Hey Lumengirls, it’s Jo. Last week we planned to do a podcast over how the new year has started, but Juli got sick! She’s ready to do a podcast over the weekend, and here’s a new thing I wanted to try through writing.

I love writing, if you can’t tell, and I’ve been playing with this idea for a while, so I’m going to try it out. I’ll pick three words or more that “speak to me” or whatever, and try to write a short story about a new character who… I don’t know. My challenge to you is to take those three words and write (or think) of your own situation, then read and see how similar or different your idea was to mine.

Three words: green, snow, school

BONUS phrase: “okay”

Fictional situation:

my aunt never really understood why i love our little green room. she calls it the third floor, all special windows and wind. she calls it my room, and that’s better than the greenhouse. greenhouse makes it sound artificial, like whatever is growing up there is actually plastic.

to me, it’s just so different from every other house on the block, in the city, i decided to love it. for some reason, my decision meant that i would make it my own.

i began to grow ivy up the walls, around windows, because i enjoy the chill air around here. and when it’s sunny, my skin can drink it in rather than the vitamins my aunt likes to slip in next to my water in the morning. no matter how many of those i take, my skin will stay pale and snowy like the weather outside. but the snow is beautiful, and i am not beautiful.

it’s been four years since we moved here, and it all seems… okay.

food… okay.

school… okay.

home… okay.

today, i don’t want to get up as my alarm rings again, again, again.

“thea parker kelly! get your butt out of bed and turn off that darned alarm!”

see, i would say she was screaming, but my aunt never truly screams at me. never really angry. the only true time she was not even angry, but furious, was at my uncle when he came home drunk one day, two years ago. he’s not allowed around here anymore.

i get up and shut the noise off. running my fingers through my hair, i travel to the bathroom out in the hall. i have perfected moving clumsily and still being almost silent. plus, by the time i finish in the bathroom, i look a little more like a human in pajama pants rather than a creature from a horror movie.

throwing on a simple outfit of jeans and a t-shirt, i gather my backpack to go downstairs. it’s raining and cold again today, but better than getting stuck in the snow. I throw my lunch into my bag and grab my coats. yes, more than one, since one goes in my backpack. i like the chill air, and my aunt wants me warm and toasty in the heavy coat that she bought for me last winter. her eyes follow my routine as she pours coffee into a thermos. i am shorter than her by a few inches, and it’s clear who got my grandmother’s better genes. her hair floats long, reddish-brown, and beautiful. mine is a deep black, and cut. one time, a little girl passing by asked if i was snow white, and i wonder what brought her to think so. snow white is pretty, and i am not pretty.

my aunt’s skin is olive, not sickly like mine, but she says to stop thinking like this, since i am my mother’s spitting image. i know what she really means, the soon-to-be last living image.

i step out of the door, welcoming the cold wall of winter. More like sludgy winter-spring.

ALRIGHT, so here’s where I got. I hope to continue this next month and make her view change about herself. OR you could do that. Sorry that this is so melancholy, but she could change, you just have to imagine it.

I hope I can see your ideas soon! Every Drop Counts!

~Jo