Melinda Duval

Taken from Melinda Duval's notebook.


They were young, healthy good looking men. Clear skin and bright eyes highlighted regular features. Both wore their hair in short dreadlocks pulled back from their faces. In the current mode, their clothes were oversized and elaborately colored. Belts cinched their shorts not over their waists but halfway down their hips, boxers as much a part of the ensemble as the crisply clean running shoes. One wore an elaborate death's head belt buckle seemingly carved from bone. The other wore a T-shirt graphically depicting a dead Rap performer.

They took up more room than their slender frames required. Not because they sprawled in the cheap plastic seats, although they did that, but because they carried in them so much life. All that vitality barely contained by the oppressive setting of a police station waiting room. No matter the reason for their presence, the young men radiated liveliness impossible to ignore.

Easy to dismiss them as arrogant or ignorant, they are life fighting to find its place.


Draft 1
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Is there someone in your life that you've been neglecting? Who is it, and what can you do to make it up to them?


For the second day in a row, Melinda chose not to answer her cell when caller ID showed a New York number. She knew who it was but couldn't bear to face it. Stanley was a very good guy and the world's best publisher. He would bend over backwards to get her what she needed to write. Oddly enough, he insisted on seeing something in return. Like words written on the page.

It wasn't that she didn't have them, she did. After days with no good stories, she'd gotten a terrific one and that had opened the floodgates. She'd sat in her hotel room for twelve straight hours and at the end she had four stories. They all needed polishing and a hard edit, but they were solid.

She didn't want to talk to him because she didn't want to go back. He hadn't seen her in almost six months and he always got twitchy when she was away. More than her parents, he worried about her when she was on the road. He'd keep worrying, keep calling, and if she avoided him for too long he come find her.

She logged into her e-mail and sent him the best of the stories along with a short note telling him she was fine. The next time he called she'd have to answer, but for now she could pretend all she had to care about was the next story.


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