Story Starters: Best of June

Hello, and welcome to our Best of June Story Starters post! Each week in July we will be bringing you something to get those creative juices flowing! 

 

Here’s how our STORY STARTER CHALLENGE has worked so far: 

-For the first three weeks of this month, we posted a writing prompt, such as  STARING STATUES, LOST & FOUND, and MAPPED OUT.

-Feel inspired by future STORY STARTERS? All you have to do is post a link to your story in the comments below. There is no word limit, and we look forward to reading your stories! PLEASE NOTE: if the comment section doesn’t work with your browser, you may email your link to k[email protected].

-BUT this is the fourth week, and we are excited to feature this STORY STARTERS PUBLICATION post, which is a collection of the “best of” stories from the previous three weeks. Readers and staffers alike can vote below for their favorites, and the winner will receive a YABC surprise!! 

 

 

Read the June stories below!

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Week One:

 

The Girl in Question 

by Deanna Lynn

Chapter One

Kali Denison studied the giant stone statues the tour guide had droned on about for the past five minutes, trying to decide if they were twins standing on opposite sides of a great war or the same person physically mimicking staring at their own reflection. Something told Kali she wouldn’t figure it out in the half an hour left of their museum tour, but it was an odd and interesting thing to think about.  And it sure beat watching Cassie Jacobs and the rest of the popular girls—a.k.a. the mean girls’ group—giggling at everyone and about everything on the other side of the room.

God.

What was she even doing here? It’s not like she actually cared about any of this crap. Well, the statues and stuff was sort of cool. School sanctioned museum field trips? Not so much.

Kali shook her head and turned, searching for something else to occupy her attention for the next thirty minutes. Something other than the girl group she didn’t even want to think about, let alone have to visually witness. The only other thing present in the room with her though, was the one boy she hoped to avoid on this trip—Ryder Yates, her stepbrother’s best friend and an all around thorn in Kali’s side.

Not that Ryder necessarily knew he was a  thorn in Kali’s side,  but…the point remained. The guy got under her skin big time and she hated for it. Okay, she didn’t hate him. At all. But she wanted to hate him, and that was practically the same thing, right? 

With a frown at Ryder’s uncharacteristic study of an ink blot watercolor painting on the wall to her left, Kali turned back to the statues, deciding to spend more time thinking about them in hopes everyone else in the room would disappear. Or maybe, if luck was on her side,  she would disappear.

But where would she go? London? Paris? Rome?

Somewhere with a white sandy beach and a dozen or so cute, blond, surfer boys?

Did she even like blonds? Kali wanted to say she did, but most of her high school crushes since moving to Oklahoma last year were dark-haired, brown-eyed bad boys. Or as bad as one could be at Layton Falls High, population 439. Guys like Ryder, who sometimes spoke to her but never once expressed interest in getting to know her. The real her.

Did that mean there was something wrong with her?

If she listened to the Cassie’s of the world, girls who hated her on sight and claimed she had no business living in Layton Falls in football captain Tucker Davison’s new six-bedroom house, there had to be. Yet Kali could never actually pinpoint what it was, or why it turned so many people off from her.

It’s not like she was rude to anyone. Or too selfish or flashy. Or even all that talkative, to be honest. Mostly, she kept to herself, reading her books, or thinking about the friends she’d left behind in Kansas. No one had even tried to get to know her since her move, and when she did go out of her way to say hello to someone in the halls at school, all she got were strange looks and furrowed brows. Like saying hello was a crime or something.  

Huh. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was a crime to talk to people who didn’t talk to her first and everyone she knew back in Kansas simply forgot to tell her. Then again, that would be a bit far-fetched and ridiculous, wouldn’t it? How would anyone ever say a thing to someone if they were always waiting for the other person to speak first?

No, it had to be something else. Something she’d done without knowing. But what? And why hadn’t anyone told her she’d committed some massive social faux pas?

Shaking her head again, Kali told herself to focus on the statues and not her social status. Maybe if she stared hard enough, one of them would come to life and slay all the stupid, status-minded people in the world.

Not that she wanted anyone hurt because of her. But frightened out of their minds for a tad little bit? That might be funny.  In a peculiar, did that really just happen kind of way, of course.

“What’s so interesting about these statues? You’ve been staring at them for ages now.”

Kali prided herself on not jumping out of her skin at Ryder’s unexpected voice. But it was a close thing. Too close, in her mind.

“So what? It’s not a crime.

Yeah, so not everyone in school ignored her. Some, like Ryder, lived to give her a hard time, which pushed her to respond in kind more often than not. Maybe that, more than anything else, was why she didn’t have friends here. Or not any real ones, at least.

