hand into the air, his voice booming across the room as
Hannah nodded her head in his direction. “If I were to use you in a book,
Ms. Daltry, I would describe the way you’re leaned against that table, your
head elevated so that you’re looking down at us. Observing. Judging.”
Elise pulled her eyes off the desk and stared at Al. Granted, they weren’t
teenagers, but still…
Hannah Daltry clapped her hands together, a smile stretching across her face.
“Outstanding. And what is your name, sir?”
“Al. Al Nedley.”
The teacher pushed off the table and walked around it, her hand grasping a
piece of chalk from the silver tray beneath the blackboard. She sprawled one word
across the clean surface.
Observe
“Well, Al. You may have found what I just did to be offensive, but it
wasn’t intended to be. I’m just showing you how to identify characteristics
that coincide with various emotions. Providing the movements, the descriptions,
the mannerisms of a character is so much more powerful than simply stating the
emotion. Trust your readers to connect the dots. Always.”
Al nodded. “So how would you describe me? What am I feeling?”
Hannah Daltry tapped her mouth with the index finger of her right hand. “I’d
have to base it on your body language as your ball cap is shielding much of your
face.”
Al took hold of his cap’s bill and began to lift it off.
“No. Leave it there. As you’ll remember by what I just did, emotion
can be picked up by body language.”
Al tugged his cap back down and waited.
“When you first spoke, your arms were folded across your chest. Your
chin squared. You were in defense-mode, quick to come to the rescue of classmates
whom you felt I was treating unfairly. But now you’re more relaxed. One
hand’s on the desk, the other in your pocket. You’ve moved forward
in your seat. You’re listening, instead of reacting.”
Elise jotted notes in her book, her heart pumping with excitement. All her
life she’d dreamed of writing a book, of creating a world from the ground
up. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Hannah Daltry
was going to be a wealth of information and inspiration.
The woman scrawled four more words across the board.
Write what you know.
“You’ve probably all heard that expression before, yes?”
Everyone nodded.
“What do you think it means?”
A female voice from the back of the room answered. “If you grew up in
New Jersey, write about New Jersey. If you’re a lawyer, write about law.”
The teacher nodded. “Anyone else?”
Elise spoke, her voice quiet but firm. “If you’re writing a sad
scene, use a similar emotion from your life. It’ll enable you to portray
that feeling more clearly to your readers.”
The teacher smiled. “Very nice, Miss—”
“Jenkins. Elise Jenkins.”
“The reporter?”
Elise ignored Jacob’s grunt, kept her eyes on the woman standing in
front of the blackboard. “Yes.”
“You’re an outstanding writer, Elise.”
Elise felt her cheeks warm as Madelyn reached across the aisle and grasped
her arm, her smile set in a wide grin. “Elise Jenkins? Really? Wow, Ms.
Daltry is right, you’re great. I love your articles.” She smacked
Al’s shoulder. “Did you hear that, Al? This is Elise Jenkins.”
Al spoke without turning. “I’m not deaf, Madelyn.”
Elise held up her hands, palms outward, and shifted in her seat. “Thank
you. But journalism and fiction are two very different things—”
A chair scraped against the floor in the back of the room. “Oh really?
I thought they were one and the same.”
“I was right on the anger, huh?” said Ms. Daltry as she perched,
once again, on the edge of the table and pointed at Elise. “What were you
saying, Elise?”
Elise swallowed over the lump in her throat, wiped the moisture from her hands
onto her pants leg. “Um, just that I have as much to learn as everyone else
here.”
“You’re off to a good start though. You certainly have good contacts
from your day job if you decide to write crime fiction.” Hannah reached
into her briefcase and pulled out two separate stacks of paper. “I’m
going to cut you loose early today…with an assignment to help us get the
ball rolling. I’d like you all to write a scene that shows some sort of
emotion. Be it sadness, fear, apprehension, joy, or,” she jerked her head
in Jacob’s direction, “anger. Put us wherever it is you want us to
be, make us feel what your character feels. Keep it to a page and we’ll
read them aloud next week.”
Hannah placed both stacks of papers on her table and stood. “Grab one
of these on your way out. It’s a scene I put together as an example. Read
it, study it, absorb it. Then give me something even better.
“Oh, and don’t forget to grab a class roster. I’ve only
given the contact information you agreed to share when you registered for this
class. You may find that forming a critique group is helpful. Or maybe you won’t.
It all depends on how you work. You’ll also notice that I’ve included
my cell phone number. Please feel free to call me if any questions arise. I gave
you that number, rather than my home, because I spend much more of my time here—teaching,
and,” she pointed at a computer in the front right corner of the room, “writing.”
In a rush, Jacob Brown was at the front of the room, a petite blonde by his
side, each grabbing their pages and heading out the door, sullen and silent.
Elise lingered at her desk, slowly placing her notebook and pen back into
her backpack as Madelyn chatted up a storm with anyone who would listen. She tried
to be polite, to engage in further conversation with the elderly woman and her
friends, but her thoughts were on one thing. Rather, one person. Jacob Brown.
Not wanting to appear rude, she forced herself to remain with the group, bits
of their conversation filtering through her private pity party with buzzwords
like “buffet” and “marks.”
“Don’t worry about the birthmark comment, you can barely see it,”
Al said, gently pulling Janice’s finger from her chin. “It’s
not a big deal. We all have nicks and dings. You’ve had yours from birth.
I’ve had mine since I disobeyed Smokey the Bear. Who cares?”
Madelyn abandoned talk of the omelet station at a place called, “Mama’s”
and jumped into the conversation. “I’ve got scars from my hysterectomy,
you just can’t see them very easily. Oh, and I have another too,”
she hiked up her shirt and pointed at an angry red mark just below her breast,
“thanks to spending too much time in the sun.”
The man they’d referred to as Paul earlier, pointed at a scar on his
forehead. “Slingshot.”
They all looked at Elise.
“Um. Well…” She flipped her hand over and pointed at a circular
patch of discolored skin on her palm. “I was ready for my chicken pox to
be done so I kind of helped things along a little.”
Slowly they migrated toward the door, discussing accidents they’d seen
and mumbling reminders to one another to pick up the assignment and roster.
“Miss Jenkins?”
She looked up, managed a slight smile at Hannah Daltry. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry if I stirred something up with that young man.”
Elise shrugged. “You didn’t. He’s angry at one person and
one person only. Me.”
“That may have been the case initially.”
Elise turned, surprised by Al’s words. “Excuse me?”
His left hand tucked into his jacket pocket, Al grabbed his papers and shoved
them under his arm. “Initially he may have been angry at just you. But I
don’t think Ms. Daltry, here, earned any brownie points with him when she
complimented your writing.”
Elise opened her mouth to respond, but it was Hannah Daltry’s voice
that spoke. “I suspect you’re right, Al. Hopefully, though, he can
find a way to tap into that emotion for his assignment.”
Al Nedley headed toward the door, then stopped. “Let’s hope that’s
all he does with that anger.”
Copyright © 2007, Laura Bradford
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