Suzie’s House 325 : Supposed to be Writing

Ben had just got his three words for the day when Lisa shoved her notebook aside and sighed. He tried not to get irritated with her, but it was like this all morning. It was like she didn’t really want to be writing.

“Didn’t you just say you were going to outline?” Ben said. He could have said a lot worse.

“All my ideas went away.”

All right, so maybe Been could sympathize with that. His ideas turned into nothing on him all the time.

“How do you do it?” She looked at him like she’d like to squash him.

“What? You mean write? I just had some good ideas I didn’t want to lose. I’m done now.” He took his hands off the keyboard of his laptop and put them in his lap to prove it, then got mad because they were supposed to be writing now so why should he have to prove he wasn’t? He moved his laptop away and crossed his arms on the dinning room table.

“I mean write with such concentration. Didn’t you notice Gene and Tracy and all them going upstairs just now?” She waved at the door between the dinning room and the hall with the staircase.

Ben shrugged. He knew they were all in Gene’s room, but so what? He was writing right now.

“I’m so jealous. I can’t do that at all. Is what your writing that good?”

“Just now? I wasn’t really writing. I was getting my vocabulary words off this one web site. I’m trying to expand my vocabulary.” Ben felt kind of funny about that. He’d been doing it for a while now. But Lisa didn’t need to because she already had a good vocabulary.

“Because Mrs. Audrey told you to?”

“Yeah.”

Lisa grinned. “She told me to, too. I mean, I thought I knew plenty of words, but she said I needed even more because I can’t use the same ones too close together. Show me.”

Ben turned the laptop toward her.

“Earthy, grotesque, and nonchalant? I know those words already.”

“Yeah? But when do you use them?” Ben wiggled his eyebrows in challenge.

“I.. uh….” That had Lisa stumped.

It was Ben’s turn to grin.

“Um… well, it’s not like I can be nonchalant about Tracy. I mean, we used to always hang out with her and Gene. Now we never do.”

“Yeah, but now they have the band. The others might think we’re grotesque for hanging around all the time.” Ben winced. “I know, that was a bad one.”

“Not as bad as what Tracy would do.”

They both giggled.

“Ok. So what about earthy.” Ben wanted to see what Lisa would come up with.

“I could say that Mrs. H….” Lisa stopped talking, and looked at the staircase because there came the bang of a door slamming into a wall.

Tracy came tromping downstairs, waving her hands and talking the whole way. The rest of the band came down right behind her.

“… can’t just leave her like that, can we? I don’t care if it’s none of my business! Even if you guys won’t, I’m going to go make sure she’s ok.”

“I’m just saying it won’t do any good.” Kate said. “She probably isn’t even home anyway.”

“I know where she is,” Bruce said in that superior way of his.

They hit the front door and all went out just like that. It was like a whirl wind or something.

“Hey,” Lisa jumped to her feet. “Let’s follow them.” She looked all excited.

“But we’re supposed to be writing, aren’t we?”

“Research. We’ll call it research.” Lisa grinned.

Ben looked at his laptop. He had kind of run out of words already anyway. And Mrs. Audrey did say it was good to get out and experience the world because that gave you more to write about. He grinned, too, and got up.

“Let’s go.”

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