“You are the weirdest girl. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

He did. All the time. Which was yet another reason Kali didn’t have the warm and fuzzies where Ryder Yates was concerned. The guy was kind of a jerk. Or rather, he was a jerk, no kind of to it.

“Why are you even talking to me right now? Your precious reputation with the female population could be at serious stake here. They won’t like it when they see you with me.”

Ryder pushed himself between her and the statues and frowned. “What is with you? You act like you’re some social pariah, Kali. I can talk to you, or anyone else for that matter, whenever the hell I feel like it.”

Be still her aching heart. “Sure you can. For the entire ten seconds it takes your on-again, off-again girlfriend over there to notice and come over here to cause grief.” Or more grief, since the girl had made no secret of still having the hots for Ryder and wishing a painful and sudden death on anyone who so much as looked at him these days.

“What does that even mean?” Ryder asked, furrowing his brow. “Cassie and I broke up months ago. She knows it. I know it. Hell, the whole damn school knows it. It’s not that hard to figure out, if you’re actually paying attention, and I know you do. I’ve seen you.”

Seen her. Seen her do what? Pay attention? To him? To Cassie? “I could care less who you date, dude. It’s your life. If you want to waste it with mean-girl Numero Uno, you go for it.”

Ryder’s lips ticked up, slow at first, then a little bit faster, until he was full-on grinning at her. “That almost sounds like you’re jealous, Kali. Is that it? Are you jealous of the girls I date? Do you secretly want to be one of them?”

Not even if he paid her. Though why the words felt like a lie right then, Kali refused to think about. Refused.

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Ryder prided himself on being able to read most girls he met pretty quickly. But Kali? She was different from any girl he’d ever known, and more often than not, he had no idea what went on behind those jade-green eyes of hers.

Oh, he could bluff with the best of them, of course. Pretend he knew exactly what she was thinking at all times, but in reality? He had no clue whatsoever. The girl was contradiction central, and her unpredictability intrigued the hell out of him.

“Come on,” he teased, leaning forward until his lips all but hovered over hers. “Admit it, Kali. Admit that you like me.”

“Did you hit your head on the bus on the way over?” she questioned, narrowing her eyes on him. “I am not, in any way whatsoever, interested in you, Ryder Yates. And I’m certainly not jealous of any girl you take out on a date. Get real.”

He was. More real than he’d ever been with anyone else. “I dare you,” he breathed, making sure to keep his voice low enough so no one else could overhear them. “I dare you to let me take you out. One date, Kali. One date to prove I’m not the Romeo you try and make me out to be.”

“No way. Uh huh. Tucker will kill you. And Cassie would kill me.”

And yet…she hadn’t said an outright no. He could work with that. He could totally work with that.

Moving an arm behind her back, he yanked her forward, until she had no choice but to press up against him. “You didn’t say no.”

“I didn’t say yes, either.”

Ryder tilted his head, studying her. “What would it take to get a yes from you?”

“Nothing. Nothing you do will get me to say yes.”

“Then say okay.”

“What?”

“If you can’t say yes,” he whispered, “then say okay instead. Easiest solution ever.”

She wanted to. He could see it in her eyes. For the first time since they’d met, Kali was tempted to give in. He wanted her to give in, too. Badly.

“What on earth is going on here?” Coach Simmons asked, her nasally voice nowhere near the whisper she’d warned them all to use after they got off the bus earlier that afternoon.

“Ryder Yates, you let that girl go right now! This is not the time nor the place for your Lothario shenanigans.”

Lothario? Was she for real?

With a reluctant sigh and a quick glance at Kali’s beet-red face, Ryder removed his arms from her waist and turned to face the school’s volleyball coach and most unpopular history teacher. “Sorry, Ms. Simmons. It wasn’t what it looked like.”

“Lies. It was exactly what it looked like, young man, and I’ll have no more of it on this trip. Not unless you want a write up and a meeting with Principal Smithton when we return to the school.”

A write up and a meeting with the Principal? For a simple hug?

He shook his head. “It won’t happen again.” Not today, at least. He wasn’t making any promises about tomorrow. Or the day after that, either.

***

Kali did her best to ignore the curious looks from the other girls on the bus, but it wasn’t easy. Especially not when Ryder had seated himself next to her for the ride back to school.

“I can’t believe you did that. People are staring at us, Ryder!”

“So what? Let them stare. What do you care anyway? It’s not like you like any of them. You don’t even talk to most of them, and neither do I, in case you wondered about it.”

She hadn’t.

