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Snickerdoodle now has a book she's making...I'm not exactly sure if it's good enough for my Journal...but yeah...
Has not come up with the Epilogue...
隆宏 ( T a k a h i r o )
Diving Under
All I’ve ever wanted is for Ai to leave me alone.
For her to back off--you know, just give me some space.
It all started the summer before second grade when our moving van pulled into her neighborhood. And since we’re now about done with the eighth grade, that, my fried, just makes more than half a decade of strategic avoidance and social discomfort.
She didn’t just barge into my life. She barged and shoved and wedged her way into my life. Did we invite her to get into our moving van and start climbing all over boxes? No! But that’s exactly what she did, taking over and showing off like only Ai can.
My dad tried to stop her. “Hey!” he says as she’s catapulting herself on board. “What are you doing? You’re getting mud everywhere!” So true, too. Her shoes were, like, caked with the stuff.
She didn’t hop out, though. Instead, she planted her rear end on the floor and started pushing a big box with her feet. “Don’t you want some help?” She glanced my way. “It sure looks like you need it.”
I didn’t like the implication. And even though my dad had been tossing me the same sort of look all week. I could tell--he didn’t like this girl either. “Hey! Don’t do that,” he warned her. “There are some really valuable things in that box.”
“Oh. Well what about this one?” She scoots over to a box labeled Lenox and looks my way again. “We should push it together!”
“No, no, no!” my dad says, then pulls her up by the arm. “Why don’t you run along home? You mother’s probably wondering where you are.”
“This was the beginning of my soon-to-become-acute awareness that the girl cannot take a hint. Of any kind. Does she zip on home like a kid should when they’ve been invited to leave? No. She says, “Oh, my mom knows where I am. She said it was fine.” Then she points across the street and says, “We just live right there.”
My father looks to where she’s pointing and mutters, “Oh boy.” Then he looks at me and winks as he says, “Takahiro, isn’t it time for you to go inside and help your mother?”
I knew right off that this was a ditch play. And I didn’t think about it until later, but ditch wasn’t a play I’d run with my dad before. Face it, pulling a ditch is not something discussed with dads. It’s like, against parental law to tell your kid it’s okay to ditch someone, no matter how annoying or muddy they might be.
But there he was, putting the play in motion, and man, he didn’t have to wink twice. I smiled and said, “Sure thing!” then jumped off the liftgate and headed for my new front door.
I heard her coming after me but I couldn’t believe it. Maybe it just sounded like she was chasing me; maybe she was really going the other way. But before I got the nerve to look, she blasted right past me, grabbing my arm and yanking me along.
This was too much. I planted myself and was about to tell her to get lost when the weirdest thing happened. I was making this big windmill motion to break away from her, but somehow on the downswing my hand wound up tangling into hers. I couldn’t believe it. There I was, holding the mud monkey’s hand!
I tried to shake her off, but she just clamped on tight and yanked me along, saying, “C’mon!”
My mom came out of the house and immediately got the world’s sappiest look on her face. “Well, hello,” she says to Ai.
“Hi!”
I’m still trying to pull free, but the girl’s got me in a death grip. My mom’s grinning, looking at our hands and my fiery red face. “And what’s your name, honey?”
“Ai Makoto. I live right over there,” she says, pointing with her unoccupied hand.
“Well, I see you’ve met my son,” she says, still grinning away.
“Uh-huh!”
Finally I pull free and do the only manly thing available when you’re seven years old--I dive behind my mother.
Mom puts her arm around me and says, “Takahiro, honey, why don’t you show Ai around the house?”
I flash her help and warning signals with every part of my body, but she’s not receiving. Then she shakes me off and says, “Go on.”
Ai would’ve tramped right in if my mother hadn’t noticed her shoes and told her to take them off. And after those were off, my mom told her dirty socks had to go, too. Ai wasn’t embarrassed. Not a bit. She just peeled them off and left them in a crusty heap on our porch.
I didn’t exactly give her a tour. I locked myself in the bathroom instead. And after about ten minutes of yelling back at her that, no, I wasn’t coming out anytime soon, things got quiet out in the hall. Another ten minutes went by before I got the nerve to peek out the door.
No Ai.
I snuck out and looked around, and yes! She was gone.
Not a very sophisticated ditch, but hey, I was only seven.
My troubles were far from over, though. Every day she came back, over and over again. “Can Takahiro come outside?” I could hear her asking from my hiding place behind the couch. “Is he ready yet?” One time she even cut across the yard and looked through my window. I spotted her in the nick of time and dove under my bed, but man, that right there tells you something about Ai Makoto. She’s got no concept of personal space. No respect for privacy. The world is her playground, and watch out below--Ai’s on the slide!
Lucky for me, my dad was willing to run block. And he did it over and over again. He told her I was busy or sleeping or just plain gone. He was a lifesaver.
My sister, on the other hand, tried to sabotage me any chance she got.
Hint~ These were the first 5 pages
I will continue whenever I get back to writing it..
 iiSnickerdoodle · Tue Oct 14, 2008 @ 08:38pm · 1 Comments |
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