FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #7

She's a local.

He nodded towards me as he said it. Of course, I was close enough to him to hear every word he was saying. Of course, he had to know that, and apparently thought I would be excited by the idea that he was looking for a local girl to flirt with.

He was completely mistaken, but he was at a disadvantage. He couldn’t possibly know that I hadn’t been a local anywhere for years. The ease of living had come back quickly in this place, but the ‘locals’ could tell I was a changed woman. Changed enough.

Although my high school years were quite a journey, I feel like it all started on graduation day, after all of the snapped pictures and smiles. I promised myself as I walked out of the auditorium that I would live a life that others would be riveted by.

The night ended with most of us sitting on the beach, stretching our legs and hands towards the warmth of the fire. It had gotten cold awfully quickly. Dan Smith winked at me across the flames. A part of me that I had hoped was left behind on the graduation stage giggled inside.

For years, girls had been swooning over Dan. In calculus, at lunch, at parties… his prom date practically had to wrestle girls off of him for the last slow dance of the night.

A part of me, a more evolved part maybe, knew that Dan was not destined for great things. He had lived, like many of us had, with everything he wanted handed to him. The difference I saw in him was that he didn’t want anything more than what we had. Most of us strived for something, although maybe not something tangible or describable or outside of our comfortable town.

That night, standing on the beach, the girl in me stomped on my more evolved self and smiled back at him. As he came around the pit and I threw back the rest of my beer, the blackout began to set in. The night disappeared in pieces, filling back in as we stumbled down the beach, disappearing again and again and then becoming totally clear as I was waking up with no shirt on.

I was waking up with Dan Smith, stretched out in his tent, remembering pieces of sordid details, and I was underwhelmed.

Underwhelmed. I wasn’t upset, and I wasn’t pleased. It said a lot.

As I crept to my car and pulled onto the road, I realized that riveting things simply weren’t going to happen for me in our small town.

I could work hard there. I could make something of myself. I planned on working my way up in my father’s company. I planned on buying a house close to town. I had planned on all of these things, but I had never planned on living fully. It hadn’t been my concern. I had thought for so long that I would simply be happy, but now I was seeing a life of being underwhelmed ahead.

”You’re doing what?” my mother asked, raising an eyebrow over a glass of wine. My father grunted from behind the evening newspaper.

”Leaving town,” I answered, leaning in the doorway of the kitchen.

It was a hard decision to make. It hadn’t been a bad town to grow up in. It wasn’t a bad town to live in.

It just wasn’t the place I envisioned myself living my brilliant life in.

It felt like leaving in a cloud of smoke. I’m sure it wasn’t nearly that dramatic, but at the time I was leaving everyone and everything I had ever known, and not completely on good terms. My parents, shocked by my decision to run out of town, were a little less than supportive. It took me years to realize how hurt they were. They had built a lovely life for themselves in Patrick Mills, but suddenly I could not see myself simply being a part of that life.

”Where you headed, Hun?” the lady behind the Greyhound counter asked, with a hand on her hip. I imagined her in Africa, carrying a basket under that arm. I imagined her in Paris, holding a cigarette in the fingers she was tapping on the desk. I realized in that moment that I could go literally anywhere.

For most, this would be a moment of excitement, but I was filled with fear. I could travel to so many places and not mean anything to the people there. Being no one frightened me to the core.

”Hamilton,” I said, wishing instantly that I had said Toronto, but not wanting to seem unsure.

Eight hours later, stepping off of the bus step onto the Hamilton sidewalk felt magical. I had pushed Toronto from my mind during the long ride, and had begun to imagine the extravagant things I could accomplish in this city. Truthfully, I felt like in any city I could accomplish more than in my underwhelming town.

I found a furnished apartment on James St., and paid the first month’s rent with the money my parents had reluctantly given me before I had left. The entire apartment was a little bigger than the laundry room in the house back home. I told myself it was cozy.

On my second morning in the city, I explored the public library.

”We have books on resume writing,” the librarian told me, pushing her glasses up on her nose. She stared at her computer screen intently. She hadn’t even looked up when I asked the question. Her fingers flew over the keys and she scribbled a number on paper, handing it to me without a second of eye contact.

I hadn’t even asked about resumes – I had asked whether they posted job listings. She had quickly decided I wasn’t that far along yet. Maybe she knew something I didn’t.

