creative writing story

i wrote this creative writing and just need to see if it's even worth turning in. for those of you who haven't read my recent style, this piece is not really supposed to have a "real" conflict/plot, so keep that in mind.

so, i want to know what you think.

The moon was the color of pine nuts and the birds were chained to the sky. I was impersonating like a halibut. The air smelled of lemons. The clouds in the sky were like ropes and were hung just below the ozone layer to dry, still dripping with rain. It was the last day of today.

The street lights were on: flickering, yellow cones of light that marred the night sky. When I was young, I wanted to be a trapeze artist. But all I could now was disappear every time I passed a streetlamp.

I was going to the grocery store to pick up a sandwich.

The aisles smelled like saltwater and shampoo. It was the type of smell that reminded me of stainless steel. I zig-zagged through the aisles, arms out to the side, fingertips grazing the flimsy cardboard boxes. I wasn’t wearing shoes and the floor was gritty.

There was a man in aisle eight.

He hobbled instead of walked, feet clunking against the floor in an uneven rhythm, and wore socks with sandals and a neon hunting vest. He carried a bottle of ketchup in one fist. He handed me a box of cereal.

“Here.”

There were marshmallows in it.

I thought that was nice of him.

He had five o’clock shadow even though it wasn’t five o’clock. It looked like he had a toupee on, but I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have liked it if I’d asked.

I peeled open the top of the box and tore opened up the bag. The cereal dissolved into wet newspaper on my tongue. I saved the marshmallows for last.

When I stepped past the registers towards the empty moon-lit street, a store clerk wearing a red vest stopped me. His name tag said his name was Simon.

“Hey!”

I glanced at him as I swallowed the final remnants of the marshmallows. They tasted like rainbows and partially-hydrogenated corn syrup. Simon’s face was splotched with pimples and he was trying desperately to grow a mustache. He smelled of cleaning supplies. “Did you pay for that?” He gestured at my cereal box.

I swallowed but kept my pace, toes slapping against the floor. “No.”

He cleared his throat and spat a wad a phlegm into the trash can behind him. “You’re going to have to.”

I paused and flickered my eyes from the box to his face. “Okay.”

The cereal was a gift from the man in aisle eight, but I didn’t tell him that. He wouldn’t have cared.

If I were him, I wouldn’t have cared either.

I walked to the register and handed the cereal box to him. He rung it up.

It was four dollars and fifty-nine cents. I handed him a five from my back pocket with fingers dusted with cereal crumbs.

I paid for an empty box.

He handed the box to me without a bag and I looked at it for a moment before passing it back into his fleshy, pale fingers. His skin looked moldy. I was sure not to touch it. “Could you throw it away for me?”

He threw me a look, watery eyes rimmed with bright red veins, and snorted. “You just bought it.”
"I know.” Wrong answer.

I watched him toss it into the trash can, licking the marshmallow dust off my fingers, before turning towards the exit. The marshmallows tasted like the plastic bag they were sealed in. I swallowed and felt my mouth dissolving into a pool of saliva and nausea and hurled myself into the bathroom. I flung open a stall door and vomited into a toilet bowl.

It was rainbow colored.

I wiped my lips against the back of my hand and inhaled away the scent of bile. I flushed the toilet with my foot and watched the rainbow disappeared into the white porcelain. I threw the stall door back open, listening to the satisfying screech of the hinges, and walked to the sink. My stomach clenched in a fist before settling.

I rinsed my mouth out with the tap water. It tasted like bleach.

I hope it wasn’t.

I braced myself against the sink, fingers clenched around the sides, and coughed up a pale rainbow into the ceramic bowl. I turned on the water, swishing away my spit with my fingertips. I wiped them on my jeans and glanced up into the mirror.

My eyes were red.

I threw my palm flat against the mirror and turned on my heel towards the door, feeling my skin smudge the glass.

I limped out of the bathroom and tasted the faint strands and threads of bile filtering through my mouth.

It was the first and last day of today.

I walked of the store into the spray paint moonlight.

I wish there were a word for this kind of disappointment.

plans/planes.

as the school days start winding down into the lemonade-scented oblivion called summer vacation, i am estatic to tell you that i can graduate next year as a junior! my academic plan for the upcoming 2008/09 year is as follows:
- take financial literacy, computer tech., and .5 credit of u.s. history during the summer
- english courses: a.p. language and english 12
- history courses: government (.5 credit)/psychology (.5 credit)
- math course: 1060/pre-calc.
- science course: physics OR physics with technology
- CTE course: photography
- electives: creative writing (1 credit) and drawing (.5 credit)/painting (.5 credit)

after graduation, i'm planning to do unschooling for a year while living at home. i started making a list of things that i'd like to complete/explore during that time:

1. working on a farm: there's a handful of organic peach farms in northern california that i'd like to take a look at. i had been planning on doing this for the upcoming summer vacation, but if i wait a year, i can do it for a longer period of time without the looming expectation of school.

2. writing: i'd like to at least finish editing my novel from nanowrimo and possibly complete a collection of short stories that i could submit to magazines, etc. i have finally broken through that dry spell of no creativity at all (and just in time to illustrate a children's book for creative writing) so if it keeps up, i should be able to keep writing and improving.

3. start a baking business. my great uncle and great-grandfather are/were bakers so i guess it runs in my genes.

4. traveling. i-to-i has a fantastic program in south africa to work with lions... but unfortunately, the age requirement is 18. i'd love to find another program that resonates so deeply with me and have another experience like the bali trip last year.

psst... do you like my template change?

genius points

in my math class (which is as boring as hell, but that is a different post), my "table" came up with the concept of genius points. we made a page in my notebook with the words "genius points" in bold with a highlighter-colored rainbow sprouting from the left side of the 'p'. genius points are given out as necessary and can be accquired in a few different ways:

- by being a genius
- by doing something incredibly nice
- by doing something that makes us all laugh
- by helping someone out
- etc.

i know it sounds like a stupid high school concept that is just made to waste time in class (which it is...), but i was thinking about how awesome it would be if we actually had something like genius points in regular life, where you would get acknowledged for doing something amazing (besides the usual 'thank you' or 'good job'). i'm not saying it should be a contest or anything, but i think that people get so beaten down just because they make so much effort but no one notices, and genius points are just a way to acknowledge people's amazing-ness.

ping-pong post

brought out my old ping-pong table a couple days ago and been playing like mad. i think i've challenged everyone in my family at least three times just today and have played over twenty games since ten in the morning.

just thought i would share that with the world.

anyways, i have a problem with this whole 'thanksgiving' thing. i mean, really. most people i know don't actually use thanksgiving as a day to give thanks, but just over-indulge in turkey and pumpkin pie.

as a way to show my thanks during thanksgiving, i'd like to make a list of thanksgiving resolutions but for the health of everyone on the planet, i won't share them, but one of them is to use thanksgiving as a one-day fast because i don't believe that one can be truly thankful unless they experience the other side of the spectrum.

save a turkey, eat a hunter. (that was a joke, people.)