Balancing Act

Lesson Eight/Final Assignment

Get inspired by the prompt below and write a story either by using the pantsing technique or the plotting technique, whichever you prefer. Keep your stories below 1000 words.

Prompt: Write about a moment when someone catches a lucky break

Word count: 962

Melanie dangled by her fingertips, the ground far enough below her she really didn’t want to let go. A pigeon scratched at the concrete ledge a few feet away and she winced, imagining its sharp beak pecking at her knuckles. One of her sandals dropped, rebounding off a canvas awning before slapping onto the sidewalk. A fast-moving businessman stepped over it without breaking stride.

She wouldn’t last long out here. Already, her sweaty hands slid on the dusty ledge. Melanie flexed, trying to pull herself up, and caught a nasty gust of crosswind. She sank back to dangling down, tears trickling from her reddened eyes.

Could they see up her skirt?

The pigeon cocked its head her way and stepped closer. Melanie didn’t like the speculative shine in its eye. Another stiff breeze swept over her, raising gooseflesh; the bright afternoon sun helped keep her from shivering, but four stories up on the outside of a building was no place to get a tan. Ending up hanging from a window ledge was just the sort of thing Melanie did. It had all started with an argument.

“What do you mean, you gave him my wallet?”

Jay, her manager—okay, her pimp—had been auditioning a new girl in the second bedroom when the pizza delivery guy knocked on the door. Melanie never learned how to read, so when he told her the total she handed him Jay’s billfold to count out the money himself. The delivery guy left after handing Melanie the warm boxes of pizza pies and she didn’t even notice he’d kept the entire wallet until Jay opened the bedroom door, zipping his pants. She’d thought his face was flushed already, but when he found out about the money he turned purple. Melanie laughed before she realized it.

“Mel, go get him back. Right now.”

When Jay turned cold, when he spoke all calm, that’s when Melanie knew she was in big trouble. Jay hit harder when he was quiet. Her throat suddenly dry, she nodded and ran to the elevator down the hall, but she was too late. He was gone. And she couldn’t follow him; these elevators took forever. She knew she didn’t want to go back to Jay’s, but her stuff was in there. She couldn’t go anywhere without her stuff. Crap.

One of the apartment doors next to her opened, and Mr. Crabbitz leaned out, his beak of a nose pinker than the rest of his face.

“Hey, doll. You okay?” His voice was pitched high and sharp, like a parrot’s.

Melanie wanted to say she was fine, but she wasn’t. She wanted to nod, but started crying instead. She always was a pretty crier. Her blue eyes glistened, her full bottom lip quivered. She wrung her hands and sniffled, turning her gaze to Mr. Crabbitz.

“Oh, dear. Come in, come in.”

She entered, his tiny hands patting and kneading her shoulders, and noticed Mr. Crabbitz had very large windows. She moved closer to the panes and an idea bloomed behind her limpid blues. An actual plan formed, and that just didn’t happen very often to Melanie.

Minutes later, she dangled from the crumbling remnants of her grand plan. Melanie had thought the ledge looked wide enough. She had figured she could stroll down a few dozen feet, slip into one of Jay’s bedroom windows and grab her stuff, and dart back down to nice Mr. Crabbitz’s before anyone even noticed.

The pigeon flapped its wings at her, the musty draft making Melanie gag. She hated birds. It lifted into the air, hovering over her head and creating a whirlwind that mussed her hair and tossed grit into her eyes. Her fingers slipped a few more centimeters and Melanie shrieked. Four stories was a long way to drop, and she’d break something for sure. The pigeon flapped off, leaving her to face gravity by herself. Her nose itched.

Just before the sneeze came Melanie clapped her hands over her nose and mouth to capture it, not realizing until it was too late she was in freefall. Screaming, she plummeted several feet, arms and legs splayed like a frantic sky jumper, and the people below stopped in their tracks, their mouths gaping wide. Melanie was close to fainting, her breath thick in her chest, and her limbs relaxed. Her body naturally curled into itself, a protective huddle of flesh and bone and fluffy blonde hair hurtling toward the concrete, and as she careened closer another gust blew through and guided her every so slightly toward the canvas awning her shoe had collided with moments earlier. She collided with as much finesse, her skirt bunched around her hips, her remaining shoe flying off to pelt a passerby. She broke through the fabric to land in a bin of bananas outside the grocery on the corner. Pulped fruit flew, the grocer babbled and pulled at his thinning hair as he rushed to the slender girl’s aid. Melanie lay in a bed of banana, blissfully unconscious of both the spectacle and her freshly broken arm.

As the gathering crowd realized just how lucky Melanie had been, their voices growing louder with excitement as they related their own versions of the event to each other while they waited for the ambulance, a lone pigeon fluttered down to land on the slackened girl’s shoulder. It gripped the fabric of her shirt with its filthy claws, tilting its head down to examine her with beady intent, and then tugged a beakful of hairs from her head. It launched back into the air, winging above the spectators’ heads with the grace of a hippo flopping in thigh-high river water, and rose to its perch on the neighboring building, on a ledge under a window.