Selections from the Vault

This page features snippets and short stories first posted on 22 September 2021, as the task of cleaning out my writing folder continues.

Please note that none of these have been edited and they will probably not be expanded or continued.

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I Don’t Want to Know

Notes: A little bit of fun, playing on the word ’know‘.

“Oh, I really wish I didn’t know that,” Honey moaned, as she entered the clubhouse, one hand half over her eyes. “I didn’t need to see that, or hear it, or know anything about it at all.”

Trixie and Di shared a look, but it was Trixie who asked, “What did you see?”

Honey dropped onto a bench and bumped her forehead against the conference table. “But if I tell you, then you’ll know as well, and you’ll wish you didn’t know and you can’t un-know something after you’ve known it, only you’ll wish you knew how and you won’t be able to and it will be all my fault.”

For a moment, Trixie frowned. “Well, can you give us a clue?”

“Wait!” Di grabbed Trixie’s arm and spun her to face herself. “If Honey doesn’t think that we should know, then I know that I don’t want to know and if you’re sure that you want to know, then I know that I’m going to leave before you find out, because I know that I can’t un-know something, even if you think you can.”

“Exactly,” Honey agreed.

“Do I even want to know what that meant?” Brian asked, entering the room.

Di turned to him to explain. “Honey just found out something she didn’t want to know, but of course Trixie asked what it was, but if Honey doesn’t want to know, I don’t want to know either, but how can I not know if Honey explains it in front of me?”

“I see.” Brian glanced at his sister. “Maybe she could wait until after everyone else has left.”

“Maybe you could stay out of this,” Trixie snapped back.

“Impatient,” he noted, considering her carefully. “You should work on that, Trix.”

Before she could respond, the rest of their group arrived and the meeting came to order. Trixie fidgeted through the business at hand, annoying Mart and exasperating Brian. Di kept edging closer to the door.

“Any other business?” Jim asked, at length. “No? Then the meeting is closed.”

The rest of them breathed a collective sigh of relief. Di was the first to her feet and darted for freedom outside.

“I really have to go,” she explained, gesturing away from the others. “Good bye!”

“Wait! I’ll walk with you.” Mart followed along, with neither a backward glance, nor any kind of farewell.

“What’s with you girls?” Dan asked, eyeing the remaining two with suspicion. “Di practically ran away from you.”

Honey gave a helpless shrug. “It’s just that I said something earlier, about something, and I said that I didn’t want to know what I knew, but Trixie asked, of course, but Di interrupted to say that if I knew that I shouldn’t know, then she knew that she shouldn’t know either, which doesn’t go with me letting Trixie know right in front of her, you know?”

Dan stared for a moment. “Right. I totally see that. Not.”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “It’s perfectly simple. Honey knows something, but she doesn’t want to know. I wanted to know what was so bad. But Di didn’t want to know, because Honey didn’t want to know, and you can’t un-know something that you already know.”

“Don’t I know it,” Dan answered, grinning. “Okay, I think I get it now. So, do the three of us need to go before you can share this terrible knowledge, or is anyone allowed to hear it?”

“Seeing as I’m not telling what I saw, ever, I don’t suppose it matters whether you stay or go, because I’m not going to repeat it.” Honey emphasised her point by closing her eyes and shuddering.

Brian glanced at his watch. “Well, I have some studying to do, so I will leave you to this fascinating discussion.”

“Yeah, I guess I’d better follow your example,” Jim added. “See you all later.”

Dan settled more comfortably and watched Honey in meditative silence.

“What?” she asked, at last.

He raised one shoulder a fraction. “Nothing. I’m just waiting for something interesting to happen.”

Trixie was not content to just wait, but jumped in with a question. “Was it something involving one of our parents?”

Honey’s gaze snapped to her best friend’s. “What makes you say that?”

Trixie shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just trying out scenarios that would gross you out.”

“No. No parents.”

“Regan? Mr. Maypenny?”

“What? Why them?”

Once more, she shrugged. “If you don’t tell me, then I’ll have to keep guessing.”

