She finally managed to get free and she ran to a far corner of the room, her heart pounding. She looked around, trying to catch her breath. It looked like a bedroom. There was a dresser beside her, with a little space next to it, between it and the wall. She slipped into that space, hiding her nakedness as much as she could. After a minute, her breathing somewhat under control, she leaned over and peeked out. It was a room in the hotel, by the look of it. The curtains and the bed looked like the ones in other rooms.

There were definitely naked bodies on the bed, but the room was so dark that she couldn't tell much. The shades were drawn (thank goodness for that), but it looked like it was still dark out anyway.

It was at this point that she realized that her arms and legs all seemed to be working properly. She couldn't lean over to touch her legs in the tight space where she was hidden, but she did wriggle her left leg and foot around. Everything worked fine. She flexed the fingers of her left hand as well. All okay.

As the Golden had said.

Now it came back to her. They had come in after the meeting was over and asked how she was. When everybody else had gone out, they had brought over three chairs to sit with her. They had told her that Mr. Bostwick was dead.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Ron said. She barely knew Mr. Bostwick, but she knew that was what you were supposed to say.

"With Mr. Bostwick dead, you are really our only friend–"

"Hey," she said quietly, "belay that kind of talk." She had read that in a book in her Literature class and had always wanted to say it.

"We want to help you," Will said.

"What, like carry me around? That's silly."

"No." His voice got quieter and they leaned forward. "We can heal you, your leg and your wrist, too."

"My leg is fucking broken. My mom said so, and she's always right."

They nodded. "She's right," Craig said.

"It's broken in two places."

"But we can fix it."

"It will be very difficult."

"And we will be very tired when it's done."

"We'll probably sleep for a long time."

"But there's an emergency going on."

"And we're sure people need you to help."

Ron frowned. On one hand, this sounded like nonsense. On the other hand, she reminded herself, her grandmother had made the pain go away by touching her cheek, and Vicki had lifted a truck off of her. And, as far as anybody knew, the Golden never lied.

"You'd better be telling me the truth," Ron said, making a fist.

"We are," Sharon said.

Ron shrugged. "What do I have to do?"

The Golden hesitated.

"This is the difficult part," Will said.

"Fucking tell me!" Ron said, raising her fist.

The Golden sat up straighter.

"You can't have clothes on," Sharon said.

"We all have to take our clothes off."

"Cloth is organic–"

"What? No fucking way!" Ron folded her arms and glared.

The Golden waited in silence for a moment, then Will said, "We will... nobody will be there. Nobody will see. We will never tell anybody."

Ron thought. She had no doubt they were telling the truth. She had always thought that there was nothing worse than being naked. She never took her clothes off – ever – except to take a bath, when she really had to, always with the bathroom door locked.

But maybe there was something worse. Lying here on this sofa for day after day, while people got hurt and killed and nobody even knew what was going on. That was worse. If her leg was fixed, she could go out on one of those teams Ray had talked about. She could be useful.

She was sure there weren't going to be mail deliveries, so she had to do something else to be useful. And she damn sure couldn't be useful if she was lying here with people bringing her food like she was a baby.

"Okay," she said. "And no funny business!"

They nodded seriously.

"Where can we do it?" she asked. "Not in here, they'll be coming back for another meeting."

"We found a room," Sharon said.

"At the end of this hall."

"We brought a cart from the kitchen."

"And some garbage bags."

"Garbage bags?" Ron demanded, but the Golden were already going out into the hall. They came back a moment later, wheeling in a metal cart. The top shelf was empty, and the bottom shelf held some plastic garbage bags, a big roll of tape, and two candles. With some effort, the three of them lifted Ron onto the top of the cart. She was sitting up, and she held onto the sides of the cart as they wheeled her out into the hall.

"Ah, excuse me," came a voice from behind them.

"Oh, crap," Ron said.

Marshall came up to them. "May I ask where you're taking my daughter? I'm sure we're not that desperate for food yet, and she's really only slightly damaged."

"It's okay, Dad," Ron said. "We're just going down there. To that room down there. For a while."

"I see," Marshall said slowly.

"I'll tell you about it later. Okay?"

Marshall looked at the Golden, who were motionless, their faces blank. "Okay," he said. "I'll look forward to that explanation later. Yell if you need me."

She nodded. "I will." They both smiled. Ron didn't smile very often, but she was happy that her father trusted her and that he wasn't going to ask any more questions right then. And she did know that if she needed his help she could shout and he'd come running.

In the room, Will put the two candles on the desk and lit them. Meanwhile, Craig and Sharon took the garbage bags and spread them out on the bed, taping them together so they made a solid covering. Then they wheeled Ron's cart over next to the bed, and, with Will's help, they placed her in the center of the plastic covering.

She lay down and Will stood with his hand over her eyes as the others untied the splints from her leg and then started to undress her. She was really trying not to shiver as her clothes came off. She wanted to take Will's hand in hers, but the others would have seen. The room was very dark, lit only by the candles on the desk, but she knew there was enough light for them to see her.

She didn't remember much else, until she woke up and panicked.

Well, she could come out of her hiding space. The Golden were asleep and they had told her they wouldn't wake up for a while. Still, somebody might come in. She reached around in front of the dresser and pulled out one drawer. Empty. She tried another. Empty.

In the bottom drawer, she found a blanket. She pulled it out and wrapped it around her. It was rough and scratchy, but she didn't care about that. Feeling somewhat better, she stepped out into the room. Now, where were her clothes?

When she found them, she smiled again. There was a little shelf at the foot of the bed, probably for a suitcase, and on it were four piles of clothes, all neatly folded, underwear on top. She took her clothes and went into the bathroom to get dressed.

Coming back out (and dressing had been rather challenging because the bathroom had been entirely dark), she wrapped herself in the blanket again and went to sit in the armchair. The Golden were apparently asleep. Naked. She tried not to look at them. They had moved a little when she'd escaped from their clutches, or she would have been worried that they were dead.

If she'd had a cigarette she would have smoked it, though her father had told her she was too young.

She suddenly had another panicky thought. The Golden had done something to her body. Nothing sexual, she was sure of that, but what if they'd turned her into one of them? Wasn't that what happened in movies? She picked up one of the candles and carried it over to the dresser. She couldn't see the mirrror very well in the gloom, but she looked the same as she always had. Bushy brown hair, not like the sleek blonde hair of the Golden. Regular brown eyes, not weird gray ones. Someone had once said she had a pug nose, whatever that meant. She hated her freckles, because old people thought they were cute, but she was glad to see them now.

As she turned from the dresser, she saw the Golden's knapsacks, leaning against the wall in a neat row. She went over and lifted one. There was something in it. She unzipped it, since that's what a detective would have done, and looked in. It was too dark to see anything, so she reached in and felt around.

The pack was mostly empty, but there were a few items in the bottom which turned out to be cheese sandwiches, each one carefully wrapped in paper.

She ate one sandwich as she carried the packs and left them next to the bed. The Golden would probably be hungry when they woke up. Finishing the sandwich, she took another one and folded it over so she could stick it in her back pocket.

Well, it was time to get moving. The problem was her jeans. Vicki had ripped them halfway up her thigh to Jan could examine her leg. Ron wasn't going to go around with her leg showing, she had to get back to her room to get another pair. But the stairs were on the other side of the lobby, and she'd heard that the lobby was full of people.

The solution to that was speed. She got up and took off the blanket, spreading it over the Golden. She opened the door and peeked out. The short hall between her and the lobby was clear.

Thinking like a detective, though, Ron had one question, and she wanted an answer. If the lobby was full of people (and she could see some of them from where she was, and she could hear more), then how had the soldiers made it to the meeting room without anybody noticing them?

The short, gloomy hall had six doors, three on each side. They were all either meeting rooms or sleeping rooms, and she didn't think any of them had doors to the outside. She walked to the end of the hall and saw a little alcove off to the right. She'd never noticed it before because she'd never had any reason to go to the end of the hall. At the end of the alcove was a door to the alley next to the hotel. It had a bar across it that would open if it was pressed, but the lock was broken. She opened it and leaned out to look at the lock from the outside. It looked like it had been forced, and recently.

One mystery solved. There was a a narrow table against the wall with a vase on it, and she dragged it over so that it blocked the door. She figured that if anybody opened the door, the table would go over, and the vase would break and make a noise. Then she realized that the door opened outward.

She shook her head. She'd have to figure this out later. She turned back toward the lobby. She took a deep breath. This was it.

Bang. She was down the hall at top speed, jumping the four steps down to the lobby floor, dodging around a couple of people and through the swinging doors into the stairwell. The best part had been when she'd whizzed past Fifteen. His look of amazement had made her day. As his eyes had widened, she'd straight-armed him in the center of his chest and he'd fallen backwards, his arms waving around.

Feeling more like herself, she came out of the stairwell on the fourth floor and walked to her room.

As she came down the stairs again, properly clothed now, Ron heard engines way off in the distance. Fuck, nobody in U-town had cars. Was this an invasion? The Jinx had motorcycles, but whenever they rode around there was that weird wailing noise that went with them. She didn't hear that. Just engines.

She ran into the lobby, and Fifteen said, "Your parents are outside. Please don't hurt me again."

It was still dark outside, the air was still bad, and she heard the engines getting closer. Her parents were there on the front steps of the hotel, along with Ray, Pat, and Sam. Ray was now wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Ron wondered how long she'd been unconscious.

Ron went and stood next to Marshall. He looked down.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." She waited for some acknowledgement of her miraculous recovery, but he didn't say anything more. Everybody was looking down the block. Ron looked also, but she didn't see anything in the darkness and smoke.

