I was doing a reformat on the Kindle version of Prelude to a Super Airplane over the weekend, and totally forgot there’s an amalgamated Twilight + Harry Potter series of novels that are part of the 19th subplot.

Anyway, Chapter 30 of PTSA was actually an excerpt from one of the books.

I thought this an apt time to post it here – if you’ve never read the Twilight books, sadly this is exactly what they’re written like. Everything after this sentence is lifted directly from my book.

30
(I know this has nothing to do with airplanes, but I wanted to put it here, because I’m hoping if I put like a blurb on the cover, I can sell more copies of the book.

This is an excerpt from “Andreanna Marsupial and the New Moon’s Glow”, the fourth book in the Andreanna Marsupial saga. All material is copyright of the author, Stephenie Piperbraum, or however you say that correctly.)

CHAPTER 143 – THE END OF ACT 1

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I should or not. The television was sitting there in front of me, and I’d been looking at it for several hours, debating whether to turn it on or not. My father, Lugustus, had bought the television many years ago – it was old now, but when he bought it, it was new.

Lugustus liked to buy things, because he was a detective. I call him Lugustus because that’s his name, and I like to use names. When I was living in Unicorn Valley County, everyone called each other names. Their real names. That was before I moved here, where I had to watch Lugustus buy things. The day Lugustus bought the television, it was raining, which is when water falls from the sky. Some people call it precipitation, but I call it rain, because it takes less time to say, and because I’m an outsider. That means I’m not like everyone else, and it’s only worse here, because I moved here from somewhere else. Sometimes that means I don’t fit in with the people in this place, which is a different place from the place I came from before. I wish I were tan, and that my tail weren’t so sleepy.

The rain on the day the television was purchased was a heavy rain, which means that in terms of water, there was more of it coming down than if it were lighter. The heaviness of the rain made me a little sad, because I don’t have as many friends as I did in the other place I lived. The rain here was heavy.

“Hey, let’s go buy a new TV,” Lugustus said to me. “It’s raining, and the old TV doesn’t work good in the rain.”

The old TV was a seven-inch hand-held from Casio. We had it propped up in the corner on an old cereal bowl. The bowl had a chip in it. I’d put the chip in that bowl when I moved here – I’d been trying to eat some cereal, and because I was so new and had no friends, I dropped the bowl. This is where the chip came from.

The chip was one-quarter inch by one-eighth inch. I knew the exact measurement because I’d used a ruler to measure the chip. The chip I made because I had no friends. I never did eat that cereal that day – instead, I took the bowl, and used it to prop up the old Casio handheld TV. This way Lugustus, who’s my dad who I call by his first name, wouldn’t have to hold the TV in his hands anymore. I couldn’t believe how big the chip in this bowl was, and when I measured it, I knew everything would be different. Thank god I had that ruler. Ugh…life.

The ruler was blue. It wasn’t a light blue, and it certainly wasn’t a dark blue. This meant the blue fell somewhere in the middle, although it wasn’t quite royal blue. Maybe it was plain blue. Plain. There’s a word to describe my life in this new place. P-L-A-I-N. Plain. What a word. Five letters, and not one of them the same. I had no friends here – I couldn’t believe it.

I took the plain blue ruler and picked up the bowl. The bowl with the chip. The chip that reminded me my heart was empty. The actual chip itself was little. I kicked it under the refrigerator, which was pale yellow in color, and had two doors. One for things we wanted to just make cold, and one for things we wanted to freeze. That part of the pale yellow refrigerator was called the freezer. It made sense to me. Nothing else did. I was so confused in this new place. This new place that was so new to me, because I’d never lived here before.

Lugustus was a professional detective. He would hate the chip in the bowl, and would feel like he had to do his detective work on it. This is why I had to hide it under the pale yellow refrigerator. The kick I used to kick the chip was just soft enough to get the chip underneath. If I kicked it too hard, it might hit the wall and bounce back out. If I kicked it too soft, it wouldn’t make it under at all, which would mean I’d have to kick it again. I didn’t want to do this, because I was so tired from not having any friends, because I’m an outsider in this new place. Everyone looked at me weird. Like I was weird. Lugustus wouldn’t understand. He was just my dad, and not my mom, and I called him by his first name. He couldn’t figure this out, because he didn’t understand me. Some detective.

