Sneak Peek: Not in the Whirlwind

Sneak Peek Part II: Not in the Whirlwind. I wrote this for Creative Writing class, taking a bit of inspiration from my alma mater (the college setting is identical, I've excerpted one of the lectures I've heard, and his professor is a modification of one of my professor's names). I hope you enjoy it.

NOT IN THE WHIRLWIND

If a tree falls down on your room and you’re not there to hear it, does it still affect your life?

The trees were engaging in a bare knuckle brawl as the autumn wind decried their violence. Leaves fell and played Frogger across the highway, and were bashed into dervishes by passing semis. His head bent on cold pavement, Nigel Armstrong trudged up College Hill, feeling the university grow further and further distant even as he walked toward it, and wishing it actually would. He turned the corner, punched the pedestrian button three times and stepped toward the curb. The thoughts weighing in his head and pulling his features into a frown lent him momentum and carried him absently into the street.

“Dude!” someone shouted, yanking him back to the yellow curb as a car horn whined past.

The light turned red, and the white LED man across the way on a pole took a step, and the crosswalk flooded with morning students. Nigel squeezed through the narrow gate with students all around him, carrying him down the hill and up the other side toward Campus Main. With barely a pause to gaze to the sky along with the bell tower, long bereft of its bell, Nigel was swept inside and up the circling stairs. Laughter and conversations of last weekend battered against his thoughts; his hand stretched forth his ID card to be anonymously swiped by the attending student, then handed back.

Inside, the flow of students washed up against the stage, a whitecap of mid-term papers curling from their wave as they placed them in waiting cardboard bins. Nigel dug through his backpack as he walked up and scanned the boxes for his class section. He paused, hand buried amidst books and folders, as the covers gazing at him from the stage caught his eye. He pulled his own paper out and glanced at it, knowing the glaring blank space where a title should be would be staring back at him. Muttering, he pushed his way backward, pulled out a pen, and quickly scrawled something appropriate on the title page. He clicked the pen closed, tossed his paper into the box, and then found a seat near the middle of a row near the back so late-comers wouldn’t crawl over him with briefly-muttered apologies as they grinned at friends sitting far away.

The college was founded in 1837, when the average weight of students was somewhere near one-fifty. Now Nigel was compressed by students whose combined weight might have been near 500; elbows tucked, hands outward to write on blue-lined paper might have looked like a “why me?” gesture to the professor at the front; and if it would have helped, Nigel may have offered it.

In his third semester, Nigel was staring a third major-change down the throat. He had established so far in his college career that he was not supposed to be a biologist, a writer, or a Public Relations guy. Psychology was supposedly the most useless degree in America today, which might suit him just fine except he hated listening to people. That more than likely led to his lack of girlfriend; a year and a half, and not even a glimmer of interest. His Gingerness didn’t help, he was sure; it was, in all likelihood, the only thing he was sure of. That, and if the professor didn’t finish soon, he might suffocate – he was quite sure of that, too.

“Your phone vibed,” the student to his left joked.

Nigel didn’t joke back that it was no small wonder, with half a thigh in Nigel’s lap, the student could feel it. “I’ll get it after class,” he whispered, turning his attention back to the front.

“An adventure,” the professor was saying, “is made of five parts. Five things must be present in a real adventure: there must be real peril, to the body or the soul of the adventurer. There must also be real prohibition – real boundaries which the adventurer cannot cross under any circumstances. If Gandalf can use magic anytime he wants for any reason he wants, why, he can simply whisk Frodo straight to the cracks of Mount Doom and get rid of the ring. That wouldn’t give us much of a story, however. Third, there must be real obligations: the ring must be destroyed, or Middle Earth will be destroyed – there is no hiding the ring, no ignoring it. Fourth, the hero must make decisions: the story cannot simply happen to him. Frodo must choose to leave Bag End, and he must choose to leave Rivendell, and he must choose to leave the Fellowship and continue alone with Sam. Finally, the hero must bear the consequences of his decisions. Frodo cannot go back to Bag End when the going gets rough, he must press on, even if the ring ends up consuming him.”

Why, oh why do I need this? Nigel sat wondering. As if I will ever have anything of an adventure.

The professor did finish before he suffocated, and he stood and waited for the mob to exemplify the worst reaction to a fire drill ever as they clogged the doors and narrow stairway to freedom. It was not Nigel’s stairway to freedom, however, as he had American Government class next door.

“Don’t forget your phone,” the student who had been on his left said as they finally exited the lecture hall.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Nigel said, pulling his phone from his pocket. He pressed the “end” button, but nothing happened. He pressed and held it, and it vibrated violently as it turned on. Still holding the phone, Nigel scratched his lip with a tenuously-extended index finger as the Verizon fire arced across the face of the display. A picture of some random scrawling on his Notes app displayed first, then switched to a picture of his mountain bike that he had put on his primary wall-paper.

“I could use a ride, too,” he mumbled, waiting as the phone continued to load all its start-up programs. Best decision ever, this super-smart phone. The phone vibrated three times as an orange envelope popped up on the taskbar. Yes, I know I have a text, he thought. Why do you think I turned you on?

From his Mom: “Bad storm…tree fell took out the house call home.”

Part III tomorrow: "No One Heard Her", the story of a girl who may have committed suicide because she found no love in the church. If you like it so far, check out the whole thing here -- and remember, it's only $0.99! Or stop back by for the next preview.