"What's going on?" she demanded.

"We heard the Jinx were leaving. Vicki ran to head them off at the bridge and try to convince them to stay."

Ron waited a minute, then she punched her father lightly in the arm. He smiled and leaned over. "Fifteen warned us," he whispered, trying not to grin. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

She pointed, and the first group of motorcycles appeared at the end of the block. They were moving in formation, slowly.

Ron didn't know much about the Jinx. They were some sort of motorcycle gang. There were a lot of them, maybe hundreds. They all dressed alike and they weren't very friendly. The only Jinx she knew at all well was Christy. Christy had red hair and was very pretty. She was friends with Ron's father, or really with Jan and Marshall, though Ron could tell that her real attachment was with Marshall. She was their security when they traveled outside U-town.

Ron was sure, absolutely certain, that nothing was going on with her father and Christy. If there was, Jan Sleet the great detective would have figured it out. But Ron knew from experience where this would go, sooner or later.

She had thought of killing Christy to protect her family, but even if she could have done it, her mother would have known and things would have got fucked up anyway.

In the lead was a motorcycle ridden by a tall, blond man. There were about thirty or thirty-five other motorcycles behind him, all coming fairly slowly, like some kind of parade or funeral. Ron remembered that the blond man was named Neil.

At first they didn't see Vicki, but then Pat pointed and they saw small black-clad arms around the blond man's middle, tiny hands holding his jacket.

Neil and Vicki dismounted in front of the hospital, the other riders pulling up behind them. Ron saw someone with a lot of red hair, but she was too far away to tell if it was Christy.

"Where are the others?" Jan Sleet asked, "and where's Dr. Lee?" Dr. Lee was the leader of the Jinx. Ron knew that, though she'd never see her.

"Gone," Neil said simply, his face impassive. "We're the ones who Vicki convinced to stay." He squeezed the shoulder of the tiny figure next to him. "Dr. Lee and the rest left."

Ray started to say something, but Neil said, "We can talk later. Who's handling the perimeter, the bridges?"

"Marshall."

He looked at Vicki. "No disrespect, but any objections to my taking over on that?"

She shook her head. "None."

"Where is he based?"

"City bridge."

Neil turned to the others, all of whom had stayed on their motorcycles. "We going to the city bridge," he said in a loud voice. "We'll deploy from there. Let's go." They rode off, more quickly this time.

When they were gone, Sam said, "That was pretty abrupt."

"We have to be happy for the help, for what they can do, but I'm not happy about it," Vicki said. "It's like I broke up a marriage or something. I was really hoping to convince them all to stay."

Ray shrugged. "They each made their own decision, that's the best we could get."

Ron tapped her father's arm. "I want to go on one of those medical teams."

He frowned. "Let's step inside," he said. "I want to talk to you for a moment."

She sighed and followed him into the hotel, knowing this meant she was in trouble. Again.

They went into a small empty office across the hall from the meeting room. Marshall sat on a desk chair, so they could talk face to face.

"I really don't want you to go," he said. "It could be dangerous."

"Fuck! Everywhere is dangerous. And people need medicine and stuff, and–"

He put his hand over her mouth. "You're right. And that's what I was going to say. You're needed, and you should go. Even though I don't want you to."

"They why did you bring me in here? I thought you were going to yell at me."

He smiled. "No, I'm going to hug you. Come here." They put their arms around each other. "I'm very proud of you. And I know you hate to be hugged in front of other people."

"Oh, by the way," he said casually as they got ready to leave, "are you going to tell me how your leg got healed?"

"The Golden did it."

"How, if I may ask?"

"I really don't know. I was asleep when they did it."

"Can they heal other people? We have a lot of wounded."

She shrugged. "Maybe. We can ask them when they wake up, but I think they're gonna be asleep for a while. They said it was really difficult."

He nodded. "I imagine it would be."

Ron went to the lobby. She was trying to be cool, but she wanted to jump up and down with the excitement of being able to walk again. She could actually go out and do something useful.

She walked up to Fifteen and said, "I want to be on one of those medical teams."

"Well, Ron, there isn't anybody else available right now. The teams are all out–"

"You're fucking lying. I can tell." She punched him in the shoulder, using her left hand just because it was working again. "What are you lying about, you little piss-ant?"

"Well, your father wouldn't approve–"

"He also probably wouldn't approve if I knock you out and do your job better than you're doing it. If I can't go out on a team, I might as well do that."

"Alright. If something bad happens, I–"

She punched him again, with her right this time.

"Katherine wants to go out on a team, but nobody else wants to go with her." He smiled. "Come on. I'll introduce you."

Ron followed him, doing her best to hide the fact that, for the first time today, she was scared.]]> http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-six/feed/ 7 http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-five/ http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-five/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:57:32 +0000 Anthony Lee Collins http://utownwriting.com/?p=3117 Ron watched the woman in the yellow suit as she talked to the soldiers. She was tall and thin like Jan, but Ron couldn't see her face to find out whether there was a resemblance. She held a cane, and Ron figured that this must be the "Tammy" who her father had mentioned before, who had borrowed Jan's cane and who had got them through the roadblocks on their way to the city.

The soldiers were listening to Tammy as she talked. Ron couldn't really follow what she was saying, but she had the idea that the exact words didn't matter anyway.

"Gentlemen," Tammy said finally, "please accompany me outside."

They left in a group, and Vicki sighed. "We need the eggs," she said quietly.

Jan peered at her sister dubiously. "Eggs? What eggs?" she demanded.

"It's like the old joke my grandfather used to tell. 'My uncle thinks he's a chicken.' 'Well, why don't you take him to a psychiatrist?' 'Because we need the eggs.'" She shook her head, smiling. "Our mother has insane delusions that she's a successful and persuasive lawyer. But we can't try to cure her; we need the eggs." She turned to Ray. "What do you think of all this?"

He ran his hands through his long, stringy hair, which was wet. With that and the robe he was wearing, it appeared that Vicki and Jan had hauled him out of the shower. Ron thought she knew what had really happened.

"I think two things," Ray said. "One is that I am very curious about how she did that. Which I expect you won't tell me. But, more important, I think this may not be isolated. We need to cover the bridges and set up some sort of security. Right away."

Vicki nodded. "I agree."

"This wasn't an invasion," Ray said. "If they were going to invade for real, they wouldn't send a few men with just a sergeant in charge. I suspect this was a group of soldiers who got cut off and decided to do their own thing. I hope she interrogates them when she has them." He frowned. "I didn't think to suggest it before they left. But there may be others, and a real invasion may come, too. We're going to have to wait on everything else for a bit. We need to get somebody to cover the entrances, the bridges, before–"

Tammy came back in and closed the door behind her. She smiled. "All taken care of. They're headed for the bridge. We won't see them again." Ray made a face, but he didn't say anything.

Tammy sat down and Marshall looked around. "Where did Sam go?" he asked. Ron noticed that the Black man with the beard was gone, so she guessed that was "Sam."

"He's gone," Tammy said idly. "It was never really going to work with he and I, you know." She smiled. "It was fun, but I intimidate men like that. I'm very successful in everything I do, I make a lot of money, and I'm fantastic in bed. That makes men uneasy, unless they're really self-confident. Sam's a nice guy, but he doesn't bring a lot to the table."

The others were speechless for a moment, until Sam opened the door and came in with two cups of tea. He placed one in front of Tammy, and she smiled. "Why, thank you, dear," she said. "That was very thoughtful."

As they sat down around the table again, Sam glanced quickly at Ron, obviously wondering who she was. He leaned over to whisper something to Tammy, who shrugged without turning around.

So, Terry knew who Ron was, but apparently Tammy didn't know and didn't care. The room was gloomy and everybody was somewhat grimy and dirty, except for Tammy who was spotlessly clean, including her long red hair, and she seemed to glow as if she could have lit the room herself if the candles had blown out. She looked less like Jan than Terry did, but that could have been because Terry wore glasses and Tammy didn't.

Marshall had remained standing. "I can coordinate the bridges," he said. "Let me go and see what I can set up."

"Ask Pat to come in," Vicki said. He nodded and left.

Ron was not looking forward to being stuck on this sofa until somebody got around to moving her, but she was looking forward to being there for the meeting, since she was sure she would learn more about what was going on. Marshall had told Terry that he didn't know, but somebody must have learned something by now.

She did wonder what time it was. Usually when she came in to deliver the mail the room was quite bright, with the the sun coming in through the two windows. Then, when the sun was high, they turned on the overhead lights.

But now the windows were dark, and there was no power. There were two candles on the meeting table in the center of the room, and they flickered and blew occasionally, throwing odd shadows on the walls.

The big table had twelve chairs. They were seldom all used, as far as Ron had ever seen, but so many of them were empty now that it made Ron think of the people who were missing, who should have been there for a meeting like this.

Jan took out her cigarette case. She lit a cigarette and then held the case out to Ray, who took one also.

Ray Stone was a drunk. Nobody had ever told Ron that, but she was very familiar with the signs. Her birth father had always said, "Never rely on a drunk. In an emergency, he'll just crawl into the nearest bottle." Of course, Ron's birth father was an asshole, so she didn't want to take his word for anything. But she thought that this was pretty much what Ray had done when things had exploded. He looked like he'd been drinking, and then Vicki had tossed him into the shower to sober him up before dragging him down to the meeting room.

Ron was never going to drink. There was a whole list of things that Ron was never going to do, but that was at the top of the list. Well, almost at the top.

