Below is the transcript for Season 1, Episode 124 of Freely Written, a podcast by author Susan Quilty:
Welcome to Freely Written where a simple prompt leads to a little unplanned fiction.
[Light piano music]
Hi, friends! I’m Susan Quilty and today’s prompt is Wait For It.
Are some phrases kind of ruined by their popularity? Like, ‘let it go’ always conjuring Elsa singing in Frozen? Or ‘who’re gonna call?’ bringing on Ghostbusters jokes? I didn’t think about that when I chose today’s prompt, but partway into writing, I suddenly heard Barney Stinson saying ‘wait for it…’ and was tempted to ditch the prompt and start over.
However, How I Met Your Mother doesn’t own that phrase and it’s been years since the show aired. In fact, there’s already been a spinoff that is also no longer on the air. So, I kept the prompt, and I hope that you can get past that association. Which might have been easier if I didn’t just put that idea in your head… Moving on.
I was not thinking about much when I started this story. If anything, I was loosely thinking about anticipation and how situations, and people, often change when we’re patient enough to give them time to grow. But I had no specific plans, since that’s the process here.
If you’re new, or need a reminder, there’s how Freely Written works: I sit down with a prompt and write whatever comes to mind, with no planning and very little editing. Then I record the story and share it with you.
So, let’s get on to the sharing:
Wait For It
She isn’t grown yet. She’s a child. Maybe a teen but not yet an adult. Mara’s thoughts spin out as she sits quietly on the bus. They weave an intricate, invisible web that hangs around her head like a veil separating her from the other passengers.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Not really. Mara tells herself these things to calm her worries and stoke her compassion. She remembers what it was like to be a teenager. Everything was so important, so dramatic. An unkind word. A whisper across the room. A critical look. It didn’t take much to send teens spiraling into despair.
A question from across the aisle pierced Mara’s veil of thoughts, though she was too preoccupied to process the words.
“What was that?”
“I asked, spouse or child?” the woman repeated with a kind smile. “I know that look on your face. You’re worrying deep about someone. Someone close.”
Mara smiled weakly, finding that she wasn’t bothered by this attempt at small talk the way she usually would be.
“Child,” she answered wearily. “Fifteen.”
“Oh, yeah,” the woman agreed without hearing a single detail. “Fifteen will do that to you!”
The woman shook her head and put a hand to her chest as if holding in her own heartaches.
“She’s a good girl,” Mara corrected quickly. A little primly, she realized as she heard her own crisp tone. Almost a reprimand for whatever the woman had dared to think about her daughter. But the woman wasn’t offended. She simply nodded in agreement.
“Of course she is. They all are. Or most of them. Mine were good kids, too. Didn’t make fifteen easy though. Or sixteen either.”
“Seventeen?” Mara asked hopefully, making up for her earlier tone.
“Well…” the woman hesitates. “Better in some ways. Though it’s all pretty rocky until they’re out on their own.”
Mara nods without asking when that was for her. She stares at the back of the seat in the row ahead of her. The seats are high-backed and upholstered in a soft material. A sort of purple or dusky mauve color that unsettles Mara for unknown reasons.
Mara hasn’t been on a tour bus like this in years. Not since her school trip to Williamsburg in seventh grade. Mara had hated that trip. She was on the outs with her best friend, Tracy, for reasons that were dire at the time and long forgotten now. She’d sat with someone else, maybe Sarah or Janelle, and had tried to look like she was having more fun than Tracy.
She shakes away the memory with a slight shudder.
“We were all young once,” the woman says gently, as if reading Mara’s mind. Mara firmly presses her lips together and the woman tries a different approach.
“So, you’re getting some time for yourself?” When Mara looks at her blankly, she adds, “Atlantic City.”
Mara sighs, remembering that everyone else on this bus is headed to Atlantic City for a fun weekend. They aren’t here to fetch a runaway child.
“Not exactly,” Mara answers uncomfortably.
“Ah,” the woman says knowingly, though Mara is fairly certain she could not know anything about Mara’s situation. “Well, if you want to talk about it, we still have a ways to go.”
“Thank you, but I think I need some time to myself.”
“Of course,” the woman agrees pleasantly but with a hint of sarcasm. “Use the time to think of what to say to her. That’s a good idea.”
“Excuse me?” Mara narrows her eyes. “What does that mean? What do you know about it?”
The woman waves her hand apologetically. “Oh, I don’t know anything. But isn’t that what you’re doing? I know I spent a lot of years imagining fights with my kids.”
“Did it help?” Mara asks, not bothering to deny it.
