NaNoWriMo Revisited: Clip #3

Okay, this novel draft(!) excerpt picks up exactly where Clip #2 left off.  I just made some little tweaks to it this evening and I'm not sure what to think about them yet, but decided to share it anyway!

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“I wish we could just rent a little cottage in the woods and never have to see anyone unless we invited them.” 

Claudia laughed a little at Mariana’s words as she settled down on the rock and dangled her legs over the edge of the outcropping.

Mariana sighed, pulled a worn notebook from her messenger bag, and started digging for a pen amongst the coins and wrappers at the bottom.  She winced as the debris invaded the space under her fingernails.  Washing her bags regularly always seemed like such a great idea, but then months would pass and the same dirt would establish itself along the bottom.

Claudia flattened her back against the rock and idly pointed her camera toward the sky, adjusting the exposure.  Mariana finally found her pen and began to work out a few lines of poetry about the crows circling the treetops, the leaves falling and the water rushing 200 feet beneath them.  She shivered slightly at the chill rising through her jeans from the rock below.

The two of them drifted into an easy silence built on years of shared space and thoughts.  For a moment Mariana felt she could see the two of them from a third person’s perspective, their twin shapes resting perpendicular on the rocky ledge.

“Claudia, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”  She lowered the camera to her lap, focusing her eyes on Mariana’s.

Mariana could feel anxious energy creeping into her throat.

 “Do you think you’d want to go away with me for a little while this summer?”  The words tumbled haphazardly out of her mouth, almost like a confession.

Claudia’s bright green eyes narrowed slightly, the way they always did when something caught her interest.

“What do you mean?”

Mariana sometimes imagined her and Claudia renting an apartment together above a bookstore, working in a café and decorating with brightly colored shag rugs and floor lamps and throw pillows.  Her fantasies would wander to the details, climbing the stairs with a bag of groceries and walking in to find Claudia on the couch with a sketchbook.  She wished the two of them could run away to a place like that, where she could write a book and Claudia could sell her photographs to art galleries.  They could live together amiably as two women who understood each other, shared so many inside jokes the rest of the world’s conversation became irrelevant.

“I just mean maybe we could stay with your brother in Philadelphia or something.”  She broke Claudia’s gaze and pulled at a loose thread on the sleeve of her coat. “Get out of here, have a little fun before we go away to school.”

“That would be awesome, except for the part where I have to save up a ton of money this summer.”

A few years earlier, the two of them might have passed notes back and forth in class about the house they would squat when they turned 18 and began new, exciting lives.  At age 12 those liberties of the imagination still came free of charge.  Mariana leaned back against the jagged rock, pursing her lips to hold in the secret that she’d wanted Claudia to at least show some regret at not being able to run away, start a new life together.