Pat came in, and Vicki motioned for her to sit down. "I need to find out everything we know about what's happened." She gestured at Sam and Tammy. "This is Sam and Tammy. They're going to try to help us." She jumped up on the table and sat cross-legged. "Tell us everything you can, and take your time," she said to Pat. "Start with the big picture. We can get updated on specific people later.

"It was awful," Pat said. "At first we didn't know what had happened. I guess we still don't know, not really. The explosion happened first thing in the morning. You could hear it all over, it was very loud."

"Were a lot of people injured?" Jan asked.

"A lot of people were killed," Ray said. "And many more were injured. And the hospital is pretty close to the river so it was basically ruined, though I think most of the patients got out. Like many buildings near the river, it was flooded in addition to everything else, since we're so close to sea level. It's still standing, but it's no place you'd want to bring someone who needed medical help."

"People came here," Pat said, "just like we've always told them to in an emergency. Well, here or the hospital, but if they went there first, they came here anyway. We sent runners to the bridge, but mostly we sent teams around to look for people who were hurt. We were bringing them here at first because I didn't know what else to do, but there's no medicine or anything here. The hotel had some first aid kits, with bandages and a few other things, but we used them up pretty quick. Then somebody thought to send people to the school, because they have an infirmary there, and all the supplies for the First Aid classes. That wasn't my idea, but it was a good one, so we started doing that."

Ray looked at Pat. "Are we sending teams into the city, or just around U-town?"

"U-town. We still have injured people of our own–"

"We need to start sending people to the city, too. Soon. Not instead of around here, but some need to do both. For two reasons. Right now, people are concentrating, and correctly so, on the immediate needs. People missing, people injured, people trapped. But, not very long from now, they're going to start askng questions and expecting answers. From us. About what the hell happened–"

"And is any more of it going to happen," Vicki added.

"Exactly. So, we need to be finding out what can." He turned to Tammy, but he obviously couldn't figure out what to say. Or, Ron reflected, she was preventing him from speaking. She was looking at him as though he was an excaped mental patient, which was pretty much what he looked like.

Marshall smiled at Tammy. "If we do get into communication with any other soldiers, counselor, it would be good to learn what we can from them."

She nodded. "That should be no problem."

Sam turned to Ray. "Excuse me, but what's your other idea about the teams going to the city? And what type of teams are you talking about?"

"Medical teams," Ray said. "A lot of how we work around here is going out to people with medical help, rather than expecting sick and injured people all to come to us. As for going to the city, I agree that our first priority has to be our own citizens, but this can't turn into us-versus-them. Who knows at this point what kind of mess we're in, how bad it will be, how long it will last? Not me, that's for sure.

"But I have a more practical reason for saying we have to go over the bridge. That's where the medicine is. Most of our supplies were in the basement of the hospital, and they're ruined. Depending on how things are over in the city, there may be abandoned drugstores and doctor's offices all over the place. We need what they contain, both for our people and for theirs. We're suffering because we centered so much on the hospital." He shrugged. "Something to learn from, if we live long enough."

Ron was wondering about what wasn't being said. What about Doc Morse and Jack Longstreet? Where were they?

U-town had been Ray's idea. She didn't need a Civics class to tell her that; she'd learned it from her parents. But it had been Doc Morse that had made it happen. She had realized that Ray's idea, that a combination of factors had made it possible for U-town to secede from the United States, could actually work. Ron's parents had told her about this, about the local factors, and the national and international ones, but it was clear that there had been one more factor as well, which they didn't tell her about.

Jack had been their voice, she knew, a big, handsome guy with a big voice and a talent for words. Ron had never liked him. She thought he was an idiot. He had sometimes clapped her on the back when she delivered the mail, and then he'd laughed when she kicked him.

Sometimes she threw out his mail, figuring that no mail for him could possibly be important anyway.

"Ron..."

"Fuck. What?" Ron opened her eyes. She'd dozed off, obviously. She hoped she hadn't been making noise. Her parents told her that sometimes she ground her teeth in her sleep.

"Sorry to wake you," Vicki said, "but I need you to understand something."

Vicki was standing next to the sofa. Ron glanced around. Tammy and Sam were gone. Jan, Marshall, Pat, and Ray were still there.

"What?"

"We're going to talk about Doc and Jack now. I need to know what happened to them, and I can tell from Ray's expression that I'm not going to like the answer. So, whatever we're about to learn, let's keep it just between us. Okay?"

"I'm not a blabbermouth," Ron said.

Vicki smiled and squeezed her shoulder. "I know you're not. But I had to say it." She turned to Pat and nodded, resuming her seat on the table.

"I was asleep when the explosion happened," Pat began, "or whatever it was. I woke up and the room was full of smoke and junk, and I didn't feel you in the bed with me. For a moment I panicked and thought something had happened to you, but then I remembered that you were away. I came downstairs, and Jack was here in the meeting room. Everything outside on the street was a mess, windows were blown out and everything, but the hotel was okay.

"I asked Jack what had happened, and he said he didn't know. Doc had gone over to the hospital to help with the wounded." She shook her head. "Then a runner came in and told us that he'd seen a wall collapse on Doc, or someone who looked like her, between here and the hospital."

"I went to look, and it was her," Ray said quietly. "That's when I started my little... toot. Without her and Jack, and with you two away, I couldn't imagine what I could do."

"I was glad you weren't here," Pat said quietly to Vicki.

"You were here, and I should have been." Vicki smiled and shook her head. "I'm pretty hard to damage. But what happened to Jack?"

Pat shrugged. "I have no idea."

Vicki was about to say something, but Ray said, "What do you think happened to him?"

She turned and saw his expression. "What do you mean?" she asked.

He sighed. "He's gone, obviously," he said. "Left, split, flew the coop." He shook his head. "Take off those rose-colored glasses and think about Jackson Longstreet for a minute, just think about him. Do you really think he was going to stick around when things got tough?" Pat looked upset, but Vicki was not reacting at all. "When you were cleaning me up, you said that I'd been around for the better so now I had to help with the worse. Well, I guess I'm not as cynical as I thought, because I'm still here. But if we're going to survive this, and do more than survive it, we'd damn well better be seeing and thinking clearly. About everything, even each other."

Jan took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. "I think he's right," she said. "Damn it."

Vicki looked around the table. "For now, at least, this doesn't go any further than this room. Not even to Sam and Tammy. Jack is missing and presumed dead. We will have a service, I have no idea what kind, but we'll invent something, for both of them, for Jack and Doc."

Ray started to speak, but she continued, "You want to talk about seeing and thinking clearly? Okay, think about this. Are the people out there in better or worse shape with us trying to help figure this out? Well, they know that when the trouble came, two of us weren't here, one went on a bender, and two others vanished." She placed her hands flat on the table and leaned forward. "Whatever trust we've lost, rightly or wrongly, we've got to win back, and telling people that Jack split town because it wasn't going to be so much fun anymore, whether or not that's true, is only going to make things worse." She looked around the table. "Any questions?"

They woke up, as usual, in a tight tangle of bodies and arms and legs, like a cocoon in the center of their bed.

"Time to get up."
"We know."
"I'm glad we got the blueberries."
"They were too expensive."
"But it was worth it."
"Yes."
"Blueberry pancakes are his favorite."
"I think we should take baths this morning."
"Good idea."
"Not just a shower."
"Alphabetically."
"I'll make the breakfast."
"And I'll help Mr. Bostwick."

Disentangling himself from the other two, Craig got out of bed and padded off to the bathroom to start the water. Will and Sharon put on their robes and went downstairs, Will to start breakfast and Sharon to help Mr. Bostwick to get up and dressed.

"We're still sure something will happen today."
"We should tell him."
"He'll know."
"He can tell when we're upset."
"I hope he doesn't think we're leaving."
"Why would we leave?"
"We wouldn't."
"But he may worry that we will."
"Then he would have to go stay with his daughter and her family."
"They sound awful."
"I wonder–"

"Children," Mr. Bostwick said gently.

Sharon turned from his dresser, where she was taking out his clothes for the day. Will and Craig stopped what they were doing also, though they were not in the room.

"We need to talk," Mr. Bostwick said.

"Will is cooking," Sharon said.

"Then we can talk in the kitchen. Please get me my robe."

She got Mr. Bostwick's robe and helped him into his wheelchair. Then she wheeled him into the kitchen.

Will was at the stove, making pancakes. Craig had come down from the second floor. He was wearing his robe, and his hair was still wet from his bath.

Mr. Bostwick wheeled his chair over to the kitchen table, so Sharon and Craig sat there. Will stood at the stove, watching the pancakes that were on the grill.

"Something is wrong," Mr. Bostwick said, looking at them. He was used to them, so their unusual appearance didn't bother him. They had golden skin and shoulder-length blonde hair, with gray eyes, and they looked so similar that only one person other than Mr. Bostwick could tell them apart.

"You've been on edge all week," he said, "and it's worse today. And now you're fixing my favorite breakfast, and you even bought blueberries out of your own money, which you know you don't have to do. Please tell me what's going on."

"We don't know," Will said.

"We've had a bad feeling all week."

"We've never felt this way before."

"And you're involved."

"That's all we know."

He nodded. "I see. And you think maybe I'm going to die today. So, you're making my favorite breakfast." He smiled. "That was very thoughtful of you. I feel about as well as I usually do, but at my age you never know. Let's have our breakfast and talk of more pleasant things. Okay?"

They nodded and went back to their work. Craig took over at the stove and Will went upstairs to have a bath. Sharon wheeled Mr. Bostwick back to his room to help him get washed and dressed.

