{"id":148,"date":"2010-07-19T21:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T21:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/?p=148"},"modified":"2023-04-19T21:27:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T21:27:04","slug":"morph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"Morph"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An unfinished draft of a young adult novel.<\/em> Excerpt is below. The full manuscript is here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laila was soaked.\u00a0 She stood there in the doorway for a minute, arms spread helplessly, hair matted to her face.\u00a0 \u201cTowel?\u201d she said finally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cUh.  One second.\u201d  I ran down the hall to the guest bathroom, grabbed one of the pink towels from the rack, and watched as she dried off.  She smelled like rain.  I didn\u2019t know that was possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cThat\u2019s a good look for you,\u201d I said, as she brushed the leaves out of her hair.  She frowned and threw the wadded-up towel at my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cWhat were you and Mom talking about?  Me, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cDon\u2019t flatter yourself.  We\u2019ve got more interesting stuff to talk about than you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cGood for you.  I bet you a million dollars she was telling you about the snails.  Come on, I need to change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This is typical.  We bicker.  On my part, it\u2019s a defense against all the things that I really want to say.  On her part\u2026well, I have no clue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cWhere\u2019s the ferret?\u201d I said uneasily as we walked down the hall, under the watchful eyes of the Rahbani ancestors.  Oscar has learned to scare the crap out of me on a regular basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cProbably waiting to jump out at you when you least expect it,\u201d Laila giggled.  \u201cIt\u2019s because he likes you, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cI\u2019d hate to see him when he decides he doesn\u2019t.  Wow, I love what you\u2019ve done with the room.\u201d  As bare and white as ever.  One of my running jokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cThanks.  OK, turn around and entertain yourself for a minute.  Changing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cWow, that did not <\/em>sound right,\u201d I pointed out.  A stupid thing to say, but now, with a girl stripping behind me and my throat suddenly filling up with phlegm, my defenses had gone into overdrive.  I fumbled with my backpack, managing to drop it twice on the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cDone,\u201d she said, after what seemed like an hour, and I turned around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            One thing I\u2019ve learned by now, at this ripe old age of sixteen, is that there are times in life when something more powerful than yourself takes over.  I don\u2019t know how to describe it, except that it\u2019s like there are two people, really, in every body.  There\u2019s the one that walks around every day, the one that everyone sees, or thinks they see, but it\u2019s really just a sham\u2014a flimsy thing, made of words, all patched together and constantly falling apart.  Then there\u2019s the one inside it, like a tiny ball of light, that shines through only a few times in your life, maybe.  And every time it does, it threatens to burn your whole world to a crisp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This was not the first time it had happened with Laila.  But this time it hit me like a thunderbolt.  I just stood there, looking at her in her thin white T-shirt and her running shorts, putting her hair up.  She seemed tiny, and delicate, and and the same time she filled up the room.  Her skin glowed, like she had a ball of light inside too, and it was fighting to get out.  I looked at the curve of her neck where it met her shoulder.  I wondered what it would be like to put my hand there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cWhat?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cNothing.\u201d  I swallowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cWhat?\u201d  She took a step toward me, letting one hand drop.  \u201cYou have these moments, and I never know what they mean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I shook my head.  My voice sounded small.  \u201cI was just\u2026thinking about stuff.  Sometimes\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cYeah?\u201d  She waited, her eyes big.  Big enough to fall in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            For about three seconds there was a war inside my chest, an epic, all-out war, the kind of war that songs are sung about a thousand years later.  Then it was over, and I could only grimace and say:  \u201cI don\u2019t know.  I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            She could have backed off then.  Or she could have gotten mad; I wouldn\u2019t have blamed her.  There must be a million parallel universes where we both just moved on and started working on the musical.   But in this one, her face went soft.  She took another step towards me.  She let her hair fall, and reached out a hand, and said something about how I had a leaf on my shirt, but my hand came up and took hers before she could get there.  And my other hand reached out and touched her hair, just touched it, and it was trembling, my hand was, and she blinked and looked up at me with a look that I knew somehow was full of fear and relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And then neither of us knew what to do.  \u201cDo you want to sit down?\u201d she said quietly.  So we sat, clumsily, on the floor.  I laughed for some reason, and she laughed back, and then my laugh started to turn into something else, a cry, so I put my hand to my face, and she brushed it aside and took my head in her hands and kissed me, a simple kiss, on the mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I thought I should say something, but it was impossible with all the light pouring out of me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Laila lay down on the floor and curled up her knees.  I lay down too.  She pushed her hair aside, exposing her neck.  I reached out and traced my finger down its length, feeling, for a moment, like one of those tiny people you see in pictures on the soft endless dunes in the Sahara. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            She closed her eyes and smiled.  I thought for a second she was actually going to sleep.  For some reason that didn\u2019t seem so strange, here, with the rain outside and the house quiet and still, with everything suddenly in its right place, in this one giant moment full of light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Maybe we should have gone to sleep.  But I was there next to her, and I was smelling her smell for the first time, the real one, beneath all the conditioner and body wash and whatever girls wear, and down beneath all that she smelled like good things, like earth, or a forest.  So I touched her again, on the shoulder, and then down along the side, and I found that there was nothing under her shirt.  Then I touched her hip, barely touching it like a thing made of glass, and followed it up, my fingers bringing her shirt with them.  And then I saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            There was a scar on her stomach, a gash from her bellybutton down, about as wide as my finger and perfectly straight.  Because the light in the room was still on, I got a good look at it in the half-second before she realized.  The skin in the middle looked pink and thin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I must have hesitated, because suddenly her eyes snapped open and she sat up, pulling at her hair, looking flustered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cSorry, I\u2026\u201d I tried, but she was shaking her head rhythmically.  She stood up and turned to the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cStupid,\u201d she said after a long silence.  \u201cStupid.  Stupid.\u201d  She put her face in her hands.  \u201cJust go.  It\u2019ll be so much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I scrambled to my feet and stepped toward her, reaching out, searching for words.  But when I touched her shoulder, she whirled and stared at me with her eyes blazing.  With her hair still wild, she looked like an animal, cornered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cGo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So I went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An eternally unfinished young adult novel. Continue reading Morph<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewclarksmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}