Well, I’m done. I finished revising each of my stories, and I submitted them to my adviser. This project ended up spanning a long period of time. Since I was planning to study abroad in Japan last semester, I actually started working on it in January. Then my program was canceled because of the radiation levels in Japan, and I had even more time to work on my project. I wrote a super-rough draft of each story first, then I went back over each draft and made any changes I thought were necessary. (There were always quite a few.) After that, I sent the drafts to my adviser, Professor Ava Coibion, who read each one and sent it back to me with suggestions. I then revised the stories and submitted them to her again, this time as final drafts.

I enjoyed fleshing out characters who only showed up briefly in some of my stories from my creative writing class and creating new characters with connections to them. I tried to make Silhouette, the town in which my stories occur, feel like a real place, and I hope that I succeeded.

Still, now that I am done, I felt that there are more stories to be told. I can think of at least ten other characters–whether they were only briefly mentioned or played a larger role in this series of short stories–who deserve their own stories. Maybe I’ll revisit Silhouette later and explore the lives of some of its other inhabitants.

I’d like to thank Professor Ava Coibion for all her help on this project. Without her critiques of my rough drafts, I would have ended up with more than a few awkward-sounding bits of dialogue and exposition. I’d also like to thank Elizabeth Neidenbach for answering any questions I had about the project.

I have completed the rough draft of my eighth and final story. This story is told from the point of view of Agatha Laurens. In this story, Agatha is still Stephen’s girlfriend, but in truth, she can hardly stand being in his company, though she doesn’t quite know why. Stephen has taken her on a vacation to Cancun, and during her time there, she has repeated flashbacks about her time spent with Molly. In the first one, she is back in high school, having a conversation with Molly about a boy she likes. The second one takes place at a later time in high school. In it, Agatha introduces Molly to her current boyfriend Nick. Once Nick leaves, Molly brings up the fact that just two weeks ago, Agatha was dating a boy named Johnny. Agatha says that Johnny doesn’t have what she’s looking for in a guy, but when Molly asks what this is, Agatha changes the subject to the spring dance. Molly says that she has no one to go with, even though a few boys have asked her already. Agatha tells her to just pick one and go with him. Molly gets a little bit angry at this, but then apologizes and says that something has been bothering her recently. In the final flashback, Agatha remembers the fight that caused her and Molly to stop talking to each other. Agatha goes to Molly’s studio, and the two of them start talking about their lives. Eventually, Molly ends up questioning the soundness of Agatha’s relationship with Stephen. This sparks an argument that ends with Agatha accusing Molly of wanting her to be just as a alone as Molly is.

At the end of the story, Stephen proposes to Agatha. I don’t say how she responds, but from Stephen’s reaction, it’s pretty obvious that she says yes.

Throughout this story, I wanted to show both Agatha’s capriciousness and Molly’s attraction to her. For example, in the first flashback, Molly questions Agatha about her crush on Bradley Miller. (By the way, he ends up being an orderly in the mental hospital where Ridley is committed.) Agatha is able to offer a few superficial reasons for liking him, but nothing deeper. In the second flashback, the swiftness with which Agatha moves through boyfriends is brought up. In the final flashback, Molly asks Agatha what she likes about Stephen. Once again, Agatha is able to come up with some superficial things, but nothing beyond those.

As for Molly, her critical attitude toward Agatha’s dating behavior, while partially motivated by concern for her friend, is also motivated by jealousy. In the first flashback, she jokingly says to Agatha in an exaggerated Southern accent, “Miz Laurens, if you was mah lovah, you could lay in bed an’ eat buttahscotch candies all day.” It’s the kind of thing a friend might jokingly say to another friend, but in this case, it also holds a hint of sincerity. At the end of this flashback, Molly shows Agatha a sketch that she did of her. When Agatha tells her that it’s great, Molly responds, “Not just great, dummy. It’s beautiful.” And of course, in the second flashback, the thing that has been bothering Molly is the question of her own sexuality.

In the original draft of this story that I wrote for my creative writing class, Stephen (who was then unnamed), was an overly idealized boyfriend. He was handsome, supportive, and made a lot of money, and any faults he might have had were never brought up. In this draft, I have Agatha mention some of his flaws to Molly. For example, he’s boring, he snores, and he can be condescending sometimes. I thought this would make Stephen a little more realistic.

On a slightly related note, I decided to remove the line in Stephen’s story about Agatha having cheated on him. On an unrelated note, if I ever said that Annapolis Patch ran away from home after Honolulu’s death, I’ve since changed that.

Now that I have finished the rough drafts of all of my stories, I have to revise each of them. It’s going to be a grind, but I think I can manage it.

My seventh story is told from the point of view of Stephen Applegate, the ex-husband of Agatha Laurens, who was the best friend and secret crush of Molly Huang. In this story, Stephen briefly returns to Oasis, the city where he was born. There he meets Richmond Patch, who has been reduced to begging on the street. After Richmond saves him from a mugger, the two men have a short conversation in which Richmond reveals that he is from Silhouette and is trying to get back there. Stephen offers to give him a ride as a show of gratitude. On the way back, they tell each other their stories. Richmond tells Stephen about his fight with his mother and his decision to run away from home. He explains that he went from town to town for years, picking up low-paying jobs and staying in bad apartments before moving on. After a while, he ended up in Oasis, where he couldn’t find a  job and ended up becoming a bum. Stephen tells Richmond about how he met Agatha in college and eventually married her, only to have her divorce him and reveal that she’d been cheating on him years later.

Finally, they arrive at the Patch household, where Miami is sitting on the porch, writing poetry. When Richmond approaches her, she punches him in the face, yells at him for abandoning the family, and tells him to leave. Just to grind salt into the wounds, she shows him Colt and calls him Richmond’s “replacement.” Just as Richmond is about to leave, his mother shows up at the door and runs out to hug him. Richmond decides to return to the family. The story ends with Stephen driving off, smiling.

I decided to tell this story from Stephen’s point of view because I wanted it to be told from the point of view of someone unfamiliar with the Patches. I also wanted to show what happened to Agatha’s marriage. (By the way, I’ll be doing her story next.)

I decided that Stephen went to the same private school that Miami attends: Green Lake High. This was mainly just to show continuity, but I also figured that a town like Silhouette wouldn’t have many private schools.

Originally, this story was going to have a much more depressing ending. It was going to end right after Miami chews Richmond out, with Richmond coming back to Stephen’s car and leaving. But then I decided that I wanted the end of this story to offer some hope for Stephen, who is currently depressed because his divorce has just been finalized, as well as for the reader.