He had been uncomfortable at first about being cared for in this way by somebody who was, apparently, a thirteen-year-old girl. When he'd expressed this, the Golden had shrugged, and Will or Craig had assisted him instead. Then he gradually became aware that it really didn't matter to them. If he told Craig a joke in the morning, Sharon would refer to it later in the day. He started to treat them as if they were completely interchangeable, as apparently they were.

It had been Mr. Bostwick who had insisted that the Golden go to school. At first they had had quite a few classes together, but some of the teachers had become frustrated because they always gave the same answers on every test. Nobody had ever been able to find any evidence that they cheated (though not for lack of trying), but the decision was made that, whenever possible, they should be split up.

This morning, Will had History, Sharon had Gym, and Craig had Creative Writing. They were very good in History, but not in the other two classes. They tried to do their best, as they always did, but they were not strong, or fast, or able to master a lot of the skills necessary to write stories.

They had the option to request different classes, of course. Students had a lot of freedom to pick their own curricula and Mr. Bostwick had suggested they ask for a change, but they had decided to stay with the classes and do the best they could.

That morning, about halfway through their first period classes, they suddenly stood up, made quick excuses, ran out of their classrooms, met in the second floor stairwell, and threw their arms around each other as the building shook and all the lights went out.

The next few minutes were chaotic. Students ran around, teachers issues contradictory orders, smoke and dust were in the air. The Golden knew what they had to do, though. Their first responsibility was to go home and check on Mr. Bostwick.

One of the teachers was stopping students from leaving through the front doors, so the Golden quickly went back to the stairway, down to the basement, through a storeroom that was supposed to be locked but never was, and out through a small window that led to a narrow alley.

The garbage cans in the alley had all been knocked over, so the Golden had to climb over them to get to the street. Ordinarily they would have picked them up and put them back where they belonged, but it was more important to get to Mr. Bostwick.

They had arrived in U-town with no money. They had quickly learned that everybody was expected to volunteer at the hospital for at least a half day every week. They also learned that if they volunteered for a full day and worked into the evening, the hospital staff would see that they got some food and a bed for the night. They were well-liked at the hospital because they would happily do any job, no matter how unpleasant.

One of the patients they had cared for was Mr. Bostwick. He had had a stroke which had left him in a wheelchair. When he had been ready to be discharged, the nurse had said that somebody had to come to take him home. If not, they couldn't release him. Mr. Bostwick had protested that he could take care of himself, and in any case there wasn't anybody who could help him. After some yelling from both sides, the Golden had stepped in and offered to take Mr. Bostwick home.

On the way, they did some errands for him, and by the time they got to his house they proposed that if they moved in with him, they would take care of both the house and him, doing the shopping, preparing his meals, and cleaning.

He had agreed (he pointed out cheerfully that he really had very little choice) and they had moved in. To their surprise, he had apparently grown quite fond of them over time, and they knew that he had revised his will to leave his house and his few possessions to them.

The house appeared intact as they approached it. A couple of houses on the other side of the street had collapsed.

The Golden opened the door and went in. The staircase to the second floor had always leaned a bit to one side, and now it seemed to tilt more than it had before. The air was better than the air outside, and they quickly closed the door.

Mr. Bostwick was lying on the floor in the middle of the living room. He had apparently fallen out of his wheelchair. There was a board next to him on the floor, and a few pieces of paper scattered around. The Golden knew that he used the board when he wanted to write, laying it across the arms of his wheelchair to provide a writing surface.

They squatted around the body.

"I think we're not supposed to touch anything."
"That's for a crime."
"This isn't a crime."
"What did he die from?"
"Everything in the room is the way it was before."
"I think it was a heart attack."
"He did have to take that medicine."
"For his heart."
"Maybe the shock of the explosion."
"We should pick up the papers and the board."
"And there's his fountain pen."
"We'll have to find the cap."
"Otherwise it will dry out."
"I don't see the cap."

They laid the board and the papers neatly on the dining room table, and then they looked around under the furniture until they found the cap. They screwed the fountain pen closed tightly, then they placed it on top of the pieces of paper, which were blank.

Then they looked at the body again.

"We should move him."
"Where?"
"Into a chair."
"It's not right to have him just lying on the floor."

Working together, they managed to lift the body and put it in Mr. Bostwick's favorite armchair.

"I'll take his pulse."
"He's dead."
"We should make sure."

Sharon picked up his arm and put her fingers on his wrist as she had learned in First Aid class.

"Nothing."

They went to the sofa and sat down. They were silent for a few minutes.

"What are we supposed to do when somebody dies?"
"Maybe it says in the book."

Will went upstairs to their room to get their copy of the U-town Book. It was a slim volume which was given to every citizen (and for sale to visitors). It included Ray Stone's essay, "U-town, not Utopia," various instructions and rules for citizens, and some reference materials.

They looked in the index under "Death, not by violence" and found this:

When somebody dies, not by violence, the following steps should be taken:

1. Make sure the person is actually dead. This is covered in the mandatory First Aid training. See p. 27.
2. Do not move the body any more than is necessary to determine if life persists.
3. Go to City Hall and talk to the clerk, who will give you the approproiate forms to fill out. The clerk will arrange for the body to be transported to the hospital.

"We did the first thing."
"But we weren't supposed to move the body."
"Should we move it back?"
"No, that might make it worse."
"We'll just have to tell them what we did."
"I'm sure we're not the first ones to do it wrong."
"We hadn't read the book yet."
"We should go and talk to the clerk."
"That may take a while."
"We should bring sandwiches for lunch."
"The refrigerator."
"There's no power."
"The refrigerator is off and the food will all spoil."
"And we just did grocery shopping."
"We should make sandwiches, of everything."
"And then we can bring them with us."
"And give them to people who are hungry."

Glad for something to do, they trooped off to the kitchen to make sandwiches.

They knew that "City Hall" meant the hotel. There had been attempts to set up an official city hall, or at least official offices, but each time everything had slowly and inexorably relocated back to the hotel. The administrators all lived there, and there were a lot of meeting rooms for them to use, and people always came there with their questions and problems anyway.

The Golden owned the house now, but they didn't care about that. They minded much more that Mr. Bostwick was gone. He had known and experienced so many things in his long life, and those things were all gone now. They had tried to learn as much as they could from him, but he had always been more interested in talking about them and what they learned in school.

"We should go look for Hazel."
"Ron."
"To find out if she's okay."
"She gets mad when we call her Hazel."
"She lives at the hotel, with her parents."
"We can ask about her when we go there to report about Mr. Bostwick."

When the sandwiches were made, they emptied their school bags and filled them with sandwiches. Then they set out for the hotel. This time they paid more attention to what was going on than they had when they were coming home from school..

"Was it an earthquake?"
"Maybe."
"Would an earthquake explain all the smoke and dust in the air?"
"I'm surprised there aren't more people around."
"Maybe."
"And why is it so dark?"
"You don't suppose they're all dead."
"I don't think so."
"Remember what it said in the book, about disasters."
"We should have reviewed that part, too."
"I brought the book. It's in my bag."
"Good thinking."
"Well, in an emergency, people are supposed to go to the hospital."
"Maybe that's where we should go first."
"That's probably where they are."
"It's closer, and maybe we can leave some of the sandwiches there for people."

So, they turned and headed toward the hospital. When they were nearly there, though, they saw a couple of people coming toward them. "The hospital is flooded," they said. "If you're injured, go to the school. If you're not injured, go to the hotel. That's where they're putting together rescue teams."

So, the Golden turned around and headed toward the hotel again.

The hotel lobby was full of people, and they were told they had to wait their turn, unless it was an emergency. They stood by the door and watched. After a few minutes, they got out sandwiches and started to eat. Some other people came up to them and asked if they had more, so they handed out some of the sandwiches.

Meanwhile, they watched, and saw that two people were trying to coordinate everything. One was a woman named Patricia, who wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap. The other was a teenage boy named Arturo, who had a shaved head and wore a torn T-shirt and baggy shorts. And then Patricia went away and Arturo was running everything alone.

Finally, he came up to them and said, "Yes?"

"Arturo Carbonieri, we–"

He looked startled. "Call me Fifteen," he said. "What do you need, and what can you do?"

"We need to report a death."

"Mr. Bostwick."

"We lived with him."

"When he was alive."

"He's dead now."

"So, we need to file a report."

"The instructions in the book–"

He waved a hand. He started to say something, then he stopped himself. "You're the Golden," he said. "I've heard about you. Please don't think I'm being sarcastic, but there is, as I imagine you've noticed, a disaster of some sort going on."

They nodded. "We were wondering about that."

He waited a moment, then he said, "Let's just say that no forms need to be filed for the duration of the disaster. Whatever it is." They nodded seriously. "So, what else can you–"

"We're also looking for our friend Hazel."

"Ron."

"She prefers to be called Ron."

"Ah," Fifteen said. "I can help you with that. She's alive. Her leg was broken. She was at the bridge, waiting for the mail, when a truck fell on her. But she'll be fine."

"Where is she?"

"She's in the meeting room, with her parents. But a meeting just started, so you can't go in there now. Maybe you'd like to help out here until the meeting is over?"

"Sure."

"We brought sandwiches."]]> http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-four/feed/ 6 http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-three/ http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-three/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:07:03 +0000 Anthony Lee Collins http://utownwriting.com/?p=3106 Terry smiled at Ron. "Is that better?"

Ron nodded, her eyes wide. "Yeah." She flexed the muscles of her leg. No pain. It felt kind of weird, but it didn't hurt.

