Angie Kinghorn

Call me

Blondie’s “Call Me” had been number 1 on the charts for over a month when she was born, so naturally her teenage parents named her Deborah, after Deborah Harry, the band’s lead singer.  Which would have been fine, except they started calling her Blondie while she was still in the hospital nursery, and once their friends got word of it, there was no stopping it.  It stuck.  For life.

That left her, a natural redhead, saddled with the moniker Blondie Abernathy.

Middle school was not fun.  When her high school contacted her begging for alumni money, she considered telling them she’d be happy to donate a plaque reading, “West Bolton High: Dante’s 7th Circle of Hell.”

Freshman year of college she tried to start over as Deborah, only to find out that after 18 years as a Blondie, she really wasn’t a Deborah, no matter what her birth certificate or driver’s license might say.  So she’d tried to color her hair blonde–a futile effort at matching her life to her name, but she couldn’t find a hairdresser willing to bleach her natural red.  “This is color women would kill for,” one of them explained.  “I just can’t do it.  It’s not right.”

And then something amazing happened: all those single guys out there remembered the redhead named Blondie.  One of them couldn’t seem to forget.  She stood out in a sea of blonde Melissas and Jens  and Amys, and waves of brunette Jills and Julies and Ashleys.

Halfway through her freshman year of college, Blondie had not only come to accept her nickname, but to embrace it.

Nobody could forget her and she could never hide in a crowd.

Even when she tried.

One night, 10 years after graduation, Blondie was ensconced in her favorite chair with a novel and a glass of Malbec.  The phone rang, and she picked it up without looking at the caller ID.  One of the perks of an unlisted number was not having to screen calls.

“Hello?”

“So you are in DC.  Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

The glass slipped from her fingers and shattered, red wine streaming across the floor like blood.

**This is a fiction post is for the online writers’ group Write On Edge.  The prompt: discover what song was number 1 on the charts in the United States, England or Australia the day you or your character was born, or any other special day in your/their life, if you prefer.

Listen to the song(s) and let it inspire you. In 300 words or less.

Comments

  1. Fantastic. I particularly liked the paragraph:

    “Middle school was not fun. When her high school contacted her begging for alumni money, she considered telling them she’d be happy to donate a plaque reading, “West Bolton High: Dante’s 7th Circle of Hell.””

    And the end is fabulous as well. You did a great just bringing us through a life in so few words.

    • Thank you! 300 words is a crunch. This ended up being more of a character sketch than I intended. Hard to do much with plot in that short a piece. But it was fun.

      Though I will have Blondie’s “Call Me” stuck in my head for the next month or so!

    • Stay tuned…I’m thinking I like Blondie and she’ll have to be more than a 300-ish word character!