Life After Dinosaurs

8 - An Eight

Alicia was quieton the walk over. When we got closer to the boats, I took my hand offof her shoulders and she grabbed my hand again. She gave it a tightsqueeze.

I squeezed back. "Scared?"

"Yeah. I hate these crowds. They all want me to belike my sisters, but we don't have anything in common." She was looking down.

"You don't mindthem seeing us holding hands?" I asked self consciously.

"Why?" Aliciaasked sharply. "We're just friends."

She had a point.

We got into thelong line of people waiting for the boats. Along the edge of the linewere couches, coffee makers, churro stands, nacho stands, and allmanner of stalls that had been distributed throughout the beach onlyhours before. On the giant monitors, her sister Jenny Martins was onthe water being pulled by a motor boat towards the luxury cruiseship. She let out a parachute and was gliding towards the boat atsixty miles an hour.

Alicia's eyes bore into the screen. When the parachute came out, she put her hand overher head. "So embarrassing..."

I chuckled. "Why?"

"It's just sounnecessary. This whole party is one extravaganceafter another. It's like, gee Mom could you be any more obvious thatyou were trying to keep you daughter from getting bored."

"So, you don'twish that you were going to parachute into a net on a luxury cruiseship?" I asked pushing her a little with mine.

She smiled back atme. "One of the reasons I'm even here is that they agreed NOT toput a spotlight on me. The last thing I want is my face put all overTV, then they'll have me in those horrible tabloids."

"That's true,"I said, thoughtfully.

I saw a couplepeople glance back at us holding hands, but no one pointed or saidanything. I guess Alicia wasn't famous enough to warrant the paradeof gawkers that her sister got. I was thankful of that. I didn'treally like the idea of attracting attention myself.

"Hey, do you remember when you weremad at your sister and told people about her secret boyfriend? Were you were talkingabout Jenny?"

Alicia frowned andkept her eyes forward. "Yeah. She was dating that guy from that HBOshow Castle Tournament or whatever. She kept making cooing atTimmothy over the phone so I reported her to Star."

"You leaked astory on your own sister?!" I asked suddenly fearing for me life.

She grinned at me."I told you I was bad news."

I chuckled andthen started thinking back on those news headlines. Timmothy played thebastard king Janothan. Their relationship had been big news.

"Didn't theybreak up?" I asked her.

"Yeah. Hecouldn't handle how high profile their relationship was getting eventhough it was good for their careers. My sister was mad at me, butshe's already forgiven me. I mean, Jenny doesn't really stay mad forlong," Alicia said confidently.

"I hope so," Imuttered.

Without warning, or because I had the reflexes of a turtle, someone jumped onto my back. It was someone, annoying, selfconfident, and covered in axe body spray.

"Hello, Rodger,"I mumbled with contempt.

Rodger ran hishands through my non-existing hair and then pulled himself off to the side. He hadthe smile of a cat who caught a mouse.

"I HAD tointroduce myself to your lovely lady friend," Rodger said in hisgoofiest voice that somehow always got girls interested in him.

With his handstill on my shoulder he leaned over and extended a shake. "It's apleasure..." His goofy voice and smile disappeared when he realizedhe was shaking Alicia's hand.

"Nice to meetyou," Alicia said keeping my hand in hers.

"Uh huh,"Rodger weakly replied.

"Do we getcurtsies?" I heard this adorable girl say from behind.

This pretty blondegirl who, as advertised, was at least an 8...whatever that meant...put her arm around Rodger and she kissed him on the cheek. The kisswoke him from his stupor. He smiled at Alicia and introduced her tohis girlfriend, Penny. Penny actually gasped when she saw Alicia. Herhands went over her mouth.

Alicia pulledherself closer to me, her head on my chest.

I guess that was my turn to steer the conversation away from Alicia. "It's niceseeing you, Rodger. I didn't think you'd end up getting agirlfriend."

"Hey, well..."He stammered and then arched an eyebrow at me. "Stranger thingshave happened."

"So Penny,Rodger tells me that you both like first person shooters?" I askedcasually.

Penny nodded andkept staring at Alicia.

--

This here is a great section to highlight just how cumbersome my writing can be when not properly reigned in. The staging here gets in the way of the pacing and makes actions pull more weight than they need to. Conversations with bombastic personalities can have a pull to them, but I do feel like the attention to physical details gets in the way of the narrative objectives here. Where people are and what they're doing is one thing, but a lot of the direction here doesn't necessarily add to what's going on. Don't get me wrong, there are some descriptions that help to emphasize the character and reactions, but overall I see this section as being more wordy that it needs to. Although, maybe the quantity of the words isn't even the problem. If anything it's the word choice that might make this a little too matter of fact.

I think to some extent, my rejection of the majority can end up giving me directives in the opposite direction. As I've said before, I think the biggest problem with the "rules of writing" is that they limit a writer's ability to express themselves. Here, my writing is not only lacking figurative language, but it's leaning too hard on simple descriptors to sell an interaction that would have a lot more subtext going on. The looks between Rodger and Ian are definitely lacking here and if I felt the urge to just gut and rewrite, I'd try to add a little more with them sizing each other up. Rodger should feel like he has a kind of moral superiority over Ian at this point. Or more accurately, Ian's haughty judgmental comments suddenly lack any weight. Ian supposedly isn't interested in being like Rodger, but then there he is walking hand in hand with a member of a celebrity family. There's a lot of emotions here that I don't think come out the way that they should. Not to mention Ian's given another opportunity to lie to himself about the state of his relationship versus Rodger and Penny's.