Terry left the room, and Ron wondered if this was a dream.

A few minutes later, Marshall came in. He saw that Ron was awake and he came over to her, sitting in the chair Terry had been using.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her.

"I'm okay." He obviously thought she was just saying this to be brave, so she continued, "It hurt a bit, but Terry made it stop hurting." She made a face. That had sounded like something a child would say.

"How did she do that?" he asked, leaning forward.

"She just touched me. Here." She pointed at her cheek.

She was about to ask a question when the door opened and Terry came back in, carrying a tray. "I hope it's alright if we share. I couldn't fit– Oh, hello, Marshall."

"Hello, Terry. When did you get here?"

He stood so she could sit again. The tray held a large plate of spaghetti with some sauce on it, plus two forks and a large glass of water.

"A few minutes ago. The car died as we were going over the bridge and we had to walk. We got lost once or twice. Sam's knowledge of local geography is not, I'm afraid, quite as good as he thought it was."

"And the local landscape has changed somewhat in the last twenty-four hours. We had just about the same experience at the other bridge. The car didn't die, but the bridge had holes in it, so we had to walk across."

Marshall helped Ron sit up (she winced in expectation of pain from her leg, but there wasn't any). He took a pillow from the other end of the sofa and slipped it behind her back to prop her up. She smiled as he handed her the glass of water. She drank it all down quickly.

"Do you have any idea what's happened?" Terry asked Marshall. "Has there been anything more on the radio?"

"Nothing. Just static. And now the batteries for the radios are all dead anyway."

"Did they attack us?" Ron asked.

Terry frowned. "'They'? Define your terms."

Ron shook her head. "Never mind." She'd forgotten for a moment that Terry was a teacher.

The door opened again and Pat stuck her head in. "More wounded coming in, Marshall. We need you."

He nodded. "I'll be back." He squeezed Ron's shoulder. She would have been furious if he'd hugged or kissed her in front of a stranger, even a stranger who she thought was probably a member of her family.

"Well," Terry said, "if anybody attacked 'us,' meaning you – meaning, I presume, U-town – then 'they,' whoever 'they' might be, attacked the city as well, since we just drove through it, and it looks pretty much as it does here. You can draw your own conclusions from that."

Ron was in the rather unusual position, for her, of really wanting to curse somebody out and being unable to say the words. And it wasn't just because Terry was a teacher. Ron had cursed at teachers quite often. Maybe it was because she had brought food. Which she was holding in her lap, too far away for Ron to reach it.

Terry smiled. "Do you go to the school here? The U-town school?"

Ron nodded. "Yeah. My parents made me go." She shrugged. "It's okay. The other kids, they're okay. I only go in the afternoon anyway."

"Only in the afternoon? Why is that?"

"I deliver the mail in the morning. I pick it up at the bridge and then I bring it here, for Vicki and Mom and Dad and the others. The important mail."

"You deliver the mail? Isn't there a post office or something? Why do they make you do it?"

Definitely a teacher. She didn't understand anything.

"Nobody makes me do it. It's what I do."

"And what do you study in school? I've read about the U-town school, and it sounds quite innovative, if you're a fan of unstructured learning environments."

"Well, they change the classes around all the time. I was taking History. We were learning about slavery. Then they changed the schedule, so now I'm taking Civics instead. History is in the morning now. Civics is like history, but it's the history of U-town.

"I only went to one class so far for Civics. One kid said that my dad wasn't as important as the others, as Vicki and Ray and them. So I busted her in the nose and she had to go to the nurse." Terry frowned disapprovingly. Ron wondered if that sort of thing happened in her classes. "She only said it to bother me, to see what I'd say. Well, she found out. Miss Nelson?"

"Yes?"

"The food is probably getting cold."

Terry smiled. "Oh, I am sorry," she said, getting up. "You were far more patient than I would have been." She nudged the chair over so it was closer to Ron, then she sat down again and put the tray back on her lap. "As I said, I couldn't fit two plates on the tray, so we'll have to share. I hope you don't mind."

Ron had already grabbed one of the forks and was chewing on a wad of cold spaghetti. She shook her head, indicating that sharing was fine with her. One strand of spaghetti was dangling down her chin, and it left a trail of sauce as she slurped it into her mouth. Terry frowned, but she didn't comment.

"In my defense," she said, after she had eaten a couple of bites herself, "I realize it isn't warm, but it was pretty much cold when I got it."

Ron shrugged and ate some more.

Ron felt a lot better after eating.

"I would go look for coffee," Terry said, "but I'm sure there isn't any." She took off her glasses and started to wipe them. "Do you want to know something funny?"

"Okay," Ron said hesitantly.

"I don't mean funny-amusing, of course," she explained, which Ron had already figured out. "I mean funny-ironic. Do you think that everything has a good side and a bad side?"

"You mean people?"

"No, I mean things that happen."

"I don't know." She frowned. "No, some things are just bad."

Terry nodded. "I really don't know." She gestured at Ron's leg. "I imagine that must be pretty bad. There's nothing good about a broken leg, is there?"

"No." She had intended to say, "Fuck no," but somehow only one word had come out. Ron had been waiting for Terry to ask how she had got hurt, but Terry had something else on her mind.

"For me, it is not entirely a bad thing. Oh, I don't mean your injury. There's nothing good about that. But, even with all the death and destruction today, there is one good thing about all this."

"There is?"

"Let me ask you another question. What if somebody was to write a book about you, about your family and all the things that have happened to you in your life, and that book was going to be published and a lot of people were going to read it. How would you feel about that?"

"I'd hate it," Ron said.

"Well, I was in that situation. Someone wrote a book about me, about private things, and even some things that might get me in trouble, and it was going to be published soon. Now, I don't know if it will be published. So, I'm glad about that, even if I am sorry about all the rest."

The door opened and Marshall came in. Terry stood up. "Marshall," she said, "I have to ask you a very important question. Is there coffee?"

He smiled. "I don't think so, but there is tea. Somebody's started a small fire to heat water."

"That will have to do. Please excuse me, Ron." She left, carrying the tray.

"Fuck," Ron said quietly. Marshall sat down again as she said "Fuck" again a few times, with increasing volume and enthusiasm, pounding the sofa cushion with her good hand, culminating with, "Motherfucking Cocksucking Shit! Bitch! Fuck! Bitch! CUNT!"

She sighed and lay back.

Marshall smiled. "What brought that on?"

"It was weird, when Terry was here. It was like I couldn't swear. I kept trying, but it wouldn't come out."

"Well, she is a teacher. She probably thinks girls your age shouldn't curse."

Ron frowned. "You mean she was stopping me?"

"If she could make your pain go away by touching you, why not?" He leaned forward. "Don't be mad at her. I don't think it's something she does consciously."

"She's... she's Alex, isn't she? My grandmother?" He nodded. "She was saying how glad she was that now the book probably won't come out, how it would be embarrassing and stuff. But it's her book, Alex wrote it. Right?"

He nodded again. "Yes."

"That's weird."

He laughed. "I guess it is. How did you know she was your grandmother?"

"She looks like Mom."

He shook his head. "You are good with faces."

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"You spotted that your mother and Vicki are related, which nobody ever sees. You figured out that Terry is your grandmother." He smiled. "And you are, as far as I know, the only person who can tell the Golden apart."

She shrugged. "Mr. Bostwick can."

"Okay, you're the only person who can tell the Golden apart other than Mr. Bostwick, and he lives with them. That's pretty impressive. The Golden all look the same to me, and even your mother sometimes has trouble. She can sometimes tell Sharon from her brothers, but I know she can't tell Will from Craig."

Ron was trying not to look pleased.

Jan came in and limped over to them, leaning over to hug Ron. "Oh, stop squirming," she said. "I hurried in here so I'd be able to do this before the others get here, but I am so glad you're alive that I intend to hug you quite often. Whether you like it or not."

Ron hugged her mother with her one good arm, then she quickly broke the embrace when the door opened again. Vicki came in and said, "I think we've got Ray about as sober as we can get him, so we need to meet."

Several people came in after Vicki. Terry was one of them, with a stocky Black man with short hair and a small beard. Pat was there, and Ray, who was wearing a bathrobe for some reason.

Vicki hopped up to sit on top of the meeting table, as usual. She was so short that if she'd sat in a chair she'd have been nearly invisible. The others took seats around the table and Ron noticed that Terry wasn't carrying anything. Apparently she hadn't been able to get tea after all.

Suddenly the door slammed open and four men came in. They were dressed like soldiers and they were carrying rifles. "Okay," one of them said, "you're all coming into custody. This whole 'experiment' is over. This situation shows...."

"This is outrageous behavior!" said a voice Ron didn't recognize. A tall, well-dressed woman in a bright yellow suit was limping toward the soldiers, who were lowering their weapons. She had long, reddish hair. Ron looked around the room, and she saw that Terry was missing.

Ron hadn't thought that having multiple personalities meant you could change your clothes and hair whenever you wanted to.]]> http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-three/feed/ 6 http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-two/ http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-two/#comments Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:09:19 +0000 Anthony Lee Collins http://utownwriting.com/?p=3072 "Ron!" came an enormous voice.

"I'm here!" Ron hollered. "Right here!"

Ron was still lying in her tunnel. Nothing much had changed. People yelled into the tunnel periodically, to make sure she was still okay, but apparently a lot of other people needed help as well, and whatever was on top of her was too big for anybody to move.

"Hang on!" Vicki said, closer now. "I want to make sure I do this the right way, so things don't shift and crush you."

