I released my first novel in 2010 but had some issues arise with the publisher, so I went through the process of getting out of my contract with them and re-released it. Since Plain Jane has recently been re-released, I wanted to share a small excerpt from it, along with a piece of my heart, on this site . I shared this once on Facebook a couple of years back, but I think it's worth another read.
(excerpt
from Plain Jane)
Mr.
Stanley knew something was wrong, so he checked up on me. He approached my
teachers and inquired about my status; then on October 28, he called me to his
desk at the end of class. Being his aide, I assumed he had an errand for me to
run, but instead he asked me to hang around after school because he wanted to
talk to me. Mona Hampton overheard his request.
When the last bell of the day rang, I hung
around to find out what Mr. Stanley wanted to speak to me about. I happened to
notice Mona slowly edging her way to the door with a curious look spread across
her face. As soon as she slipped out, Mr. Stanley shut the door. He sat me down
and told me he knew I was barely passing all of my classes. Quizzing me, He
asked about what was going on in my life to cause such a drastic change in my
grades. I quietly sat with my head hung low, never answering any of his
questions.
“Aralyn, you are a brilliant young poet
who can really make something of herself,” he said, encouraging me.
With tears in my eyes, I looked up at him
and replied, “Nobody cares about poets, Mr. Stanley.”
“I do,” he insisted. “But if you don’t get
your act together, I’m afraid you’re going to mess up your opportunities.”
After at least ten minutes of prodding me
for an explanation for my failing grades, he lectured me for an additional
thirty minutes on the importance of a college education in the work force. When
he was finished, he permitted me to leave. I left the room knowing I had messed
up my life. I shut the door and looked up to see Mona standing at the end of
the hall; the shame weighed so heavy on me that I quickly shifted my eyes to
keep her from seeing through to my failures, but what she saw in that was
something totally different.
The following day I woke up with a
determination to change the path I was on. I set my mind to focus on my schooling.
Since it was a Friday, I resolved within myself not to go out partying with
Rhonda or Sheena that night. “You’re gonna have to shape up, Aralyn,” I told
myself as I looked in the mirror and primped my hair.
Ray picked me up as usual and walked me to
my first class. As we walked through the hall, girls whispered amongst one
another. Occasionally one would break out in a snicker. Guys looked me up and
down like they were checking out my body or something; then a girl named
Abigail walked right up to me and asked, “So, how’d you do it?”
Perplexed, I asked, “Do what?”
She laughed, “Oh, come on, for a teacher
he’s hot. How’d you get him to sleep with you?”
“What? What are you talking
about?” I belted.
“Everybody’s been talking about it since
last night. The whole school already knows; don’t act like little Miss
Innocent. Mona saw it with her own eyes.”
At the name Mona the light bulb in my brain turned on. What Mona had suspected
when I couldn’t look her in the eyes was guilt, not the guilt I felt (the guilt
of being a failure) but the guilt of sleeping with a teacher. I couldn’t
breathe. I felt trapped in a small room with the walls closing in on me. I
jerked my head from side to side searching for an escape route to no avail.
Once again words were unleashed as weapons
into my life, but this time there was no lone assailant clothed in white with
tiny horns hidden beneath a thick head of hair; this time almost the entire
student body had gathered to unleash my demise---words that came together and formed a heinous rumor!
(Plain
Jane, pgs. 251-253)
The
previous excerpt is from the chapter of my book titled “I Heard a Rumor.”
Words
form weapons in the lives of many young people. Sometimes that weapon is a
knife that stabs straight through the heart leaving the recipient with a deadly
wound. The blade is often serrated with gossip and rumors.
While
writing Plain Jane, I felt led to
place tiny pieces of myself within my character. That chapter was one of the
most difficult for me to write because it tapped into a place within my soul
and my past that I wanted to never
reopen. While revisiting the time in my life when I was viciously attacked by
my peers through a heinous rumor, I found an open wound.
As I
expressed Aralyn’s pain and emotions when one of her peers saw an innocent
situation and twisted it into an ugly monster, I was truly conveying my own
floodgate of hurt that surged to the surface of my heart as I typed. My heart
pounded, my chest constricted, and tears flowed as I bore my soul;
consequently, it was healing the lacerations left by my attackers.
I made
sure to form the weapon that shattered Aralyn’s life in a very different manner
from the one that had been used upon me, yet I could not escape the
similarities. Both weapons were sharpened by rumors and gossip leaving the
victim to bleed out. Just as her rumor was not the same as mine, the placement
in her life was different as well. For Aralyn it came during a time of misery
and pushed her closer to the edge. For me it was the catalyst into the black
abyss of depression that follows me to this day.
You may
be asking yourself why I am sharing this side of me. I think it is because I
feel that people need to understand the consequences of gossip and rumors. I
was fifteen years old when I was stabbed repeatedly in the heart by that blade.
I was thirty-seven when I wrote Plain
Jane and received my healing. Although I no longer have an open wound, I
will forever carry the scar;
unfortunately, there are those young people who never have the opportunity to
heal.
Schledia Benefield