“But I don’t want to tell!” Honey wailed. “It was hard enough to be there, let alone to have to repeat it.”

“Tom? Celia? Cook? Miss Trask?”

Honey’s face paled. “Well ….”

“Aha!” Dan crowed. “But which of them?”

Trixie contemplated her friend for a few moments, eyes narrowed. “Miss Trask.”

“Yes,” Honey squeaked.

“But Miss Trask and who?” Trixie mused.

“Why does there have to be a who?” Honey asked, eyes squeezed tight shut.

Trixie looked over to Dan and rolled her eyes. “Because I refuse to believe that Miss Trask could cause that kind of reaction from you if there wasn’t a someone else involved.”

Honey’s shoulders slumped at this piece of logic, but she did not answer verbally.

“It can’t be any of the people I’ve already named,” Trixie reasoned, thinking hard. “Sergeant Molinson? Principal Stratton? Mike from Wimpy’s? Old Brom?”

“What?” Honey stared at her friend. “But that’s–”

“Bad enough to cause this kind of reaction in you?” Trixie asked, rolling her eyes. “That’s what I’m aiming for. So … how about Regan?”

“You’ve said him already,” Dan pointed out. “And I think you’ve missed an obvious suspect.”

Trixie’s eyes widened. “Mr. Lytell! Oh, why didn’t I think of him before? But, Honey! What did you see? Or hear? They wouldn’t–”

“Wouldn’t they?” Honey’s tone was dark. “I wouldn’t have thought they would, but after what I saw, I wouldn’t say that any more, since I saw – and heard – and I’m not ever going to be able to forget!”

Dan sat back and observed the pair, highly amused not only at the discussion, but at the looks of disgust and indignation that graced the girls’ faces.

“Ugh! But that’s a mental image that I never wanted to have.” Trixie scrubbed a hand across her face.

“You think that’s bad? You try seeing it for yourself!”

“No, thanks.” Trixie shuddered. “I don’t ever want to!”

The Break-up

Notes: A snippet of conversation between Trixie and Honey about a break-up.

“Goodbye, Honey.”

The words echoed through her head, almost seeming real enough that she might be hearing them with her ears. In spite of the six days, twelve hours and forty-seven minutes since he uttered them, she could still hear them, over and over again.

Honey shook her head, trying to dislodge the unwelcome memory.

“Did you hear me?” Trixie asked, in a tone of voice that somehow managed to combine sympathy with exasperation.

“What? Oh, sorry, Trixie. My mind was…”

“Fixed on my bone-headed brother,” Trixie finished with a scowl. “The next time I see him–”

“You’ll be just like you usually are to him and you won’t, in any way, let him know that I feel the way that I actually feel, because I’m absolutely certain that he doesn’t know how I really feel and I want it to stay that way.” She gave her best friend a challenging look. “And you’re not going to tell anyone about this, ever, are you?”

Trixie groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’re asking the impossible!”

“I’m not!” Honey took a breath, trying to gather her thoughts. “It’s not his fault that things turned out this way.”

The look she received in return for this sentiment embodied disbelief.

Honey let out a sigh. “It’s like this: I know that we started out being attracted to each other, in a very innocent kind of way, way back in the beginning, when everything was new and everything seemed possible, and along the way we did explore that a bit, before college and commitments and all that stuff got in the way, and it did seem, for a while, that there might actually be more to it than just a teen romance of the most innocent kind, only now, when we’re apart and moving in different directions, and there are things pulling us away from each other, it’s perfectly clear that there’s not ever going to be an us, at least, not the us that we thought there might one day be, and I’m really sorry to say that he saw it before I did and it hurts that he did and that he had to point it out to me and it hurts that the dreams I had are never going to be anything more than dreams, but I think the thing that hurts the most is that it feels like our friendship is being swept away with it, and all of our extended friendships as well.”

“Oh.” Trixie sat down with a thump. “In everything you’ve said this week, I don’t think I ever got that.”