"That's okay," Ron replied. "Take your time."

"Jan and Marshall are coming. We couldn't take the car onto the bridge. There were some big holes in the pavement, so they're walking across. I ran ahead."

Ron was willing to wait. She'd been stuck in this tunnel for a while – several hours as far as she could tell – and a few more minutes was no big deal. And she really didn't want to get squashed. A couple of times she had tried to ask people what was going on, but they hadn't known, or they hadn't been able to explain it. "It's big!" was about the clearest thing anybody had said.

She still didn't remember when things had changed. She remembered sitting on the piling, as she did every morning, and then the next thing she remembered she was trapped in here.

"Ron," came Marshall's voice, and Ron wiped her eyes with her good hand.

"I'm here, Dad," she said.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Fuck, no. I think my leg is broken and maybe my arm, too. Can you get me out of here?"

"Vicki is working on it. It should be–"

There was a sort of metallic crashing noise, and Ron could see a few strips of dim light. Then Marshall picked up the wooden thing that had been on top of her. It turned out to be one of the pallets that some of the food deliveries came in on.

Looking up, Ron saw one of the delivery trucks. It must have fallen sideways and been lying on top of her, resting on the piling that blocked the bridge, until Vicki had pulled it off.

And, yes, she was glad to be free, and to see her parents again, but Ron was still determined not to cry. But then she saw the tears in Marshall's eyes, so she figured it was okay. And even Jan Sleet, the very rational amateur detective, took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. Then, as Marshall leaned over and hugged Ron, being very careful not to move her, Jan asked, "What's broken?"

She touched Ron's left leg, causing a burst of profanity. "I need to see your leg," she said. "I'll need to take your pants–"

"No!"

Jan, seeing her daughter's resolve, called to Vicki. "I know you're eager to go," she said, "but I need your help with a couple of things."

"Sure," Vicki said as she trotted over.

Vicki Wasserman was generally described in newspaper articles as the most unusual-looking head of state in the world. She was sixteen years old, with long, straight black hair, and she usually wore a leather jacket, a black T-shirt, black jeans, and high-top sneakers. She was also the smallest world leader, being somewhat less than four feet tall. As she said at times, it was appropriate that she was the smallest head of state because she was the head of the smallest state.

People didn't always realize at first how small she was, because her proportions were completely normal; she was just in miniature. People sometimes commented that their initial impression had been that she was simply farther away than she really was.

"I need to look at Ron's left leg," Jan said, "and then I'll probably need a splint."

Vicki reached down and split the leg of Ron's jeans halfway up her thigh, and then, as Jan's long, capable fingers began to probe, causing more profanity, she pulled one of the boards from the pallet. She snapped it in half across her knee, then she split piece one down the middle with a blow of her tiny fist. She banged the broken ends on the tarmac to flatten the worst of the splinters.

"Good enough?" she asked.

Jan glanced over and nodded. "Fine. Thanks. We'll see you at the hotel, as soon as we can get there."

"Okay," Vicki said. "By the way, somebody just telling me that the hotel is okay but the hospital is flooded and unusable." Jan and Marshall looked over, horrified. "I know," Vicki said. "What a time to lose the hospital. The power is out here, too. I'll learn more when I see the others. See you soon."

She ran off, moving so fast that she vanished almost immediately into the smoke and dust that was all around them.

"The femur is fine," Jan said, "but the tibia is broken, I think." She noted Ron's grimace. "I'm sorry, dear. I wish you weren't in pain; I wish I had painkillers; I wish I was a doctor..." She looked around. "I wish I knew what happened here." Ron craned her neck up to try to look over the barricade into U-town. Marshall helped her sit up as Jan took off her sneaker. Marshall felt her shoulders sag as she saw the area for the first time.

Ron had sat on this piling every morning for months, looking at this view of U-town, waiting for the mail delivery. She knew every street, every building, every storefront, every crack in the pavement, every broken streetlight. And now, the building that had held U-town's informal post office was a pile of rubble with one part of one wall still standing. The window of the flower store was shattered and most of the plants were knocked over. There was a long crack in the pavement and one piece of the tarmac had buckled up like a throw rug. There was a small fire in the little park in front of one building.

There were several shapes around that she was sure were dead bodies. There was no one moving that she could see. The air smelled foul. Her eyes stung, and she wiped them.

It was quite dark. Ron had no idea how long she'd been trapped, but she couldn't believe it as nighttime yet. It looked like it was, but if the whole day had passed she would have been a lot more hungry.

"What happened here?" she asked, looking around at the devastation.

Marshall shrugged, attempting a smile. "You were here. We weren't. You tell us."

She thought it was a good sign that her father was able to joke. What it really meant was that, with all the death and injury and uncertainty, the most important thing to him was that she was alive. He helped her lie down again.

Jan opened the small overnight bag Marshall had been carrying and began to tear a shirt into strips.

"I'll tell you about our trip," Marshall said. He held her hand, and she would squeeze it periodically as Jan's bandaging of her leg became painful. "Perry was surprised to see us," he said. "He hadn't heard anything about the book."

"Fuck," Ron murmured and Marshall squeezed her hand.

"Frankly, the other reason we wanted to talk to him was because he's written a couple of articles about U-town. He's against the whole idea, and–" He glanced at Jan, who didn't look up from her work. "–your mother thought she could win him over."

"Ow," Ron said.

"Things didn't go that well with Perry, but then Alex and Sam showed up this morning."

"Fuck. Who's Sam?"

"Alex's boyfriend. Didn't I mention him yesterday?"

"I don't know. Fuck. Ow. I can't remember. Shit!"

"Sorry," Jan said. "The worst should be over. I just need to look at your wrist."

"It hurts if I move it."

Jan smiled. "Then don't move it. I'll look at it where it is."

"So," Marshall said, "things got a bit tense, as you can probably imagine. Sam and Alex had come to talk to Perry as well, but they hadn't planned on doing it with us there."

"So, what happened?" Ron asked. She was looking at her father very intently, aware that he was distracting her from what was going on with her arms and legs.

"Then, right after they arrived, your mother had a strong feeling that something had happened here, to you. She turned on Perry's radio and found a news report which said that there had been an explosion, or a series of explosions, or an earthquake, or something, in the city and in U-town. Then the radio station went dead, replaced by static. We couldn't find another station broadcasting, so we set out. Sam and Alex came, too, in their car. Sam's sister was in U-town, and he was worried about her. Perry couldn't decide if he was coming or not, so we left him behind. We needed to get here as quickly as possible."

"I'm done," Jan said. "We need to get going."

Moving very carefully, Marshall slid his arms under Ron and then got carefully to his feet. Her left leg had splints tied to it with strips of cloth and her left arm was in a sling. She put her right arm around Marshall's shoulder.

"Okay?" he asked her.

She nodded.

Jan was kneeling by the bag, pulling out a notebook and a pen that she put into her jacket pocket. "We're leaving the bag," she said. "I'm going to have enough trouble walking without my cane as it is, and you have your hands full. Literally."

"I could hold it," Ron said.

She shook her head. "I think we're going to have to get used to leaving things behind."

Ron had no idea what that meant, but she decided not to ask right then.

They walked the first couple of blocks in silence, just looking at the devastation around them. They saw more bodies, and injured people, and a lot of people trying to help.

"Runner!" Jan called when she saw a familiar face. A boy, probably about Ron's age, came running over to them.

"Miss Sleet!" he said. "I'm glad you're back. Is Vicki–"

"She came back with us. Do you know what's happened?"

He shook his head. "I was asleep. I don't know. We've just been trying to account for people, and some people are trapped in buildings. Some we can't find at all."

"And the hospital?"

"Flooded. We're sending people to the school. It was the best we could think of."

She nodded. "Thanks."

Ron hated to be helpless, and she hated it especially now that her parents would have a million things to do and she would just be lying around, hurt and unable to help. She hoped against hope that her leg would turn out to be okay, maybe just strained or sprained or something. But this wasn't likely. Her mother knew a lot about injuries. Jan and Marshall told stories sometimes about a place called Bellonna where she had written a series of articles about a war there, including fixing up people with broken legs and so on.

Ron had never seen her mother so bedraggled looking. The usually-immaculate detective's hair was uncombed, her face was streaked with grime, her tie was loose, and her suit was dusty and rumpled. Ron frowned. "Mom, where's your cane?"

Jan smiled. "I had to lend it to Tammy. She got us through the police blockade."

"The whole city is closed off," Marshall explained. "All we saw on the highway was cars leaving; no one was being allowed in. Vicki tried to convince the soldiers that they should let us through. That worked at the first blockade, but not the second one. Tammy had to talk them into letting us through."

"Who's Tammy?" Ron asked.

"Well," he said as they turned the final corner to the hotel, "that's a–"

"Jan! Marshall!" Pat said, running toward them. She had been standing in front of the hotel. Jan hugged her awkwardly.

"Is Vicki back?" she asked. "Someone said they'd seen her."

Jan and Marshall looked surprised. "She was ahead of us," Jan said, "and certainly moving more quickly than we could. I'm surprised–"

Vicki appeared from a side street, running toward them and launching herself into Pat's arms, knocking off the taller girl's ever-present baseball cap in the process. "I had to stop and get some people out of a cellar," she explained.

Ron woke up disoriented. She cautiously opened her eyes and looked around. She was in the meeting room in the hotel, the room where Vicki and the others had their meetings and ran things. She didn't spend a lot of time there, but it was usually where she delivered the mail in the mornings.

