The Invention of a Character

            I do this often, simply for practice. I begin with one line and go from there, never knowing for sure where my writing will take me.

It was the first day of autumn and Casey knew it was time. She had been preparing for this change all summer. It had taken her only seconds to make the decision, but she knew the timing had to be perfect. She was leaving her home, if one could consider it that, on her own, with no clear destination. Casey was sixteen.

Home . . . what a ridiculous concept that was, at least in Casey’s world. Home, for most people, conjured images of warmth, security, and love. Home evoked the impressions of kitchens filled with the smell of freshly baked, chocolate chip cookies or crisp, clean linens, smelling of soap, and folded with perfection; home was lacey, Valentine hearts pasted onto doilies, Easter eggs died in rainbow colors, Halloween jack-o-lanterns glowing on a wide, front porch, and Christmas trees laden with tinsel and filling a parlor with a rich, evergreen scent. Home was Mother, Father, and a baby brother. Home was the perfect place to be.

Wishful thinking. For Casey such an existence was a fantasy, a make-believe world created by novelists. It was not her reality. She had lived her entire life in the Elmwood Meadow Children’s Facility sixty miles west of Philadelphia, in the heart of nowhere. From the moment she had arrived, an infant swaddled in a plastic trashcan liner, she had been alone, a tiny baby who grew into adolescence existing in a cold and loveless environment. This day, she would change all that. She would, for she was Casey, a mirror to the seasons.

And where will Casey go? She might slip into a novel some day and I’ll find out.