If This Were a Story - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Beth Turley is a graduate of the MFA in creative and professional writing program at Western Connecticut State University. She lives and writes in southeastern Connecticut, where the leaves changing color feels like magic and the water is never too far away. She is the author of If This Were a Story, The Last Tree Town, The Flyers, and This Close to Home. Visit her on Twitter @Beth_Turley.

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If This Were a Story

The Note

I measure how happy a day is with sounds. Happy days sound like a TV on low volume or birdcalls through a screen door. Sad days sound like dishes crashing into each other in the sink. Sad days sound like too-loud voices. Once a day is stained sad, it’s hard to make it happy again.

My class copies vocabulary into our notebooks. I write the words like an astronomer discovering a new planet, as if the definitions can unlock the secrets of outer space. “Instantaneous”: when something happens without any delay. “Iridescent”: the quality of changing colors when viewed from different angles. “Intention”: an aim or a plan.

The tip of my pencil breaks. I walk to the back of the room and shove my pencil into the sharpener. The grinding sound is a happy one. It means a new point, a shiny do-over.

On the way back to my desk, I see a small piece of paper crunched into a ball on the floor. I pick the paper up with the intention of throwing it away, but it looks like my name is written on it. I unravel the note and read the three words on a torn sheet of lined paper. The words fill my head with the sound of flying arrows, quiet and quick and aimed in my direction. A sad-day sound.

NOBODY LIKES HANNAH.