There was nobody else in the room. The lights were still out, and the windows were dark. The air still smelled bad, and her leg still hurt. Marshall had given her a couple of painkillers, but they'd obviously worn off.

One reason she was disoriented was that she was lying on something, and she didn't know what it was. She poked at it with her good hand. It seemed to be a sofa, but there weren't any sofas in the meeting room. She turned her head. It looked like one of the sofas from the lobby. Somebody must have carried it in for her. She vaguely remembered this, and she remembered Pat bringing her a peanut butter sandwich.

She'd stayed awake for a while after they'd got here, so she'd heard her parents report that things in the city were pretty much the same as here, and how nobody had any idea what had happened. She was not used to situations that her mother couldn't figure out pretty quickly.

The door opened and a woman came in. She was tall and lean, with shoulder-length ash-blonde hair and a narrow face. She wore glasses and her eyes were large, but her nose, mouth, and chin were small. She was wearing a light-colored sweater over a dark brown collared shirt, tan slacks, and dark brown boots.

She looked rather tense, but Ron did notice that, unlike everybody else, her clothes and face were completely clean.

Seeing that Ron was awake, she pulled over one of the chairs and sat beside the sofa. She held out her hand. "I'm Terry Nelson," she said. "I'm a school teacher."

"Ron," she said. "I'm Jan Sleet's daughter."

"Don't try to sit up," Terry said. "Are you in a lot of pain?"

"Yeah," Ron said, keeping her voice low, though they were alone in the room.

Terry said, "I guess there aren't any painkillers or anything like that."

"I don't know. My father gave me a couple that he had, but..."

"But they've worn off. I see. Is there anything else you need?"

"Well, I'm really thirsty. And I'm kind of hungry, too." Ron hated asking for help, but she didn't seem to have any choice.

Terry stood up. "I'll see what I can do." She looked down on Ron for a moment, her expression difficult to read in the gloom. Her hair fell around her face, throwing it into more shadow. She took off her glasses, then she reached out her hand and touched Ron's cheek for an instant.

Ron's reluctance to be touched by strangers was overcome by her surprise that the pain suddenly went away.]]> http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-two/feed/ 7 http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-one/ http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-one/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:01:11 +0000 Anthony Lee Collins http://utownwriting.com/?p=3060 Fuck. What the fuck had happened?

Ron tried to catch her breath, but there was so much dust in the air that she started coughing violently. Her chest hurt, and when she managed to stop coughing she threw up a little. It tasted like she had swallowed an ashtray. She waited until the coughing stopped, then she drew in a deep breath. She could breathe, at least, though she could barely move.

She'd read that in a book once, that you take a deep breath when you've been hurt, to see if your ribs are okay. Checking further, she found that her right arm was fine, but her left arm was numb and didn't move. Her legs seemed to be pinned under something.

She had an urge to scream for her father, but she used her good arm to punch herself in the shoulder. She could deal with this. She looked around, but she couldn't really see anything. She was lying down and she seemed to be in some sort of tunnel. No, it was... she reached across her body to feel the rough wood on her left. She nearly gave herself a splinter, but she thought she knew what it was. It was the huge wooden piling that blocked the bridge between the city and U-town. She sat on it every morning, waiting for the mail delivery, so she damn well should know what it was. She was lying on the road surface, which was gritty and also familiar. She reached up and felt the dark surface above her.

It was wood, but not like the barricade. This felt like planks. She pushed, but it didn't budge. She tried to move her left arm, so she could push with that as well, but she couldn't get it to budge. She felt tears welling up, but she punched herself again. There was just enough room for that.

Her father would come and find her. He knew where she was, and he would lift this thing off her, and she was not going to let him see her crying like a little baby...

Which was when she remembered that both of her parents were out of town. She tried to squirm her way up, but moving made her left ankle hurt so bad that she yelled, "motherfucking shit!"

She stopped trying to move and she yelled for help. If you yell loudly, because you really need help, not screaming like a girl and not crying, then it's okay.

Ron's father Marshall walked her to school almost every day. He didn't have to, of course, but they both enjoyed it. He was the assistant to Jan Sleet, the famous reporter and amateur detective. Jan and Marshall had adopted Ron, who had run away from her real parents months earlier (her "birth parents," as Marshall always called them). Ron had been twelve then, and she was now thirteen.

Sometimes Ron and Marshall talked while they walked, sometimes not. They enjoyed it either way. Today, he was talking about the book report she had written the night before, reminding her to bring it to her history teacher during the afternoon.

School was okay. They had just changed her schedule again, so now her history class was in the mornings. Ron didn't go to school on the mornings, because she needed to deliver the mail, so now she was excused from History and she had Civics instead. Marshall had made it clear that, even though she was no longer in Mr. Tremayne's History class, she still had to turn in this one final paper.

She had been to one Civics class so far, and it had been weird. It was also about history, but different history than the History class. It was all about the history of U-town itself and how it functioned. So, it was about the people who had founded U-town, and Vicki who ran it, and it was weird to have a class about people who she delivered mail to every day, especially when two of them were her parents.

After Civics, she had Gym. They were learning basketball, which Ron really enjoyed, though she hated changing in the locker room. Ron hated the locker room. Even the smell of it made her feel like throwing up. She hated to take off her clothes except when she was alone and the door was locked. And the shower, which she never used, was worse. How could you shower with other people?

When Gym was over and she was changed back to her regular clothes, she went to the school mail room and slipped her report into the slot for Mr. Tremayne. She preferred that to seeing him.

Mr. Tremayne had got the idea somehow that Ron's postal responsibilities were unfair and that she should be free to go to school full time. This was completely wrong, and Ron was tired of trying to convince him. He thought it was something her parents were forcing on her because it was good for them, and, like some of her other teachers, he didn't listen when she told him he was wrong.

And she knew there would be trouble at home if she kicked one of her teachers.

"Hello, Hazel," someone said behind her. She turned and saw Sharon Golden.

"Hi," Ron said.

Sharon took an envelope from her book bag and slipped it into one of the mail slots. "I'm taking Dr. Alexander's advanced literature class," she explained, "and this report is due today. Dr. Alexander is out sick, but I didn't want to miss the deadline."

Sharon and her brothers were the only students in the school who didn't try to take advantage when a teacher was out. They always turned in their work on time. Ron thought they were probably aliens, or maybe mutants. Why take Dr. Alexander's class in the first place? It was a difficult class, and it wasn't required, so why take it?

"Your father is outside," Sharon said as she turned to go.

"Oh, shit," Ron thought. She wondered what she'd done wrong now. Marshall walked her to school, but he never picked her up.

Marshall smiled when he saw her coming down the steps, but she could tell he was worried about something. He had been in a good mood in the morning. She wondered what he could be upset about now. She had punched a boy during the basketball practice when he'd called her a name, but there was no way her father could have heard about that already.

"What's up?" she asked as she walked over to him. She had made it clear in the past that he wasn't to hug her or anything like that when the other students could see them.

"I thought I'd walk you home, Ron," he said. "Your mother and I have to go out of town this afternoon, and I wanted to tell you about it before we leave."

"Okay," she said, and they set out. "Is Mom on a case?" she asked. Her mother's cases sometimes meant she had to travel, and she never traveled without Marshall.

"No," Marshall said, "this is family stuff. Unfortunately." He caught her alarmed look. "Nothing to do with your family. I mean your birth family. This is your mother's family."

Ron nodded. "Family" always sounded like trouble to her, because it was always in the back of her mind that her real family might appear and screw everything up. Her life with Jan and Marshall was far better than she had ever thought family life could be, but she knew how easily good things could get messed up.

"I thought we might have a sandwich," he said. "I didn't get any lunch, and as soon as we get back to the hotel your mother and I have to go. Do you want a piece of pie?"

Ron was pretty much always willing to have a piece of pie, so they stopped in a coffee shop that she liked and took a small table. It was the middle of the afternoon, so the place was mostly empty.

"Do you know anything about your mother's family?" he asked her once they were seated.

She shook her head. "She talked about her dad, Vinnie. Grandpa. He sends her mail sometimes, from Italy. And packages. That's all I know." Ron delivered the mail, so she always knew who got what, and mail from Italy was unusual.

"Well, this is to do with Jan's mother. Her name is Alex. Alexandra. Jan was raised by Vinnie, so she didn't know her mother. She's... troubled." Ron already knew that "troubled" meant "crazy." The waitress came over and asked if they needed menus. Marshall ordered a tuna sandwich and a salad, and Ron asked for a piece of apple pie a la mode. Warm, of course.

"Your mother always wanted to know Alex, though," he continued when the waitress had gone, "or at least to know where she was. Vinnie had no idea; he hadn't seen her for years. But you know your mother. If there's a mystery, she can solve it."

Ron nodded. Her belief in her mother's detective abilities was absolute.

"Well, Alex was difficult to find – she had changed her name at least once – but Jan got a line on her and eventually found her. And in the process we met Perry Nelson. He's the person we need to go talk to today."

Ron frowned. She had heard that name, but couldn't remember where.

"He's a famous writer," Marshall explained. "He's very young, but he's written three successful novels."

"I..." She was trying to remember, then it came to her. "A girl in my English class, she read a book of his, and she got all goopy when she talked about it. She asked Miss T. why don't we study his books instead of stupid Moby Dick, and Miss T. said Melville was a great author and Perry Nelson was very young. And something about June..."

"Jejune."

She shrugged. "Something like that."

Marshall laughed. "Well, he is young, but he's a pretty good writer. We met him, and, well, the case got complex, but your mother solved it. And I think she and Alex have exchanged letters a few times, but they're not close." He hesitated. "Do you know anything about multiple personalities, Ron?"