I searched the shelves until I found the number she had written, then stood in that aisle for the next twenty minutes. ‘Resumes for Health Careers’, ‘Resumes for Nursing Jobs’, ‘Resumes for Advertisers’. I read each title and contemplated just what I wanted my ‘riveting’ life to be.

The librarian found me sitting in the reading area with a glazed look on my face.

”No luck?” she asked.

I almost didn’t recognize her without the reflection of the computer screen in her eyes. I shook my head and shrugged in defeat. She turned on her heel and left, returning with a book titled ‘Resume Style’. I spent the entire day in the library, typing and retyping each section, crafting the words so carefully.

I was stumped as to what job I wanted, and by the end of the day I realized that was probably my biggest problem, besides the crippling fear and lack of real experience.

”Quite a writer you are,” the librarian laughed as she passed me the pages I had printed and accepted my 10 cents per copy. “It’s only a resume, but it reads like a story.”

I left, slightly confused.

I lay in bed that night, very aware that it was not my own bed or my own neighbourhood. It didn’t feel right, but I wondered whether this was how all great adventurers felt when they first set out.

I fell asleep with the thought that it was miles better to be overwhelmed than under.

Sun beat through the window the next morning. It would have been nice to pull the drapes, but there were none. I had to get up right away, pulling on one of the only suitable outfits I had packed.

Coming out of the building, I noticed an office across the street. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it before – the Hamilton Spectator. The day before I had felt that I couldn’t expect a brilliant job without brilliant experience, and without it I had felt hopeless. Today, life seemed so promising, with the Spectator just staring at me.

I walked through the front doors fully prepared to beg.

”We actually have an opening,” the perky receptionist said, smiling far too wide.

”I have a resume,” I replied, unsure of how to deal with her over-excitement when my own was bubbling inside of me.

She led me through a classic wooden door into a large office. A balding man was sitting behind the over-sized desk. He nodded at me and she introduced me, continuing to smile.

”Do you have any experience writing?” he asked me. She had introduced him as a Mr. O’Connell, but he certainly did not fit the name. I wracked my brain for a more appropriate fit.

“Honestly, not professionally,” I answered. ‘Mr. Peabody’ I thought.

”Do you think you can you write something engaging?” he asked, his voice getting slightly higher with each word.

”Most definitely,” I said. ‘Definitely Mr. Peabody’ I thought.

He nodded and waved me out of his office, picking up the phone as I walked towards the door. On the other side of the door, the receptionist was back at her desk, on the phone.

”Mr. O’Connell would like you to come in tomorrow morning at 7,” she said. It took me a moment to realize that I should be excited because her disposition hadn’t changed. “No one else has applied,” she whispered, covering the butt of the phone. I smiled and backed out the front door, mouthing the words ‘thank you’.

That is how I came across my first writing job, and I wrote “something engaging” daily for the next four months.

In the fall, reeling from the idea that I had successfully left home and survived, I asked Mr. O’Connell for a long weekend and climbed on the bus to visit home.

My parents met me at the bus depot with mild pride on their faces. I wasn’t sure if I looked different, or if they were simply seeing something different in me. There was still a part of them that was disappointed in my distance, but they had seen so many of my friends walking aimlessly around town, working in the shops and restaurants.

I wasn’t living exactly the life they imagined, but they couldn’t contain the bit of excitement they felt because I was different.

I was different. I looked around town and felt an itch to leave because I felt like I was missing out on something exciting.

I ran back to Hamilton as soon as possible, hoping to feel the same sense of relief I had felt when I had first arrived.

I didn’t feel it. Instead, I returned to my desk and wrote stories that would engage people in this town, but not myself. I thought it was time for another change. I climbed on a plane this time and headed for Toronto, hoping to find something to completely overwhelm me, in a good way.

For the next two years, I travelled around sporadically, writing and living and searching for something. I felt underwhelmed quite frequently, excited occasionally, but surprisingly, began to yearn for home.

Home, that had seemed so un-impressive to me after graduation, began to seem so appealing. I flew back home and stood in the liquor store, listening to a boy describe me as a “local”. I held my tongue and let him believe he was much more experienced in life. I walked out the door and got in my car, drove to my parents’ home and laid in the bed I had laid in my entire life.

Maybe I am just a local. The experiences I have had outside of Patrick Falls will fade, and I’ll be left without whatever I build here. Maybe I will live a boring, underwhelming life. On the other hand, maybe I misread this place, and I will spend my life searching for the excitement in everyday life, writing about my small town.

I could be wrong, but I’m beginning to think I was underwhelmed by myself, not by the town.

back to Contest #7