Act I: Spring Break

1. Breakfast in Bed

I make breakfast for my parents. They’re sick in bed. 

I fill the electric kettle with water. It’s stainless steel. I set it on the base and click the button, and it warms to life with a swell of heat. I like the fiery whooshing sound. It’s a warning that something surprising is about to happen. I imagine the kettle lifting off and hovering in the kitchen and then zooming around the house.

I put four slices of multigrain toast into the toaster oven. My parents like toast done on one side. It feels fun on the teeth when you bite into a soft bottom and a crispy top.

I scoop rice pudding out of a plastic container and into a metal bowl. It’s glucky. When I scoop it out, the pudding coming off the cold spoon makes a sound like glucky. Or maybe it’s gloop or shmluck. It’s kind of gross. My dad likes cinnamon and sugar on his rice pudding. It’s how his mom used to make it. She died before I was born, so I’ve only seen pictures of Grandma Kate.

My mom doesn’t like rice pudding. She likes butter toast and English Breakfast tea with cream. My dad drinks tea only when he’s sick, so I make him a cup of tea as well. He likes it plain, nothing in it. 

On the kitchen counter are two cups of tea on saucers, a pitcher of cream, a stack of buttered toast, a bowl of rice pudding, two bananas, spoons, napkins, and a kitchen towel. I have to transport all this from the kitchen to their upstairs bedroom. I can’t carry everything at once. 

I stare out the window. I can see Lake Norman through the trees. The water is calm, bluish, and bright with sparkles. We live in a lake community half an hour north of Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s almost noon on Saturday, and any second people will be out tubing and riding jet-skis. My parents are doctors, and they got their second vaccine shots yesterday. They’ve been sleeping a long time and finally texted me to bring them food. 

I put everything except the tea on a tray. I’ll deal with the tea later. I rush upstairs. I one-hand the tray and open the door and go into their bedroom.

“Oh, thank you, honey,” says my mom. She’s sitting up against pillows.

My dad’s a lump in the covers. “Wha-?” he groans.

I hand the tray to my mom. Sick people make me nervous, even when I know they’re not technically sick. “I have to get the tea.” 

I race back down. 

As long as I have something to do, I don’t have to think about people being sick.

This is the tricky part. 

I have a saucer in each hand. I put a thumb against the cups so they don’t rattle. I’m halfway up the stairs when I wonder why I didn’t use another tray. It’s too late now. I’m looking at the stairs and measuring each step so I don’t trip. My thumb gets hot. I spilled some tea. It’s my dad’s plain tea, so he probably won’t miss it. 

“Set them here,” my mom says, patting her side table.

There’s stuff on the table: tissue box, an NYU water bottle, an eyeglasses case, jewelry, and hair bands. Snaking around the base of the lamp are cords for a phone charger and a heating pad. I push the saucers like snowplows to clear space. The tissue box falls off the cliff.

“Locke,” says my dad, sitting up. “Thanks, buddy. Good man.”

“Need anything else?” I ask.

“Belgian waffles,” says my dad, trying to be funny.

“This is perfect,” my mom says. 

“You guys okay?”

My mom knows sickness is not my thing. “We’re fine,” she says. “Just tired. We’ll be down soon.”

“Hey,” says my dad, perking up, his mouth full of glucky rice pudding: so gross. “I know it’s your spring break, but hold off on seeing friends until we see Grandpa Holly.”

“That’s Tuesday?” asks my mom.

“Uh,” says my dad, pausing his next spoonful. “Yeah. Should be Tuesday. I’ll confirm with Shyla.”

 “So I can see friends Wednesday?”

My parents hesitate. They don’t answer. They’re looking at each other. That’s a bad sign.

“Let’s just see how things—”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I understand.”

2. Confined Space

“Let’s just see how things go” is how my parents tell me something’s up without telling me something’s up.

Grandpa Holly is sick. He’s 89 years old. He’s staying with Aunt Shyla and Uncle Gley. It’s complicated because of Covid-19 and all that.

I don’t want to think about any of this. What I want to think about is the monster story. 

It’s my first day of spring break, and I slept in, too, but only until ten or so. I’m okay with seeing friends later because I’m already thinking about the monster story.

The monster story!

Finally.

I’ve been waiting so long.

My bedroom is on the second floor and has a window facing the backyard and the lake. I have a bed, a desk, a folding table, a dresser, and a bookshelf. 

The walls are bare. 

The reason the walls are bare is because one day during online school, I tore all my posters down. 

This school year of 2020 to 2021 is my eighth-grade year, and it was so not supposed to be this way. I don’t want to complain about, like, not getting to go on field trips or play team sports or whatever, and our school is doing a good job of mixing in-person and online classes and having classes outside and all that. But still there was a day when I was in my room, and I kind of lost it. I didn’t want to look at my posters anymore. I didn’t want to look at anything anymore. I was so sick of everything. Everything was pushing into me and squeezing me out, day after day after day. I wanted to fight back by tearing down my posters and restoring the bare white walls. 

So yeah, I have bare white walls, and that emptiness makes me feel better. I feel like the world isn’t so full, so overflowing and in my face and crushing. I have space to imagine my stories, and I can contribute something to the world. It’s funny, but white walls inspire me. It’s like they’re saying the world has space for me.

