Audrey Wick is a full-time professor of English at Blinn College in Texas. There, she is a writing teacher who writes. Her first women’s fiction novel FINDING TRUE NORTH released from Tule Publishing April 12, 2018, and its sister story releases July 26. Her writing has also appeared in college textbooks published by Cengage Learning and W. W. Norton as well as in The Houston Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, Writer’s Digest, Southern Writers, and various literary journals.
She believes the secret to happiness includes lifelong learning and good stories. But travel and coffee help. She has journeyed to over twenty countries—and sipped coffee at every one. Readers can connect with Audrey at her writing website of audreywick.com, and on Twitter and Instagram @WickWrites.
Her Favorite Element on the Periodic Table
That summer she became a chlorine mermaid. In a friend’s pool that overlooked the San Juans, strawberry hair fanned behind her, tresses like peacock feathers. Bubbles floated to the surface faster than her thoughts. She stayed suspended in counts that increased with each attempt.
Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four . . .
“Young and sweet and only seventeen,” her lungs fortified and her body adjusted to sub-surface existence every time she practiced. And for what was she practicing? Was this Stoicism? Or her version of it?
Sixty-seven, sixty-eight . . .
Awareness was hers but no one else’s. The audience rimming the deck of the pool had long dissipated. It was her, the water, and her breath.
Eighty-one . . . And then she could count no more.
Labored and spent, she parted her lips, accepting the rush of cool water. She tasted an altered state, change rolling on her tongue like waves of relief. She drank with tight-shut eyes the water that was not made for drinking.