“Well, I didn’t really get what it was that I was feeling, at first,” Honey explained. “I mean, I felt the pain and the regret and the disappointment. But I’m only just starting to process the bigger picture. I mean, I had this idea in my mind that the seven of us would always be friends.”

Trixie shook her head. “I don’t think he meant to never see you again!”

“His last words to me were, ‘Goodbye, Honey.’ There’s not much more final than that.”

“Yes, but did he mean that the way you think he meant it, or was he just saying that the thing that was between you had ended and that things wouldn’t be the same after that.”

Honey shook her head. “That’s kind of an understatement.”

Trixie made a gesture that almost screamed the word whatever. “Even if things aren’t the same, we’re still all going to be friends. Even if things start out being awkward.”

“Awkward! How am I going to look him in the face after all the things I’ve thought about him since that happened?” She sighed heavily. “How am I going to face anybody after destroying the group.”

“You haven’t destroyed the group,” Trixie assured her. “I mean, sure it might be awkward and sure we’re all concerned for you. But we’re concerned for you. We’re not against you. And we’re not against each other. And so long as the two of you don’t start screaming at each other in front of us, I don’t think there’s going to be a problem.”

Tears began spilling down Honey’s cheeks. “We’re not going to scream at each other. This isn’t that kind of break-up. This is the kind where the relationship just quietly fades away into nothing. And there’s nothing left. Nothing to argue about. Nothing to make either of us angry. It’s just all gone.”

“I don’t think it’s all gone, Honey.” Trixie pulled her friend into a hug. “I think you’ll find, when the dust settles, that you two will be friends again. It’s true that things didn’t happen how we thought they would, but in the end, it will be okay.”

Perspective

Notes: A snippet about the perception of attractiveness.

“Call me, Dan,” she murmured, looking at him through her lashes. “You know you want to.”

Honey watched her friend give the girl in the tight, skimpy dress a flirtatious smile and admire her swaying hips as she walked away. He glanced at the piece of paper she had pressed into his hand, then crumpled it up and dropped it on the floor. Honey watched it fall, and considered how invisible it became in the dim light of the bar.

“You weren’t interested in her?” she asked, leaning close so that her could hear her low voice.

Dan laughed and a shiver ran down Honey’s spine at the sound. “No. She knows it, too, which is why she keeps on trying. It’s not every day she finds a man she can’t entice into her bed.”

A frown marred Honey’s smooth brow as she looked down at her modest outfit. Sometimes, she felt as if men would never look at her the way that Dan had looked at that girl. She had no desire to follow that kind of lifestyle, but it would be nice, once in a while, to get some appreciation.

“Hey!” Dan interrupted her thoughts with a gentle finger to her chin. “Don’t look that way.”

“Why not?” she asked, wondering if he had read her mind.

He glanced towards the door, where their dates were standing, their eyes adjusting to the light. “You don’t need to throw yourself at someone to get his attention. You’ve got it, any time you want.”

Honey looked up and met her boyfriend’s eyes. His smile was all she needed in that moment.

Across the room, her boyfriend was viewing the same outfit from an entirely different perspective. Where Honey had seen clothing so conservative as to border on the unattractive, the man in her life was busy appreciating the way the fabric clung to her curves and the gentle hint it gave of what lay beneath. As far as he was concerned, she could be wearing a sack and he would still desire her, but at this moment she looked very good.

“Wipe off the drool,” he heard in his ear, at the same time as he felt a firm thump on his upper arm. “If you’ll think carefully, I think you might remember how to walk and we can go over there.”

He gave his companion a withering look, but took her advice. To his chagrin, he found that she was in part correct – he did need to concentrate on walking, for fear that he might end up sprawling across the floor. While he would take Honey any way he could get her, he was not confident that she felt the same way.

Looking Back

Notes: In this snippet, someone returns to Sleepyside to consider their past.

She wandered, slowly, along a path which had once been so familiar. What would it have been like, she wondered, if I’d stayed, if he’d come after me, if we’d tried harder? Her steps slowed further as she neared the house. He probably wouldn’t be there, but his wife might be, and maybe his kids. She didn’t want to see any of them.

