The Rapture
This is an excerpt from a new short story that I am currently working on.
I am so loving this new short story that I am working on, The Rapture, that I just can't wait to be done, so I'm sharing a short excerpt.
“You should start hanging out with Lisa again.”
Lisa Bradshaw, her mother’s teen dream. Bradshaw had been Taryn’s best buddy since the time they were tots tumbling over one another at local Easter egg hunts and birthday parties, but as the end of middle school approached, they, as do so many other adolescents who have recently configured their own pubescent stench, smelled each other, ewl’d and grew apart.
An 8th grade Lisa Bradshaw could have been summed up in the juxtaposition that was the gross overgrowth of her makeup and the serious shrinkage of her clothing. To Taryn’s mom, Lisa Bradshaw had blossomed into some exotic, flowering phenomenon, but to Taryn the transformation more resembled chocking vines, growing unchecked until they swallowed completely what was once a striking and unique home.
Why can’t you be more like Lisa? Taryn’s mom frequently said without saying, pointing out Lisa’s picture on the school’s website as Cheerleader of the Month (Seriously? What does that even mean?), but hardly acknowledging the fact that Taryn herself was a state math champ. “Is that Lisa’s boyfriend driving that Mercedes? I hear his parents are very well off.” She stated casually on another occasion as if driving a luxury car made you a good person, as if any of the superficial BS mattered. And while Taryn had zero aspirations to being anything like the fatally flawless, little miss perfect perfection small town USA otherwise known as her former best friend, Lisa Bradshaw, the incessant comparisons hurt. It was a feeling of fundamental inferiority like that of a woman who quietly nursed one failed pregnancy after another sitting in the office of her OBGYN surrounded by sunny women sporting rounded bellies and their crazily grinning husbands, carrying within them magical little bundles of joy while she carried nothing more than a raging yeast infection.
The Rapture
I am so loving this new short story that I am working on, The Rapture, that I just can't wait to be done, so I'm sharing a short excerpt.
“You should start hanging out with Lisa again.”
Lisa Bradshaw, her mother’s teen dream. Bradshaw had been Taryn’s best buddy since the time they were tots tumbling over one another at local Easter egg hunts and birthday parties, but as the end of middle school approached, they, as do so many other adolescents who have recently configured their own pubescent stench, smelled each other, ewl’d and grew apart.
An 8th grade Lisa Bradshaw could have been summed up in the juxtaposition that was the gross overgrowth of her makeup and the serious shrinkage of her clothing. To Taryn’s mom, Lisa Bradshaw had blossomed into some exotic, flowering phenomenon, but to Taryn the transformation more resembled chocking vines, growing unchecked until they swallowed completely what was once a striking and unique home.
Why can’t you be more like Lisa? Taryn’s mom frequently said without saying, pointing out Lisa’s picture on the school’s website as Cheerleader of the Month (Seriously? What does that even mean?), but hardly acknowledging the fact that Taryn herself was a state math champ. “Is that Lisa’s boyfriend driving that Mercedes? I hear his parents are very well off.” She stated casually on another occasion as if driving a luxury car made you a good person, as if any of the superficial BS mattered. And while Taryn had zero aspirations to being anything like the fatally flawless, little miss perfect perfection small town USA otherwise known as her former best friend, Lisa Bradshaw, the incessant comparisons hurt. It was a feeling of fundamental inferiority like that of a woman who quietly nursed one failed pregnancy after another sitting in the office of her OBGYN surrounded by sunny women sporting rounded bellies and their crazily grinning husbands, carrying within them magical little bundles of joy while she carried nothing more than a raging yeast infection.
The Rapture
No comments have been added yet.
