Second Annual Writing Contest Winner Announced

Before announcing our winner we here at the Better Read than Dead Book Club would like to thank everyone that took the time to enter. It was a very tough decision this time around, but both of us were struck by our winner and fell in love with the story, and we hope you do too!

So without further ado we introduce to you: C. Hoekenga’s short story ‘Quarters’!

Quarters

“I hate this,” Abby says, for possibly the tenth time in the last half hour. She tries wiping her brow with the back of her hand but it only spreads the sweat around. “Why did you think this was a good idea?”

Darren rolls his eyes and sighs, a loud over-exaggerated sound. “‘Of course I’ll hike with you, Darren!’” He mocks, one hand on his hip and the other flapping in a crude imitation of Abby. “‘I love nature, it’ll be fun!’”

“I didn’t know that you go hard like this!”

“I’ve gone on hikes like these ever since I was five, Abby. Of course I go hard!”

Abby rolls her eyes and stops walking. She pulls her bag from her back and relaxes slightly when cool air hits her sore back. Abby pulls her water bottle from her bag and stands in the shade of the forest. She drinks the last inch of water in her water bottle and grimaces at the temperature. The water had been ice cold when she and Darren had started their hike.

“Look,” Darren says, pointing past the trees they stood by. “We’ve just got this last hill, and then we’re done, and I will never take you on a hike with me again.”

“Thank God,” Abby says. She puts her empty water bottle back in her bag and slings it back on her body. Abby takes a step forward and hesitates, looking back to Darren. “Hey, while we’re resting, I just want to say, I’m really sorry for ruining your hike. I know you were really excited about showing me this place and I’ve just been crapping all over your fun all day.”

Darren shrugs. “It’s okay,” he says. “I should have realized that you wouldn’t have fun. We can just do something different next time we hang out.”

Abby smiles half-heartedly. Great, her best friend hates her.

“Alright, dude. Still besties?” She says.

“Of course.”

The pair leave the shade of the forest, and Abby raises her hand to her eyes, squinting in the bright light. She looks around them. A deep gorge ran parallel to where they were. The path they needed to take was marked helpfully with stone stairs and warning signs. There was no fence separating the path and the long drop to the small, winding, stream below.

Abby leans over the edge slightly and catches a glimpse of the stream. Darren grabs the back of her bag and tugs her back a few feet.

“Careful, dude,” he says.

“That’s deep,” Abby comments.

“If we can walk up it, we can walk down it. And we walked up it to get here.”

They had. It had sucked.

“Sure,” Abby says. “We got this.” She’s disappointed with how uncertain she sounds.

“Hey, it’s okay. Look,” Darren points to the visitor's center and parking lot. The ugly building looks tiny in the distance. “We can rest when we get down. I’ll buy you ice cream.”

“I’m holding you to that,”

They began to walk down the stairs. Darren, stepping carefully, leads the way. Abby keeps one hand on the side of the cliff as they walked. Five minutes passed, then ten, and as they began nearing the bottom, Abby let herself relax.

Something flies through her peripheral vision, and she turns, trying to catch what she saw.

“Is that a bird?” Abby asks.

Darren looks over his shoulder at her. “Where?”

“There!” Abby says, and points. She leans out over the edge, searching.

“Careful!”

“I swear to God I saw-”

Abby stumbles and loses her footing, and then she was falling.

Abby screams as she falls. She scrambles to find handholds in the cliff side, but the thin tree branches can’t hold her weight. She doesn’t stop screaming, even when her throat is as raw as her fingers. She doesn’t cry, despite the burning in her eyes. Her muscles burn, too, as her arms were yanked from temporary handholds. Abby’s legs were already aching, from the hike, and they don’t stop even though she isn’t walking anymore.

Abby spins as she falls, and eventually, she gives up trying to save herself. There was no hope. She closes her eyes and prepares to hit the ground.

She lands on something soft, and the surprise from that is enough for her to open her eyes.

Abby looks around. She’s in a diner. Soft music with words she can’t identify play in the background. The booth she sits in is made of cracked red fabric that sticks to her thighs when she moves around. Cream colored foam peaks out through little holes. The table in front of her is a checkerboard of plastic coated tiles. The protective coating is scratched and sticky.

Abby wonders if she’s in a dream, but she doesn’t recognize where she is and all of Abby’s dreams happen in places she knows. There are other people, dining at the booths around her. Abby tries to see their faces, but every time a feature slides into focus it immediately becomes a blur again.

