Just a Phase

I am very good at not finishing stories. Exceptionally good, in fact. Sometimes my lack of follow-through bothers me, but most of the time I see it as a natural part of writing; you lose interest in the things that aren't special, and you move on to other things that have the potential to mean a lot to you. I go through writing phases the same way I go through music phases and movie phases and "I'm going to match my toenail polish to my fingernail polish" phases.

So when (after a week or so) I stopped being excited about my Target story, I wasn't too upset. Don't get me wrong-I think parts of it are really good, and there's always a chance that I'll go back and finish it someday, but for now I have all my creative juices funneling towards another project.

The project? Write a love story. A happy, sappy love story that is original and fulfilling at the same time.
Why this particular mission? Well, the story I wrote for the firstlinefiction contest is quite sad. One of my friends read it over for me, and he said that to balance the gloom, I should try for a romance.
Okay. Easy. No problem.
Not so much.
I'm beginning to think that writing a love story is harder than writing any other type of story, because you have to dodge the cliches that have been thrown at you practically since birth, while at the same time maintaining enough cliche to make the story believeable. Tough stuff.
I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now, and I still haven't come up with a really good idea. Hopefully one hits before I go back to school, because at that point all short story writing (and most pleasure reading) will cease unavoidably. Depressing, isn't it?

Anyway, I thought that I'd give you a bit more of that Target story. Totally, it's about 3 pages long, and is written in the form of a bunch of different scenes that I was hoping to tie together somehow sometime.

I walkied as I left the break room: “This is Holly. I’m back from my fifteen and swinging through electronics.” Electronics was an important guest service area for Target. Whenever a team member began work for the day or returned from a break, they were supposed to walk through the department and ask any guest they saw if they needed help finding something. It kept our guest service ratings in the green, our GPS’s and TV’s selling, and our bodies circulating. Our red shirts radiated availability like monkeys in estrous.
As I hoofed it around the accessories displays towards the wall of flashing flat screens at the back of the store, I spotted Sarah Berg down a shoe aisle, madly grabbing at the piles of sandals strewn across the floor, and tossing them into their respective boxes.
The phone rang from the operator’s desk. Sarah jumped up and sprinted towards it, muttering as she flew past me, “I’m really fucking things up, Holly.” I clucked my tongue in pity, deciding not to lie and say that she was doing fine.
I had heard the conversation earlier over the walkie. Sarah, who was fitting room operator for the day, was going too slowly on her zone. She had been taking her time with the shoes, arranging them meticulously and forgetting that she still had yet to go through baby and men’s. Kristin had chewed her out as politely as one could be chewed out, but the fact that all team members could hear it over their walkies made Sarah’s face burn red as she ran.
Sarah and I had gone to high school together. We had spent an entire year sitting next to each other in two different English classes. Whenever a paper was handed back to us, Sarah would first check her own, and then not-so-subtly bob her head over to check my paper. If my grade was lower than hers, she would cluck her tongue softly, grin a self-satisfied smile, and promptly talk about something else as if she were Wilbur and ‘humble’ was strung into the web above her sty. If my grade was higher, however, her mouth would gape and her desk would be empty in a flash as she danced up to complain to Mr. Manske or Mrs. Nelson about her unfairly low grade. Hiding my graded paper didn’t help, either. Sarah would simply ask me straight out, her ostentatiously blue eyes innocently daring me not to share.
It had been a large shock, then, to walk into my first day of work to find Sarah waiting by the food court wearing red and khaki.
I continued on towards electronics, spotting out of the corner of my eye a pair of stray white flats peeking out from under an endcap. That’s a B+, Sarah.

Kyle was manning the boat, surrounded by cameras and guests looking at cameras and trying to get his attention as they clutched cameras. He didn’t look up as I passed. I had hoped that he would be one of the team members to train me in when I first started work, but no such luck. He had trained Sarah in hardlines; his lean form easily striding ahead of her petite blondeness as they toured the store.
He was quiet, I surmised. Once I had entered the break room to find him staring at the TV, which had frozen into multicolored squares. “This is some riveting television,” I had joked. Silence. Then I thought I heard him say, very softly and very sarcastically, “I can’t tear my eyes away.” Later I decided I had imagined it.
A guest flagged me down by the ipods. “Ma’am!” I always hated being called ma’am. A nineteen-year-old was nowhere near being a ma’am. Ma’ams were middle aged and wore ankle-length capris and short hair with highlights. I got a glimpse of myself in the reflective ipod case while the woman debated over which color nano she should get. My face was as childishly round as ever. My hair had frizzled into annoying ringlets on my forehead, which I tried to smooth down and tuck behind my ears, to no avail.
“The green is rather pretty.”
Kyle was reflected over my shoulder. He was talking to an older gentleman by the phones.
“But black won’t get dirty so easily.”
Kyle’s face didn’t hold the earnest look I caught so often on my own visage; he looked nonchalant as he listened to the man’s wheezy questions, although his eyes were bright.
“What do you think, ma’am?”
I started and looked back at the woman, aware that Kyle was watching us from the suddenly empty boat. “Red. Definitely red,” I flashed a toothy smile, “But I might be a bit biased.”
The woman laughed and decided on the green ipod. Kyle came over to unlock the case without speaking.