Wednesday, 16 January 2019

Extract from 'Girl on Wheels'


Jodie's Chariot
Hi, it's me, Jodie. Well, that's how I start my tweets (Rachel showed me how) so that's how I'll start the book. Almost thirty words already. Don't get it right, get it written, that's what Karen said and I always do what teacher tells me. Quite often, anyway. See, fifty words now.
 Let's get the jargon out of the way first, shall we? Then you can decide if it's worth your while to read on. OK? Right. I'm 28 years old, IC3, T10-L1, 1.45m tall, 62kg. heavy. M.Sc., demographic class C2, favourite vehicle is my custom built 6kg racing chair, and I play rugby to relax. Let's move on.
 One hundred and nine words, and you already know a fair bit about me. I reckon I can finish this book in under a thousand words. Fifteen hundred tops. That photo of me on the front cover? Yes, a bit out of date. I don't like any that's been taken of me since then. Twenty-one years ago and I loved life.  Didn't  know that, of course, I just got on with it. School was good; I loved hearing stories and poems. I liked games and swimming - we all learned to swim. Then it all went wrong: mum died. She'd been too busy to go to the doctor about the pains in her chest. Then she dropped dead. Just collapsed and died. Gone. I was sitting at the kitchen table and she was fetching my dinner from the microwave. She sort of gasped, looked at me, tried to speak. I sat there, thought it was some kind of joke for a moment. I grabbed the phone and called 999. I tried to turn her over into the recovery position - we'd learned about that in school - tried the kiss of life and the paramedics had to drag me off her. I ran. That was all I could do. Just ran and ran and ran. The police found me - that was where I first heard the IC3 bit.

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