Meredith Scribbles

The past few weeks, I have had the worst writer’s block. I haven’t wanted to write any of the scenes I need to work on in my novel, Street Survivors, and I was wondering how I was ever going to find inspiration in the middle of substitute teaching, packing for Oxford, and preparing to spend a summer abroad. I was grading student papers for my English classes when suddenly I saw one of my characters, Roman Cornell, standing in a back alley with a gun in his hand. The image surprised me for several reasons. First of all, Roman isn’t in Street Survivors. Though he’s mentioned by his sister, Ellianna, he doesn’t appear until its sequel, Burning Heart. Yet here he was.

A second surprise was to see him fighting on the ground. Roman is a fighter pilot, and all of his fighting typically takes place in the sky. He’s ruthless in the air, and he’s done more than enough damage to his enemies in dog fights, but it all takes place in a cockpit. Something about not seeing the light die in his enemies’ eyes as he kills them somehow seems to protect his innocence. To see him now, standing over a body that he killed in cold blood was startling.

That was what surprised me the most—he killed someone. He didn’t have to in any of my current plot lines, so I never considered it before. It hurt me to see him do it. I knew that if he did, he wouldn’t be the same. Though many of my characters are funny, witty, or sarcastic, Roman was the ultimate goofball: Enneagram seven, ride-or-die rebel, Maverick-esque pilot, protective older brother, and dedicated visionary, Roman was both Fred and George Weasley in my story. So I started to wonder: was Roman capable of killing someone if it meant protecting his sister? What if she was there? Could he do it in front of her? How would it affect him?

I didn’t know. I wanted to find out.

Instead of writing about my main character, Kelcey, I switched gears, if only to put words on paper again. The only appearance Roman makes in Street Survivors is when Elli mentions to Kelcey that she used to travel on the streets with her brother, but that it got too dangerous, and he dropped her off at the orphanage to protect her. I figured this was the too dangerous moment she was mentioning, and I decided to explore it. After writing the scene three different ways, I realized I didn’t want Roman to kill anyone. I knew that he could do it, and he would do it in a heartbeat if Elli was in danger, but I wouldn’t make him. He would carry it with him for the rest of his life.

Instead, I brought back another character from Burning Heart to pull the trigger, deleted the dead body, and focused on the fear element. No one had to die for Roman to realize how serious his situation is and that he can’t keep Elli with him if he wants to keep her safe. What resulted is the scene I have now. Even though it won’t make it into the final manuscript, I wanted to post it, not only to show that I have, in fact, been writing, but because it gives a deeper glimpse into his character besides the arrogant, flirty, practical jokester seen in Burning Heart.

Without further ado, a deleted scene from a young Ellianna Cornell’s perspective. Enjoy!

Elli fiddled with the ends of her dark hair. The strands were fraying and jagged but somehow running her fingers through the split ends calmed her. She looked up at her brother walking beside her. For other siblings, four years apart might not have seemed like a significant difference, but as the only family she had left, his status hovered somewhere in the nuance between brother and father. No one would have guessed he was fifteen from the way he walked tonight, muscles tensed with his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears.

Roman had never brought her with him on business before. When he said he had to be somewhere, he’d normally leave her perched on tenement fire escapes or curled up behind trash bins in a back alley. The waiting was the worst part though, sitting hour after hour not knowing what he was doing, left to wonder if and when he would return. Elli knew it was safer for both of them if she didn’t ask questions about his business, but after months of nail-biting waiting, she couldn’t stand being left behind one more time. Finally she’d begged him enough for him to let her come along. If, he had emphasized, she promised to keep out of sight.

Roman’s cap, typically worn backward so casually, was turned so that the brim shaded his face. Most days his dark curls fell close to his shoulders, but tonight he’d pulled them back in a ponytail and stuffed them beneath the hat.

Elli looked up at him, trying to read the apprehension she sensed in his gaze. “Are we okay?”

He couldn’t seem to muster an attempt at reassurance. He just reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Just stay where I tell you. But you have to promise to stay hidden. We could be waiting for hours, but no matter how tired you get, you can’t make a sound. Understand?”

Elli nodded. She didn’t mind waiting as long as she knew her brother was in sight.

The faintest of smiles rose on his face, more like a blink of relief that let the muscles in his face relax for the briefest moment. “Good.”

She followed her brother down the alley to an intersecting street jumbled with pallets and crates scattered in piled heaps. Roman gestured to the boxes. “You can hide behind these.”

Lowering a hand to the ground as she crouched, Elli brushed the dirt from below her before sitting down on the cracked pavement. She hugged her legs to her chest as

Roman built the crates up around her, shielding her from sight. Before he laid the last pallet over her head, his worried eyes met hers. His black irises glinted in the dim light as he raised an unnecessary finger to his lips.