Once I had hid the chip, I took the bowl and looked at it. I noticed for the first time that it was white. A pale white. All white was pale, but maybe this was paler. Paler than white. I laughed to myself. Maybe I was going crazy from not having friends to go places with. It’s not like I’d know where to go anyway – I wasn’t even from here. I was from somewhere else. Someplace that wasn’t here. I looked at the bowl for another minute, and started walking to the living room. I tripped – just a little. Not a lot. Not enough to fall down. My heart ached again. I couldn’t tell Lugustus about Handsomar Horsebuck coming back into my life. Not now, and not ever. That means never. Not even later than now. My dad could never know about Handsomar’s return. He was just my dad, and he wouldn’t understand. Nobody understands me, because I’m not from here. Except Handsomar. We still love our staring contests so much.

I tripped over a chair. The wooden chair. The same one I’d eaten dinner in last night. I’d gotten home late from school, because I’d been out with Handsomar, who when he first came back, I thought had become a vampire man-horse. He wasn’t. He was still a regular man-horse. Something else had changed about him though, and it would change my life forever, but I need to explain the chair. The chair. The wooden chair – that’s what was important right now. It was a wooden chair, made of wood. When I sat in it last night, never in a million years did I think I would trip over it that morning. But I did, because I was lonely, because I had no friends. This place was so strange.

I’d made chicken for Lugustus and I for dinner. The dinner where I sat in the chair I had tripped over, after I’d hidden the chip in the bowl, which I’d used to prop up the Casio, which one morning Lugustus and I were going to replace with a new TV, which I was sitting in front of now, wondering if I should turn it on. The chicken was good. I’d bought fresh fowl at the grocery store that afternoon, which is the time between morning and evening. The time of day I’m most aware of my lack of friends. No friends. Wow. How did I get here?

The grocery store Lugustus had told me to go to was big. This was because it was one of two stores in town. It had been remodeled recently, because the other store was selling more food than them. I guess they thought they should make a bigger store to hold more food. Maybe if I had a bigger heart, I could have more friends. I was so alone. The other store was big. I’d only been there once, because I didn’t know how to get there, because I wasn’t from here. I was from somewhere else. Yeah, somewhere not here.

The outside of the other store was a dull beige, with bricks lining the top and bottom rims of the roof and ground. In front was a sidewalk, which was made of cement. Cement was heavy. Like my heart, which was alone from not having friends.

The Secret Origin

It’s interesting reading that post – it seems even then I knew it was something orangier and roundier than it appeared. Also of note: the term wasn’t actually attached to the synthetic ball when it was created…that’s crazy.)

It would almost be a crime against myself not to mention the final demise of the Orange Roundie, at least as far as the NBA goes. They’re all-leather, all-the-time, for-all-time, it appears.

Of course, the Orange Roundie can never really die, as noted in this completely random thing I had nothing to do with at all.

But really, the death of a composite (he’ll always be “synthetic” to me) basketball is nothing compared to the true anguish people go through when Harry Potter 6 gets pushed back seven months.

Jean Fink, a 51-year-old Los Angeles artist who also works as an administrative assistant, was so distraught after a night of fitful sleep that she dashed off a scathing message to the man who’d betrayed her. “I can’t breath amymore [sic] because you just ripped out my heart,” she wrote in an Aug. 15 email.

Really?

Now, I don’t want to rip on Jean too much, but how do you get all the way to age 51 and feel that passionate about a children’s book series about magic tricks?

I mean, I’m not nearly 51, but I’ve already reached the point wherein you realize seven months isn’t that long at all.

If they were just scrapping it altogether, I could see not being able to breathe anymore, but even then, I think I’d find a way to start breathing again before spending my last moments ripping off emails to the head of Warner Brothers.

One of the earliest things I remember my father teaching me was, “Son…if you’re dead, you can’t watch Harry Potter movies at all.”

This was a full 15 years before Harry Potter existed, so like my dad is a pretty impressive guy, regardless of whether that’s even good advice.