“Not really,” the woman says. “The real talks never went the way I thought, and the fake fights just riled me up. Better to take a breath and wait for it, I think.”
“Wait for it?”
The woman fishes a container of chocolate chip cookies from her bag and offers Mara one before answering.
“Wait for whatever they’re going to say,” she clarifies before taking a bite. She chews slowly while Mara shakes her head.
“I already know what she’ll say.”
“You think you do,” the woman agrees. “And you might be right, partially. But there’s always something else. Some bit you didn’t expect. And if you don’t wait for it, you may never hear it.”
Mara crosses her arms and shivers, either from the cold or a wave of disappointment. Her voice cracks as she asks, “What if there’s nothing she can say?”
“What do you mean?” the woman’s calm is beginning to annoy Mara.
“I mean, what if she’s done something so awful that nothing she says can explain it?”
“Oh.” The woman leans her head against her seat and thinks about that. “You’re looking for an explanation? Something that will make it make sense?”
“Well, yes.” Mara sounds indignant. Shouldn’t she be looking for an explanation? Doesn’t her daughter owe her that?
The woman turns back to her thoughtfully.
“Did everything make sense when you were fifteen?”
“Well, no, but I never did anything like this!” As the woman cocks her head to one side, Mara remembers that she hasn’t told her the story. The words are on the tip of her tongue, but Mara can’t bring herself to say them.
“Who’s in Atlantic City?” The woman’s question surprises Mara. “Is she visiting friends? Staying with her dad?”
Mara’s eyes widen, then close abruptly, cutting off the threat of tears.
“I’m sorry, the woman says with her hands raised. “It’s none of my business.”
Opening her eyes, Mara watches the woman eat. She has a peculiar way of breaking off small pieces instead of biting directly into her cookie. A napkin on her lap catches any crumbs that might come from the breaking, though the cookie is soft enough that nothing falls.
“No, it’s okay,” Mara says. She takes a deep breath before admitting, “She took my car.”
“Hmm,” the woman nods sympathetically but she shows no sign of shock or outrage. Mara feels her anger rising.
“Did you hear me? She took my car! Stole it while I was in the shower. And she’s fifteen! No license. Just a learner’s permit, which she will be losing when I get there.”
“That’s big,” the woman says kindly, understanding what Mara wants from her but not quite delivering. “A really bad decision.”
“Uh, yeah,” Mara agrees emphatically. “Took my car and I had to take a bus to come get her! All the way to Atlantic City! There’s no excuse.”
“No,” the woman says sadly. “No excuse that makes that right. But I wonder why she did it.”
“Oh, I know why!” Mara’s anger flares, now that the story is out. “We had a fight, and she thinks she can do better living with her dad. Didn’t tell me she was going. Didn’t tell him either. Just disappeared and left me frantic. I had to get a call from him to know where she was. From him!”
“That’s rough.” The woman’s agreement seems genuine, but it still isn’t enough for Mara.
“You don’t know him,” Mara insists. “It’s insane to think he’d let her stay with him. She knows that. But she went anyway. She had to make a point. Had to punish me for being a good mom, for having rules.”
The woman is quiet. Mara takes a breath and realizes what she’s just revealed to a stranger, and to anyone else who might be listening in. Her face flushes, and she bites the inside of her lower lip to keep from saying more.
When the woman stays quiet, Mara shakes her head and mutters, “Wait for it. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear how she tries to get out of this one.”
The woman shifts in her seat and Mara turns to face her. After a moment, their eyes meet. The woman smiles again, kindly.
“Wait for it,” she repeats with care. “Not for the excuse. Wait for her to tell you why she’s hurting. That’s what matters.”
Mara opens her mouth to argue, then stops. Her daughter is hurting. In her rush of fear and anger, she’d missed that piece of the story.
The woman offers the bag of cookies again and Mara takes one. They are an hour from Atlantic City. Plenty of time for Mara to come up with a dozen or more answers for her daughter’s behavior, but she doesn’t.
With great effort, Mara sets it aside. She asks the woman, “Why are you going to Atlantic City?”
And then she listens to the woman’s story, deciding to wait for her daughter’s answer.
The End
Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed that short story. This is another case where I’m reminded how hard it can be to wrap up a story in around ten minutes! Especially without a plan to help with pacing.
As I’ve said before, I definitely prefer having a writing plan and I don’t think I could have written any of my novels without one. Yet, free-writing is a great way to practice creative thinking.
If you want to read some of my more carefully planned writing, you can learn more about my novels on my website: SusanQuilty.com. Links are in the show notes.
Until next time, try a little free writing of your own. Let go of any planning and see where your imagination takes you.
[Light piano music]
