Looking for Sam's hero. Growing

During our time under "house arrest", I decided to see if I could help my wife.

She has been working off and on for more than a decade on her novel, so during this quarantine is the perfect time to try and get it published. While it's finished enough to send to an agent, we realize it still needs to be tweaked. But I think it's time.

So if anyone in my LinkedIn community is in the publishing field, or knows someone, or knows a friend of a friend... we'd really like to hear from you. First, let me give you a bit of a synopsis she wrote:

Growing is a coming of age story about differences and about falling perilously in love. It raises provoking questions about how people outside of the mainstream are perceived and treated. We watch a relationship develop between Sam, a brilliant loner who struggles every minute to maintain the happy state he values, and Christine, a sometimes-schemer, sometimes-dreamer, who is fixated on discovering her own bliss amidst self-imposed expectations she creates for herself and her friends. Loving Sam is easy, but living with him, depending upon him, building a life with him seems unfathomable and to Sam, heart-wrenching. 

The story is written from the points of view of both Sam and Christine and includes vivid snatches of life that Sam’s brain subconsciously captures as Movie Memories. Through conversation and Movie Memories we learn Sam’s scary truth about plums and why people blank as well as tender stories that introduce us to Sam’s non-people friends like Rooster and Shiny Bouncy Thing and his parents, siblings and buddy, Mark.

We first meet Sam sitting on a granite slab sculpture in the engineering quad on a university campus. After two years of trying to get Sam to notice her, when he finally does Christine quickly scrambles onto the rock. At her prompting, Sam shares vivid stories that explain his peculiar way of being in the world. There are mutual sparks. 

They meet again and again, and each time is more complicated. Sam lives by a detailed schedule that he makes every Sunday. He does everything that’s on the schedule because it only includes things that matter to him. For three years, his classes, lab work, music, running, rollerblading, and Sundays with the Shazam Brigade have kept him in happy. 

Sam’s constant state of happy, despite his inability to fit in, intrigues Christine, and Sam discovers that telling Christine his life stories is nothing at all like telling them to family or medical-systems people. Sam’s brain has a proclivity to subconsciously create realistic imaging that links to people he loves, so Sam knows, very early in their relationship, that what he feels for Christine is real. 

The linking and chaining that his mind generates become progressively stronger and increasingly dangerous. As Sam learns about dating, kissing, and reciprocal conversations, his happy becomes increasingly dependent upon Christine yet he refuses to tell her about the physical pain that the images bring on every time they part, even when she issues her ultimatum -- Do you want easy or do you want remarkable? 

Miserable and confused, Christine backs away just as Sam urgently needs the relationship to move ahead. Jealousy stemming from Sam’s new friend Lulu brings Christine back, only to be parted again by her own sneaky betrayal that began with lying to his family to gather backstory about Sam for a play she was writing. When the play is selected to be performed on campus, Christine finally shows it to Sam. He’s furious and now believes that their entire relationship had been a farce, avoiding contact until he learns that Christine needs help with her play that only he can provide. The story ends with “spinning” cast members, multiple curtain calls, and a tender kiss that alludes to a promise of kisses to come. 

Backstory:

Sam’s voice emerged during a creative writing class; colleagues found him compelling. Short stories became chapters, plays, and now this book manuscript (100,815 words, 365 pages). Sam and his family and friends are all fictional characters, but the most profound experiences and some of the touching stories illustrated in this novel came from real truths that I observed or that had been told to me by people who live under labels. When I introduced Sam and Christine to an audience in the form of a one-act play—the audience snickered and chuckled in places where they connected. Guilty chuckles, I call them, because really, just how normal is any one of us? 

Thank you for taking the time to read about my story. I welcome your feedback.

We've also attached the first ten pages below. If you are intrigued, we'd be thrilled to send you more!

Chapter 1: She Climbs Onto 180

Sam

           When she begins to slip, I don’t think about the fingers or the skin I had never touched before, I just reach down. She grasps my outstretched hand before I can pull it back. She’s now sitting beside me, with twined fingers in her lap. 

           Eventually I hear,

           “So Sam, how about it? What makes you tick?” 