Okay, so maybe that was a tiny bit of a white lie. She had wondered. A little bit. Once or twice. Maybe even three times. But that was it. She hadn’t actually cared about the answer, or even thought to voice a question on it aloud. Not recently, anyway.

“This is the worst day ever.”

“No, it isn’t. Come on, Kali, admit it. You had fun for a minute there. Don’t even try to deny it. I know you did. I saw that you did.”

Kali did think about denying it, on principle if nothing else, but in the end, she couldn’t. Because Ryder was right. She did have fun bantering with him at the museum, and she had been tempted to say yes to his date request, too. Maybe she would have even agreed if he’d been remotely serious about it and they hadn’t been interrupted before she figured out if he actually wanted to date her or simply wanted to trap her into admitting she liked him.

Either way, Ryder Yates was trouble to her peace of mind, and that meant, from here on out, Kali had to do everything she could to avoid him, or, at the very least, ignore him until he gave up and found someone else to focus his attention on. Something told her it wouldn’t take long.

That’s what guys like Ryder did. They got you interested in them and then they left to put the moves on the next girl, and then the one after that and the one after her and her, and yes, her, too. Pretty soon, they forgot all about the first girl who caught their eye, and that, ladies and gentlemen, would always be Kali. The girl on the outside looking in.

Story of her life.

 

 

Week Two:

 

Lost and Found

by: Debbie McQueen

The sound of jack hammers was muffled by the ear protection that covered Will’s ears and helped block the harsh sounds of construction. He was walking through the site, and observing the work being done. His crew of forty men, were working on clearing away the debris and busting through the earth to get to the desired depth for the foundation they would lay. The construction site was in a previously residential neighborhood. A wildfire had scorched the area and had burned through the neighborhood over ten years ago. The neighborhood had sat as a wasteland, a haunting shadow of the life that once thrived there, of the laughter of children, of the love families shared within their homes.  

Will hated seeing the charred remains of broken walls, of the shattered dishes, and of the burned portraits he came across. His heart ached for those that lost so much. After a decade of insurance fights, and politics, and consultations, the land was finally slated to have new life as a shopping center. His company had been given the contract to begin the demolition and foundation work. After approving the work that was being done, he wandered mindlessly through the street, looking sadly upon the corpses of the homes.  

A bright glint caught his eye. Something metallic was reflecting the sun’s light. He was drawn to it, curious to what was hiding among the rubble. He moved a couple bricks, and found a blackened circular locket. Whatever chain there might have been was long gone. He picked up the locket, and thumbed across the front of it. His thumb was covered in soot, and the metal seemed to be in good shape underneath the char coating. Will tried the button which would pop the locket open, but it was lodged with dirt and debris. He pocketed the locket without thought.

In the evening, he tried to scrub the locket with a paste of baking soda and water, he had once heard that helped with burned pots, maybe it would work on the locket. He scrubbed with a sponge and some of the soot started to come off and reveal the gold beneath it. It had very intricate vines and flowers designed on it. On the back he could almost make out some letters. Not wanting to damage it further, he decided it would be better to take to a professional.

That following Saturday, he took the locket into an antique jewelry store. He showed the locket to the old man that worked there. The man turned it around in his hand, admiring the work. He agreed he could repair it, and bring it back to life. Will was so relieved to hear that, for some reason this locket had become important to him. It was something special that belonged to someone, and he hoped he could get it back to the person who probably missed it.

After about an hour, the jewelry restorer handed him a shiny, gold locket on a new gold chain. To show that it was completely restored, the man clicked the button and the locket opened. There were two pictures within. One, black and white, with a woman in her twenties, her hair done up in liberty rolls, and her long straight skirt looked like the picture was taken in the 40’s. In her arms, was a baby, wrapped up in a blanket, and the smile on the woman’s face shone with love. The other picture was a colored picture, but probably taken in the 50’s. It held a girl of about 10, holding hands with a young toddler girl. Both pictures were surprisingly untouched by the fire, the locket’s metal protected them. He turned it around and saw the initials on the back. It was marked with J.A.S.
The desire to find its owner grew even stronger having seen the pictures within. He spent his free time over the next week trying to track down who it might belong to. He found a record of the names and addresses of the houses that were on the street before it had burned. He finally found one house that seemed to be right about where he found the locket. The owners of the house were Frank and Jane Knudson. The initials didn’t match, but perhaps it was Jane’s maiden name.  

