NaNo '09

This is the beginning of my attempt at NaNoWriMo last year. For those that don't know, "NaNoWriMo" stands for National Novel Writing Month. There is an entire website and organization devoted to a community of writers from around the world writing a novel in one month -- November. A novel is classified as a work of fiction 50,000 words or longer. I attempted it last year and only made it to 3,345 words. This year, I tried again, and failed to reach my word goal almost every single day. I haven't worked on it since November 3rd.
Anyway, here is the first part of last year's NaNo attempt.

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“Inhale. Exhale. Smile. Repeat.” – not quite my life motto, but words to live by nonetheless. Sometimes life taps you on the shoulder and reminds you the cat hasn’t been fed in a week. Sometimes it tackles you from behind and knocks you over as it explains in a painfully slow manner that it’s leaving you and it’s taking everything along. Sometimes you’re left alone, stood up, sitting at an empty bar wondering why you’ve stooped yourself so low. Sometimes you’re left panting, 10 feet from the starting line, wondering if you’re ever going to make it to the 26^th mile. And sometimes you find yourself completely and utterly alone on a plane to a place you once called home…and you wonder if it’s ever going to be the same.

At eight years old, that was me that forgot to feed the cat. I remember that day as the first time I really understood that life wasn’t fair. About 5 years ago, life left me. More like, it felt like I left life. All my friends, all my family, and my perfect life stayed behind when I moved to Texas. Two years after that, I was the one sitting at the bar, seemingly abandoned and questioning everything. Those five years felt like a marathon that I knew I’d never finish. And a few hours ago, I was the one on that plane. I had left all my true friends in Pittsburgh one Thursday. All five years on that day I would try to forget. It never happened. I don’t know why my life was so amazing before, but I knew I had to get back there.

I realized I wouldn’t really know what it was until I relived it. So there I sat on that plane thinking, wondering, imagining. I sat and stared out that window for what must’ve been an eternity. Thousands of feet off the ground, I could still see the lights of Dallas shining bright through my window. Many times in my life, I’ve been able to look down at the world like I was God. Only one of a few hundred in that plane, but it felt like it was my world spinning slowly below every time. I watched the lights disappear slowly and thought. I thought softly, about nothing in particular. I slid my fingers across the window and imagined that I was the one pushing those cars down the highway and turning the lights on and off. I wondered what it would be like if all of it was mine.

Images flashed through my head. I played a slideshow of my life, from early childhood far into the future. I listened to my friends’ voices telling the most outrageous stories and suddenly wished I was home. It’s been too long, I whispered as I thought of how much I’d changed in the past few years. Is it all still there? My house? Their houses? The mall? My favorite Starbucks? Will they reject me? Will I be “good enough”? Will they still know who I am?

~~*~~

Back in the day, I was the happiest person you would ever meet. I wasn’t super smart or athletic or popular. I just had a loving family, loving friends, and a busy schedule. As long as I was doing something, keeping my mind occupied, nothing was wrong. I enjoyed my life and the people in it. I was perfectly content. But as soon as I was alone at night with nothing to do, I would end up thinking about my future and wondering if I would ever know what I should do with my life. I had no ideas of a career or college. I was a junior in 01-02. I figured all my life that I’d know by then what I wanted to do. It didn’t come in 2001. It didn’t come in 2002. It didn’t come in 2003, that knowing that I was meant to be this or I would love to do that. I just couldn’t figure out why.

I chose Business Management. That will be general enough, I thought. And when I do figure my life out, I can always change majors. Next was college selection. I managed a 1300 on my SATs so I had somewhat of a variety to pick from. I wanted risk in that area to make up for the lack of commitment to a career. I wanted to go far. I wanted to escape the cold of winter and the obligation to my friends and family and neighborhood and church and myself. I just wanted a change. I was happy, but the more I thought about DeVry in Texas, the more I realized I didn’t know why I was happy. I had lost all the excitement of new and different things. I just wanted a change.

So DeVry University in Irving is where I went and Business Management was my major. This included both risk and broadness. This is the time I find out who I am. I’ll change everything here. I’ll be a better person when I come back and no one will be able to believe how different I am. It’s perfect!

And there I sat on that airplane thinking, How true those words turned out to be. They really won’t believe it. And here I am now, standing on a rainy sidewalk outside the Pittsburgh International Airport, not having a clue where to go next.

~Allison

Brothers In War

This is a short story I wrote for a history project. The assignment (given to us on October 25th) was to  write a fictional piece approximately 5-6 pages long about a character that comes from any background, any country, any prejudice, as long as that character lived during or contributed to WWII.

The assignment is due today. I wrote this story in around 4 hours this morning and afternoon. Here's a hint to anyone seeking to not fail high school: Don't do that. It was stupid. I trusted myself too much.

However, I hope you enjoy this . . . :

Ten years ago, we had no idea this was coming. We had no idea we were headed toward being connected with a word such as “genocide”. I have always been devoted to my country, but this particular man never struck me as quite right in the head. He’s never been anything but overpowering. We saw that part of him, but had no issues with it at the time. But this . . . this is too far. Someone needs to stop this man before he succeeds in eliminating a group of human beings from the face of the earth forever.

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“Lukas! Lukas!” I let out a strained whisper, not daring to be heard by anyone that might be nearby. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but saying his name made me feel a little bit better. “Lukas! Luke!” I opened the basement door and ducked my head as I descended. “Luke!”

“Arlen! What could you possibly have been doing out there for three hours?”

