Sakura

I love picture prompts!  Here's one for this week.  I want to make sure to give credit to Digital Blasphemy, where I got this image. 



I would say something about it, but I don't want to change your first impressions and affect your writing.  :-)

Have fun!

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My response:

I pulled off my heels as I stepped off the patio and onto the lush lawn separating the mansion from the river.  They'd already rubbed my toes raw, and of the girls here, I was one of the last to pull off my strappy, expensive, torture devices.  Then again, they did make my legs look nice, which was the honest-to-goodness reason I'd kept them on this long.  It was a pride thing.  I couldn't get a date to the prom, but I came anyway, and I wanted to look like I could be here with someone.  Like I wasn't the fat, awkward geek who had struggled through the last four years of high school.

The strains of the last slow song floated out the open windows behind me as the song of the water rose in front of me.  It was both comforting and depressing.  Six months ago, I would have laughed at the idea of my going to prom.  Then mom signed me up for weight-watchers.  After seventeen years of feeding me chocolate chip cookies or brownies when I walked in the door each day after school, I came home to a note on the table.  Mom had paid for the meetings and left me a schedule.  It was so like her.  Non-confrontational to a fault.  She didn't like to get her hands dirty.  I bet if I'd asked her to her face, she would have denied it.  But I'm my mother's daughter.  I didn't bring it up.  I just showed up for the meetings.

Wouldn't you know, they worked?  Six months, and now most of my graduating class didn't recognize me.  Three months in, a group of semi-popular girls started talking me to in American History, then invited me to sit with them for lunch.  It was like my whole world had changed with the loss of fifty pounds.

"Like" my whole world had changed.  "As if."  Which, if you want to get all semantic, means it didn't really change.  Which was why, as the last song was announced and my new-found friends turned to their dates, and I was left alone, again, like I always had been.

I couldn't stay inside.  Everyone was dancing the last dance - no more lingering on the sidelines, no more small crowd to blend into.  The only way to hide my alone-ness was to disappear through the wide, glass-paned french doors.

Lights hung from the tree branches, reflecting off the water and making the whole garden look like a fairy paradise. 

I should be happy. 

Who could be sad in such a beautiful place?

But for me, the beauty only made the loneliness worse.

Different Genres

So, this week there is a prompt, but also a challenge.  If you choose just the prompt, check it out and write something.  For the challenge, write something in a genre different from what you'd usually write.

This week's prompt:
He looked down, took a deep breath, and jumped.

Good Luck!

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My Response:

(I struggle to write contemporary, so I'm going to give it a shot this week.  Also, I can't seem to get male characters, so I'm going for broke!)

I looked up to make sure they were watching.  I wasn't going to do it more than once.  Travis and his gang lounged on the large, flat rock near the water's edge.  I couldn't make out their faces, but I knew well enough the leer Travis wore.

One glance down at the water.  Two steps back.  I took a deep breath, filling my lungs, then closing my mouth to hold it in.  Last thing I wanted to do now was let out a girly scream.

Two running steps forward left the rock behind me.  I became gravity's toy, falling faster and faster.  I counted.  One.  Two. 

Then I hit the water.  I'd never been so glad to find myself submerged.  Here in the water, I was comfortable.  I surfaced, slowly releasing the breath I'd managed to hold.  I stroked towards the shore, victorious, feeling like Poseidon rising from his domain.

Travis and his friends looked up nonchalantly as I walked up to them.  A few drops of water spilled from my suit onto Travis's converse and skinny jeans, sitting in a pile near his feet, and he frowned. 

"Deal's a deal.  You all saw.  Now all of you stay away from my brother."

Travis's head rolled on his shoulders and he squinted up at me.  "Yeah.  Deal's a deal.  But your brother didn't prove himself.  You did."

Snickers all around, and a few of the guys turned predatory stares to where Kevin sat on his towel across the beach.  I would have jumped off the cliff twenty times just to make him stand up and look at his persecutors.  Instead, he turned his head, cradling his knees to his chest and rocking self-consciously back and forth.

Kevin wouldn't go in past his belly-button in the water, there was no way he'd jump off the cliff.  Not before Travis and his gang had him so whipped he'd never see straight.

Something behind me caught Travis's attention.  One of his buddies whispered.  "Dude, that guy's insane!"  I turned just in time to see one of the red-suited lifeguards emerge from the path at the top of the left side cliffs, on the other side of the waterfall from where I'd jumped. 

"No way."  Awe and reverence filled their voices and their eyes. 

The lifeguard jumped.  I counted a full five seconds before he hit the water.  The cliffs on the left side were easily twice as high as the more popular twenty-footer I'd leaped from. 

The lifeguard disappeared into the churning water, then surfaced.  Travis whooped.

An idea formed in my mind. 

"Alright then.  If I jump from there, then you leave Kevin alone."

For the first time in my life, Travis actually looked at me, surprise stripping his features of all pretense.  Then he recovered himself.  He laughed.

"You?  From up there?"  He shook his head and leaned back in his chair.  "You'll never do it."

I didn't drop my gaze.  He seemed unable to look away.  "I will, and then you will leave Kevin alone."

Travis's eyes darted over to Kevin, then surveyed me again.  "Yeah.  That'd be worth it.  Deal.  You jump from the left side, and we won't bother you or your brother again."

I nodded.  "Don't blink."

I felt the eyes boring into my back as I turned and headed into the pine trees.  My bare feet were too soft for the forest path.  Pine needles pricked my soles and scraped my arms.  This path was harder to follow than the one up the opposite side.  I scraped my knee climbing up a rock, and I got a handful of pine sap when I tried to pull myself up with a branch.  Then, finally, I stood at the top.

I stepped out of the shadows of the trees, and the musical chatter in the small lake stopped.  Travis and his goons were watching.  Everyone down there was watching.  Kevin stood on his towel, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun.

I stepped up to the cliff and looked down at the water below, as if to assure myself that it was there.

Two steps back.  Breathe in.  Two running steps forward.

I jumped.