In reading the articles about the families who had lost their homes, and had been relocated after the fire, he followed the Knudson’s steps. He found they had moved to the next town over. When he looked up information on Knudsons, he found three listed. One, Elizabeth Knudson lived in an apartment. The address listed for Frank was different than the one listed for Jane Knudson. When he googled the address for Frank, a website for the cemetery popped up. A weight settled on his chest, afraid he wouldn’t be able to return the locket to its owner. He clutched the locket against his chest. He was not normally a sentimental man. He had nothing in his life that held value or beloved memories, but somehow this inanimate object reached inside his heart and held on.

He decided with the other address not that far away, he would just, and see what came of it. He went to the address for Jane Knudson. It was a corner lot, with a small yard in front, there was a porch with rocking chairs out front. A few cars were on the street parked near the house he was looking for. He took a deep breath, resigning to get out of the car and go to the door.  

Will walked up to the door, knocked and stepped back. After a moment, a woman with wispy red hair, and a perfect hour-glass figure opened the door. She was stunning, or would be if it hadn’t appeared that she had been crying. Will, suddenly unsure of what to do, rubbed his hand through his short black hair.

She stood, staring at him with her green eyes, waiting for this stranger to say something.

“Yeah, hi, umm…is this the home of Jane Knudson?” He felt so stupid, how was he going to explain this?

She nodded slowly. “Yes, it is. I’m her daughter, Beth. How do you know my mother?”  

“Well, this may sound crazy. I don’t actually know her, and I am not even sure if I’m in the right place.”  

She looked at him puzzled. “Who are you?”

“I’m sorry, my name is Will Grant. I am working a construction site in Ludlow. Did your mom used to live in the Suncrest neighborhood?”

Again she nodded, her face looking more bewildered. “Yes, my parents had a house there for twenty years, I grew up there.”

Will dug into his pocket and pulled out the locket, before he could even ask about it, Beth sunk to her knees, with her hands clasped over her mouth. “How…where…how do you have my mother’s locket?” Fresh tears seemed to be forming in the corners of her eyes, as she reached for the locket.  
Will felt a huge weight lift off of him, knowing he had come to the right place. He felt awkward standing while Beth was on the ground in front of him, so he kneeled down before her.

Beth looked up to him and launched herself into him, hugging him tightly. He hesitated a moment, before hugging the woman back. As they separated, they both stood. Will didn’t know what to do, so he began sharing how he found it and what lead him to this house.

“You have no idea how much this means to me.” Beth started. She grabbed his hand and pulled him gently into the house. “Aunt Lilly, come see what this man brought.” An older woman came around the corner from the living room, and stopped in awe at the sight of the locket. Her face looked familiar, Will couldn’t place it at first. The woman held out her own matching locket from beneath her shirt. Now, he could see the resemblance to the woman in the photo inside the locket. This must be the little toddler in the picture.  

“Sakes alive, how did you find this? Jane… Anne… Simmons…” She said the name as she read the initials on the back.

Will was elated to have brought the locket back, and have it met with such delight. He knew his heart had lead him here, and looking back to Beth, whose smile hit him square in the chest. There was a reason he found that locket.

“Is Jane here, I would love to see her get the locket back.” Will asked.

A hush fell over the room, and he looked around, observing more. There were dishes of food on a table, and several people gathering in the living room. Each person had a look of sorrow on their faces. A sadness crept into him as well, beginning to understand what was happening.
Beth pulled Will again, they went back to the porch, and sat on the rockers. Beth took a heavy breath, and held Will’s hand. He squeezed her hand back in support.

“My mother loved this locket. It was her most treasured possession.” Beth opened it, and circled the photos with her finger. She showed it to him. “This was her mother, my grandmother. I never knew her, she dies when my mother was eighteen. This other picture shows my mom with her little sister, Lilly, whom you just met. My mom became her guardian, and was like a mother to Lilly. She was heartbroken when it was lost in the fire. That you found it, and brought it here, there aren’t enough words, for me to share how grateful I am to you. She passed yesterday.”  
Will felt for this woman he had just met, he regretted that he didn’t make it in time to give it to her mother though.

“I am so sorry for you loss, and that your mother didn’t get to have her locket before she passed.” 
Beth looked at him, moved by his tenderness and compassion, and by the lengths he took in getting the necklace to her.  

“It being here in my hand, is a miracle in itself.” She put it on over her head, and clutched it by her heart, much the same way he had once. “Now, I will have it to keep with me, and that is a special gift. Come back inside with me, and stay for a while, if you can.”
Will agreed to stay, and felt something special, even though he felt as if he was intruding on a private family moment, he felt welcome, more than that, he felt home.

 

 

We are so in love with these stories! Please vote for your favorite by clicking HERE! Voting is open until midnight EDT on Friday, July 1.

 

 

And return next week for a brand new STORY STARTER!