Shh.

He didn’t have to tell her. She knew it already, but his anxiety was so visible, she didn’t say anything. Then the pallet closed over her head, and Roman was gone. His footsteps faded. Shifting her head, she pressed her eye to a slit in the nearest crate, searching for a glimpse of her brother. He was lounging against the wall of the building across from the corner. She watched him pull a lighter from his pocket and hold it to the butt of a cigarette.

Roman doesn’t smoke.

Battling her surprise, she kept silent as he held it lightly between his fingers. The embers glowed at the end of the rolled paper, but he didn’t raise it to his lips, only rested it lightly against his jaw as if about to take a draw. He never did. He just waited, second after second like someone waiting for the world to end.

Finally he stood up, uncrossing his legs and lowering the cigarette. A figure in a leather jacket stepped into Elli’s line of sight, framed in the screen of the crate-slit cinema.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

The man stopped five feet away. “Have I ever left you hanging?” Shadows hid his face, but gel spiked his tall hair straight up, and his voice carried a strange brogue she didn’t recognize. He asked, “Were you followed?”

“No. You?”

The man shook his head.

“I heard you sell cigarettes.” Roman dropped his to the pavement and ground it into the street below his shoe.

“Not personally, but I just crossed paths with someone who carries them for a reasonable price.” The man’s voice sounded light, but there seemed to be something unspoken in his words as he said, “If you like, I could connect you with him.”

“I may have to take you up on that.”

Elli tried not to squirm. Her legs were already burning, and her toes tingled as circulation drained from her feet. She forced herself to keep still.

The man with spikey hair stepped closer to her brother. She could barely catch his words from the distance, but she could hear his quiet urgency as he whispered, “There’s a man in Chiangrad offering a pack for two hundred papers. I would take the deal while it still stands. Can you secure several packages?”

A hundred papers? For a pack of cigarettes? Elli knew prices were rising, but she’d stood outside the liquor stores on the corner, and she’d never seen a pack go for more than fifteen.

She heard Roman snatch a shallow breath. “I’ll do it.”

Spikey-Hair nodded. “I’ll let him know you’ll be in touch.”

Pins and needles pierced Elli’s legs. She turned away from the slit in the crate and tried to readjust her weight. It didn’t help. There was no room to move. She sucked in a breath through her teeth. Swallowing down the pain, she looked back at her brother as she tapped her feet lightly, trying to bring back feeling. Her foot knocked one of the crates.

The pile rattled.

She gasped. Through the slit she saw Roman’s head shoot up. Spikey-Hair’s hand shot under his jacket.

Roman reached forward. “Wait, don’t—”

A loud bang cut through the night. The crate above her splintered, showering splinters of wood shavings down on her head. She closed her eyes against the particles of sawdust and covered her head with her hands as she tried to stop her body from shaking.

Distantly she heard Roman shouting, “Stop, stop, it’s my sister!”

The silence was heavier than the air. Elli slowly opened her eyes.

Spikey-Hair held a gun in both hands. His arms were tense as if it took all of his strength to point it at the ground. “You brought the kid! We schedule a rendezvous, and you brought the—”

“The patrols are getting worse, I couldn’t leave her behind—”

“So you brought a kid to . . .” He dropped a hand from his gun and ran it across his forehead.

Elli had never seen Roman so upset. His face trembled with an emotion she didn’t recognize, something between anger and fear. “You didn’t even see who it was. You just fired! It could have been a rat, or—

“Or a trooper or a spy or just an ordinary person who reports to the authorities, and then the bullet’s in your chest, Roman!” He lowered the gun and replaced it in his holster. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Roman was already walking toward her hiding place. Even with the shadows, Elli saw his face darken. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Spikey-Hair called after him, “You’re right. It’s not a conversation. Just a choice.”

“I’m not choosing—”

“You’re either in or you’re out! There’s no in between.”

Roman just kept walking. By the time Roman lifted the shard remains of the crate off the top of the pile and looked down at her, the man with the spikey hair was gone.

“I’m so sorry.” His lips formed the words, but no sound reached Elli’s ears. He reached down and lifted her into his arms. He didn’t usually carry her, but she curled up against his chest and tried to focus on the sound of his heart pounding and not the fact that if she had been any taller, it would have been her and not the crate blown into bits.

Roman must have been thinking about it though. She was only eleven, and she didn’t weigh much to begin with, but she could feel his arms were shaking as he walked.

“What are you going to choose?” she whispered.

“You, Elli.” He buried his face against the top of her head. “I always choose you.”

It was true. He put her first—he always did—but she didn’t like how pinched his voice was. “What does that mean?”

He swallowed. “It means I love you, Elli. And I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

She should have asked him to be more specific.

She would have chosen from a list of anythings.

Anything but being left behind.