Glowsticks Unite Update (I'm not going to call it that btw).

Well, Holly Golightly was a roaring success. I won a prize for being the 'most true to the theme' female. The prize was a couple of books penned by university staff :P But I was happy just to get recognized. I was also the only girl dressed as something other than a fairy or a... girl... so I'm pretty proud of myself for that.

Here's a photo.

Also, here's an update on the story from last week. I'm not totally sure where it's going, but I'm really happy with the prose and the beginnings of characterization.

I met Chelsea in a café outside a train station in downtown Manhattan. It was still early in the day and we were the only two customers in there. She’d ordered black coffee and she was stirring it slowly, looking up to the door every so often like she was waiting for someone to arrive. She had long hair pulled back in a ponytail and wide impatient eyes, the kind of eyes that made every man pretend it was his face they were looking for and that when they finally settled on him she would blink a couple of times and say ‘there you are’, with a sardonic smile and maybe a wink.

            I asked the waitress for my flat white and took a seat a couple of tables away from her. I spread my papers around me like I always did, but it was purely customary. I couldn’t have concentrated that morning. For some two weeks by then my mother had been coaxing me back home in calculating hints about her health, and it seemed the more I determined to stay in the sin and squalor of my current milieu, the more arguments she had to draw me out of it. That morning it was cataracts. The world was going fuzzy at the edges, she told me. She was worried she’d fall down the stairs.

            The waitress brought me my coffee and I sipped it immediately without waiting for it to cool, burning my tongue and causing me to cry out. I saw Chelsea staring at me across the room with a curious expression that she turned to a self-conscious smile when she briefly met my eyes. She looked down again, as did I. But I could still sense her eyes on me after I’d looked away. I could see the slight movements of her head in the corners of my vision.

            When I sipped at the coffee a second time and found it still too hot, inhaling sharply, I heard her chuckle, a soft noise like a confirmation of a suspicion to herself, not genuine amusement at all. I looked up at her sternly but she raised her eyebrows and smiled.

            ‘You know what they say about flat white drinkers, don’t you?’ she asked. The event of her voice startled me and I stuttered something meaningless in lieu of replying. She waited a moment for me to offer something more profound, and when I didn’t she smiled again and said ‘flat, white people.’

            I must have looked affronted because she laughed then and picked up her cup and came and sat across from me.

            ‘I’m just kidding, sweetheart,’ she said, crossing her legs and leaning back in the chair. ‘Don’t look so serious.’

            I watched her for a minute, expecting her to ask something about my papers, or at least acknowledge them with her eyes, but they never left my face, even to look down at her own coffee, which she still stirred.

            ‘What do they say about people like you?’ I asked. I was quite proud of myself for a moment, until I saw a flicker of something like indignation cross her face and I realized what she thought I’d said.

            ‘I meant your coffee,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Black, is it?’

            ‘That’s right,’ she said, regaining her cool demeanor so quickly that I doubted I’d seen it crack at all.

Yez. More to come shortly.