Too large. The scope of the question is too large. I’m primed to bolt, but I’m drawn to her fingers as they begin to play with a bit of dark curly hair near her mouth. I watch the twirling and notice that the top lip is thin and twitchy. I begin watching those lips emit sounds. When the sounds become recognizable words . . .

            “I can’t believe how much stuff you know.”

. . . my hands unclench and the tightness in my neck fades.

           I have to think a long time about her second comment – “I can’t believe how much stuff you know.”   Discerning the correct way to answer seems important. As I sit there thinking of what to say first, it registers that she’s still sitting there perfectly quiet, still looking at me, waiting for me to do something. This recognition makes me smile. She smiles back. The floodgate opens right up.

           “I do know things. I know stuff because I learned it or I just know it. But a lot of what I know creeps other people out when I tell them, so I practice keeping the juiciest thoughts to myself.”

           I stare at her, searching for some clue that she’s able to listen. Is it safe to continue talking? I can still stop now, but if I go one sentence more, I’ll be stuck in the loop of my story. Still twirling that bouncy hair she looks right at me and quietly says,

           “But sometimes you let them out?” 

           My mind screams, Yowzer! You get it! But I stop myself from blurting that out and just say,

           “Yes Christine, sometimes circumstances demand that I let them out.”

           When I say her name, her eyebrows raise and that crooked mouth forms a smiley line. I deduce that hearing me say her name out loud was unexpected; but to tell the whole truth, I’m even more surprised that it just slipped out. She doesn’t say anything about the name thing, she just asks,

           “Do you mind when your thoughts pour out?” 

I keep talking.

“Most times I do.” 

“Do you mind now?” 

           “Usually no one except medical people ever want to know . . . I use her words . . . ‘what makes me tick’.”

She smiles. The last bit of that getting-ready-to-flee tension leaves my body. I say:

           “I don’t mind spinning for you.” 

Her forehead scrunches making her eyes drop closer to her nose. This look I know. My sister Bethie’s face looks exactly the same when she needs me to explain something. So, I clarify, “talking, story-talking, like spinning a tale.” She nods. 

dc

Christine

           I see him sit on 180 for hours. I don’t know why the thick flat granite slab in front of Abercrombie Engineering Building is a favorite spot, but I do know that Sam perches on that rock sculpture a lot, sometimes reading, but often just staring up or out at nothing in particular. I wonder what holds him on that huge flat horizontal rock for so long. A few times when I walked through the engineering quad and Sam had been perched on the sculpture, he looked down and acknowledged me with a small nod. I’d always say, “How’s it going Sam?” All last year he smiled but never said a word. But this Fall semester he began responding: “I’m good today,” “It’s good,” and once, “I’m just spinnin.” But today he had said, “I’m great. How’re you?” He had acknowledged me and I intended to make the most of it. So I say, “Mind if I join you for a bit?” and before he can answer I begin scrambling up the rock. As I climb I wonder. Tonight, will Sam stay or flee?  

           When I begin to slip, he extends his hand. Even I know it’s an unusual gesture. Then long silence. It’s now been about 4 minutes. I had just asked a guy who in the past two years has now said a total of eighteen words to me, to have a conversation, to explain himself. As I wait, I concentrate on remaining perfectly quiet. I keep my eyes pinned to his face and am determined not to say a word until he does. He tilts his head to the right, his fists aren’t clenched and his left eye is fluttering. 180 is a huge flat slab -- I’d say over 30 kids can climb on it at one time, but I had deliberately scooted right up next to him. He’s not squirming away. At last he raises his eyes. I smile. Sam begins to talk. His words pour out so quickly, that I wonder how he keeps breathing. I sit as still as I can and focus on his mouth and eyes. I don’t want to do anything to make him want to stop. 

Sam

           “Once I start spinning out-loud,” I say, “I’ll have to go on and on even if you leave. I’d hate to end the night sitting up here with all that stuff spinning out of my mouth and no one to hear it but me. I’ll look even weirder than I usually do.”   

           “I’ll stay ‘til you’re done Sam, I promise,” she says.

I open my mouth and words begin flowing out all over us.

