Going strong!

Cruising right along, over 1000 words ahead of schedule. So far we've established that poor little Nika has been molested, abused, and it an untreated schizophrenic sociopath! She's stabbed a girl with a stick, and at 15 she raped a girl. It's turning into a fun ride into her insanity, and she's not even grown yet. Here's another excerpt.

Her eyes caught on a group of girls standing near the drinking fountain. There were four of them, almost identical in appearance. Nika chuckled. It was amazing how people tended to flock to those who were most similar to themselves. That's one of the reasons Nika couldn't connect with anyone. There just wasn't anyone similar to her, no one who'd understand why Nika was the way she was. The four were laughing over something, a book, or a notebook maybe? There wasn't anything particularly interesting about what they were doing, but Nika continued to watch anyway. One girl lifted her head and looked around, reminding Nika of the way a ferret will go onto it's back legs and sniff the air. The girl looked at Nika, turned back to her friends for a moment, then began walking Nika's way. Nika averted her gaze to another group off to her left, a pack of seven boys throwing paper wads at each other as they raced down the hall. Nika caught sight of the blond again, in her peripheral vision. She turned her head until her gaze met the smaller girl's.

"What are you staring at?" Nika blinked slowly, processing the girl that now blocked her view. She was pretty in a conventional way. Wide blue eyes, clear skin, just a small sprinkle of pale brown freckles across her nose. Nothing to cause her to stand out from the crowd, but just pretty enough to draw as much attention as she chose. "Hey, you. Freakazoid." The girl snapped in Nika's face impatiently. "What the fuck are you staring at?" The girl had obviously forgotten her place. She'd stepped outside her plastic bubble, she'd broken the rules. Nika frowned as the girl began snapping again.

Nika grabbed the girl's wrist mid snap. "Don't." Her voice was calm, but threatening. Nika stared into the girl's blue eyes as she held her wrist tightly. "It's not polite to snap in people's faces." Nika squeezed her wrist until the girl's blue eyes clouded with pain. The girl struggled, trying to pull her arm from Nika's vice like grasp. Nika could see that the girl was about to scream, drawing attention to them both. She dropped the girl's arm and turned to walk away. She limped slightly as she walked, a gift from one of her mom's boyfriends. Bob or Jim or Earl, Nika didn't remember, but she'd never forget the searing sting of the knife across the back of her arm, or the crunch of bone as he'd stomped eleven year old Nika's foot as she tried to run. Her mom had waited nearly two days before taking Nika to the hospital. By then many of the breaks had begun to set. They'd rebroken her foot in multiple places in an attempt to get it to heal properly, but the damage was severe enough that Nika would never again walk without a limp. The girl watched Nika walk away, rubbing her wrist and sneering in Nika's direction. Most people left Nika alone. It was common knowledge that she was dangerous, prone to violence. Numerous stories floated through the halls, that she'd stabbed a girl to death with a stick, that she'd beaten one girl so badly she had to be institutionalized, that she cut people and drank their blood. Most of the rumors were over the top, and some were so outlandish that even Nika had to laugh, but she did nothing to dispute them. The fact that most of the school was terrified of her suited her just fine. Nika cocked her head to the side, a gesture familiar to anyone who watched her for any length of time. "You never have been able to control that temper." Anda chided. "Now she'll go tell a teacher and it'll be off to the Principal's office for us. Why do you always screw things up?"

Nika took her seat at the back of the room, behind a girl with braces and curly red hair that sprung up from her head in a halo of flame. Nika didn't know her name, nor could she recall the name of the girl from the hall. This wasn't her world, wasn't anything she wanted to be a part of. It was just something she had to get through every day. Nika was a pro at just getting through. She watched Mr. Winger as he talked excitedly about their next reading assignment, Alex Haley's Roots. Nika sighed and dug into the desk with her pencil. She'd read Roots a dozen times already. She knew that book inside and out. She felt a certain amount of kinship with the slaves in the book, forced to toil for someone else's profit, unable to live life on their own terms. She could already see how this semester would go. She'd sit in class every day, bored out of her skull, then ace every test and blow the curve for the rest of the class. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered coming to class.

