Glitter Girl - Chapter One

As she read the stupid contest rules, she cursed and entered it anyway. It wasn’t as if she’d win. It wasn’t like it mattered if she bent one silly little rule just a little bit...did it? OK, Charlie conceded, it was more like she was whacking it with a bloody great sledgehammer. But ‘YOUR NOVEL MUST BE BASED ON A TRUE STORY’ was such a stupid rule. It deserved a sledgehammer! It stared up at her from the entry form. Taunting her. Taunting any writer with a bit of imagination. And that was the point of being a writer…wasn’t it? To sit in a dark room, at a cluttered desk, letting the film-reels of original thought play out behind your eyes, projecting their form onto paper, then quickly tracing it in ink before the next idea pushed into view. It wasn’t about running off on a bunch of half-baked escapades and keeping a glorified diary about them.1

Feet on the scrubbed, bare bench in the middle of the sunny kitchen, Charlie conveniently forgot that she’d never even had a quarter-baked escapade. She was good at forgetting. Particularly when it came to forgetting what hadn’t happened. As the graphite ribbon curled from her pencil, she remembered all the things she’d never done, all the chances she’d never taken or had never been on offer to begin with. The drab young woman in T-Shirt and shorts gradually filled her notepad with reversals of every decision that had been made in her drab young life. There was a lead character who had the nerve to follow dreams, confront fears and seek true love. Who wasn’t shy of being drawn to the glitter of darkness and desire. And, most of all, who was what she couldn’t be…2

‘You can’t do that!’ A slender brown arm stretched in front of Charlie, snatching the entry form. ‘It’s not allowed!’3

‘It doesn’t count if they don’t find out. And who’s going to tell’em, eh Steve? You?’ Charlie retorted, snatching the page back from her over-opinionated flat-mate. ‘And I thought we’d established it’s wrong to read over someone’s shoulder?’4

‘Not as wrong as breaking the law,’ Steven shot back. ‘They will find out ’cause you’re going to have to go meet the judges at some point. And you’re not just going to get kicked out of some stupid writing contest for bending the rules. You’re committing a fraud. You’re going to end up in gaol!’5

‘Note to self,’ Charlie flipped to a new page and scribbled, ‘Don’t have a lawyer as a best friend. They are spoil sports and worry warts.’6

‘Note of reality!’ the lawyer jeered, ‘Don’t be rude to best friends who can help you out of prison! If that wouldn’t be spoiling your fun, that is?’7

‘That’s assuming this piece of complete fiction,’ the notepad flourished over her head, like a struggling white dove, ‘can win a Non-Fiction contest. Which says a lot for the judges’ ability to judge, if they can’t tell truth from lies.’ Her grey eyes tracked his progress from her shoulder to the opposite side of the bench. ‘Doesn’t bode well for truth, either, if lies are more convincing.’8

‘Why don’t you write the truth?’ inquired Steve in his best cross-examination voice. ‘You’ve written it before in all those poems, each of which, I might add, violates the ‘YOU MUST BE AN UNPUBLISHED AUTHOR’ rule.’9

‘Being a published poet doesn’t count. Besides, poems are short lists of non-specific truths. Novels are long lists of specific lies,’ stated Charlie, glaring defiantly from her witness-box high-ground. ‘If you were a writer, you’d know this. However, as you’re just a know-it-all lawyer wearing nothing but a pink fluffy bath towel, your opinion doesn’t count. So stop wasting your breath and go get ready for your date.’10

He casually crossed his arms over a muscled, bare chest, still gleaming with bubble-bath suds. ‘Never said I had a date tonight,’ replied the picture of innocence.11

‘You’ve always got a date,’ Charlie said, managing to make ‘date’ sound like ‘S.T.D.’. ‘And if you don’t stop bugging me and shift your arse into gear, you’re going to be late meeting him, her or it.’12

‘You’re avoiding the point – ’13

‘Rather well, I thought – ’14

‘Charlotte Grace Sebastian, YOU ARE NOT A MAN!’15

She hated it when Steve yelled. It felt like being buried alive under a rock fall. Instinctively ducking for cover, Charlie saw her notepad lying randomly open. But where most people would have seen her illegible scrawl, she saw him. Dimly aware of Steven’s continuing rant, Charlie stared into the pencil-lined eyes of the young man she’d always known, in all his danger, daring and excitement. In his stilettos, sequins and glitter. She knew how long she’d been waiting for him, but not ’til now had she known how long he’d waited for her. For her to give him form. Voice. Life.16

‘No.’ Her voice sounded like a pencil snapping. It snapped Steven’s mouth shut. ‘No, Steven Earnest Rawlins, I am not a man. But Sebastian Grace is.’17

‘Sebastian Grace? Good God, Charlie! Couldn’t you have been even a tiny bit original with the name? Or do you actually WANT the judges to think you’re writing about yourself?’18

‘Who says I’m not?’ she asked in a voice so soft she was surprised Steven heard it over his tantrum. He must have, because the foot-stamping ceased, replaced by enraged spluttering.19

‘WHAT! What the hell’s wrong you? Why do you continue with this crap, Charlie? Why can’t you just write the truth about your life?’20

She knew the answer. She’d denied it in her own head enough times to know the painful truth of it. Intimately. If she was going to share the pain, she wanted him to feel it. Once sure his huffing and puffing had finished and he’d caught his breath, Charlie leaned over the bench, knuckles whitening against laminate. Locking his brown eyes with her grey, in clear, exact tones she explained, ‘Writing is all I’m good at. But being good means nothing. If I want to write, I’ve got to be successful. And when it comes to success, the truth doesn’t count. My life doesn’t count. What I am does not count!’21

Steve took a step backwards, whether from the forcefulness of her argument or because he thought insanity was contagious wasn’t clear. ‘Why do you always say that, Charlie? How can your say it about yourself? Hey? That you don’t count?’22

‘Because you can’t count Nothing. And that’s what I am.’23

Expression softening, he leaned over the off-white laminate, dark arm encircling pale neck like a bizarre accessory. Foreheads pressed together, several eyelashes meshed which hurt slightly, Steven’s warm breath whispered in her ear, ‘You’re not Nothing, Charlie. Don’t ever use that word about yourself.’ He smiled at the hopeful question in her shoulder shift, seeking comfort. ‘No,’ his voice curled with the smile. ‘Grammatically, the correct term would be No-one.’24

‘GET OUT!’ Her head snapped up to give him the full impact of scream and death-stare, both glass-shattering, but he was already half-way to the kitchen door. The notepad took-off from her hand on creased white paper wings. Its maiden flight ended crashing head first into the chipped plywood door, freshly shut on where his head had just been. Charlie’s story slid, crumpled, to the floor in a pile of cracked spine and crushed wings.