{"id":10174,"date":"2021-03-04T07:49:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T14:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=10174"},"modified":"2021-03-05T17:15:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T00:15:24","slug":"the-rule-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/the-rule-was\/","title":{"rendered":"The rule was . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Lynn Levy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daria stood with her nose up against the glass, peeking in at the door. She didn’t go in\u2014she knew better. And when someone came out, she melted away, back into the shadows, back where she couldn\u2019t be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the tall blond man saw her anyway, and walked toward her. He was a giant, an enormous bulk of branches and limbs that looked like he shouldn\u2019t be able to balance, let alone walk. She imagined him crashing over, like her string doll did when she pressed the button on the bottom. But instead, he folded himself down, quiet as a sheet, until he was squatting in front of her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre you Daria?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daria furrowed her brow. The rule was, you don\u2019t tell strangers your name. But another rule was that you don\u2019t lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes,\u201d she finally decided upon, because she liked his pale blue eyes, and the fact that they were down right across from hers, and she didn\u2019t want him to get up yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s so interesting in there?\u201d he asked, turning his head over his shoulder, back toward the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t know. Can\u2019t go in,\u201d Daria said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blue eyes flashed. \u201cAh,\u201d he said. \u201cSo is it secrets you love, or puzzles?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daria thought about it a moment and said, \u201cThey\u2019re the same.\u201d Because they were. They were both things to figure out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInsightful,\u201d the man said. Daria didn\u2019t know the word, but understood that he agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made a quick movement and she felt a brush of air beside her ear, and then he was holding a coin, not an ordinary quarter or dime, but large and nearly white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUsually this is where I say, \u2018Look what I found behind your ear,\u2019 but it comes from farther than that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daria\u2019s eyes locked on the thing. It nearly glowed, and she imagined she felt heat coming from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you want it?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were rules about taking candy from strangers (don\u2019t), and following strangers (don\u2019t), and getting into cars with strangers (don\u2019t). Daria understood the common thread of these rules, but chose just then to be precise. There were no rules about fat, glowing white coins, none at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He reached out his hand, an invitation for hers, and right then Daria dared<\/em>. She lay her hand, palm open and up on top of his, and felt his fingers against the back of her hand. They were warm.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t know what she\u2019d expected, but he seemed like he could be something . . . else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gently, he pressed the coin into her hand, and closed her fingers around it. He patted her closed fist with his other hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He poured his pale blue eyes into her dark brown ones a second more, then unfolded, standing up like the stop action movie she\u2019d seen on TV of a tree growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKarl, you coming?\u201d someone yelled from behind the door. He turned, neatly blocking her from view and said, in a much gruffer voice, \u201cCan\u2019t a man take a leak?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a grumble and the door shut again, the little bell tinkling in a way that was too pretty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karl strode toward the door, and just as he went in, looked back over his shoulder at her. He nodded, just barely, and went inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You cannot beat a bully, was one of the things Daria had worked out on her own. And basically, all grownups were bullies. You could only outsmart them\u2014and so Daria knew how to hide things. Real things, like the coin, and unreal things, like what she was thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the rules was that she wasn\u2019t supposed to spy on Uncle Brad\u2019s friends. But this uncle would pass, like the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She melted clean away, into her best hiding place, and didn\u2019t open her hand until she got there. The coin was gone. But from her palm shone a clean white light that filled the space. What it was, was the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lynn Levy\u2019s<\/strong> writing has been published in The Write Spot: Discoveries<\/em> and The Write Spot: Possibilities, <\/em>both available on Amazon in print ($15) and as an ereader ($2.99).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lynn lives in Northern California with her husband, an endless parade of wild birds, and one dour skunk who passes by nightly. She and the skunk have an understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lynn has been an audio engineer, software developer, survived middle management, and is wildly enjoying her latest reinvention as a technical writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lynn Levy Daria stood with her nose up against the glass, peeking in at the door. She didn’t go in\u2014she knew better. And when someone came out, she melted away, back into the shadows, back where she couldn\u2019t be seen. But the tall blond man saw her anyway, and walked toward her. He was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1474],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sparks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-2E6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10174"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10185,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10174\/revisions\/10185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}