Don't You Dare Tell Anyone Mr. Stevens

Chapter 6 - The Writing Assignment

Ben was fast asleep on the bed side closest to the wall in the guest room. The mahogany shades were closed and it was pitch black in the bedroom. All except for the white glow of my laptop. I stared at the open page and thought of Mr.Stevens writing assignment. How did I want to show readers my life? How did I want to express and show myself? What part of my life would I even start with? I thought of everything in my life. Then it hit me sending my head spinning.

It'll start from Friday when Marcus left. It will be about my life and what has happened from that moment on. I'll start with a back story then continue. It will be easier that way. But first I had to think of my main character. I looked over at the mirror and saw my reflection. Long curly brown hair. I turned to the screen then back to the mirror. Curvy, averaged height, hazel eyes that turn an olive green. I look at the screen again. My name is Tess Chance.

My character will be Lucy. Lucy Greenfield. Her story will be called The Chronicles of Lucy. Yes I like that. I began to type fast as the wind my fingertips delicately brushing across the keys the way a paint brush dances off the surface of a canvas.

Lucy Greenfield: blue eyes, blonde short straight hair, tall and slender. Then I thought of her back story which is mine. I began to think of my life.

The clicking of the keys as I brushed my fingertips across them began to sing the song of the words I wanted to write. My back story. I was five years old when Marcus began to disappear than reappear. He broke my arm once when I spit in his face for smacking my mother. I had expected her to defend me but she sat there and watched saying

"Marcus please don't leave me forget the girl who cares what about me? I love you please!"

When I was seven he smacked me for asking him what he wanted for dinner. He said that a girl never takes that kind of tone with her father. When I was eleven and Ben was only three he tried to beat him with the remote because Ben kept crying. Instead I ended up in the hospital because I got in between them. The nurse said I was lucky I didn't need stitches. The hits missed my eye. But she didn't know they were hits at the time. No one did.

When my mother went up to school she told them I had been running around the house, which has marble and wood, and fell down some stairs. She was so believable. I mean why not she was a desirable woman with a seductive voice and pretty face. She carried herself well and always looked very nice. The fathers used to gather around her at dismissal to talk about things that adults do. Once when Marcus gave me a black eye she had to go up to the school.

She told them I had fallen off of my bike and they all believed her then pitied me. Everyone said I was lucky for having such a beautiful and nice mom. My response would have been you could have her but I never said so. I wouldn't even wish that kind of punishment upon my greatest enemy.

When I was 12 mom and I went shopping for bras. When we got home she got so mad at me because Marcus left. He left because when he got home we weren't and he was hungry. And she saw it as he left because she was out doing something for me. She ripped one of the bras in half and tried to hit me with wire inside. I grabbed a pan and smacked her with it. That was when the nights over at Ethan and Kelly's started. Also my obsession with metal pans started. I like my pans. Especially the cast iron ones. Those leave marks. His parents don't know though. No one can and no one will.

So I took this and I turned it into Lucy's life. I told the story of how when I was 15 Marcus spilled beer all over my dress to the spring fling. Then tried to hit me because he was so drunk and said my stupid dress sucked up all of his bear.

Thinking about all of this didn't make me feel weak or vulnerable. It didn't make me want to crawl under my bed and hide in the darkness. It made me want to take a gun to their heads and shoot them dead. Then one more time just because I would love to do it twice.

Bitterness overshadowed my heart like a cloak of bloody red.

Lucy will have a brother. His name will be Tom. I'll put in the time when Ben got hit by Marcus in the back ten times with a metal bat because he didn't give Marcus his money. Marcus called it disobedience. I'll put the time when Marcus yanked his belt off of his jeans. The slicing sound it made. The cutting noise it made in the air. The cracking sound it made when it hit mom and Ben. I'll talk about the blackness of the closet when I was 14 and knocked him out with a chair because he pushed Ben down some stairs and he landed in the hospital.

I'll talk about it all. I'll talk about all of my school transfers. I'll talk about Mr.Stevens and his writing class and how it saved me and how he saved me without even knowing it. How he made me feel safe in a world where I felt I was burning to ashes. How he nurtured me when he didn't have to. How he found a liking for me and saw something in me, talent, that no one else did. How he saw me as I was. He saw a lonely depressed girl with and gave me writing as a way to be alive and free. He saved my life. If it weren't for his writing class I think I'd be dead.

I'll talk about Ethan and Kelly and how their home sheltered me in a time where my house was mass chaos and destruction. I'll talk about my childhood and friendship with Ethan and Patty. I'll talk about my life with Patty. But I think I'll call him James and her Janelle. Lucy and James and Janelle will be best friends. I knew what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I was going to turn my life story into a writing assignment. The thing that will change my life. The Writing assignment.