Write Before Your Eyes Read Free Page A

crackled faintly in the deepening dusk.
    Dylan looked unconvinced. “Don’t get me wrong, Gracie, this could have world-shattering potential. And nobody is more willing to suspend disbelief than me. But any of these things could have happened anyway.”
    “I know,” she said. “But what about your khaki shorts?”
    “I wear khaki shorts every day. You have to write something really out there, like ‘An enormous chocolate bar fell out of the sky and landed in Gracie’s lap,’ or ‘And then there was world peace.’”
    Gracie thought that over. “That would be cool, if I wrote about world peace, and all over the world every battle came to a screeching halt. People just dropped their guns and grenades and started, you know, asking each other what kind of music they liked.” She and Dylan watched the sun drop behind indigo clouds on the horizon, rimming them in orange, pink, purple, and gold. They seemed to be suspended in a glowing moment when everything was possible. Gracie was afraid to write down the world peace thing, though. What were the chances it would happen? And then the magic would be over. Little things were safer.
    “Hey, I know. You could try writing that Lindsay Jacobs kissed Dylan McWilliams after school on Thursday.” Dylan smiled, raised his eyebrows wickedly, and checked his watch. “That’s tomorrow, right?”
    Gracie took out her pen as if she were going to take notes. “Any particular location you’d prefer?”
    “Hmmm. The old love seat they keep backstage in the auditorium would be nice. But I’m not picky.”
    “Well, that’s generous of you. That gives fate plenty of leeway.” Gracie held the pen over the page, but didn’t write.
    “Seriously, write something now,” Dylan said, pulling his knees to his chin. “I want to see it work.”
    “Okay. I started this sentence right here. I was going to write about a fuchsia elephant. That’s weird enough, huh?” She showed Dylan the place.
    “Okay. Go ahead.” He nodded.
    Then, carefully forming the letters, she finished the sentence:
    A fuschia elephant appeared on the horizon.
    “It’s
f-u-c-h-s-i-a
.” Dylan pointed to her cursive.
    “It’s so boring hanging out with a genius.” She made the correction and shut the journal. They sat looking at each other, not breathing. What if nothing happened?
    Pounding footsteps approached.
    But not elephant footsteps. Those of a person.
    They turned as one to watch a guy run by. An ordinary college student, out for a run. Wearing a yellow T-shirt featuring a wildlife preserve. With a fuchsia elephant on the front.
    Gracie grabbed Dylan’s shoulder. “His T-shirt!”
    “I saw it!”
    Gracie stared after the runner, then back at Dylan. The hairs stood up on her arms and the back of her neck. It hadn’t been a real elephant, but still, what she’d written in the journal had come true.
    “Dylan! What do I do?”
    “Try another one.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know, let me think.” Dylan jumped up from the bench and paced the walkway, waving his arms in his excitement, as if he were throwing confetti. “Okay…see if you can make something from a fantasy real. Like…Frodo Baggins came to Chesterville. Oh, man, we can’t do that to Frodo after all he’s already been through. How about ‘The Cheshire cat came to Chesterville’?” He laughed. “It sounds like a bad movie sequel.”
    “Okay, fine.” Gracie wrote a bit more quickly this time:
    The Cheshire cat came to Chesterville.
    She and Dylan remained stock-still, barely breathing, waiting for it to happen. Gracie scanned the darkening trees for glowing eyes.
    “No!” Dylan said suddenly. “Erase that!”
    “Why?”
    “Because I changed my mind. I mean it, Gracie, please humor me and write the thing about me and Lindsay Jacobs. I feel as though I should strike while the iron is hot.”
    “Lucky for you I have a pen eraser.” Gracie went over and over the line with the crumbly white eraser until she’d