Today I have three things to do. Maybe four. Or five.

We’ve had online school since February. Three kids at Glenbrook got Covid, so we went virtual, again. That means in the last month or so, my bedroom got gross.

The corners are choked up with wrappers, bags, paper plates, plastic bottles for sports drinks, and dirty laundry. Under the bed are projects made of glue and Sharpies and poster board. There’s also an overall smog in the room made of body odor, humidity, sweat, stale food, and artificial cheese powder. 

Today, it’s me versus my bedroom. 

I shake out a garbage bag. I get on my knees. I pounce and claw and rake the junk into the bag. I wipe sills and baseboards. I vacuum. I grab one of my mom’s spritzers from the bathroom. I spray it like I’m putting out a fire. The floral scent burns my nose. I open a window and turn on a fan.

I win.

It’s time for the next phase.

I find a hammer and two nails and put up a cork board. I’m going to use it to track the scenes of my monster story. I have thumbtacks and index cards. 

Next, I clear the folding table of all my movie projects. 

When I was younger, like up to seventh grade (I guess that was last year), I used to make dioramas, spaceships, and hidden bases, and I would use them to make short movies on my iPhone. I never finished a movie, but I loved building the sets. 

Starting eighth grade, I stopped building sets. I stopped making movies. I felt kind of ashamed at my age to love these little projects. I felt like a kid still playing with toys. So my props and sets sat on the table “gathering dust,” as my mom says. 

Today I shove all that stuff into my closet. 

Finally, I organize my desk: new notebook, pencils, colored pens, a ruler (for making charts and diagrams in the notebook), and my laptop, which is disgusting. It’s full of stupid stickers. It’s dusty and grimy. The keyboard is crumby. My parents won’t get me a new laptop until I start high school. So I’m stuck with this one. I spend an hour cleaning it. I use lint-free wipes and a can of compressed air to blow out the crumbs between the keys.

I’m making my bedroom into a workshop for one thing only: the monster story.

My bedroom is ready: simple, sharp, and clean. It’s a writer’s room.

Mr. D. gave us one task to do over break: to come up with a confined space. 

The Confined Space!

It’s the first element in the monster story.

The confined space is important because that’s how you get trapped with the monster. 

If you aren’t trapped in a confined space, then you can walk away. And if you can walk away, there’s no story. 

If you’re on shore, and the shark’s in the water, then you can put on sunscreen and lie on the beach all day, no problem. If the ghost is in the attic, and the front door is unlocked, then out the front door you go. If you’re camping in a Winnebago, and the sasquatch howls in the woods, then you crank up the Winnebago and wave adios. 

No confined space, no story.

The point of the monster story is to force the hero to face his fears and have a showdown and fight to survive. So I need a confined space.

Mr. D. gave us examples: abandoned theme park . . . insane asylum . . . desert laboratory . . . jungle prison . . . mountain castle . . . underground maze . . . a mine, cavern, tunnel, island . . . haunted library . . . elevator stuck at the top . . . and so on. 

It’s a lot to think about, so that’s why he gave us the week of spring break to write a description of our space.

This isn’t just homework for me. I want to be a writer. I write stories all the time. I love writing. 

I write “Confined Space” on an index card and tack it to the cork board.

My only problem is I never finish a story. Never. Not ever. Not once. I don’t know how. I love beginnings, I struggle with middles, but I stink at endings.

I love seeing my “Confined Space” index card up there. It’s so hopeful. I feel professional. But then there’s all that empty space on the cork board. So much empty space! I’ve never made it through that empty space before. The cork board is a desert. It’s hot and barren and vast. That scares me.

I start stories on Google Docs. I love writing titles and making up characters. I love creating worlds. I have so many stories I’ve started and spent weeks on, and then . . . somehow . . . I get stuck. I don’t know what to do. 

It’s like I invited all these characters to a party, and they’re standing around waiting for me to start the party. I don’t know how to start the party. I don’t know what they want from me. It’s easier for me to close the document, shut down the party, open a new document, and start again. 

I have so many Google Docs that end at one or two pages. It’s embarrassing. It’s like my stories hate me. When I give up and let them go, they have a party by themselves and celebrate the fact that I’m not in charge anymore.

“Hey,” says a two-page Google Doc. “I’m a story about pirate detectives that he quit in sixth grade.”

“Oh, yeah?” says a one-page Google Doc. “I’m a story about hamster wizards that he quit in fifth grade.”

“Get this,” says a three-page Google Doc. “I’m a story about vikings in high school that he started yesterday and quit today!”

They laugh at the “quitter” (that’s me) and shout, “Cheers!” 

It makes me insane, wanting so badly to do something and not knowing how to do it. Am I the only writer in the world who doesn’t know how to finish a story?

So I’ve been looking forward to Mr. Davenport’s Language Arts class since I first heard about it in sixth grade. Eighth-graders would talk about Mr. D.’s legendary class and the infamous monster story. The monster-story project starts after spring break and lasts the whole spring trimester. 

I am putting my heart into this. If I can stick with it, I will finally finish a story. I will not be a dumb kid messing around in his bedroom. I will become a real writer.