Evelyn
Hernandez is a little bit of my daughter, Erin, and a little bit of every one
of the young ladies that have been - or currently are - my high school students.
She is talented and intelligent and she has people in her life that love and
care about her. She wants to fit in and feel normal, but at the same time she
doesn’t want to be like everyone else. She wants to follow her own style and
follow her own heart. Sometimes this gets her into trouble, shakes her
self-confidence, and causes her to doubt herself. But mostly, Evelyn Hernandez
is just…herself, still finding her voice, still discovering her powers, and
still learning how to use them.
An
early version of Evelyn first appeared in something I wrote for my students a
few years ago. I had them working on fictional short stories that were based on an actual conflict they had, or were having, with a significant person in their
lives, and I wanted to show them how easy it was to discover the stories all around
them if they only looked. Many of the students were having difficulty finding a
conflict to write about; something I had assumed would give them the least
trouble.
Sure
they’d all recently been in some sort of disagreement, argument, shouting
match, or even an actual physical fight, but they failed to see any of their
own conflicts as story worthy.
I
wanted to show them that the struggles in their own lives were just as
relatable and just as valid as those in the lives of the fictional characters
they enjoyed reading about…that it wasn’t the nature of the conflict that made
a story interesting and believable, but the quality of the storytelling. So I
made up a conversation between two people texting each other during class and
presented it in a PowerPoint. Two students volunteered to read the parts out
loud. It went something like this:
Hey. Why won’t you return my text?
I’m in class.
I’ve been texting you all morning.
I’m in class.
You didn’t call me back last night.
My mom was mad I got back so late.
Did she take your phone?
No.
Why didn’t you call me back then?
---
---
Stop ignoring me!
I’m in class!
I’ll be waiting for you outside.
She’ll see.
Her class is in 200’s.
Someone will tell.
Sure,
the texts were all in complete sentences and free of spelling errors and
emoticons, but the students found them convincing and were instantly intrigued.
Who were these people and what were they hiding?
If
you look inside your own phones, I told them, I’m sure you will find plenty to
work with. It’s not so much the texting, but the story surrounding it that is
important, I said. Then I showed them the story I had begun to write around
this conversation:
Evelyn’s purse began to vibrate in her lap again. Her phone had been going off all morning. She knew who it was. Mr. Schwartz was standing only two desks away, but he had his back to her, explaining something to Luis. He would be a while.
Evelyn’s purse began to vibrate in her lap again. Her phone had been going off all morning. She knew who it was. Mr. Schwartz was standing only two desks away, but he had his back to her, explaining something to Luis. He would be a while.
“Hey. Why won’t you return my text?”
It
was Mark. Evelyn looked up from her purse. Schwartz was still explaining.
She
switched the pencil to her left hand and began thumbing the keys on the phone
in her purse with her right, “I’m in class.”
“I’ve
been texting you all morning.”
“I’m
in class.”
“You
didn’t call me back last night.”
Schwartz
was now leaning heavily on Luis’s desk with one hand and gesturing in the air
with the other, his hand fluttering as he spoke like a one-winged bird. “My mom
was mad I got back so late.”
“Did
she take your phone?”
“No.”
“Why
didn’t you call me back then?”
Her
thumb twitched once, but remained hovering above the keys. Wasn’t it obvious?
Did she have to spell it out for him?
The phone vibrated again, but she was no longer holding it. Her hand had drifted up toward her face and her fingertips pressed lightly to her lips, remembering.
The phone vibrated again, but she was no longer holding it. Her hand had drifted up toward her face and her fingertips pressed lightly to her lips, remembering.
And
then what happens, they asked. Well, nothing, I explained, it’s just an
example. Yes, but where’s the rest, they wanted to know. I don’t know the rest,
I said, I only wrote that part to give you ideas…to help you finish writing
your own. We’ll finish writing ours, someone declared, if you finish writing
yours. And so I finished it.
When
it was done, I found that Evelyn’s character was much more complex and
interesting than I ever thought she would be. She turned out to have such
complicated feelings, and she could be impulsive, aggressive, even mean; but
she was also conflicted: feeling powerful, yet ashamed for finding joy in
causing someone else pain. I called the story, “Fight or Flight,” and as the
title suggests, it was about choices: Do you run away to keep from getting
hurt, or stand and fight for what is right for you…even if you must hurt others
in the process? I later submitted it to a few literary magazines and one of
them published it.
Another
version of Evelyn appeared about a year later in a very short screenplay that I
wrote, once again, as a model for my students. The class was an English
elective I’d created called An Introduction to Horror Film. In it we examined
the origins and evolution of the genre and wrote analytical essays on films
like Nosferatu, Frankenstein, Invasion of
the Body Snatchers, Psycho, and Night
of the Living Dead. As a final activity, the class wrote original short
screenplays, and we managed to film five of them, enough for a Horror Short
Film Festival during lunch. Even though we never planned it, all of the films
shared a common theme: bullying.
Most
of the students completed their films at home, but I wanted a story that would
involve the whole class and that would take place entirely in my classroom. So
I wrote a screenplay about a bullied teen who gets revenge on her tormentors
when she discovers she can make things happen by drawing them. Even though it
was only three minutes long, it took three days to film, which explains why in
the final edit some students’ clothing, and even hair styles will suddenly
change from one cut to the next, and then change back again. We had fun making
it though, and since it was a horror film there was definitely lots of blood.
I
won’t say anymore about the plot of the film because a very similar scene
appears in chapter nine of my novel, The Revenge Artist, and I don’t want to give too much away.
This
October 22, my book finally becomes available, and I can’t wait for more people
to get to know Evelyn Hernandez. If she seems familiar, or even reminds you of
yourself in some way, don’t be surprised, especially if you were ever one of my
students, but in many ways she remains her own person and not even I always
know what she will do in a situation until I start writing it.
I’ve
decided to write a sequel to The RevengeArtist and I’m already half way finished. I think I know how it will end,
but I can’t be sure. Evelyn continues to surprise me.
