Morning all. We have reached the middle of the week and for some reason that feels like an achievement this week. I think it is the return of the tree pollen in my area. Just when you thought it was gone, the next wave arrives because the trees have different schedules. Ah spring. But the antihistamine has been taken so let’s jump into the mid week writing prompt. Fifteen minutes on the timer and off we go.
I like that this started with mention of a dance. I think Ellie is going to hear something more than likely murder related and then events will culminate at the dance, I would have to think about the details, but I kind of like the idea, worried about a break up she stumbles into a murder that knocks the break up completely out of her mind while everyone else is still focused on it. Could be fun to write. But who to kill…
Wednesday, May 13th: The dance was coming up soon.
The dance was coming up soon. Ellie was dreading it. She hated going but attendance was mandatory. It wasn’t so bad when she had her friends around her, but everyone one was going with a date this year. She thought she had a date as well. She and Jared had been dating for a little over eleven months and planned to go to the dance together. They had in fact danced at the last dance together.
Prior they knew each other but hadn’t spent much time getting to know each other. After the dance he called to ask her out. After three dates they decided to make it official. They were an exclusive couple. The thing that got Ellie was that he asked for them to be an exclusive couple. He said he didn’t want to date anyone else, made a point of it in fact.
A few weeks prior she found out that while she had been only dating him, he decided the term exclusive didn’t apply to him and he had been seeing someone else. When she found out and confronted him about seeing Sarah his excuse was that he hadn’t been dating lots of others just one other person as though cheating exclusively with one person somehow made it better.
Ellie found his logical explanation almost more insulting than the actual cheating so she broke it off. Surprisingly he wasn’t going to the dance with the girl he cheated on her with. He apparently only liked seeing Sarah when no one knew. Once everyone knew he was seeing her, he broke things off.
Ellie hated the fact that she now felt bad for Sarah.
Jared would be going to the dance with Emily this year. Emily seemed to think she stole him from Ellie and was being quite obnoxious about it. Spending the night at the dance with them while all her other friends were paired up and listening to the comments Emily was bound to make just seemed like a headache waiting to happen.
Thinking about it when she was in the library was enough to cause her to grumble under her breath as she searched for the reference she needed. She was using the old newspapers to add color to her report. Some were on microfilm and others were bound in dusty volumes. The one she was looking for was a volume one. She took the heavy volume off the shelf and decided she didn’t want to carry it all the way back to the desk if it didn’t have the article she wanted. Instead, she sat down on the floor, placing the book on the carpet in front of her.
There were few people ever in this section of the library, so she wasn’t worried about being in anyone’s way. She tried to set her own grumbles aside as she flipped through the pages of the bound papers, careful not to damage them.
Ellie carefully turned the pages, forgetting her own issues as she read some of the more outlandish headlines. Exclamation points were common and often it seemed like the paper was trying to yell at readers.
She became engrossed in the story of a flood in the downtown area when the river burst its banks and didn’t hear the others arrive. Not until she heard the voices in the next aisle over.
Ten til Midnight 