Writing excerpts

I'll be posting some excerpts from what I'm writing for Nanowrimo. Probably not enough for anyone to really make sense of the story, but what the heck. So far I'm doing well, on schedule to make 50k. Of course, at three days in, I was on schedule last year too :P

So here's the first excerpt. Note that this isn't the beginning of my novel, just one scene.

"Nasty Nika booger eater!" The girl chanted in a high pitched sing-song voice. "Daddy left her, mommy beats her, even dogs don't wanna eat her." She pointed at Nika and laughed, one hand covering her mouth. Nika sat with her legs spread, digging in the dirt with a stick just about the size of a pencil, but thicker. She was on the far edge of the playground, beyond hearing range of the teacher, and she'd thought she was far enough away from the other kids that no one would notice her. Her limp hair clung to her face, streaked with dirt and sweat. Nika watched the girl, Becky, with a blank expression. "What's a matter? Cat got yer tongue?" Becky stood with one hand on her hip. Nika squinted up, pausing in her digging. "Freak." Becky hissed and stomped off, back toward a group of girls huddled around the tether ball pole. Nika watched the girls gesturing at her, laughing and tossing their heads back in amusement.

"They're just jealous." Nika whispered. She dug into the packed dirt. "Stupid girls, stupid, stupid, stupid." She punctuated each word with the stick. She looked up at the girls again. They were leaning in, their heads touching. Nika wondered what they were talking about, what they were plotting. She stood up and dusted her hands on her faded blue jeans. Four bruises marred the side of her right bicep, nearly the perfect outline of a man's fingers. She tucked the stick in her back pocket and walked slowly toward the pack of girls. A couple of them glanced at her and giggled. All of them were dressed in clean, bright clothes. Some of them wore braids, others wore their hair loose and shiny straight. They smiled with pearly white teeth and blinked bright, clear, eyes. Nika stood out in contrast. Her brown hair hung limp and stringy across a face streaked with dirt. Her eyes were clouded and dull, and her expression rarely changed. She looked, for lack of a better word, haunted.

"Becky." Nika's voice was barely audible, nothing more than a hoarse whisper among the din that is an elementary school playground. "Becky." Nika repeated, louder. Becky had her back turned, but the other girls saw Nika talking, heard her whisper Becky's name. They tapped her on the shoulder, pointed toward Nika. Becky turned around and wrinkled her nose.

"Eww, what do you want nasty Nika booger eater?" Her voice was a sneer. She crossed her arms defiantly.

"Nothing." Nika stood perfectly still, her hands hanging limp at her sides. "Nothing at all." She turned slowly, obviously intending to walk back toward the edge of the playground. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." Anda echoed in her head. "Stupid girls do stupid thing. Bad girl Nika, bad girl Nika." Anda's voice was a chastising whine. Nika gritted her teeth. Anda was going to ruin everything if she didn't shut up. She made a low hissing sound, as if trying to shush her imaginary friend. She continued to walk slowly away from the other girls. "Bad Nika, bad, bad, bad."

All at once Nika felt hands on her back, pushing her forward, throwing her off balance. She stumbled, managed a few more steps, then stumbled again, finally pitching foward. She caught herself with her hands and knees, wincing as her left shin came crashing down on a sharp rock. Nika felt herself being shoved further down against the ground, her hands knocked from under her. She struggled to get back to her knees, but was suddenly pinned down by the weight of someone sitting on her back. "Uh oh spaghetti oh." Anda's voice again "Yer in trouble now missy." Nika grinned slightly as she stared into the dirt. Sometimes people were so predictable. She wiggled enough beneath Becky's weight to get her left arm beneath her and her right arm slightly behind her. The girls were laughing and cheering. All at once Nika began to roll to her left, using her arm as leverage. At the same time she reached for the stick protruding just over the top of her back pants pocket. It was just small enough to hide, but big enough to be used for what Nika was about to do. Using the force of her own momentum as she turned, Nika rammed the stick into the soft inside of Becky's left ankle. She felt the skin give way, like the popping of an under inflated balloon. The blood trickled down Becky's foot and across Nika's fingers before anyone even realized what happened. Then suddenly Becky was screaming.