The Differences Between Fiction and Nonfiction (Semi-Daily Flash Fiction #1)

Frankie snapped out of her daze when she heard her Mom call her name from downstairs. Her surroundings came right back to her; she was propped up in her bed, holding open the 402-page novel she’d just picked up earlier that day, her fingers acting as a makeshift bookmark for page 402 and her bedside lamp providing all the light she could ever need to read and re-read those final lines. She skimmed them quickly once more, and got that same feeling she’d felt reading them for the first time. It felt like being punched in the gut, slapped across the face, and dunked underwater all at once.

Frankie heard her Mom call her name again, and that feeling flooded through her a third time.

Frankie took a moment. Then, she tossed the book to the carpet and rushed to the door.

She went down the stairs slowly, like a robot. All she could think about was that book.

It’d just been something she’d spied during that Barnes & Noble shopping spree she’d joined her AP Literature friends in just that afternoon. To her, the summary blurb on the hardcover back had made it sound like the least original thing in the world – the entirety of the plot could be described as “teenage son finds out his father is going to die in three weeks, thus he tries to give him the Best Life possible before Doomsday” – and its title didn’t help that impression at all: 21 Days. Even if its author did have a decent track record and its cover featured some credible praise, Frankie had bought it expecting to laugh wildly at some cheesiness and overly sappy dialogue. Four and a half hours later, she couldn’t even think about laughing at that story.

It wasn’t like it was a masterpiece. She could easily remember its worst lines, and pretty much every detail that she felt should be cut out immediately. But, looking back on it, Frankie couldn’t help feeling a strange attachment to that book.

At some points while reading it, Frankie had felt like she was staring into a funhouse mirror.

Frankie entered the kitchen just as her Mom finished placing their plates at each end of their tiny table. She looked up once she heard Frankie’s footsteps and smiled.

“Hey there, sweetie,” she said, “What’ve you been up to all this time?”

She was wearing that Pokémon apron she’d found on Ebay, the same one that Frankie had sneered at when she first spotted it on the computer screen, to which her Mom had said “Well, apologies if you have a nerdy mother!”

In that book the protagonist’s Dad had had a strange fixation with 70’s movies. So, three days before he died, the protagonist swallowed his criticisms and marathoned his favorites with him.

In response to her Mom’s question, Frankie shrugged. “Just reading,” she answered,

“What’s for dinner?”

“Spaghetti Bolognese, your favorite!”

“Oh.”

They ate in silence, save for Mom’s constant questions.

“So, you’ve just been reading? This whole time?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wow! Must’ve been a really great book, then! What was it about?”

“Ehh…. Y’know, it was just some slice-of-life thing I found…”

“Really? Was it everything you’d expected?”

“Ehh…. Not really….”

“….Frankie? Are you feeling okay?”

Did the protagonist’s Dad ask as many questions as this? Frankie could’ve sworn he did.

Or he was just a chatterbox. She couldn’t quite remember which.

“Sweetness, please, is something going on? Why are you so quiet? Frankie? Frankie?”

Frankie had long since stopped listening. She was too busy thinking about the other night, during a dinner just like this one, when her Mom couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved her most recent client, how much she loved her job. Frankie realized she couldn’t even remember what that job even was. She could only remember that her Mom loved it.

She couldn’t help herself: she thought of the future. What was going to happen in twenty years? In five? Or just one? Would her Mom still wear that apron, still work at that job? Would Frankie have to sit beside her bed, listening for the inevitable flatline?

“Frankie.” Her mother was by her side now, gently rubbing up and down her shoulder.

“Sweets, please tell me, why are you so upset?”

Her mother wasn’t dying. Her mother didn’t have an obsession with old movies that she made fun of her for. It was just a book, a made-up unrealistic world created just to advance the author’s career. But those facts couldn’t stop Frankie from crying any harder, hugging her mother any tighter, or telling her she loved her as much as she did.

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