Sneak Peak

First 2 journal entries from WIth the Flash of Lightning

Mandatory Evaluation Journal

Counselor: Randy Lockwood
First name: Serenity
Last name: NA

Journal Topic: What does your name mean to you? What is your identity? Who do you see yourself as?
Please write in as much detail as possible. This will help your counselor take care of your needs. Date all entries. Journal entries will be kept confidential between the writer and counselor. Be truthful in entries. They help you reflect and help your counselor make smooth transitions for you.

Date: How about you figure it out. I'm sick of filling out these forms.

 

There’s going to be a time in your life when you don’t know who you are or where you came from. You won’t understand why you don’t fit in and why you’re so different. You will feel like an outsider, the old and torn off crust of society.

 

For me, that happened when I was five. I had just got placed in a foster home, had repressed my past few days, and another kid asked what my name was. “I’m Serenity,” I said proudly.

 

It took me just a few minutes when the other kids were introducing themselves to me to realize that they had last names as well as first names. Why didn’t I have a last name? Why couldn’t I remember where my parents were, why they never came home? It was as if I had forgotten them and forgotten who I was.

 

And ever since then I have spent my life repeating over and over again my name when I get transferred to foster homes or get switched to new schools.

 

“I’m Serenity,” I say, embarrassed. I don’t know my last name. I could have known if I wanted to. The schools know my name, you know my name. But it's too painful to know what I could have been.

 

I could have been Serenity Brown and had a younger sister and a pet dog. My dad would be an insurance man, my mom a teacher. I could have been Serenity Smith, Serenity Charles, and the list goes on and on.

 

Right now I'm just Serenity. I don't have a last name. I don't belong to a family. I don't know who I am or where I cam from. I imagine I did at once. I had a mom and a dad. And one day they disappeared, and I was too young ot remember them. At least that's what I say to myself. It's as if I just popped onto earth all formed and molded. No family. No identity.

 

I’m the present day Annie, or what the movie of Annie had been if happy endings didn’t exist. I’m the dreamer that wants her wish to come true but has given up.

 

I’m not a daughter, I’m not a sister, I’m not a friend, I’m not a cousin, I’m not a niece. I’m just Serenity. First name, Serenity. Last Name, NA.

 

Mandatory Evaluation Journal

Counselor: Randy Lockwood
First name: Serenity
Last name: NA

Journal Topic: Why are you switching homes? How does this make you feel? What are you doing right now to prepare?
Please write in as much detail as possible. This will help your counselor take care of your needs. Date all entries. Journal entries will be kept confidential between the writer and counselor. Be truthful in entries. They help you reflect and help your counselor make smooth transitions for you.

Date: When you start over all the time does it really matter?

 

I guess I’ll start with where I am right now. You are winding up her driveway. She lives on the top of some hill. Silently, you hand me a photo. I look at it and then crumple it up. I hate her more than the first time he showed me her photo. She has dried out dirty blonde hair, her face is covered with badly hiddenwrinkles, and she is skinnier than a pin. Her smile is worse, if you can even call it a smile. She looks like she’s hiding something behind her yellow misplaced teeth that require someone to drill braces on them.

 

Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a bit. She’s gorgeous, and I envy how easy her life is. But she’s hiding something and I don’t want her to be my new foster mom. However, it’s coming down to the last inning. My other millions of foster homes have not worked for me. I was too young, too old, too boyish, not tough enough, too quiet, and the list goes on and on. Every home always seemed to only take me in our of pity, would realize they couldn't care for me along with all their other dozens of foster kids, and you would move me somewhere new.

 

Another reason for my move, you ask? My parents had left me behind when I was five. I don't really remember that year at all. There were always a lot of people I didn't know crowding around me, asking me how I felt. I remember being scared and wanting my mom. No one ever could tell me where she was. I later learned my parents disappeared, and to this day they were never found.I like to think they are dead, because it's better than the alternative of them running off on me.

 

Who am I moving in with? Well, Social Services decided that Nina Starr would be best for me. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.You say she is a strong woman, had a shaky past, and best of all is an actress, as if that will make me less intimidated. When you say actress, you get all excited, like it’s supposed to make me want to live with her. I have seen her in a couple movies and her showEzmerelda, but besides that she is a total stranger. To me, all it screams is thattaking me in as a foster child will give her loads of publicity and a photo shoot for People magazine.

 

I don’t want to live with someone I don’t know. I thought my life couldn‘t get any worse. Everybody says, “O Serenity, you are so lucky to be living here today.” I don’t think so. My parents have disappeared, I never had a normal child hood like what they show in the movies, I am always getting moved to another “home” and I am going to be fostered by a lady who plays a witch on the sitcom Ezmerelda. Plus, I have to move back into the sunken pit of Wisconsin. Can you say, “cheese?”

 

From the moment your car has passed the Illinois border into Wisconsin I have known I will be living in an empty place. There are a lot of fields, a lot of farms, and not a lot of people. However I am told that Milwaukee is one of the biggest towns and there is no farm land down town.

 

So once again you ask how I am feeling. Well it’s the same as the other billions of times. I feel an empty beating in my stomach and start to get anxious. Don't be alarmed though. This si what normal is to me. I get like this a lot while waiting to meet my new home.

 

Author's Note

With the Flash of Lightning can be purchased at Amazon.com or Bookstore.kidpub.com. Now through the end of July 100% of the profits will be donated to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

Reviews

[pia Z]

I hope you continue this because it's a promising start. I like the irony of Serenity's statement about showing normalcy on television and in movies; if we were subjected to all things "normal" on television and movies we'd have quite the boring catalogue, eh? It's such a perfect thing for a teenager to say, I really liked that part a lot.

As someone who has worked in child and youth services, I can point out a few flaws in the verisimilitude of the piece but I don't think the purpose of the story is to fact check the foster care system (and perhaps it's different in your neck of the woods anyway). I like the fact that the main character is questioning herself and her circumstance. I think you can cut out a few of the lines that talk about the parents being out of the picture, because it's a little bit repetitive. For example, you spend a little time talking about how the parents have disappeared, etc. and then the character re-states that fact in the third to last paragraph. I'd tighten that up a bit.

I'm so in love with stories that have narrators with a hint of mystery to them. Who is Serenity? Where did she come from? And what did her parents do to warrant their disappearance? It's a great start - do continue! And thank you for sharing it!

[M.A. Van Dyke]

I got about halfway through this and I want to keep reading it, but it's time to make dinner! I added it to my library reading list, so hopefully I will get back to it. This is well written and intriguing, I want to find out what happens to her!
Since this is already up for sale, I'm not sure how much feedback you want on it...
In the paragraph that starts with, "Right now I'm just Serenity." there is a came that lost it's "e"! Other than that, this is great!
I hope you enjoy writerscafe! Have a good one!