Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Novel Excerpt: "Polly and I"


NOVEL EXCERPT:  “POLLY AND I”
by Gail Ansel

The narrator is a 15-year old girl, who’s just hung her new Mick Jagger poster above her bed.  She and her sister are fighting.

Polly rises up from the floor, face red, coming at me.  I reach the bathroom and try to slam the door shut, but her hands wedge it open a sliver.  I grab a can of Lysol from the shelf and spray at the crack in the door.  Polly falls away and the door shuts. I paw at the push button lock.
 “You bitch,” my sister screams.
I jump back away from the door. I’m safe. Polly bangs on the hollow core.  I hear my mother’s voice and the crashing stops; the two of them murmur.  My foot is scraped red, a stinging track of white peeled skin runs along the side like a zipper. I shove open the second floor window, but it’s too far away from the porch roof to jump. 
“While you’re in there, clean the bathroom,” my mother laughs, and clomps down the stairs.  The bile rises in the back of my throat and I want to stab her with a kitchen knife.
I turn to the toilet and throw up, as quiet as I can manage.  The nausea overtakes me, and then is gone.  The flush of the toilet prompts a single bang on the door.
“I can wait here all day.” My sister’s mouth is against the door jamb.  “I’m gonna kill you.” And then she laughs.
I sit on the bathroom floor, leaning against the pink bathtub.  Polly is quiet.  I want to vomit again.  Count on my fingers to 28 again, past 28 to 30, 40, 43.  Stick my finger down past my waistband.  Clean.  
A sound like a mouse.  Torn pieces of paper are sliding over the pink marble threshold, slipping in one after another. Shiny black ones, white ones.  43 days. Finger dip, still clean.
“Poll? I have to tell you something.”
She laughs.
“No, seriously.  Is Mom gone?”
The paper slips, slips, her giggles becoming breathless hysteria. The movement of the paper across the floor makes me nauseous again, and I crawl to the toilet, barely making it.  Wait. I look at the shiny black paper. Those pieces are Mick; they trigger a roar of certainty I’m in the biggest trouble of my life. 
“Jenn?” my sister says. 
My forehead is on the tile, I’m bent over, I can’t stop crying.
“Hey,” she says. This time I don’t make it to the toilet.
“Oh, my god, Jenn.”
“Is Mom gone?” I say, my voice high.
“Yeah, it’s just me.” 
I crawl to the door on my hands and knees and lie on Mick in pieces, my mouth along the threshold.
“It’s bad. It’s really bad. I fucked up.” I whisper to her.

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