Wednesday, January 10, 2018

One Small Wish: Day 9

Word Count: 54,023

Summary of Events:
Vaughan and Chelsea went ice skating after having breakfast together again on Saturday morning and Vaughan tried his hand at a figure-skating manoeuvre, and did pretty well, considering he'd never tried figure skating before. Fancy began thinking about the explanation Eirenna had given for her tears the night before and how it couldn't possibly make sense, which left her worrying that Eirenna had lied to her. Vaughan went over to his grandparents' house for breakfast before sitting down to talk with his grandpa, the purpose of his visit; he started by conceding that it was up to him to grant the wish, and not the church . . .

Excerpt of the Day:
""Good," Grandpa said. "But then why are you here? I thought you wanted advice."
"I do," Vaughan replied. "Advice on how to . . . leave."
"TwoCities?" Grandpa asked.
"Yeah," Vaughan replied. "Like, should I just drop it cold turkey right now and leave them in the lurch for the final week? Or should I stick it out until the end of the St. Nicholas thing and then run for the hills?"
Grandpa sat silently and stared contemplatively at the floor beyond them.
"I mean, I, I guess I'm kind of reluctant to drop things now," Vaughan added. "Not because I've come to enjoy this whole St. Nicholas thing — because I haven't — but, yet, well, I guess I kind of want to anticipate how things are going to fall out and kind of outthink Mom and Dad in a way too, and stuff."
"What do you mean?" Grandpa asked.
"Well, um, I, I really only attend TwoCities because Mom and Dad have told me that if I want to live at their house I need to attend their church," Vaughan replied. "So I do; they also somewhat mildly threatened to kick me out if I didn't play St. Nicholas."
"Am I correct, then, to understand that you would like to have a place of your own secured before you do anything too drastic?" Grandpa asked. "Or at least something that would be interpreted as drastic?"
"Yeah, I guess," Vaughan replied.
"You aren't in any way reluctant to leave TwoCities?" Grandpa asked.
"No," Vaughan replied. "I mean, I'd be willing to drop it as fast as I can, after all, I've kind of alienated some pretty high-profile people in the church already."
"What do you mean?" Grandpa asked.
"Well, Pastor Rich's son, Quentin, the Children's Pastor, is in charge of reviewing all the entry forms," Vaughan replied. "So I gave the form for that girl who approached me to him, and he wanted to stop reading it as soon as he saw her address put her in St. Johns, but I made him read the whole thing, and then he made a jab at me for having only gone to law school, and, you know, not being a full-on practising lawyer yet, so I turned it back at him and called him out for not even having gone to Bible school, and yet, somehow, still having the authority to preach and stuff, and he threatened to hit me with a chair."
"Oh my," Grandpa said.
"I'd made a comment about how they aren't exercising honesty and integrity and thus could get fleeced by lawsuits because they have nothing written down," Vaughan said. "Then he made the jab at me, as if I couldn't authoritatively tell him what the law said without being a lawyer, so I basically insinuated that he isn't qualified to tell me anything about the Bible considering he hasn't even gone to Bible school.""

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