Week 2 Blues?

I just found out that I didn't win the contest at my library.  I really thought I was going to win it.. and now I'm just plain sad.

Why do I write?  Someone my age who doesn't seem at all writerly (just one of those "I'm writing a book about my life story" people) got an honourable mention.  Mehh..

Am I actually a good writer?  Sure, I can write fast.  Sure, I'm obsessed with it.  Sure, I've written lots of words, but as they actually good words?

In a state on confusion,
Sarah

P.S. Read more so see what I submitted.  Sure I wrote it a while ago because I can't write short stories very often, but I had hope, you know?

The Car Chase

“Sir, we have a confirmed sighting of the red car.  Tailing supposed suspect.”

“Permission to destroy.”

*              *              *

“Emma!  Pass me the popcorn.” 

I rolled my eyes at the immature and absolutely uncouth boy beside me.  His one hand was inches from the bowl between us, yet he couldn’t even bother to grab popcorn himself. 

“If you want it, you have to get it yourself.”  I said tiredly, casually scratching the tomato sauce on my shirt, which had dried on after that same boy, Nick, had ‘accidentally’ knocked his pasta on me. 

“That’s not the way a man works.”  Nick told me, stubbornly tilting his chin higher up in the air.  Apparently, his pale blue eyes and straw coloured hair was ‘cute’, but I never saw it.  All I saw was a disrespectful, boy who liked spilling pasta on a girl’s favorite shirt.

Much to my disappointment, Nick was still on about his ‘way of life’.  “The woman fetches the popcorn, clothes in the morning, food in the afternoon and takes care of everything while the man watches the latest football game.”

I rolled my eyes again.  “And how would that family survive?  Any way of income?”  I liked to think about the practical side of things - especially around him.  I had said the practical side earlier, about buying the latest skateboard and Nick had just stood there at loss of words for five blissful minutes.

Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen this time.  “They don’t have to work.  My parent’s own the Grensbey Amethyst mine, when I inherit that, I’ll sell it all and live off the millions I’ll be paid.”  He sounded so proud, wow, his parents own a mine.  Sure, whatever.  I didn’t really care - all I cared about was getting home and away from him.  Like that was going to happen anytime soon.

“I don’t think your parents would like that, Nick.”  Our driver said.  His hands were on the wheel, navigating through the slushy false spring that happened every February.  I looked out my window, hoping that Nick would take that as I sign I didn’t want to talk to him ever again in my life, and for him to shut up for eternity.  As if.

He wasn’t even supposed to be here.  This was a special trip between me and my brother David, who had just returned from Iraq.  It had never meant to include the annoying son of my overly generous parent’s friends. 

My brother had joined the army a year after graduating from a high school.  I could still remember my mother crying when he left, although it was slightly faded because my memory was horrible, and anything two years or more was almost gone.  Either way, it felt like an eternity when he was gone. 

In this shopping trip I’d ask him to take me on, I’d been hoping to get to know him again.  But things never work the way you intend for them to work.

“Emma, are you there?  I’m still waiting for that popcorn.”  Nick waved his hand in front of my face.  Yes, he was the unexpected thing that had ruined the trip.  A last minute business crisis had caused the Wilson’s to run off to the other side of country, leaving behind their annoying son and five-year-old daughter in the hands of their kind and always-there-for-you neighbors, my family.  Moreover, with my parents taking both their daughter (my younger sister) and the Wilson’s daughter to the zoo, Nick had been forced to come with us. 

“You can’t leave him… who knows what that teenage boy could do.  Emma, I know your mature and can handle him… even his sister would be more suited to be home alone than him!”  I mimicked under my breath.

“What’d you say Em?”  David raised his head and looked at me in the rearview mirror. 

“She’s talking to herself.  The first sign of insanity.  How about we leave her at the closest mental hospital?”  Nick asked, acting innocent.  “We just passed a sign saying there was one five kilometers East on Kings Road.”

The car stopped at the intersection, and pulled away, driving straight ahead.

