She gasps softly. “Oh my God. He plays football, doesn’t he?”
Before I can answer her, Professor Stephenson strolls into the room with a stack of papers under one arm and a coffee in the other hand. “Good morning, everyone,” he says with a bright smile, his eyes twinkling from behind his glasses.
Stevie makes a very small sound beside me before greeting him along with the rest of the class. After placing his papers down, he shrugs off his jacket to reveal a dark navy button-down with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Stevie nudges my foot, but I ignore her.
“Before I give you the first assignment,” he says, “I want to ask you something.” He perches on the edge of the desk and folds hisarms before scanning the room. “What’s the hardest thing to do in fiction?”
“Endings,” someone says immediately.
“Dialogue,” another person groans.
“Writing men,” Stevie mutters under her breath.
Professor Stephenson laughs softly. “All good answers, but I’d argue the hardest thing is restraint. Most writers overwrite because they don’t trust the reader to feel what’s underneath the scene.” He takes a sip of coffee. “So this week, we’re practicing control.”
A collective sigh fills the room.
“Your assignment is to write a scene where every sentence begins with the same letter.”
“Oh, that’s sick,” Stevie says beside me.
“You’ll hate me halfway through it,” he replies. “But limitations force creativity. You stop relying on instinct and start paying attention to every single sentence.”
A guy near the front raises his hand. “Do we get to choose the letter?”
“Yes. And choose wisely. Some are much harder than others.”
Stevie immediately opens her notebook. “I’m doing ‘S’ because it sounds sexy.” She shakes her shoulders to emphasize her point.
“That tracks,” I mumble.
“What are you picking?” she asks.
I stare down at the blank page on my laptop; my thoughts still half stuck in the conversation I’d just been having outside class. Without really thinking about it, my fingers tap against the keyboard.
Z.
I don’t even realize I’ve written it until Stevie leans over.
“Psychopath choice,” she whispers.
My fingers hover over the keyboard, and the blank page glares at me as I start to think about what I’m going to write.
Clicking keyboard keys fill the air while my hands stay still. Even Stevie is writing away as though writing the truth is the easiest thing to do.
What kind of assignment even is this? Every sentence starting with the same letter? It sounds less like creative writing and more like psychological warfare.
Click. Click. Click-click-click.
Everyone else is working while I’m stuck staring at a blinking cursor and a single stupid letter.
Z.
Just write, Honey. It’s not that hard.
I inhale slowly and start typing.
Zero chances existed of her going back once she left.
