I have no idea why I never thought to dig this one out until now. It's the biggest piece of hilarious garbage I ever produced in my life.

I'm serious. I don't know where to begin. I never titled this poor piece of trash, and it has no logical plot, either. This thing happens. Then this happens. Then this. Then I forgot this character existed and accidentally ignored them for 70 pages, so I just pretended they died a mysterious death. And the main character was like American Gladiator: Mentally Ill Child Edition. Seriously. I wrote it for two years and hit 277 pages of nothingness before my 13-year-old self wised up.

It's just....so bad, it's good.
Let's dive on in shall we?

(As always, original spellings)
---------------------------
The early spring morning was still and sielent, except for the rustling of wind in the tall grass and the faint buzz of distant honeybees. Thick fog was slowly fading away, burning off in the rising sun. The dirt road was free of traffic, as if there ever was any. (Y'all I just can't.) "I'm probably the only one awake in this podunk town," Jenna thought.

She dropped her jacket and backpack and stood with her toes on a crack in the sidewalk. "Three...two...one....go!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, and took off.

What follows is an agonizingly long sequence of Jenna's American Gladiator morning run. I do not feel like typing it all out.

Anyway, she runs a mile in seven and a half minutes. Whoop de doo. Then she hears the "moter" of the school bus and has to hustle.

Jenna began running again, this time back in the direction where she started. If she took the shortcut across the creekbed, she just might make it in time. But than there were the pit bulls to consider...

She didn't have time to ponder the possibilities of what might happen. She jumped over the creek, just narrowly avoiding falling in. The pit bull rescue came into sight, along with dozens of snarls and growls and sharp teeth. "They're chained up," Jenna said out loud, trying to console herself as she made a fist. "They're chained. It's fine."

I've never in my life heard of a "rescue" that chains up dogs.

FYI I do not have pit bull prejudice, this is actually a character flaw Jenna overcomes later. So yay. Character development.

Just the same she hurried on. It wasn't much further until she got home. The bus was probably almost at her stop, and there was no way it would wait on her.

By now Jenna's lungs were screaming at her to stop, but she struggled to ignore them. Her street was now visible, and so was a leaving bus. (What beautiful imagery. A "leaving bus.") She jumped over a fallen tree downed by termites, ran to her yard, grabbed her book bag and jacket, and turned around, all in one swift movement. Than she pounded after the bus, kicking up red dirt.

The bus slowed to a stop as Jenna neared it, panting and stumbling. The doors opened and Jenna heard the laughter of all the other kids, but the driver just said, "you're a little late, aren't you?"

Can it, geezer, Jenna thought, waiting for him to say more. He jerked his thumb twords the seats, and she sat down, breathless and lightheaded.

"Hey Jenna!" yelled an all-too-familiar voice. "So, shapin' up your legs, huh, stick girl?"

"They're already like toothpicks," another boy jeered.

(This was a game my brother and I regularly played with our stuffed animals. School bus bullies. But given that we were respectively 9 and 11-year-old homeschoolers, we didn't know a real insult to save our lives.)

"SHUTTUP!" Jenna exclaimed, ready to punch someone. "Shuttup, Wayne! Shuttup, Marley!" (This was my actual spelling of shut up.)

Wayne Henderson stretched back, his feet a hair's length from Jenna's face. "Soooo, stick girl, how fast did you run today?"

"It's none of your business," Jenna snapped. "And get your stupid feet outta my face."

Wayne moved only slightly. "You're so slow, I bet if you were racing a turtle the turtle would win."

"At least I'm not as fat as one like you!" Jenna fumed.

????

This goes on longer than it reasonably should. Anyway, Jenna has a miserable day in middle school except for her one bright spot, her best friend Andrew, who is overweight with curly black hair and big black eyes. His appearance and personality were directly based off my fifth grade best friend who I moved away from. Anyway, after school Jenna runs imaginary races because she's weird, while Andrew times her. Then Jenna heads home.

As soon as she pushed through the door, the kids she couldn't stand swarmed around her, asking questions a mile a minute.

"Did Wayne and Marley beat you up?"

"Did YOU beat THEM up?"

"Can I time your races today?"

"Okay, okay!" Jenna yelled. She pushed through them all.

Zachary, her real brother, sat at the kitchen table doing his second grade reading homework in a black notebook covered in cat stickers. Jenna sat across from him and opened her binder.

"Have a good run today?" Zachary asked, gnawing on his pencil.

"A mile in seven and a half minutes," Jenna announced triumphantly.

Zachary's gentle green eyes widened. "Is that Olympics-fast?"

Jenna shook her head and smiled. Only Zachary could make her smile. "Not quite."

Miss Cosby, the fat foster home lady, passed through the kitchen just then. "Good, you're both doing homework," she said, marching up the old, creaky steps.

"I dunno why you make us do it now. It don't make sense to do it now. We have all weekend," Jenna yelled.

After homework, Jenna helped Miss Cosby make dinner and then put the kids to bed. Besides Zachary, there were ten of them. Jenna didn't even remember all there names. She did know Annabelle, who was the bossiest kid on the planet. Jenna wanted to punch her often. Becca was six and annoyingly obsessed with romance and weddings. Michael was nine and would have been decent company, but he was an inventor and once blew up his bedroom trying to fix a car motor in under ten minutes.

As Jenna was climbing into her own bed, Zachary slid under the covers with her. "Can you please tell me about Mom?" he whispered.

Jenna groaned. "Not tonight."

"Please?" her brother pleaded. "You haven't talked about her in ages."

Jenna rolled over to face the wall. "No."

"Oh, c'mon!" He wasn't whispering anymore. "Just this one night."

Jenna thought about his sad green eyes. "Which story do you want?"

They whispered together all night long. About camping trips in North Carolina, about their mother's pony, about getting lost in Kentucky, about their dad saving Zachary from drowning in a lake. Jenna told stories until birds began chirping and the first rays of sunlight appeared on the horizin. Then they both fell asleep.

So that's the first two chapters of this hot mess and we haven't gotten to the good stuff yet. You can't even imagine what's coming.

Up next: Jenna's sobfest of a backstory.

And honestly, she was, in a way, a really well-developed character to come out of my pathetic 11-year-old skills. She was just....so dang weird. The running obsession, the way she jumps over everything, threatening to beat everyone up and never doing it. I'm serious, she's mentally ill. You'll see what I mean later on. There's probably stuff I don't even remember. We'll find out together.