10K Happy Dance!

I just broke 10,000 words. Huzzah!

It was supposed to be 16,000+ today, but whatever. Who cares what the NaNoWriMo calendar on my desktop says. :P

I have no clue what I'm doing at this point. Wrote a chapter from Neil's perspective, a chapter from Shanna's. I don't know if I like this switching back and forth thing, but it was a chance to follow her around at work and see what's going on there. Still wrestling with first person perspective.

So yeah. I don't know what happens next. I hope my characters do. My abnormal work week has left me too exhausted to devote much brain energy to this.

One day... I'll learn how to plan and outline in October. :)

***

And now... an excerpt! Shanna is a cashier in a restaurant that's sorta-loosely based on the place my mom works. (Book Lady is kind of real. :)) And the Blink 182 reference? They were mentioned earlier in this chapter. A wonderful friend gave me a mix CD with a lot of their stuff last week, so I had them in my head when I started. It sounds exactly like the sort of thing Shanna's other kid brother would listen to. (and that Shann would secretly dig :P)

Yep. When in doubt, borrow from life. Um yeah. Here's the end of the chapter.

***

Book Lady finally came up with her ticket in hand. As I rung her up, we made the usual small talk:

“How are you?”

“Just fine. And you?”

“Oh, doing great!”

She paused for a second as I handed her change over. And she looked at me. Not the quick “thanks-have-a-nice-day” eye contact that comes and goes… but a probing sort of look. Like she tried to read me the way she read the pulp fiction paperback in her purse.

Then she smiled, and said, “Have a nice day, sweetie.”

“You too. See you tomorrow?”

“Of course!”

She left. I realized I really didn’t even know her name, even though she came every day. And she probably didn’t know mine.

But for a moment… for the briefest of moments, she looked at me as if she did. As if she knew something I didn’t. Something no one else knew.

Weird.

I leaned on the counter to wait for my next customer, twirling the ends of my ponytail in my fingers, and humming one of Jon’s stupid Blink 182 songs.

The gnawing in my stomach was pretty much gone by then.