The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
In the summer of 2017, Katie Sims and her daughter Cullie, moved from New York City to Katie’s hometown of Boaz, Alabama for her to teach English and for Cullie to attend Boaz High School . Fifteen years earlier, during the Christmas holidays, five men from prominent local families sexually assaulted Katie. Nine months later, Katie’s only daughter was born.
Almost from the beginning of the new school year, as Katie and fellow-teacher Cindy Barker shared English, Literature, and Creative Writing duties for more than 300 students, they became lifelong friends.
For weeks, Katie and Cindy endured the almost constant sexual harassment at the hands of the assistant principal. In mid-October, after Cindy suffered an attack similar to Katie’s from fifteen years earlier, the two teachers designed a unique method to teach the six predators a lesson they would never forget. Katie and Cindy dubbed their plan, Six Red Apples.
Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice. And, eternal friendship.
Chapter 47
I hadn’t slept all night. After returning from Cindy’s, Cullie had gone to her room. I sat in the den and cried for over an hour. I knew the only way to stop was to change my mind. My iPad was laying on the coffee table, so I picked it up and opened Netflix. I was glad I had started last Tuesday night watching a series recommended by Cindy.
She had first mentioned it at the beginning of the school year. We were sitting in the auditorium for the start of a faculty meeting. Cindy had said, out of the blue, “my greatest fear is that someday Steve will come home from work and tell me he wants a divorce, that he is marrying his best friend, Adam. You know, God made Adam and Eve, and not Adam and Steve. The good thing is, as far as I know, Steve doesn’t have a friend named Adam.” I had thought it was strange, especially coming from someone I barely knew. She then had said, “Have you never watched Grace and Frankie?” The meeting started right as she finished her question. Since then, she has referred to the series on several other occasions.
For some strange reason, last Tuesday night, after my day finally was over, probably after 11:00 p.m., I had lain on my bed and started watching Grace and Frankie. The Netflix original first aired in 2015. It starred Jane Fonda and Martin Sheen as one married couple, and Lily Tomlin and Sam Waterston, as another. First episode, Martin and Sam, rather, Sol and Robert, announce to their wives, over what should have been a lovely dinner at a nice restaurant, they wanted a divorce and were getting married. The two long-time law partners had been having a love-affair for twenty years. No doubt, their news had come as a shock to their wives, Grace and Frankie.
Tonight, to dampen my wave of tears, I had watched the fourth episode, The Funeral. In it, Robert and Sol had their first spat after starting to live together. It occurred at a colleague’s wake. During a scene where the two lovers were attempting to make up, Robert said, “we will always have meshuga.” I was unfamiliar with the word but let it slide. It was after two hours of tossing and turning after I had finally laid across my bed that the word rolled back across my mind. I knew I would never go to sleep without researching meshuga. It’s basic meaning is “crazy or foolish.” Webster’s example sentence was, “When your mother is meshuga like his was, a lifetime of therapy is pretty much a foregone conclusion.” So, Robert thought his and Sol’s crazy foolishness, or their crazy and foolishness was a blessing, a relational characteristic that was as abiding as their sexual desires. I was satisfied, and surprisingly fell asleep even though my mind was replaying that auditorium scene with Cindy and my heart was wishing it could go back and start over framing and developing the greatest friendship of my life.
My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. as usual. The Thread was clearly calling especially since I hadn’t had a writing session since last Wednesday morning. Five days ago. As I grabbed my coffee and walked down the long hall to The Thread, my mind was the furthest it had ever been from writing a scene in a current project. I sat down and pulled out a new journal I had recently purchased online, one just like Darla had used. I’m not sure why I had bought it because I wasn’t one to keep a journal. I used to, but that was during my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college. Once I began writing stories, what I called my public writing (because I hoped many others would someday read the little tales my imagination had spun), I had stopped my private writing. The bottom line is I found it to be a waste of time, simply writing down an account of your day’s activities, including what time you had brushed your teeth and how you felt when the cute barrister asked for your phone number. This was insane, why was I using my brain cells to think of this? I was wrong about journaling. Done correctly, it can be a life-changing activity. However, it, not keeping a journal, was simply a choice, like so many other things in life.
With that, it seemed a good day to create my first journal entry in over twenty-five years. Before I could write today’s date at the top of the first sheet, Robert’s meshuga whisked across my mind. Crazy, foolishness? How about insane? It then dawned on me why this word had been able to wiggle its way into my subconscious and now front and center in my consciousness. I had lost my meshuga, my Cindy. I hated to admit it, but this was both good and bad. Mostly bad. But, the good part was, without her, I would be only a thought-crime criminal, never actually doing the deed. I would keep my criminal intentions locked safe away in the back hell of my mind. The bad part was, I didn’t believe I could live without my Cindy. Her gorgeous red hair, I fully believed, somehow gave me life, almost like it flowed new blood into my body, not exactly like my own heart did. Her blood was so unique and exciting. It made me dance, it made me laugh, and cry. With her, I could love. I’m confident my feelings and desires for Wayne Waldrup would never have occurred without Cindy. I’m sure I would have never sought real justice if it hadn’t been for Cindy. This was bad, but it was also good. Wilkins got what he deserved. I doubt the law would have ever punished him.
I journaled about mine and Cindy’s meshuga for over an hour. I was dead without my Cindy. How on earth could I live without spending time with her, touching her hair as we sat on the pier, or talking endlessly about everything from Hell to Heaven and everything in between? She got me, and she got to me. The final sentence I wrote was, “even though both Cindy and I are both fully heterosexual, I could see and understand what Robert was talking about when he told Sol, ‘we’ll always have our meshuga.’ But, for me and my best friend, ours was gone forever. I destroyed it when I forsook crazy, foolishness, and insanity, and broke the only promise she had ever asked me to keep.”
Richard L. Fricks 