The One That Got Away [#1]

By I Feel Pretty

What can you expect from those of us who feel a little pretty? A little bit of everything. In the first collection, we have fiction that runs the gambit from funny to hard hitting. Non-fiction tackles families, abortion funds, and working. We have a poem, and an excerpt from a novel, both sure to blow you away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: I Feel Pretty
• Release date: Jan 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466001114

I Feel Pretty

I Feel Pretty is a writers collective based in Chicago. The stories are totally free on our website, but you can download them onto your various e-reader and tablet type things here.

Book preview

The One That Got Away [#1]

I Feel Pretty Writers Collective

Published by Gibson Culbreth and Wyl Villacres at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 I Feel Pretty Writers Collective

(Individual authors retain ownership. All rights reserved.)

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FICTION

1. The Truck, The Wagon - Sayla Blackwood

2. Craig Huttenberg - Ben Kramer

3. The Life-Span of a 21st Century Crush (a Cautionary Tale) - Lisa Mrock

4. College Love Story: 101 - Alex Williams

NON-FICTION

5. Drag Queen - Shelbie Janocha

6. Stan Tinlee - Amber Ponomar

7. How to Survive as a Server at Buddy Guy's Legends - Jazy Jes

8. Memories of My Sister - Brittany Selters

9. If You Get a Girl Pregnant You Better Have an Abortion Fund - Samantha Traina

POETRY

10. 36 Bookmarks - Liz Baudler

NOVEL EXCERPT

11. Leaving - Gibson Culbreth

The Truck, The Wagon

Sayla Blackwood

I was fifteen years old the first time I followed a boy into a basement. Moonlight was shooting through the slits in the drafty cinder block walls, illuminating Dylan’s fish white back and spilling in soft slants across my pasty, sallow skin. We softened our steps against the wooden stairway so we wouldn’t wake his parents, but my limbs were heavy with whiskey and I could hear the heavy thump-thump-thumps of my feet dropping like stones from one step to the next.

Dylan turned back to face me and his lip ring flashed silver beneath his fat, pink lips, Can’t you be any quieter?

Sorry, I mouthed and pressed a hand against the basement wall to steady myself.

I’d been seeing Dylan steadily for two weeks, an attraction that had spawned from the intense feelings of loneliness I already felt at the age of 15. I’d had a few boyfriends before (none of them serious) and Dylan came along just after I’d been dumped in favor of the captain of the volleyball team. It wasn’t love so much as it was a convenience.

We made our way down the rest of the stairs (though I can’t imagine we were any quieter) and Dylan reached back to cradle my fingertips in his open palm. Over here, he whispered and started feeling his way around in the dark, tugging me after him. We crept along the side of the staircase, moving our feet forward slowly so we wouldn’t trip over anything hidden in the dark. We passed a broken dresser, three plastic kitchen chairs, and a bar stool before we moved into the center of the basement where a long hallway stretched into a second room. Here no light reached us and the space around my body was pitch black. I could see dark lumps and shapes looming around us in the darkness, but I didn’t have the good sense to be scared. As we pushed further forward, we could hear only the sounds of our feet clomping against the cement floors for a time before Dylan wrenched me around a corner and I saw the bed.

I didn’t really have any expectations for the night, so I wasn’t surprised when I discovered it was just a small white mattress shoved in a corner, piled high with an assortment of patchwork quilts and badly crocheted blankets. One red, rectangular pillow was tossed in a corner and it hung against the walls of the basement like a soggy crimson dishrag. A small window set high on the wall illuminated the space over the bed and I could see tufts of grass shooting out from the ground on the other side. I wanted to memorize every detail abut the place so I would remember exactly how it happened, exactly how the night had turned out, but the vodka was pushing against the inside of my forehead, pounding it until the mattress and pillow and window and grass were swimming together in a long, wormy mass of blues and greens and reds.

Here? I asked. My voice sounded steady and unsure though I had known the night would turn out like this. I had been wanting to get this over with ever since the girls at school started making fun of me for being a virgin, but I never imagined it would happen at a time when I couldn’t even control the direction my limbs moved in.

Here, Dylan spoke and his booming, bottomless voice made this a command.

He moved forward, curling one finger beneath my belt loop and pulling me onto the mattress with him so that I collapsed onto my back against the inflated cotton. My hair was spread out like a fan around my head and I could imagine what I must have looked like in that moment with my milk white skin and shock of corn silk hair nearly blending in with the mattress itself. I was almost invisible.

Come here, Dylan coaxed and tucked his right hand beneath the ridges of my spine. My lower back arched forward but my head remained cemented to the pillow, hanging heavily backwards.

I caaaaan’t, I moaned. My head was swimming and my vision blurred until Dylan’s face was only a small, ghostly orb floating above me. My limbs fell like weighty sacks of sand and every movement felt strained and sluggish as if I were trudging through thick folds of earth and mud. His breath was moving in hot waves against my cheeks and my neck and he smelled like wet grass and peppermint with a faint hint of vodka. I breathed him in deeply.

Earlier that night, I’d been sitting in the back of the pickup truck with Dylan and the rest of his friends while they passed around a bottle of Jack and another one I’d never heard of before called UV Blue – an alcohol that shone with sapphire light against the cool metal bed of the truck. We were all