The crosswalk is the busiest place in town any time of the year, and even if Braddock has a fraction of the people in the summer, it’s still bustling. As I’m coming up, I spot a girl approaching from my left. She’s ghostly pale like me, with auburn hair cut in a short bob around her soft jawline. The most striking thing about her is her narrow, almond-shaped eyes. I’ve always thought chicks with eyes like that are really cute. They catch mine as I approach, and there’s a kind of click; two people in a crowd with matching energy. She greets me with a narrow, witty smile. I return hers in my usual unintentional way, soft and genuine and a little bit sad-looking without ever meaning to seem that way. And we stand there for a minute, waiting for the traffic to clear.
“Say, is it gonna be dry like this all week?” she asks.
“Um…” I wish I had a better answer ready. “I think so? I haven’t really checked the weather.”
“Why, I sure hope it is.” She stares back across the street at the shade of College Green. “Anything I hate is rain in the summer.”
Roll my eyes in agreement. “Ugh, totally.”
I sneak a look at her. She’s wearing a brown bell-shaped hat, the kind that were popular in the 1920s. She’s wearing a 20s style dress, too: green, knee-length, with a round-cut neckline and loose cap sleeves. She’s even wearing old-fashioned brown stockings and brown heels. It catches my eye and I stare for a second or two; it’s a hot day for stockings, especially the old-fashioned silk kind like that. And her shoes are really retro, like old church grandma shoes. She must shop at that vintage thrift store all the way up at the far end of Court Street; it’s the only place around here where you could get clothes like that, unless she goes thrifting in Columbus.
She’s standing here next to me, watching the street, not self-conscious at all. Like she wears stuff like that every day without even thinking about it.
Then she looks at me, glances away, looks at me again a little longer. Her eyes linger on my top and on my legs, and she looks away again, blushing. I’ve always been a little bit empathic and I can feel curiosity in her glance. And…attraction?
Nah, that can’t be right - girls are never into me. Maybe I look too preppy, I don’t know. I’m a D&D nerd, raised on video games from the age of five, but because I wear an Abercrombie hoodie or Hollister shorts or flat iron my hair, people assign me a whole package of expectations - Courtney is a bitch, Courtney’s stuck-up, Courtney’s a backstabbing gossip, Courtney’s rich. Courtney is heterosexual...? Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’m gonna have a hard time living up to all of that. Maybe not the bitch thing - because yeah, I’m probably a bitch - but the rest of it?
Sorry, no can do.
The traffic finally stops from the other direction. I give her one last smile - which she returns warmly - and step onto the street. A few quick steps take me to the other sidewalk. I stop and look at my slender Fossil watch, making a pretense to turn in her direction again for one last look. She’s awfully cute, and I love her chic vintage style. I wonder if she’d think I was creepy if-
There’s nobody there. I glance around to see if she took off in another direction. Nothing. There are plenty of people around, walking dogs, wearing flip-flops, riding bikes. But no girls with vintage clothes.
She’s gone. It’s like she was never there.
But she totally was there! I talked to her!
Unless I’m finally losing it?
I rub an eye with the heel of my hand, not really caring that I just stamped dry mascara on my skin. Maybe I need to get out more. Maybe I need friends. I stand on the busy sidewalk for a moment, completely disoriented, before remembering that I was looking for a place to sit down and eat my salad. But even as I make my way onto College Green and up toward the Civil War statue, looking for a place to sit, I can’t get that girl out of my head. Not just because she was cute. Something about her, that weird click when we saw each other.
Eh, maybe I’ll see her again. I shove a straw through the lid of my drink. Nobody just vanishes.
I wish you could just disappear.
Though I guess if you wanted to disappear, this would be the place to do it. Outside the city limits, the nights are dark and old, and people who vanish are never seen again.
Author Info
The Book Junkie Reads . . .Reckless Dreams Interview with . . . Cassandra Yorke . . .
How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
Personal, atmospheric, and immersive. I’m not happy unless you’re really there, wherever “there” is. For me, telling a story takes a back seat to actually taking you someplace else. Often this makes me kind of an in-your-face writer, even confrontational, if I’m trying to tell you about something important. When someone puts my work down and says “I’m done reading this,” usually it’s because the writing and the emotion is too raw, and not everyone can handle that.
