We're allowed to have favourite scenes though, so I thought I'd share one from the end of chapter 12, beginning of 13 in my teenage book 'Re: Becca'.
Add caption |
Remember the school Games lessons on those horrible barren wastelands called playing fields? Here Becca has just been (as usual) the last one picked for hockey teams and she's not having much fun. Until...
‘Okay… and… Bully-OFF!’ Miss Jordan shrieks and blows the whistle so shrilly that any dogs within a ten mile radius will be spinning on the spot before heading in our direction.
I sigh despondently, though I take my stance and try to look like I mean it. But before the game has a chance to get underway, I hear a loud CRA-ACK! Pain shoots up from the base of my leg and I am immediately pole-axed and lying in a state of agony on the muddy grass, clutching my ankle for dear life. I don’t even need to turn round to see what the hell has happened to me because it’s taken place so many times before that Miss Jordan probably thinks I’m a secret epileptic or something. This is a foul carried out by one of the minions under Juliette’s control by a strike to the ankle with a hockey stick and if it didn’t hurt so much I’d be rolling my eyes with the whole boring monotony of it all.
‘PPPPEEEEEP!’
the whistle slices sharply through the air again and Miss Jordan springs over
to me, her breath white in the chilled morning air. She bends down and glares at me as if I’ve
just dropped something messy on her nice clean carpet. Deliberately.
She does my mum’s hands on hips stance and I swallow beneath her,
waiting.
‘Becca Banks!’
she scowls accusingly – like I’m doing this to secure a curl-up-and-die part in
this year’s school production. ‘What do
you think you’re doing down there?’
Seriously, so
many words have to be bitten back where teachers are concerned. WTF d’you think I’m doing down here, Miss?
Springs to mind but before I know it, I’m being hauled to my one good foot by
Claire and Miss Jordan and virtually dragged over to the reserves bench. The pain is spiking right up my leg and they
lump me down and leave me.
‘Sit it out,’
Miss Jordan huffs and then runs jauntily off back towards the field peeping her
whistle like she’s peeping for bloody victory.
Stupid ignorant lesb…
‘This the
injuries bench then?’ a voice splits the silence.
I turn around
to see a tall tracksuit looking a whole lot warmer than I feel, hobbling
towards me, the hood pulled down close to its owner’s nose. I can’t quite make out who it is but the
voice sounds familiar.
‘Can I?’
the tracksuit points to the bench and as I nod, it sits down beside
me. ‘You look cold,’ he says, lifting his hooded face to the sky. I wonder why he isn't glued to the female forms as they bounce and bob their way after the
stupid hockey ball on the field in front of us.
I open my mouth to tell him that, yeah, strangely enough, I am actually ber-luddy freezing as it happens but I’m hypnotized into silence as
my eyes see long nimble fingers tear down the zip, pull both arms out of the
sleeves and then the still-warm track-suit top is wrapped around my shivering
torso in one seamless move.
‘Better?’ Judd Crawley smiles chivalrously
into my astonished face.
13.
When our grandchildren ask me to
tell them the exact moment I realised I wanted to be with their grandfather for
a lifetime - if not longer - I shall tell them that we were sitting together on
a very damp, very cold wooden seat at the Hartley Road Upper playing
fields. We’d both been in our respective
sports classes and, as luck would have it, had become contemporaneously injured
and arrived here, on the reserves bench, at almost the same time.
Fate.
I sit and relish
being in the warmth of Judd Crawley’s fleecy lined tracksuit top, my skin
heating up nicely from the mere proximity of his body beside me. On a deeper level, I also feel all the
stuffing which had been so cruelly pulled from my insides not minutes before,
return to my body a gazillionfold. Only
this time my innards are suffused with a radiance of proper happiness. I may actually
be floating at least five centimetres off this bench for all the reality I’m
feeling right now. I’ve already screwed my eyes shut tight twice
and opened them just to be on the safe side; to make sure I’m not concussed or
anything – er - from the ankle? Well,
who knows. But he’s still here. Sitting
beside me. And I have his fleecy top
wrapped around my body. HIS fleecy
top. Around MY body.
3 comments:
I really like the emphasis at the end, and the sound of Becca's voice throughout. You can tell that the character 'lives'. Are all favourite scenes revealing or pivotal, I wonder? Thanks for sharing an evocative piece.
Thanks Derek, for reading and commenting :)I'd have to mull over a favourite scene being revealing/pivotal. What say you?
I think, to some extent, they're pivotal to the author. Maybe it's the moment when you realise that the character comes alive, or you really begin to understand them. Or else it's that moment where the momentum shifts and things start coming together.
My sense is that we have favourite passages not only for those reasons, but also for the quality of the writing and what it says about us as writers.
Post a Comment