Chapter 3 (post three)

Pre-note: This section isn't terribly exciting, although it does explain some things, so I thought I'd ramble a little here. I finally got the Wi-Fi in my house working, so now I'm constantly using my laptop in my basement room/dungeon. I thought this would encourage me to write more, since I could easily post to my blog and I would have my laptop on more often anyways. This turned out to be false. True, my laptop is now on until one in the morning most nights, but instead of writing new chapters or even editing old ones, I'm Facebooking and emailing and downloading music. It's terrible. Between ten pm and one am used to be my writing time, so now my novel has come to a halt. I'm a lot further than what I'm posting (I've posted three chapters and have written about four times that), but it was good for me to keep working on it. I'm not going to have much time when I start UWO in the fall, so it was kind of important to me that I get a lot of it done now. My goal back in June was actually to write the whole novel then maybe turn it into a screen-play, but there goes that idea. 

Perhaps I should stop complaining and let those of you who haven't already gotten bored and closed the window, actually read the end of Chapter three.

 Chapter three, section three:

Back on the beach, I sat on the blanket as Jake went to fetch towels from the car. I pulled my navy dress over my damp body and wrung my wet hair out, sprinkling polka dots of water across the material.

I inspected the food Jake had pulled from the basket earlier. There were two sandwiches, labelled “Egg salad” on a sticker sporting the initials of the Upper West End Hospital, and wrapped in plastic. Carrot sticks, cucumber slices and pepper wedges were wrapped separately beside two perfect red apples. Plastic plates and forks sat beside a cake of some sort. Two cans of pop were propped up against the basket, labelled simply, “Cinnamon Apple” and “Orange Mango.”

Jake returned with two white towels, passing me one as he sat down. He had pulled his shirt back on, and rubbed her hair with the towel.

“Help yourself.” He said.

I wrapped the towel around my shoulders, although I didn’t feel very cold, and picked out a sandwich. I unwrapped it, took half in my hands, squished the bread a little between my fingers, and placed it back down on my lap. I looked over at Jake, who was eating carrot sticks and cucumbers, and then back at my half a sandwich. Again, I picked it up, lifted it up towards my mouth, then paused and placed it back down. Something was missing.

“You won’t be hungry.” Jake had noticed my strange act, as he ate his own lunch.

“Why?” I asked, sniffing the sandwich. The smell made my mouth water a little, but it didn’t cause my stomach to grow empty.

“You are a spirit here, not a living thing. Your living body required food, but your spirit doesn’t. Because of this, you never grow hungry.”

“Then why eat?” I asked.

“Because we can. It still tastes great,” he said as he took a bite of sandwich.

“Does this relate back to the energy thing?” I asked.

“Yes. As spirits we can go for much longer without rest, and are much stronger as we were as physical beings. You also don’t need to breath very much; we mainly do it because it’s a habit we keep.”

Back home, the sandwich may have tasted just as good, but eating it on that beach wasn’t the same as eating on earth. There was a satisfaction that came with being hungry, eating and then being home; a satisfaction that makes a meal really good. The food in Heaven never tasted as fine as the food back home because of this.

I watched Jake finish his sandwich and lean back, watching the sky. His fingers were inches from mine, lying on the blanket beside me, supporting him. His hands were twice as large as mine, and I remembered how they’d wrapped around my tiny fingers as he pulled me back to the safety of the sand. I wanted to reach over then and wrap my hand around his, but I didn’t. Instead, I looked over to the ocean, where a white boat danced in the distance.