Preptober Prompts 2023 (Week 4, Prompt 1)

2. The Tower
Character Prompt: Write about your character making a mistake or causing something bad to happen by accident. What happens? Can they fix it?
Setting Prompt: Write about the aftermath of a disaster occurring in your setting. How are people coping? Is it going to be repairable?

Emelines friends suddenly ghosted her right before her birthday, and she didn’t know why. She spends weeks and even months trying to get them to finally talk to her again, but it wouldn’t work. She had no idea what had caused them to do this, Emeline didn’t think that she had done anything wrong to deserve this. She tries to think back and figure out what she did and why her friends are ignoring her, but no matter what she thinks about, she can’t figure out what she did to make them so mad! Emeline starts to get seriously frustrated with this, since something bad is not happening to her for a reason she doesn’t even understand, and it doesn’t make her feel very good. She starts to believe that she just isn’t good enough and she annoyed them just for being her, and that’s why they left her. She tries not to believe that, but when no other reasons can be found, that’s about as good of one she can come up with, and slowly falls into it. Eventually, many many months after this happens, almost when she’s even forgotten about everything, Emelines old friends Bailey and Ava finally tell her what happened. They say that when she first started dating a few months prior to the incident, that was the guy Bailey liked, and she instantly got jealous. Ava sided with her but neither had told Emeline that Bailey liked Emeline boyfriend. Once she was already jealous, Bailey and Ava started to notice every small mistake Emeline made, and the things she did even as jokes, like teasing, and pranks, started to offend them. From being already offended and annoyed, they also started to blame her for everything, and believe that it was always Emeline’s fault. This point of view really started to shape the way they saw their friend daily and they both started to really despise her. Emeline never knew this of course, and since neither of her friends would say anything or tell her what she did wrong, sometimes Emeline would do it again, making the problem all the worse. She now knows what caused the problem, and also realizes that it’s not really her fault, and it could have all been avoided if her “friends” had just told her everything in the first place. She knows that she can’t fix anything, and that it was honestly kind of stupid in her mind. She wishes that she hadn’t lost a friendship over a boy, and is pretty upset by the reason, but looking back at everything, and how they treated her because of it, they really weren’t very good friends, so maybe it was all worth it.