           “Even now I still tell people stuff like . . . beware, things grow and you don’t even know. The things I blurt out are the truths that build up inside of me. I have learned to hold them in. But sometimes I just can’t keep them inside one second longer. If I do, the truths might vanish or worse, I’m afraid that holding those words in might turn me into a normal. So, when truths or thoughts that matter need to be said, they have to come out, regardless of where I am or what I’m doing.”

“So that’s why you blurt out brilliant stuff in class?” 

           When I hear her words, I feel a warm flush rise up from the bottom of my neck and onto my face. I touch my skin, feeling for that hot creepy wave. I had seen other people blush but I couldn’t recall ever doing it myself. It feels like something’s licking me with a very dry, hot tongue. But in this moment, other curiosities are stronger. My mind ricochets away from the blush and back to her comment.

.          “I guess so. Some professors do want to hear my brilliant rumblings as soon as I think them . . . ”

I remember how back in middle school, my buddy Mark taught me to blink one eye as a signal to help people know that I’m not being unequivocally truthful on purpose. So, when I say the word brilliant, I wink real hard at her. She giggles. 

           “. . . most professors let me blurt. It makes it easier. I had trouble in the beginning.” 

           “What kind of trouble, Sam?”

           “I almost left a few weeks after coming, but my Dad kept talking to me about everything I still needed to learn so that I can make a living someday, and he reminded me that Rice was the only university that had these rocks.”

Christine

           Sam’s right hand is hanging over the edge of 180 and his fingers are caressing the smooth insides of the long indentations in the rough edge of the huge slab of pink granite. I had never noticed the thick ridges before. I lean down and make a point of watching his hand glide back and forth like he was petting a purring kitten. But I quickly refocus on his face. I don’t think it would be right to mention the rock, not today, not now. So I just say:

           “So, what do you want to do for a living, Sam?”

           “I create molecular animations. So, Grad School’s essential for landing a job at a large university or medical research lab that needs intricate imaging.” 

           “That’s cool, Sam.” Do you work in a lab now?

           “I have regular hours at the Center for Bio Nano-Tech and I also help out at the Bio Engineering Lab. 

           “Could I see one of your animations?

Sam opens up his laptop and shows me his screen saver that rotates through a couple animations. 

           “These are incredible, Sam!”

           “They’re just baby ones.” 

           “Sure, you probably need more powerful computers to depict some of the nano combinations. Did you help that visiting professor with his graphene structures?”

           “Graphene’s an unzipped, nanotube. It’s flexible, transparent, and stronger than steel. The actual tiny microscopic bits are hard to manipulate. I told him that if he could visualize the way I can, it would be easier for him to manipulate the image, extrapolating and exploiting potential benefits like 2D coatings that could fight bacteria . . .” 

           I’m afraid that if Sam goes on and on about graphene, I’ll never get to know more about him, so I take a chance and interrupt his stream of words:

           “So, you create and store the complex ones like graphene in the bio nanotech lab? Sam stares at me with bulging eyes that seem far away. My interruption spooked him. I hold my breath. In a few seconds I’m relieved as he answers me.

           “Yeah, the cellular pathophysiologists and micro scientists in the nano lab deal with microscopic bits all day long. My animated models are apt.” 

           “I’m sure my Dad would appreciate your models. He’s a pathologist.”

           “Your Dad . . . my Dad . . . yours . . . mine . . . Dads. . . Moms . . . parents . . . they help their kids.”

           “Yeah, you said that your Dad helped you to stay here at Rice that first years?”

           “Dad persuaded me to stay until Mom descended.” 

           “Descended?”

           “Mom’s determined that I won’t be one of those statistics — you know, the kid they tell you about in orientation sessions. The one to your left who washes out. Mom’s hyper vigilant and convincing. She flew down and made me talk to a lot of people. I had to make promises, agree to do stuff that she knew I could do. She explained the shout outs and my inability to relate to people in normal ways. Mom explained how the stuff I know needs to leave my mind so it won’t paralyze my functioning and how when I blurt, the thoughts detach and become separate from me. She told them all that I can’t hold stuff inside like normals do. Things got better.” 

           “Freeing?”

          “Sure. I guess you know by now that I’m not a Normal.” 

