Get Me His Phone

Today’s writing prompt comes from this website, where you can generate a random bit of dialogue to get your creative juices flowing. I decided to use a writing prompt today (while waiting for my YouTube video to upload) to get myself in the sit-down-and-write mindset. Enjoy!

As always, this rough piece of essentially idea journal material is my original work. Don’t steal. Be cool.

My required line of dialogue (thanks to the prompt): “If you get me his phone, I might reconsider.”

Evelyn paced the room, her heels clicking on the scuffed tile. Her hands moved with an agitated precision like she was trying to use sign language to explain where her words were failing her. Every time she reached the wall, she just spun around and kept walking. 

Felicity watched carefully from her seated position in the middle of the room. She hadn’t known what to expect when she came in here today; yelling, anger, arguments, crying? But silently pacing certainly wasn’t her first guess. She was afraid to move. Afraid that she may trigger a different–more volatile–reaction. 

Three more laps. Three more spins. Then Evelyn’s pace falters. Her foot hovers over the tile for a beat longer. She mumbles something to herself. When she resumes the march, it seems as if she’s walking a little slower. 

Perhaps, Felicity thinks, she’s calming down? “Should we talk about it?” she asks, her voice testing the water.

“No. Absolutely not.” She stops and turns her body toward Felicity. She jabs a finger toward her. “No.”

“Eve, you can’t just ignore it–”

“YES, I can.” She punctuates her statement with another jab of her finger. A single tear slips down her cheek. When she starts up the pacing again, Felicity notices she brushes the tear away with the back of her hand. 

It breaks her heart to see her friend like this. Was she wrong to come to her, she wonders. “What do you want to do?” she asks. “Seriously. You tell me what we’re doing and I will do it.”

Evelyn stops, mid step. She sniffs and then sighs. She doesn’t turn around. “We do nothing. We know nothing.”

Felicity drops her head. “OK.” She takes a deep breath. “But if it wasn’t your brother, would you still feel that way?”

Evelyn lets out a groan of frustration. “I hate him for putting me in this situation.”

“I know.”

When Evelyn turns around this time, she stomps each of her feet in a frustrated show of childish anger. “What are our other options?” she asks. 

“We can turn him in.”

“We have no proof. At least I don’t. Do you have proof?”

“I told you, I saw it on his phone.”

Evelyn shakes her head. “Right, but you don’t have a copy. You don’t know if the picture is still there. You don’t actually have a copy of the picture at your disposal.”

“True.” Felicity sighs. “We can confront him.”

“Oh, that’s your big plan? You want to ambush my brother over, what, family dinner? Don’t mind us, your girlfriend and your big sister just want to talk to you about a crime you committed. We saw a picture of it and we thought you’d like to explain yourself. Maybe you can turn yourself in. That would be better than us having to do it for you. It would be like you are taking responsibility for your actions, instead of us turning on you.” A few more tears leak out of her eyes as her voice rises, echoing through the empty room. 

Felicity doesn’t know what to say, so she lets the silence stretch until Evelyn takes a deep breath and blows it out. “I’m sorry, I just can’t see that going well,” Eve says. 

“Can we really do nothing?” Felicity asks. “I’m so confused. I don’t know what would make him do something like this and I really want it to not be true. I need you to be my guide here. I’m scared.”

“We need something to bring to him,” Evelyn says. “We do nothing without proof.”

She turns around, heading toward the desk at the front of the room. “If you get me his phone, I might reconsider.”

Felicity stands up. “I can do that.”

“Good. Until then, we never had this conversation. You don’t know anything. Act normal.”