The light above her flickers and she looks up. It swings slightly but she can’t feel a breeze or hear a fan. When Abby looks back down, there’s a girl sitting across from her. Abby’s eyes widen and it’s almost like she’s ten again, sitting across from her best friend at the shores of the lake between their houses.

“Liz?” Abby asks.

“Yeah?” She responds simply. Liz is wearing a dark blue shirt with white embroidered flowers that span over her shoulders and across the front. Green threads make patterns down her chest. Liz’s hair is up in a messy ponytail. Though Abby can’t see Liz’s back, she knows that the flowered pattern continues, with the green threads twisting around them, and that there’s a bumblebee hair clip attached to her ponytail.

Abby hasn’t seen Liz since they were young, but she’s clearly aged. Liz is wearing the same outfit she had been wearing when Abby saw her and entire family off to Arkansas.

She had waved until her arms hurt, and stared at their silver minivan until it had vanished from view. Abby and Liz had sent each other letters, and emails, and had called each other practically every day. Halfway through seventh grade, Liz had just stopped responding.

“Are we dead?” Abby asks. She hasn’t heard from Liz or her family in years.

Liz smiles. “We don’t talk about that here,” she says, and then abruptly changes topics. “Let’s trade quarters. My collection is so boring right now.” She pulls a plastic one-gallon ziplock bag from her lap and puts it on the table, between them. She opens it and spills out the contents. Quarters roll across the table.

“See?” Liz asks, picking up one coin and showing it to Abby. Squinting, Abby reads the engraved letters on it. It’s not a state, like she expected. Instead, it reads Drowning.

“I have so many of these,” she says. “C’mon, Abby, show me what you’ve got,”

Hesitating, Abby pulls her bag from her back. She searches in it, pushing past her water bottle and sweater. She finds three coins at the very bottom and places them on the table with shaking fingers.

She reads them.

Drowning, Broken neck, and Broken spinal cord.

Bile rises at the back of her throat and Abby swallows, pushing it down. Liz scoops up the coins eagerly and reads them.

“Boring,” she says, flicking the Drowning coin aside. “But these… these are interesting. I’d trade for these.”

What’s wrong with these coins, Abby wants to say. Why are these awful things written on them. But she can’t find the words. Liz notices her struggle, somehow, and nods.

“I’d better hurry,” she says. She pulls a single quarter from her large pile and slides it to Abby. “Here, I think you’d like this one.”

Concussion, it reads. Liz winks, and takes all three of Abby’s quarters, including the Drowning one she had put aside. “Take it,” Liz says. “Give you a fighting chance.”

Abby takes the quarter. Before she can put it in her pocket, Liz grabs her elbow.

“Arkansas,” she says. “Blue Rapids, Arkansas.”

She lets go of Abby. Abby pauses and briefly considering putting the coin in her bag. She decides to leave her bag on the booth beside her and slides the quarter into her pocket. There’s a humming sound from the light above them, and Abby stares up at it. It sputters and goes out, and with it, the entire diner goes dark.

When she opens her eyes, she’s on the hard ground. Mud is caked into her hair and her legs and hands are submerged in water. Abby’s dizzy, and she can’t breathe. There’s desperate shouting from high above her, and from all of her sides. Her ears are ringing. Footsteps slam into the ground near her and Abby almost screams again. Everything hurts. People are swarming her. She can’t breathe.

Abby catches a desperate breath and she can’t really see, can’t really hear, but she can feel her heart beating in her chest. Tremors push through her hands and she scrambles at her sides. Her hands go to her pocket, and every movement burns. There are soft hands on her, trying to push her back down, trying to get her to relax. There’s a single coin in her pocket and she grabs it.

She can’t read it, she can’t see, the letters are shaking and swirling around her. People are still surrounding her, shouting to each other and running around her.

“We’ve got you, you’re going to be okay,” one soothes.

“What does this say,” Abby begs, pushing the coin towards them. As far as Abby knows, the person who spoke is the only real person here. They take the coin and try to calm her, but she slurs again, “What does it say?”

“It’s a quarter,” they say.

“What does it say!” Abby says, because even though the fact that it’s a quarter is clicking somewhere in her head, she needs more.

The person squints at the coin, and reads, “Arkansas.”