In Through The Exit

I was just taking a walk and thinking about how fun it is to write a character who has an impulsive reaction to something.

Fun, because they usually do something dumb and then have to deal with the consequences of it. It also typically makes no logical sense, but in the character’s mind it’s the only option in the moment.

For instance, in The Test, Silver decides that she needs to create a distraction after something goes wrong in her plan to steal the final exam answer key for her English class. I won’t say exactly what happens because I don’t want to spoil it but to the reader it should seem like a pretty ridiculous thing to do that won’t solve anything. But, in her mind, it’s absolutely the right thing–the only thing–to do at that moment.

Okay, that was a little cryptic, but I can give you an example from my own life too.

Several years ago I was headed to the library on a weekend afternoon to meet with one of my writing groups (I’m pretty sure). I pulled up to the parking garage nearby and saw that cars ahead of me weren’t able to get into the garage for some reason.

Whether it was full or whether the ticket machine was broken or something like that I don’t quite remember, but what I do remember is seeing the car in front of me simply drive in through the exit lane.

For whatever reason, the exit bar was up so it was possible to drive in that way. I was irritated that I couldn’t get into the garage and had only a few minutes before the meeting was about to start and so what did I do?

I drove in through the exit.

As soon as I did this I realized my mistake. I did not have a ticket for that garage, which meant that if the exit bar was down when I was leaving I would not be able to exit, although I thought that I might just be able to put a credit card into the machine when leaving, even if I didn’t’ have a ticket.

You know, I could have just circled around and driven back out and gone to find an appropriate parking space and been a few minutes late to my meeting. But that’s not what I did.

I parked my car, went to the meeting and upon leaving the garage, guess what? The bar was down. So I tried just using my credit card to exit. And the bar did in fact lift.

And the machine also ate my card.

So now, I was out of the garage but down a credit card and would need to report it lost and all that.

All in all, the consequences weren’t too harsh, but still, I would have hung on to my credit card if I hadn’t driven in through the exit.

---

Amanda Linehan is the author of North, about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller, about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels. Get a free short story every month when you sign up for her newsletter.