I assume I have to submit to vote so in an effort to provide the person who wins the contest with a bigger landslide and therefore more encouragement:
The Groups Where you Aren't Looking
Word Count: Three Fifty something. All I've got.
A bookstore. A Nikki(as she introduces herself) of twelve has wandered into where I sit cross-legged at the single shelf of McCarthy's work, carefully pulling the "Oprah's Book Club" stickers from the front while taking care to leave no marks on these pieces of immortal literature. The girl has dragged her parents along. She points to a seven dollar mass market paperback sitting next to a fourteen dollar trade paperback with a finer cover of a respected author's series for children. The useless store aide informs the family that she has chosen the sixth book, and that the seventh has just been released in hardcover. The father silently yearns with the tone any once poor man would know as longing for the ease of purchasing such things as could make his daughter happy with no regard to his mortgage. She cannot have the seventh yet. I buy the seventh now for the girl in case she stays up late and runs out of sixth. She beams. She is ecstatic. She is wonderfilled. She is twelve and will grow to be beautiful one day if she keeps that happy smile.
The same bookstore, in fact. Another group of (eight now, their mass has osmosed another poor thing) girls indistinguishable from a group I saw before. They invade the manga section to the opposite side of the now cleaned McCarthy novels across from where I clean Marquez. Ringing cellphones and lip gloss. They're twelve, too. They talk about how pretty the pictures are and try to flip through to see which books have the least words to burden their minds, and make them laugh as they assert all books should. The only funny book I've ever read is about burdens. They're unburdened. Or so they're told. They are two to the unburdened eighth power for none is alone in her thoughts. One finds a book made entirely of pictures - it is for toddlers. They each buy a copy, for next to the lip gloss in their purses are wads and wads of their parents love. The zookeepers with fake lips and fake smiles and fake tits pick up their animals.
The Groups Where you Aren't Looking
Word Count: Three Fifty something. All I've got.
A bookstore. A Nikki(as she introduces herself) of twelve has wandered into where I sit cross-legged at the single shelf of McCarthy's work, carefully pulling the "Oprah's Book Club" stickers from the front while taking care to leave no marks on these pieces of immortal literature. The girl has dragged her parents along. She points to a seven dollar mass market paperback sitting next to a fourteen dollar trade paperback with a finer cover of a respected author's series for children. The useless store aide informs the family that she has chosen the sixth book, and that the seventh has just been released in hardcover. The father silently yearns with the tone any once poor man would know as longing for the ease of purchasing such things as could make his daughter happy with no regard to his mortgage. She cannot have the seventh yet. I buy the seventh now for the girl in case she stays up late and runs out of sixth. She beams. She is ecstatic. She is wonderfilled. She is twelve and will grow to be beautiful one day if she keeps that happy smile.
The same bookstore, in fact. Another group of (eight now, their mass has osmosed another poor thing) girls indistinguishable from a group I saw before. They invade the manga section to the opposite side of the now cleaned McCarthy novels across from where I clean Marquez. Ringing cellphones and lip gloss. They're twelve, too. They talk about how pretty the pictures are and try to flip through to see which books have the least words to burden their minds, and make them laugh as they assert all books should. The only funny book I've ever read is about burdens. They're unburdened. Or so they're told. They are two to the unburdened eighth power for none is alone in her thoughts. One finds a book made entirely of pictures - it is for toddlers. They each buy a copy, for next to the lip gloss in their purses are wads and wads of their parents love. The zookeepers with fake lips and fake smiles and fake tits pick up their animals.
