"Lawrence" Launched

First words of the novelization of popular short story "Lawrence" written yesterday—the dread Barrier of the Blank Screen, demolished. To good effect, I hope ...

Aliens.

The two sibs with the yellow–flecked, blue–green, almond/olive–shaped eyes and the smooth skin that was not Chen–yellow, Chavez–brown, Marino–dusk, or Chapman–pale, but a distinctly original blend of them all, with Walkingstick–red in the cheekbones .

Not illegal aliens, they didn’t meant that—at least, not in the lower grades—but Area 51. That Laurie’s head was egg–wide at the top didn’t help. Nor did it help that he widened his almond/olive–shaped, yellow–flecked, blue–green eyes in wonder at the everything that everyone else thought wondrous, and at many things that no one did.

The Flying Saucer Incident was no help either, establishing the boy as Room 2’s sacrificial oddball on his first day of kindergarten. This despite his big sister’s determined preparations to ease her little brother’s entry to school.

It was Mercy who had walked Laurie to school that first day. This seemed to parents and girl alike as a duty befitting a third grader long accustomed to being fawned over as precocious. In fact, the girl had skipped second grade, ...

Dec. 6, 2012