Chapter Twenty
Penny
Ever since our trip to Round Rock, Dad had been asking when I was going to let him read my book. Normally I had a strict policy of not letting anyone read my books until they were finished, and sometimes not even then. But Dad insisted on it. “If I wait until you’re done, I may never get a chance to read it.”
“Why wouldn’t you?!”
“Imagine you were directing a Star Wars movie and a ten-year-old girl with cancer came up to you and asked if she could see it as her dying wish. You’d have a hard time saying no.”
“Well, you’re not going to die,” I said in as calm a voice as I could manage. “But because I like you and I need another pair of eyes, I’ll send you the first five chapters. You have to promise me you’ll be honest about it. I don’t want you lying and telling me you love the story if you think it’s awful.”
“Remember, I graded essays for twenty-five years,” Dad replied. “A lack of honesty was never failing.”
“Well, if you hand me the story back with a giant ‘F’ at the top, I’ll probably go to my room and cry, but I think I would prefer that over dishonest encouragement.”
When I left for work on Friday, Dad was sitting in the kitchen window reading the first chapter over a cup of tea. By the time I returned home that night, he had finished it.
“What did you think?” I asked him. In spite of my initial hesitation, I was genuinely curious. “Come and talk to me while I’m putting up my hair.”
Dad came and sat down at the end of the bed while I studied myself in the vanity. After agonizing over it for a couple hours with Nic, I had decided to wear a sleeveless black beaded top and a pair of high-waisted jeans.
“There’s a lot going on in this story,” he said, “a lot. I almost think there’s too much plot.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? I tried to keep the story moving along at a fast pace. I don’t want the reader getting bored, putting the book down to get a cup of coffee and then getting distracted and never coming back to finish it.”
“I sometimes think having too much plot can be as boring as too little. Like, it’s great that your characters are falling in love and flying around Berlin, but you haven’t given as much attention to their internal struggle.”
“Internal struggle?”
“See, the real story inside any story is how the protagonist grows and changes. Like, the thing that makes the original Star Wars so compelling is how Luke is transformed from a scruffy nerf-herder into a brave, confident young man.”
“Interesting…” I loved Dad’s insistence on using Star Wars analogies despite the fact that I had never much cared for Star Wars.
“Michael and Anna Beth need to have a goal that they’re working towards or else the story is just going be a bunch of random events. I want to know what motivates them, and I want to know the inner struggles that are keeping them from attaining happiness. Just as Luke Skywalker struggles with a lack of confidence in his own instincts, they ought to both have character flaws that are keeping them from being together.”
Inner struggles. Character flaws. I tried to think of it in terms of my own life. Was there anything keeping me and Darren from being really happy together? Sometimes I thought what we had was perfect. But then there were those moments, like on the tower on Wednesday, when I could tell I was making him nervous, when he seemed to be wondering what he had gotten himself into and whether there was a way out.
By now I was almost done getting ready, and I paused to examine myself in the mirror. I was wearing a blue beaded bracelet and a pair of long dangling peacock feather earrings. I was just applying an extra dab of body lotion to both wrists when the front doorbell rang.
“You want me to get that?” asked Dad, rising from the bed.
“No, I’ll get it.” I ran ahead of him, heart pounding with fear and excitement. Darren had never met my dad before in the capacity of being my dad, and I hoped their first meeting wasn’t horribly awkward.
He stood at the door wearing a red flannel shirt and a pair of dark jeans. I was so used to seeing him in his grease-stained blue uniform that for a moment I stared in surprise. “Are you going to invite me in?” he asked.
“Sure, come right in,” I said slowly. “I’d like you to meet my dad.”
Dad shambled slowly forward and extended his hand. “Darren Savery,” said Darren. “I’m kind of amazed we haven’t already met; Penny talks so much about you.”
“Only good things, I hope.”
“Yeah, she really loves you.” He had taken three steps into the house; now he stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the late afternoon sunlight and smelling strongly of cologne. Flashing me a warm smile, he added, “I find that Penny is a loyal and kind person in general.”
“Y’all are too nice to me,” I said, blushing. “I’m only loyal because I have people in my life who are worth being loyal to.”
“You’ve never given yourself enough credit,” Dad said with a shake of his head. It felt weird to be standing here talking with both him and Darren, two sides of my life that had never previously mingled. “You turned out so much better than I had any reason to expect.”
I had never much liked being the center of attention, especially when it was flattering. “Well,” I said, turning to Darren, “shall we get going?”
“Yeah, I guess we’d better. Your dad probably has things he wants to do tonight.”
“I think I’m gonna go lay down.” Dad turned and began shambling back in the direction of his room.
“Do you need me to come tuck you in?”
“Don’t worry about it. I just want you to be safe tonight. Darren, you look after her and make sure nobody hurts her.”
“I will protect her with my life,” Darren replied, and I didn’t doubt that he meant it.