Sam

           Christine told me later that she had wanted to ask me more stuff that first night on the rock but was afraid that if she prodded too much I might stop talking. She was probably right. But I do remember that when she had said “Normal is pretty boring,” I leaned closer in and whispered, “Most people never figure that out.” 

           And that’s when I made my first SMC 1 [Smell Memory Christine 1]. SMC 1 is a flowery, salty, herby scent that oozed from the skin on her face and neck and maybe her hair. My brain stores SMC 1 near all of the CMM’s [Christine Movie Memories] that began lining up in chronological order in a brand-new shiny file drawer in my head. My brain hasn’t created a completely new file drawer since that first years I matriculated at Rice, three years ago.

           I feel OK sitting on 180, sniffing, and sharing my memories with her, so I keep spinning. 

           “I can control most thoughts a lot better now. When I was younger, I just shouted out everything that was important to me. Sometimes I’d also shout warnings or labels like ‘booger, booger, booger,’ ‘bad eye’ or ‘beware, take care.’ I’d shout really loud, over and over to the blank stares that passed me by on the street, the playgrounds, or in the hallways.” 

           She giggles real loud. My first reaction is that she’s laughing at me. I stiffen up and get ready to bolt, but she’s not turning or fading. I register that her giggling is pleasant, soft, not biting. Her laughter helps me grasp how odd my shout-outs must seem to normals and I laugh too. Simultaneously, my mind begins flicking through past images to support a brand-new construct: Talking my memories out loud for a girl sitting close to me on the safety of 180 is not like telling my memories to medical people, or even family. It doesn’t feel at all intrusive or therapeutic. There’s no guilt or withholding on my end. It’s satisfying. I keep talking.

           “Some thoughts go on and on and they don’t stop unless something huge gets in their way. Like now, as I’m telling you all this, it feels like the words have become a locomotive, not part of me at all. They have a separate energy. Once I let the first few out, I can’t stop them. I have to let them run on and on until the whole story escapes.” 

I take a shallow breath straining to slow it all down. 

           When she says, “Go on Sam,” I sense she feels the churning power too. I take another deeper breath and keep the story rolling.

           “When I was small, saying all the words that were in my mind out loud made me feel safe, but unsettled everyone else. I now know that the words are my own thoughts, but there was a time when I really wasn’t too sure. 

           “How so,” she asks?

“When I was twelve, I expended a lot of energy trying to figure it out. One day I saw a poster for this place where people could stand up and say stuff out loud. I started going there all the time. I got up and just prattle it all out. I’d say things like:

           ‘. . . the circle is the way in and the way out and the ball bounces into the circle and is lost in the light. I’m in that circle too, stuck, so stuck, such luck . . .’

Words would pour out of me for maybe five whole minutes. Most of the time, I could have gone on even longer but there was a buzzer that would go off if you took too long. That happened to me once and I started to cry and they all laughed. It took me a while to go back and then I made sure I jumped off the stage before that buzzer, and just mumbled the rest of the words to myself as I ran home.”

           “How brave you were.”

Like I said, back then I was trying to figure things out. . .figure out what makes me tick. I deliberately use her words what makes me tick. I needed to shout the word-thoughts out loud to people who listened and didn’t make me stop. Some of the normals reeked with a sweet smokey scent and would shout things like ‘Hey kid . . . Righteous . . . . Cool dude . . . Bodacious.’ Back then, I didn’t know that the Smell Memory SM TP 1 [Smell Memory Talking Place 1] was illegal and I didn’t know what bodacious really meant so I never said thanks. I just blathered and then before the five-minute mark, I’d jump down and run away, still talking. Once when I was explaining all about growings, turnings and chainings, they all started smacking their hands against the table-tops and making hooting noises. I hated that they kept slapping the tables. By then I had already figured out that the thoughts came from inside me and although I can’t always control them, they no longer frightened me.  I had figured out that the thoughts, that became words, were simply fragments of what made me, me. That slapping was worse than my own crying, so I never went back.” 

           “You figured that out all by yourself?”

           “Had to, because even though lots of systems people tried to tell me the thoughts were mine, I had to learn the truth for myself.”

           “Boy, your kid life must have been scary!” she says.

