From the Classroom

As some of you may know, and some may not, I am currently in school for my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. What comes with that is a lot of writing that you guys have never read. I have to write everything from short stories to novellas and even plot out full on novels. I was working on a piece today, only a little bigger than 500 words, and I thought it was not half bad. We will have to see what my Professor thinks about it. I decided to post it here and if you guys seem to like it, I will post more of my classroom writings here. Hope you guys enjoy the short story, Jessica's Bonfire.

 

             The fire had begun to die, the brightest flames started to dwindle to nothing more than embers and ashes. It was time, but Jessica stayed a little while longer.
            She lifted the cigarette to her cheap, Maybelline rep lipstick covered lips for another drag. It was a matte 695 Divine Wine-red lipstick if anyone cared, but no one ever did. 
            No one ever noticed Jessica, but they would after tonight. The flames from the bonfire she had made in her backyard finally extinguished completely. The coldness of the Autumn night air crept in like monsters waiting for the light to go out in your room before sneaking out of your closet and from under your bed.
            Jessica pulled her new American Eagle hoodie, bought just for tonight, a little tighter around her large midsection. The kids at school called her Biscuits, but her mom said she was perfect the way she was. She had tried to tell the kids at school what her mother had said, but they didn’t listen. No one ever heard her. 
            Jessica could feel her adrenalin pulsing through her veins with every heartbeat, and she tried to prolong what was about to happen a little while longer. She knew what she had to do, but she didn’t necessarily want to do it. 
            Why hadn’t they all come to her bonfire like they said they were going to? 
            Why hadn’t they tried to be friends with her?
            Not a single person showed up, and she had gone on to Facebook to see why not. That’s where she found Sara Jinkins’s posts about the Standing Up Jessica Party. She had kept it a hidden group and everyone that Jessica had invited to her bonfire had gone to Sara’s party instead. A party that was nothing more but a giant middle finger to her.
            Jessica felt the tears begin to well up in her eyes, but she knew she couldn’t cry, not yet. It would ruin her new make up she had begged her mom for. She would cry, not until everyone else was crying first. 
            She pulled the cigarette up again, but as she put it to her lips, she watched the glow of the burning tobacco claw its way to the filter and go out, just like the fire. Just like her hopes for a normal life.
            With nothing else to do and nothing else to hold her back, she knew it was time for her to leave and pay a little visit to the Standing Up Jessica Party. She just hoped they wouldn’t mind her plus one.
            “Let's go.” Her voice cracked with fear, pain, humiliation and half a dozen other teenage emotions. She turned on her heels and marched through the dirt, following the path that led back to her parent's house where her 2001 Ford Focus was waiting.
            As she walked, her feet tossed dirt over the pentagram she had drawn in the soil and the smears of blood that had come from her hand. 
            The fire was dead, and almost all light was gone, but there was enough for Jessica to see the shadow begin to follow after her.
            “They will remember me after tonight.” She said to herself. ​