“I took a walk. Sorry.” I always hated lying to him, especially now that he was a hostage of sorts, but he did not need to know that I met Farica after I bought food. The matter had no relevance since there was no way it harmed or bettered him. “Here’s the bread.”

“Thank you.” We sat down. “So what did happen across the street last night? I was tempted to look, but my nerves got the better of me, which was probably a good thing.”

“Fire. They burned it down.”

“Cruelty. Pure cruelty. I told you, I told you there was something we missed.” Lukas had told me—hundreds of times—that Adolf Hitler was hiding something; that he had some secret agenda that everyone was letting go because of his energetic speeches. Lukas said, over and over, things like “That man will go down in flames one day” or “Mark my words: People will bow at his feet and he will send them off to die.” Never had my adopted brother been more right. He always was the smart one of the family, however screwed up people thought he was.

“Yes, you did. You were right. You were always right.” Yet, never had I wished more that Lukas was wrong. It would have saved us a lot of heartache.
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Though Arlen Schaefer was seven years older, he brought Lukas into his “family” and treated him like a brother ever since Lukas was nine. Neither of them had much, Arlen reasoned, so why shouldn’t they share what they do have? Lukas had never objected to even the kindest treatments Arlen offered to him; there was a sort of understanding there that each of them would contribute what they wanted to the other’s life and the other had to accept it. “It’s because we’re brothers,” Arlen had said on Lukas’ eleventh birthday. “A brother never leaves his brother behind. So we’ll do this together.”

Lukas was thankful that Arlen remembered where he was from, even when he couldn’t himself. Arlen had to remind him when he was seventeen that his parents were Jewish, or he would have forgotten. Religion never meant much to him, at least, not before November 16, 1941. He would remember that day forever.

Lukas and Arlen were not home when (from what the neighbors said) three men wearing square-ish hats broke down the door and searched the entire place. The two had come home to absolutely everything looking like it had been run over by a tank.

“I told you this would happen.”

“I know.”

Arlen did know, for Lukas had a habit of making all his theories known to the person nearest to him when he conjured it. That person usually happened to be Arlen. The theories were typically minor, but in times like these (for example, every single moment following Kristallnacht, which had occurred almost exactly three years previous), everyone in the world had harsher theories than before. The most recent of Lukas’ theories involved what had just happened with the house: Nazis storming and raiding for Jews wherever they could. The only fortunate part of everything lying in ruin was that the two young men had not been around.

They looked into the house solemnly and didn’t need more words than those while they spent a week cleaning as much of the house as they could. It was that week that they decided that Lukas should remain in the basement until the war blew over. It had to at some point, they reasoned.

Arlen brought Lukas food and clothes and no one ever bothered to question about the two orphans from completely separate families that had once lived in the house. All the people on the street had fled, joined the army, been taken away to camps, or never left their houses anymore for fear they too would be killed and forgotten.

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“They can’t do this, Luke. It’s never been right!”

“They are doing it, Arlen. They’ve been doing it, and so far there’s no other country that matches Germany. There’s nothing the world can do for us now.”

“These people have gone mad. Someone needs to stand up and—”

“Don’t put those ideas in your head. You know what will happen if you go out there and are spotted, ‘specially now that the letter’s here.”

While I was buying our second loaf of bread that month, a letter had slipped under the door. It seemed more like a death summons to me, considering I’d rather die than join those Nazi monsters. They seemed to think that threats would bring me down. The letter said something about them using force if I did not comply in a set time. I could not care less what they did to me; all of my energy would continue to go to hiding my brother and supplying for his needs. Lukas was much more important to me than my own safety.

“They ignored us for so long. Why now? Why would they try to bring you in now, after three years?" Lukas wondered aloud. I couldn't help but wonder the same thing.

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On June 3, 1943 Lukas Reinhardt Schaefer was found and beaten almost unconscious before the Nazis shipped him off to a concentration camp named Dachau. Dachau was located approximately ten miles northwest of Munich and served as a model for several other concentration camps that followed. I, Arlen Schaefer, was not home at the time Lukas was found. I had gone out for only the first time that week and came home to the house, once again, destroyed. At that very moment I realized that I could no longer stay there. I walked as fast as I could for two miles or so and settled momentarily in a house that had previously been raided and was empty at the time.

I had never been more worried about anything in my life. Lukas was only 24. He was almost never in school as far as I knew, but he had a better head on his shoulders than anyone I had ever met. I found a deep red journal on one of the snapped-in-half tables that had been written on only once, and that writing looked vaguely like a grocery list, though I really couldn’t tell. I became reminiscent and started writing down every memory I could think of involving Lukas, keeping the theories he conjured on a separate page, laughing at some of the absurdities he conveyed to me before we slept some nights. His mind was strange, but sharp, and as I kept track of the conspiracies he predicted, I realized how right he really was about all of it. He regularly predicted political events, including to an extent his own capture. He knew they were coming for him someday; he may or may not have known just how soon. If only I had been there. But no, he would have scolded me for that kind of thinking. He would have said something about “at least one of us is alive.”

Indeed, though I never knew exactly what happened to Lukas, I came to find myself accepting his death. The saddest day of my life was the day Dachau was liberated. However happy I may have been for those that were now free, I was lost in the overpowering thought that I would never see my dear brother again. April was now one of my least favorite months of the year, second only to June—the month I lost a companion, my only family, my best friend, my brother.

~Allison

(P.S.: All of my facts came from Wikipedia. Don't do that either.)