           “When I was really small, to keep from being terrified all day long, I just slipped away.”

           “The blurting came much later. I don’t know why thoughts just explode out of me.”

“I know why, and so do you. You already told me.” 

Pushy, I think to myself. No one else ever challenges me when I say the I-don’t-know-why-words.” So, I just blurt out:

 “Explain!” 

“You said that if you didn’t let important words out, you were afraid you would either freeze up or become -- too normal, walking around with all those other blanks.”

           “Yeah, that’s right!”                                                        

           “Why do you call people blanks, Sam? 

           No one outside of my Mom, my brother Dan and doctors had ever asked me to explain blanking. I didn’t not like the idea of telling her, so I begin:

           “Before I began first grade, I had a great deal of foggy days where people, all of them, disappeared into my brain’s foggy background. But THINGS, the real stuff, remained vividly clear. I could stay Happy in the fog for days and days in a row. In that early fog, I learned to notice details. I studied leaves and rocks and bits of carpet string for hours. I tried to figure out my most favorite sensation—shiny! During this foggy discernment, I learned how to function, how to survive. My brain learned how to store all the bits of important stuff. This many years later I can retrieve the important sights and sounds of my entire life and play them all back like it’s a 3-D movie. I have thousands of little movie memories catalogued in my head, beginning with detailed images of carpet and rocks and sounds and shiny shimmery objects like spoons and mirrors and rings and aluminum foil origami shapes that my little sister Bethie made for me. Now I know that those catalogued intricate memories of things helped me grow brain synapses so I could eventually take in more and more. By the time I went to school, I could even capture memories and conversations that had to do with people outside of my family.” 

           “Wow, so are you saying that if there’s something you want to remember you can just conjure it up exactly the way it was?” 

           “Yes, exactly how it was to me back when my brain catalogued it. I still have trouble accepting that how I remember stuff isn’t necessarily how anyone else recalls that same moment.” 

She laughs like I told a joke and says,

           “Everyone’s guilty of that, Sam.” 

I tell her one of my biggest revelations and she laughs! I’m losing my Happy. But before my subconscious takes over and she slips away, I hear her ask:

           “What about the blanking?”

Her timing is faultless. She was just about to blank away herself. She asks again:

           “Can you tell me a catalogued story about blanking? Is that possible, Sam?”

I’m bristling and the I-want-to-bolt-out-of-here-energy is surging, but I’m equally intrigued about retelling a movie memory to her. 

           “Ok I have one. It’s MMM 87. My brain labeled it Rooster Spins and Sam Spins Too but it’s all about blanking and turning. After I tell it, you’ll need to help me stop talking. One movie memory usually spurs on another one that is linked to it. Can you do that, Christine?” 

            “Ok Sam, I’ll try.” 

           I focus my eyes and recall the memory. Within seconds, I begin reciting a conversation I had with my Mom one day on the wooden glider, a day that ended with me and Mom twirling in the summer wind.

MMM 87: Mom Movie Memory 87

Rooster Spins and Sam Spins Too

— She joins me on the wooden glider on our front porch. She’s holding a blue ice pop, my favorite. She wants to talk, but I’m fixated on the weathervane perched on the very top of the roof of the white house across the street. I know the metal rooster perched atop that long rusty arrow. Over the past seven years, we had become good friends. 

I’m worried about Rooster. The late summer breezes are slight tonight. People don’t notice them, but Rooster and I feel every puff. Like me, he too was born to spin, but the tiny puffs of summer air keep him pinned to one spot. This is the worst kind of weather for my friend. I feel the hot tension as if it’s me stuck on that roof. If only the wind would blow harder. I want to climb up to the vane and give my friend a twirl, but it’s too far up, too dangerous my brother Dan says, and it isn’t even my house. All I can do is call to the wind. But I hear talking and recall that I’m not alone. I rip my eyes away from the weathervane, take the ice pop she’s holding out to me, and answer her.

           “I don’t mind.”

           “Are you sure?”

           “Really, I’m sure.”

           “It will just be one night.”

I glance back up at Rooster. He’s spinning! In my mind I yell: Yeah! I thank wind. I relax and watch my friend fly. What is Mom saying? I focus and answer her.