Compendium | Short Stories and More

rewrite | contest entry

I wasn't expecting to have a guest. The doorbell of my home may as well have been broken for how little it was used. My heart always skips a beat when I have a guest. I guess I'm always anticipating bad news. I briefly consider grabbing a pair of scissors or a knife, but decide against it. I don't want to scare off some innocent salesperson.

When I open the door, I find a familiar face. I would have thought she was a cosplayer under normal circumstances, but something about her tells me that she's exactly who she appears to be. I can't explain it. I just know.

"Hi— I'm sorry to bother you and show up without any warning, but I had to find you. I'm—"

"Nancy Drew," I finish for her, and I can't help but smile. "I know."

I don't read much these days, but as a little girl, I pored over any Nancy Drew book I could find. And when I got a little older, my best friend and I obsessively played the computer games together. Nancy was an embodiment of everything I wasn't and so badly wanted to be. She was always off having adventures and traveling to incredible places, exposing bad guys and solving mysteries wherever she went. I wanted to be like her some day, and instead I ended up a self-conscious recluse who only ever leaves the house to go to work.

How is it that she's here? I should be asking a million questions, but I want to hear her out. Because she's still everything I wish I could be. She's ingrained into my vocabulary, even. Whenever my hair curls outward at the bottoms, I describe it as "Nancy Drew hair" even though no one seems to know what I mean.

"Again, I hate to intrude, but you're my favorite book character and I know how your story ends. I figure that if we work together, we can change it."

I definitely wasn't expecting that. Me? Her favorite book character? I've always considered myself unremarkable and forgettable. I often wonder if people so much as think about me when I'm not around. What am I like in the form of prose? Am I a lot less awkward? Elegant, even? That, too, has me curious, but more than that, what kind of ending is she referring to?

For years, I've worried that my story won't have an ending. It has yet to start, so how could it end anywhere worth noting? I do the same mundane things every day and never make any progress and ask myself all the time if I'll ever do anything worth talking about. And apparently, not only do I eventually do something, but it goes wrong? I could have predicted that much.

Under any other circumstances, I would've shut the door. Of course my story ends badly. But with Nancy here, I feel like a kid again. Like the future is as endless as its possibilities and like I can do anything I want to if if try.

I give her a firm nod.

"Okay," I agree. "Then let's change it."