Novel in Year Exercise 1

Novel in a Year

12.30.10 (Guardian Angel: Lynn Calapari) Exercise 1: Complete the sentence “The day after my eighth birthday, my father told me…” (then write what else comes to mind, or not, whatever the case)

 The day after my eighth birthday, my father told me it was all a lie. The life I had known up until that moment was a lie – carefully constructed by people in power far outside my father’s control. Far outside the scope of reality my eight year old brain could comprehend. I questioned him further, of course, but he had no way of explaining its complexities to a child. He only told me that he was sorry, and that I must be a big girl and take the train away the next morning, and never come back to our house. I didn’t understand.

 He read me a bedtime story, and tucked me in, and kissed my forehead. I didn’t sleep well. I dreamed of dark things and evil people. In the morning he took me to the grav-train station and put me on the direct line to the space port. Something in his eyes kept me from protesting, or even from crying, despite the unbearable hurt that welled up inside of me. I realized once I got older that what I saw on his face, what I felt, was agony.

 Agony of loss. Agony of doing what was right even though it would hurt, so badly.

 I got off the train at the space port and wondered around lost for a good hour, until suddenly my uncle showed up like magic from the crowd, looking every bit as worried as my father had. He snuck me aboard a transport, and I left Earth.

 I found out the next day they had killed my father. Killed him for telling me the truth. They thought he had ruined my chances of becoming what I am. They thought they needed an elaborate plan to shape a girl into an assassin, but they were wrong. All they needed to do was murder a girl’s family, and cut her off from everything familiar to her, and throw her into a galaxy of the unknown.

 I am what they wanted me to be. But they never controlled me. And I will never forget the truth of what my father told me that day after my eighth birthday.

 I am an ANGEL.