Brittle Bones: Noble Strength, Lost In LA

Abstract: The following excerpt is from my fictional coming-of-age novel about Audrey Anderson's life, a girl from a small made-up town of Tribuca, California, an aspiring musician. This excerpt is an interlude of my debut manuscript.

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2013 - Tribuca High School - Los Angeles, California

“Settle down please. Quiet!” the teacher pleaded as the final bell rang for class to begin.

English class. Middle of the afternoon. The first period after lunch, just as the students felt the most light, energetic and sociable.

“Ok, as you all know we are going to be diving into our first piece of the pie in the syllabus; the annotation and reenactment of William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”. Today we’ll just cruise through the expectations I have for all of you, weekly assignments and grading scale…”

I tuned the rest of the dialogue out as I stared out the window completely lost in my own thoughts.

You know it’s time to graduate when…now slow down for one tiny quick second. You’ve been in this high school for how long? That’s right. A year. One treacherous day you’ll never get back. Cheers to that.

“Mr. Morris!”

I jumped in my seat and cleared my throat.

“Class, we have a new student with us here today. He just moved out here from Detroit,” Ms. Dorothy Ambrose, the English department head, addressed the class.

“Would you like to say a few words? Introduce yourself, please.”

I stood up apprehensively.

“Uh, I’m Aaron Morris. I was originally born right here, in Tribuca, but I spent most of my life in Detroit…”

I looked at the teacher for some sort of guidance, as in..what else did she want me to say? She just made a gesture encouraging me to go on.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“There’s really not much to know about me. I like hip hop, I skateboard from time to time and if you wanna holla’ at me I…” paused.

It was at that point that I noticed her staring directly at me, eyes golden like the Tuscan sun, lips crimson as cherries, cheeks flushed like she just witnessed something that caused her her innocence. She was beautiful. Her pearl white teeth and her radiant smile calmed me down a bit. Like an idiot, I found myself crossing over through the desk towards her.

“I can be found in the school directory.”

What?!

The bombshell bit her bottom lip from laughing. That didn’t stop anyone else from bursting with laughter. Then the bell rang. She staggered off and I stood there like a moron not knowing how to move.

Pshh. Who am I kiddin’? She was a Cali girl, I was Detroit. She was probably couture and I didn’t give a fuck. Then again, she was someone defiant; somebody who stood out from all those people that seriously lacked originality. It’s like somebody cloned them to wear the same brand of clothes every single day.

And her hair? It was beyond gorgeous...a hazelnut rich brown color, thick and incredibly luscious. She kept it up in a modern teased up beehive, I looked back but she was already gone. The bell rang and I already knew that Sue, my guidance counselor, was gonna give me shit.

As I walked past swarming groups of students trying to rush from one end of the hallway to another, I spotted her again. She was standing by her locker, organizing her books, and trying to desperately look for something in her notebook.

I scurried over to her to say…

“Hi!”

She winced and looked me over with a suspicious look on her face.

“Hello?”

Then she snapped her fingers and said,

“The school directory guy. What’s up?”

I wanted the ground to swallow me whole, but this was a chance to redeem myself.

“Yeah, but I didn’t catch your name in case I ever felt the need to look you up?”

Oh. My. God. It just keeps getting worse.

She smiled at me sweetly.

“I’m Audrey. Welcome to Tribuca High, the land where dreams go to die.”

We both laughed.

“Can I walk with you?”

She nodded and closed her locker before picking up her set of books. I noticed a guitar pick and we talked a little bit about Audrey’s band, the telecaster she inherited from her dad, and life in California. Once we reached the end of the hall, she politely said goodbye, giving me a hug asking if we could meet for lunch tomorrow. I agreed.

There was chemistry. I liked that she didn’t immediately tell me to get lost.

I looked down at the floor and noticed a piece of paper laying rather close to my sneaker. I automatically assumed that it belonged to Audrey and I was right. It was a story for Ambrose’s class. She was already out of sight.

“Noble Strength,” I read to myself.

Once again I was standing alone in an empty hallway like some idiot with no sense of direction. I decided to head home. There was one more class left to end the day, but I could always use the “new kid” card and tell them I got lost in some corridor. Maybe they’ll eat it up. Perhaps they won’t. I picked up the piece of paper with Audrey’s poem on it and shoved it in my pocket. I assumed it’d be safer in the hands of someone as sheepish as me versus some asshole. Nevertheless, I was about to peek inside of Audrey Anderson’s mind.

Walking back home, I fell into an existential crisis. Would me reading her poem be an invasion of privacy? Intellectual theft? I certainly wasn’t going to publish it anywhere. I crumbled the piece of paper in my pocket and fumbled with it all the way up to my room, where I locked myself up and crumbled it again.

I shook my head and decided to check it out.

“Noble Strength”

I’ve never had a guy tell me that he loved me

For some absurd reason I was afraid that he would judge me

What’s a girl to do when her heart is broken?

So many words and thoughts were left unspoken

Despite the lack of the title of a noble heir

Given the impression that she doesn’t care

She’s still led to believe that her life is symbolically fair

Therefore, I will not give up nor will I give in

Because noble strength it’s what’s in me within

It was at that moment where everything changed. A few months later...I reminisced that moment when I had first spotted Audrey Anderson...the moment I had absolutely and irrevocably fell in love.