She was working on a huge mouthful of pie, so he waited while she chewed and swallowed it. "Like when people are nice one day and mean the next? Miss T. is like that."

He shook his head, using his knife and fork to slice up the contents of his salad. "No, that's different. That's manic-depressive. Not that Miss Tumolo is manic-depressive," he added quickly. "After all, everybody is like that to some extent." He smiled. "You're in a better mood some days than others, after all. That's not a disorder, that's just normal. But, when it's extreme, when it's not because of things that happen, then it can be a disorder. Like an illness."

He poured dressing on his salad. Ron nodded. "I get it. Miss T. isn't crazy, she's just annoying."

He smiled. "Exactly. She's your teacher; it's part of her job to annoy you."

Ron closed her eyes and shook her head, restraining herself from saying how good she thought Miss Tumolo was at this part of her job.

"Anyway," Marshall said as he took a few pieces of red onion from his salad and slid them into his sandwich, "multiple personalities is different, and more serious. That's when you actually have different personalities, like you think you're different people on different days. So, say you were a girl named Susan. On Monday you might be yourself, Susan, and then on Tuesday you might be somebody named Fred, and you'd dress differently and talk differently, and you'd be mad if somebody called you Susan."

"So, Alex thought she was a guy?"

"No, though I understand that happens sometimes. Anyway, the main thing is that when we met Alex, she said she was going to write a book about what had happened to her, about the multiple personalities and so on."

Ron shrugged. Ron wasn't much for reading books, except what she had to read for school. She used a spoon to scoop up some of the melted ice cream from her plate. "This happened a while ago, right?" she asked. Marshall nodded, chewing on a bite of sandwich. "Then what's going on now?"

"We were never sure if Alex would really write the book she talked about – it takes a lot of discipline to write a book, and she's pretty unstable – but I saw an ad for it in the paper this morning. We have no idea what's in it, but some of the things she was doing when we met her were illegal. Does she talk about that, does she talk about Perry, or about us? We want to talk to Perry, to see if he knows more than we do." He chuckled. "Frankly, I'm sure he hasn't heard about it yet. He lives out in the woods with no television or telephone, and I don't know if he reads newspapers.

He hates publicity, and this is going to be a big story when the book comes out, because it's an unusual story and also because he's involved and he's famous, and your mother is famous. And there are potential legal ramifications, too, from what Alex was doing. I don't know what that will mean, but the first thing we want to do is talk to Perry."

Marshall was still working on his sandwich and salad, so Ron stood up and went to the counter, where the waitress was trying to tune in some music on the radio. "Excuse me," Ron said, "can I get a Coke?"

The waitress nodded and Ron went back to the table.

"There's more," Marshall said. "Vinnie and Alex had another child, and that's–"

"Vicki, right?" Ron asked.

Marshall stopped and regarded her. "How did you know that?" he asked.

Ron shrugged as the waitress brought her the tall glass of soda. "They look alike. Mom and Vicki. And they kind of talk the same way sometimes – not as much as you and Mom, but sometimes they do." She looked a bit uneasy as she sipped her soda through the straw. "I mean, their faces look alike, not the... everything else."

It was true that most people, meeting Jan Sleet and Vicki Wasserman, would not have immediately noted the similarities. Jan Sleet was six feet tall, thin to the point of emaciation, with a narrow face and lank brown hair to her shoulders. She always wore large, horn-rimmed glasses and impeccable, perfectly-tailored three-piece suits, and she walked with a cane. With all of this, though, she was the less unusual looking of the two women.

"I'm surprised you noticed," Marshall said. "Most people don't see it." He smiled. "You are your mother's daughter. You'll be a detective someday."

"Did she know?" Ron asked. "Vicki?" She took it for granted that her mother had known.

"No, she didn't. We had to tell her this morning, when we saw the ad in the paper." Ron waited, slurping the last of her soda. "She took it fairly well," he said.

"Is she going with you?" Ron asked.

He nodded. "For security."

"So, Alex is my grandmother?"

"Yes, as Vinnie is your grandfather."

"Does she know about me?"

"I don't think so." He looked uncomfortable "If you ever meet her, don't refer to her as Grandma or anything like that. Don't throw your arms around her." He laughed at Ron's expression. "I know you wouldn't do that. My point is this: when you meet Vinnie, you could do exactly that and he would love it. We've written him all about you and he's delighted to have a granddaughter. I think he was pretty sure he would never have grandchildren. Your mother being, as she would put, it, a career girl–"

"And because Vicki is a..."

Ron caught her father's expression and stopped before she uttered a word she knew her father didn't approve of.

"In any case," Marshall continued, "Alex is different. As I'm sure you'll see, sooner or later."

Ron's parents had gone, along with Vicki. She had said goodbye to them in their room, but they hadn't made too big a thing of it. They were planning to be back the next day after all. After they had gone, Ron wasn't sure what to do. She had homework, but she could do it later. She didn't feel like doing it in the room all by herself.

Then she thought of the Golden. She thought she'd go visit them, and she could do her homework with them. Sharon and her brothers always did their homework right after dinner.

She wondered what they were having for dinner tonight. The food at their house was always good. She liked eating with her parents, but they did drag her to some weird places for dinner. Indian food, Korean food, she never knew what they would end up eating. Some of it was pretty disgusting.

But the Golden didn't cook that kind of food. She smiled. They were trying so hard to be normal, they made only the most normal food. Maybe tonight would be meatloaf. She really liked their meatloaf.

She picked up her ancient Red Cross shoulder bag and went downstairs. She always had the bag with her. In the morning, she used it for the daily mail delivery. After the mail was delivered, she used it to carry her school books.

She ran into Pat downstairs in the lobby. Pat was in her twenties, with short hair. She usually wore jeans and a T-shirt, and almost always wore a baseball cap.

"Hi, Ron," she said. "Guess we're on our own tonight." She smiled. "Do you know where you're eating dinner?"

"I'm going to see friends," Ron said. "See you later."

She left, frowning. She didn't really like Pat. It sounded like Pat thought Ron couldn't get herself fed when her parents weren't there. Ron had taken care of herself just fine for a long time before she ever met Jan Sleet and Marshall O'Connor. She loved them, but she could still take care of herself. They knew it, so she didn't see why it was such a mystery to Pat.

She made a face as she crossed the street. She knew she wasn't supposed to feel this way, but Pat also made her uneasy because she knew Pat was Vicki's girlfriend. They shared a room together, even though Vicki was barely sixteen. First Ron had thought they were just friends, roommates, but then she saw them at a big party for Jack's birthday and they were holding hands and even kissing. In front of everybody.

It made Ron's stomach hurt. When Pat looked at Ron, was she thinking... Ron shook her head. It seemed crazy, but Vicki was only three years older than Ron. She felt queasy. No, it was crazy, but she tried to avoid Pat whenever she could.

She never mentioned this to her parents. They were willing to accept all sorts of people, so Ron did too. But she had her own opinions.

As she walked, she thought about the things Marshall had told her. She didn't think it had anything to do with her. Jan had parents, and she assumed Marshall had parents, but they weren't in U-town, so they didn't matter to her. And Vicki was now Jan's sister. She hoped that wouldn't get weird.

Ron was not large, but she had a very loud voice, and that's what saved her.

"We're coming!" a woman's voice called. "Try to stay calm."

Ron didn't dignify that with a reply. As she waited, she thought about the fact that her parents weren't going to rescue her from this. Well, she loved them, but she didn't really need them. She'd never needed anybody but herself, and you should never rely on other people.

Then she thought she heard her mother's voice.

–Ron? Ron, are you alright?

Ron looked around, as well as she could in the dark and smoke. "Where are you, Mom?" she demanded.

–I'm not there. I'm still away. Are you alright?

"Fuck no," Ron said. "I think my leg is busted. I'm stuck under something and I can't move, but somebody heard me yelling. I think they're going to try to get me out. But I don't know what's on top of me."

–We're coming, Jan Sleet said. As fast as we can.

Ron wanted to say something to indicate that of course it would be good to see them, but that she would cope and so on, but what she did say was, "Hurry."]]> http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-one/feed/ 6 http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-intro-for-readers/ http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-intro-for-readers/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 01:00:55 +0000 Anthony Lee Collins http://utownwriting.com/?p=3084 The first chapter of Throwing Stones is ready.

As I've said, this novel follows A Sane Woman and U-town, and it picks up a lot of characters and plots from those books. The challenge is to make this book clear to people who haven't read the others, and without inserting infodumps all over the place (and without a big "what happened before" recap at the beginning).

So, that's the Scylla and Charybdis that I'm attempting to navigate between here.

The first draft of Throwing Stones had an omniscient third-person narrator, and it moved around a lot from character to character. I'm starting this one in third person but focused on one character (I think Tiyana said there was a name for that kind of third person). I'm going to see if this works, but I'm expecting that I may have to switch back and forth, maybe alternating chapters. But I'm going to see where this goes and if it can work this way.

Of course, it may end up loosely following the same plot as the first draft, or it may diverge, though I think the main plot points will remain the same.

Chapter One starts here: utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-chapter-one

If you prefer to print it out to read it, then go here: utownwriting.com/printing/01-chapter_one_print.php

Please let me know what you think. I'll let you know when Chapter Two is ready. I'm not worrying about chapter titles right now, but I'll probably add them at some point.]]> http://utownwriting.com/2011/throwing-stones/throwing-stones-intro-for-readers/feed/ 0