She crumpled up the paper and tossed it over her shoulder. She refused to look behind her, certain the sight of the heap of wadded up paper would make her want to crawl under the straw to hide like she and Devin used to do up in the hayloft of the big old barn when they were kids at their grandparents farm. She didn’t even turn around when she heard a small crash. The Buddha statue, she figured, the small pink one made of resin, the one where he’s the jolly traveler, knapsack on his hobo stick. At least, she thought, that one wouldn’t break. But she aimed the subsequent balls of paper lower and put a little less punch behind them. The truth was, she didn’t know why she was doing this. Why was she putting so much pressure on herself? Since when did she tear pages out of her notebook, begin again and again, rejecting her work like this? What was wrong with her? She heard the sound of a car on gravel, and her pen froze. Henry couldn’t be home already. Could he? In spite of herself, she got up and walked to the window. Who the hell was here, and what was she going to do with her big pile of evidence? She saw the orange Fiat in the driveway. Fuck. Worse than Henry interrupting her. It was Marge. No way was she letting Marge in. She ducked when she saw her getting out of the car. Ducking, squatting there beneath the windowsill, made her feel insane. She giggled. I’ll just crawl away, right? More hysterical laughing. She backed up, inched her way over to the other wall, hands and knees wading through the mountain of crumpled paper. How was she ever going to be able to explain this?

[Editor’s note: written from a prompt from Creative Writing Prompts.]