For those just tuning in, this challenge is about taking a story idea from bare bones idea into a fully fledged story by writing consistently every week day for fifteen minutes. The sentence I end with on one day, is the sentence I start with on the following. Part one was Bob’s story and has nothing whatsoever to do with the story below. Part Two follows a character named Penelope. I have a few basic sentences to act as road marks on her journey. I am loosely calling that an outline. We will see where she ends up by the time the story is done. For now, we start Part two of the 2025 Fifteen Minute Writing Challenge.
Day 33: She had just reached the right page when the phone rang.
She had just reached the right page when the phone rang. Penelope reached for the phone and hit the green answer button without looking at the screen, her thoughts still on the file in front of her. She flicked the speaker button and set the phone on the desk next to the file.
“Hello,” she said.
“What do you think you are doing?” Penelope blinked at the venom in her step-mother’s voice. She looked to the file for a moment wondering if Jeanette meant the file.
“About what?” she asked.
“You know very well about what.”
Penelope sighed and stepped away from the file, taking the phone with her. This conversation was not an unusual one. Anytime any action she took reflected poorly on Trinity the conversation started out in the same accusatory manner.
‘As if I spend that much time thinking about Trinity.’
“I really don’t,” Penelope said. She suspected that Jeanette would be upset that Penelope chose the time of her moving out rather than let Jeanette dictate the timeline but other than that she couldn’t think of anything that she had done recently that might impact Trinity or Jeanette at all.
“Don’t you play innocent with me,” Jeanette declared. Peneloppe took the phone out of the bedroom and walked back to the kitchen. It was edging towards lunch time and she thought that pulling together a sandwich while her step mother ranted might be a good use of her time. As she walked Jeanette went over the same familiar lines.
AS always Penelope was an ungrateful little beast who should be doing her best to support Trinity. It took Jeanette longer to say that and it was in much more veiled and complicated terms, but that was what it boiled down to. They were all terms Penelope heard before. None of it told her what it was she supposedly did. That wouldn’t come until Jeanette thought she was properly chastised for her ingratitude. Penelope set the phone on the counter and began assembling her sandwich.
She added some mustard and cold cuts to two slices of bread and then added some cheese. She slapped the two slices of bread together with the meat and cheese between and set the sandwich on the plate. She put everything else away, pulled out a knife from the drawer and managed to cut it into two triangled halves by the time Jeanette was ready to talk about what had her irritated.
“So what do you intend to do about your behavior?” Jeanette declared.
“You still haven’t told me what I have done,” Penelope pointed out.
“About the party,” Jeanette said.
Penelope frowned. She had been certain it would have had something to do with her moving out.
“The party?” she repeated.
“Trinity’s birthday.”
“The one I am not invited to?” Penelope said.
“Is that why you are sabotaging it?” Jeanette asked.
“I haven’t had anything to do with her party, sabotage wise or not,” Penelope said.
“Oh, so you don’t know why people are cancelling? Or RSVPing as not attending?” Jeanette fairly squawked.
“Nope,” Penelope said. “I haven’t talked to anyone about it.”
There was silence for a moment on the other end of the line. Penelope thought Jeanette might have hung up. She looked at the screen and the timer for the call was still running.
“You didn’t tell people not to go?” Jeanette asked slowly.
Ten til Midnight 