A fair amount of ground covered today. I'd have been stoked to do another six hundred words and end the week at an even 30K in five days, but it just wasn't in the cards.

145,060 / 150,000 (96.7%)

Today's sample is from the early part of the day's writing, since the later sections are all too spoiler-heavy. In today's thrilling episode, the narrative paraphrases Bob "Bobcat" Goldthwait in Savage Steve Holland's One Crazy Summer, one of the finest movies ever made.

There was always one kid, in every grade school class, who called their teacher “Mom.” It seemed an inescapable fact of life. And that they would then be known as "the kid who called the teacher Mom", for the rest of the school year.

Alice hadn’t been that kid, but she’d sat next to him once, and had joined in with the others in teasing him mercilessly.

She hadn’t thought of that kid in years. But when she opened her mouth and almost, but not quite, called Stillman “Dad,” she couldn’t help but remember him.

“What’s that, love?” Stillman was fixing them breakfast. To get a proper start before they hit the road, he said.

Alice had just been about to ask him something about their plans, but every memory of what’s she’d been about to say was driven from her memory as soon as she uttered the “Da-“ syllable. She thought about playing it off, calling him “Daddio” like some hipster doofus from fifty years before, like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, but didn’t have the heart to try.

“Nothing,” Alice said, shaking her head.