“Well, sorry Nick.  We just passed the turnoff.  Another day, eh?”  David laughed.  It felt to great to have him back at home and with me - only God knew how much he’d helped me growing up - but I cringed at the thought of him joking with Nick Wilson.  Didn’t he know?  Why wouldn’t he see the stupid, big headed, arrogant side of him and know to stay away?

Outside the car, the ‘Nashville’ sign passed by.  A click of hail joined the clatter of rain that had been following us around all day.  It wasn’t the best day to go shopping, and the amount of people and activity in the mall had reflected that.  Either way, there was a nice amount of bags in the trunk - maybe a not so nice amount of money taken out of my bank account, but I had the money to loose after my summer job. 

“…And that’s the start of the real storm.”  David said, referring to the hail falling from the sky.  I nodded, and my head fell back against the headrest.  I closed my eyes and relaxed.

An electronic whirr came from my left, followed by a downpour of rain, sleet, and heavy rocks of hail.

“ARGHH!”  I screamed.  Nick was just doing up his seatbelt again as I undid mine and jumped on him, pummeling his face with my hands. 

“Whoa!  Watch it Emma, we almost got into a car accident!”  David shouted.  A truck roared by, inches from the side of our car, splattering the previously red, but now a dirty pink, splattered car with more slush.

I didn’t say sorry, and regretfully sat back down in my seat, promising myself to torturously kill Nick some other time when it didn’t endanger my life. 

As the slush cleared off the windshield, I saw a pair of headlights cutting across the 4-lane road.  A car’s horn blared as the silver SUV cut off two lanes of traffic and headed in a straight line towards us.

I felt my heartbeat quicken, and wondered what on Earth the SUV was doing.

David must have noticed the deranged car and driver heading towards us as well, and he swore colourfully.  I think he must’ve picked up some words in Iraq, because before he left, ‘shoot’ was as far as his vocabulary went in the profanities direction. 

I guess he’d learnt a new meaning for ‘shoot’ over their, and it didn’t mean the same thing as ‘damn’.

“Is there anyone behind us?”  In these conditions, which were getting worse by the second, David couldn’t take his eyes off the road.  I waited for Nick to look behind, noticing the line of traffic ahead of us.

“Someone!”  David shouted at us.  Nick hadn’t moved.  I checked behind me.

“No one.”  I said, casting the lump of wasted space beside me a look that I hope reinforced the ‘I’m going to kill you’ scheme of things.

David’s hands flew at my words, one hand on the gears and the other controlling the steering wheel.  The emergency brake was pulled, gear-stick shifted from three to reverse.  Our red car rolled backwards.

“What-” I started to ask.

“Shush.”  David said sharply.  I closed my mouth and looked at the SUV, which was charging towards us as we drove backwards down the road.  I looked over at the speedometer, just visible under David’s arm.  It read 70 kilometers an hour.  I didn’t know that was possible while driving backwards. 

The car slid to a stop, David’s hand switching from reverse to first and up as the car regained speed.  Now we were speeding towards the SUV.

David spun the steering wheel and our car moved into the oncoming lane.  The silver SUV tried to turn and hit us, but only clipped the back.  The car fishtailed for a minute, and then David regained control.  He sped off down the road, joining back into the right lane when the SUV was far behind us.  Back in our lane, David still drove fast, cutting between cars and passing on the left and right.

“A, S, S, H, O, L, E.”  Nick muttered beside me, digging through the pocket and cup holder beside him. 

“What are you calling my brother?”  I asked, giving Nick another death glare.  He reflected it back at me. 

“No you idiot, that was the license plate number.”  Oh, I thought.  I grabbed the notepad out of my cup holder and handed it to him. 

“There’s a pen in the glove compartment.  David, can you slow down and get it?”  I asked. 

“I have to make sure they’re gone and we are far away from them.”  David told me, but slowed down and got the pen anyways.

We recorded the plate and David told us that he would take it to the police station the following morning.  Right now, all he wanted to do was go home.

*              *              *

“We lost them, sir.”

“Well, do better next time.  Your life is on the line - it’s them or you, Gespard.”