But I feel like where I really excel is in creating atmosphere and tension, and that’s the one common thing that connects everything I’ve ever written. Atmosphere tends to flow naturally into most of what I write, and that’s something I’m really proud of. I also enjoy creating art that deepens that atmosphere and turns it into as real an experience as I can create.
Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
I think there are a couple of levels to this question for me. Writing itself is natural - it’s how I’ve always expressed myself, ever since I can remember. Some kids draw or whatever, but I wrote, at least from third grade or so. It’s how I always conveyed emotions and ideas, how I tried to preserve feelings and moods and experiences. It always just happened.
But writing a novel is something different entirely. Novels need story and plot and structure. You have to take that experience or memory in your head and make a story out of it, something people will actually want to read. That’s always been really hard for me, probably because I have crippling ADHD and I have these little thoughts full of emotion and impact but it’s not a coherent thing that goes from A to Z. So that’s something that I’ve had a lot of difficulty with.
What mindset or routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or just free writing)?
I think for me it starts with music. I have all these huge playlists for different parts of the story, for different characters and possible situations, whatever. I cue up the music with the energy I need, and then I go into my workspace (right now I’m using Milanote) and hang out with character profiles and photos until the scene materializes enough in my head for me to start. If the music is right, if I’m not trying too hard to force an outcome, if I’ve got the right levels of caffeine and neurotransmitters and if all the planets and fixed stars are in proper alignment and whatever, I jump and try to hit the ground running. If I don’t stumble and if the fire in my brain doesn’t fizzle in the first few minutes, I can usually get something going. The problem then is that the scene ends and I have no idea how to connect it to the larger narrative or what I want to happen in a larger sense. I’m constantly tripping over my own shoelaces and getting lost in the forest of my own head. My own nearsightedness is the perfect metaphor, actually - if I took my contacts out, I could barely see my hand in front of my face and I could get lost in a shoebox.
Writing Mary, Everything was like building a bridge without wearing contacts, in the fog. The sequel, which I’m working on right now, will be even more ambitious, I think. There’s so much more happening in the world, so many new characters and new archetypes that need to be introduced. I’m already hopelessly confused.
Do you take your character prep to heart? Do you nurture the growth of each character all the way through to the page? Do you people watch to help with development? Or do you build upon your character during story creation?
I try to make character creation as organic as possible. I guess I kinda have this philosophy that we live in a multiverse of infinite scope and that my characters are real people somewhere - all I’m doing is channeling them.
I usually just start with the most basic idea about what my story needs. As an example, Hazel Morrison emerged when I made a note to myself like, “the girls need a Gandalf-type character - some kind of mentor or guardian.” I feel my way toward a name, kinda like feeling your way through a room in the dark, and I introduce them onto the page. Then I do my best to quiet my own expectations and let them react to the world with as little interference as possible. That’s worked out explosively well with characters like Sadie and Hazel. Other times, I run into trouble when I try to introduce characters from earlier iterations of the story - sometimes they’re not compatible anymore, or they were poorly realized to begin with. Sometimes this character process is simple, like when the characters have plenty of personality ready to go, with plenty of opinions and agendas. Recently, as I’ve approached the sequel, it’s been a lot harder for me to introduce new characters. All I can hope is that they come to me as willingly as Sadie and Hazel did.
Have you found yourself bonding with any particular character(s)? If so, which one(s)?
Well, Courtney is sorta my alter ego, my avatar in the world of the Flapper Covenant. Or maybe I’m her alter ego. Anyway, Courtney is a more perfect version of me - she’s a little cooler, a little prettier, a little smoother. And she’s hilarious and full of surprises. It’s my favorite thing about her - she always says and does things on the page that come out of nowhere and have me cackling and sobbing with laughter.
But I’ve bonded with all the protagonists in Mary, Everything - especially the four main girls and Hazel. Mary and Nettie are loosely based on real girls that went to my college in the 20s, girls I got to know fairly well during the weird time slip experience that inspired this whole thing. Sadie wasn’t so much based on anyone I could find - she emerged from a picture of a girl from one of those yearbooks. All I started with was this impulse of creating a best friend for Courtney. Once Sadie emerged onto the page, she took over the whole story. I was halfway into an earlier rough draft and I had to scrap the whole thing so I could grapple with her from the beginning of the story. She was that powerful.
So even if I am Courtney in a way, I love all my girls more deeply than I can say. Maybe being Courtney makes me love them more.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cassieyorke87
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