“Who am I kidding?” Marcy asked herself aloud. “I don’t want to see Peter, either. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m here.”

But she did know. After twenty years away, she was making her first visit to Sleepyside. None of her family lived here any more. Almost no one she had called a friend had stayed. She had kept in touch with none of them. She had gone far away, made a new life and never looked back – until now.

After a few more steps she could see the house. It looked just as it had the last time she’d been here. That was the night she’d told him she was leaving, the night he’d let her go, the night when the things she’d thought she wanted slipped out of her reach.

At one time, she thought she’d love to be Mrs. Belden, to cook in that kitchen and grow vegetables and raise a houseful of children. At one time, Peter was all she wanted, all she dreamed about. And then a different dream had risen. She let go of Peter and all he represented to chase this new, exciting dream. She had chased it for twenty years, without ever catching it.

And now she had returned – if only for a brief snatch of time – to look on the shadow of her first dream, the one she sacrificed for a chance at something better.

The door of the house opened and Peter’s wife appeared. She strode purposefully towards the vegetable garden. Marcy wasn’t sure of her name, or whether they’d ever met. She didn’t know what the woman liked to do, what she might have been had Peter not swept her up into his peaceful existence here.

That could have been me, she told herself. I could have been living here all these years, making his dinners and bearing his children. She frowned, wondering if that would have been so bad, after all. Would she have regretted not trying to reach her potential? Would they have broken apart in hot arguments and conflicting desires? Would she be one of those women who juggled children with their ex-husbands and their husband’s ex-wives? A stream of never-ending negotiations about who had which child when?

Out on Glen Road, a school bus passed. A small, blond boy trudged up the driveway and greeted his mother. Marcy frowned. Did they only have one child? Peter’s wife finished picking vegetables and led the boy inside, no doubt for cookies and milk, or something else equally domestic and comfortable.

“Okay. I’ve seen what I came to see,” she told herself. “There’s no point staying any longer.”

But she did stay. She stood and stared at that house, nestled in the hollow and surrounded by peaceful countryside. A far cry from the big city life she had known all this time. A far cry, too, from the bickering, the ambition, the back-stabbing and scheming. Out here, there would be no dramas, or danger. They probably didn’t even lock the doors.

She heard another school bus driving away. A short time later, she noticed some teenagers – two boys and a girl. That’s more like it, she thought to herself. I never could imagine Peter with just one kid.

The taller boy turned in her direction. Marcy shrank back into the shadows cast by a leafy tree. Her heart began to beat faster. He looks just like Peter, she mused. Only one of them looks like him.

A bittersweet smile flitted across her lips. In her mind’s eye, all of her children had looked like him. She had once imagined two boys and two girls, each of them with Peter’s dark hair and eyes. She had given them names and guessed at their interests. If she had been Peter’s wife, she would have taken their daughters to ballet lessons and their sons to basketball. She would have baked cakes and had his boss over for dinner.

Peter’s real children had long disappeared into the house by this time. The girl didn’t move like she had ever taken ballet lessons. And those curls would have been a nightmare to smooth into a neat bun. But there was a basketball hoop over the garage, so perhaps one part of her dream had been fulfilled.

Marcy took one long, last look at the house in the hollow, the house of shadows of her dreams.

“It would never have worked,” she decided, aloud. “I never could have been the person he needed.”

She turned and retraced her steps, leaving this piece of the past behind. He can stay there, she thought to herself. There, in his peaceful, little world, where most likely nothing much ever happens. It’s just home-cooked meals and early-to-bed on a school night.

She shook her head. The dream still had some pull, even when couched in those terms. But now that she had seen it again, she could let it rest. Sure, her life had not run to plan – to any of the plans she’d ever made – but did that matter, in the end? She would think up a new plan, a new excitement. She would leave Peter to his peaceful existence.

Marcy got into her car and drove away, never looking back.

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