Fiction

This week in my Creative Writing class, the lesson talked about the different types of fiction i.e. genre fiction, (like westerns or mysteries, the stuff people want to read) vs. literary fiction (which aspires to be art or makes a statement about the human situation or something highfaluting like that.) We also learned about some of the differences between a novel and a short story, (like length and scope) and we were taught a bit about character and plot development. My homework was to write the beginning (first 500 words or so) of a fictional short story beginning with the sentence, "Chris began to question the wisdom of this trip." Here is what I came up with:

Chris began to question the wisdom of this trip. A few days before, when her mom had asked who wanted to accompany her and dad when they climbed Mt. Audubon on the last day of their family vacation, she had eagerly joined the group, thinking that hiking a mountain would be an adventure, and give her a chance to spend some time with her older sister Susan. Now, only an hour into the hike, she was wishing she had stayed home with the younger kids. Even helping to babysit would have been better than this.

She took a deep breath of the cold mountain air. It was June, but there were still patches of snow in shady spots under the tall aspens that stood in clumps along the trail. She wished she owned a warmer coat; her jacket didn’t quite keep out the frigid breeze that was blowing. Hopefully it would warm up more after the sun rose over the crest of the mountain above her. Of course by then they would be at a higher elevation. She might as well get used to being cold.

Chris glanced ahead to where Susan was walking hand in hand with Jake and then looked away quickly, before anyone noticed. Susan had gone to college the previous fall and come home for the summer with a sparkly ring on her finger and huge plans for the future – plans that didn’t include Chris. Feeling sorry for herself, Chris trudged along the narrow trail as it meandered up the side of the mountain. Beyond Jake and Susan, her parents walked together, assisted by long walking sticks. There were just the five of them today, and she was the odd man out.

“Why did Jake have to come?” she asked herself silently. He wasn’t really part of the family yet. Chris had looked forward so much to having her favorite sister home again, and now the only person her sister could even think about was Jake. For the entire two weeks Susan and Jake had been separated, Susan had spent all her time either talking to him on the phone or talking about him to anyone who would listen. She was always “Jake this…”, and “Jake that...” Chris was sick of hearing about Jake. Now that he was here in person, butting in on their family vacation, it was even worse.

The trail began to steepen as it switched back and forth up the mountain side. Chris unhooked her water bottle from her belt and paused to take a long drink. The water tasted like plastic and dirt. As she screwed the cap back onto the bottle, she noticed something moving in the tall yellow grass off to the right of the path. Something dark and about the size of a large cat darted from the grass and disappeared behind a stone outcropping. Chris stood still and watched to see if it would reappear. Eventually it did, crawling out from the other side of the rocks and sitting to lick its paws.

“Hey, you found a raccoon!” Startled by the voice directly behind her, Chris jumped and spun around. It was Jake.