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This is part of a series of short stories I wrote based on Ben Franklin's virtues (Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility). This one is about Temperance: "Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation." All of them involve the same group of characters...I tried to develop them more as the stories went on, but anyway, here is the first one of that series:

Rena Tyler was the epitome of a best friend. She was always there providing a shoulder to cry on, an ear to tell secrets to, and a car with a tankful of gas ready for a day of store hopping. Always, that is, except for today.

Cathleen tapped her foot impatiently as she waited on the sidewalk outside of her dorm complex. Rena was 15 minutes late...and counting. They had planned to have a girl's day out, complete with shopping at all of the stores at the local strip mall, getting their nails done at the local boutique, and stopping at WalMart for some pretzels and cheap fabric remnants for her room project. She and her best friend had been taking fabric and gluing it to her walls, a project which was no doubt much of a fire hazard, but made her room look like a quilting machine had exploded.

After a half hour of waiting, Cathleen heaved a sigh and tromped back into the dorm, scuffing her feet through the lobby, up two flights of stairs, and down the hallway to room 258, where first she would pout and then she would look for the reason why her friend failed to show up. She threw her purse on the bottom bunk and tossed her coat onto the back of the door. Her roommate was gone for the weekend, something about a big party at her boyfriend's frat house, lots of cute guys, and free alcohol. Sherry wouldn't care anyway; the two of them rarely saw each other as it was and tolerated a passive existance as roommates, each keeping to their respective psychotically neat and tidy corner and muttering a greeting every now and then.

Seeking a sympathetic soul, she took down her away message and browsed through her list to see who was supposedly sitting at their computer. "Benji will talk to me," Cathleen thought to herself as she clicked through a quick hello.

"yo grrl wuz up?" came the ever-literate reply.

He's such a nerd, she thought to herself as her fingers lightly tapped on the keys. "Rena didn't show," Cathleen sent the message and checked through her messenger list again. Maybe she was online.

"thats weird. u talked to her today?"

"Nope, we talked yesterday morning though, she decided that we'd hit the store today since neither of us had anything to do," she sent back. Rena was offline. Time for a phonecall.

Rena lived in one of the townhouses on campus, with six other girls. She constantly complained about noise, but enjoyed being closer to some of her class buildings and having a parking space guarenteed right at her front door. Cathleen started to dial the number, ingrained in her memory for the present school year, since they changed numbers every year.

"i havent seen her since class yesterday. maybe she changed her mind," Benji offered, his words appearing in blue on her screen.

"Hang on, I'm gonna try to call her," she replied, waiting for the phone to ring. It rang twice. She heard the phone pick up, and nothing but atmosphere at the other end of the line. "Hello? Rena?"

"Rena..." a deep male voice answered her questioning tone. "Who is this?"

Cathleen answered, her voice clearly confused, "It's her best friend...Cathleen. Who are you?"

"Michael," he said, directing a sudden coughing fit away from the receiver. "Michael Frank. Rena's not here...there's been an accident."

Cathleen's breath caught in her throat. "What happened?" she nearly shrieked into the phone, "Did she get in a wreck? Somebody hit her? We were supposed to go out today but she never showed up..." Her words came in a rush and she tried to keep a hysterical tone out of her voice. What if she had been mad at her and there had been a car accident? What if this whole time she'd been upset but her best friend was lying in a hospital somewhere and she wasn't there for her? What if...

"She had too much to drink," he replied, quite steadily. "They had to take her to the hospital last night for alcohol poisoning. She should be back in about an hour..."

"Alcohol poisoning?!" She yelled, quickly following it up with an apology.

"Yeah, it's all cool. When she gets back she'll probably have a pretty good headache, but nothing to worry about," Michael sounded completely calm. How could he be calm at a time like this?

"Nothing to worry about?" She continued to yell into his ear. "My best friend in the whole world is in the hospital and there's nothing to worry about?"

"Hey look, they'll take care of her, so chill out! I gotta go clean up some stuff before she gets back," he continued, obviously wanting to get the hysterical girl off of the phone and away from his ear. "If you want to check up on her, why don't you come over in an hour or so? One of the girls from the house will have brought her back by then." With that, he hung up the phone. Stupid boys. Wait...Who WAS he, anyway?

Cathleen completely ignored his advice about coming over in an hour. She had to go over NOW. "Rena's in the hospital from alcohol poisoning," she typed quickly to Benji. "I'm going over to her townhouse to wait for them to bring her back."

"wow, ill be over there too," he sent a quick reply and put up an away message before she could stop him.

"Well, it might be good to have familiar company," she said to herself, grabbing her coat and purse and locking the door behind her.

When she got to the house, one of the girls from the house was pulling into a parking space. The girl rolled down her window and hollered out, "Cathleen! Rena's askin' about ya!" Cathleen ran over to the car and hopped in just as Benji turned the corner. He joined them without a word the entire ride to the hospital.

Rena was sitting in the lobby waiting for her ride and stood up slowly when Cathleen, Benji, and her townhousemate came through the door. "Hey guys," she said softly when they were closer. "Guess what? I'm never drinking again..."

I too enjoyed this.I agree the ending is a bit unexpected. Have you considered writing a longer version? Or is there more to this one. Do you have any of the other virtues written? You should post them.

My only criticism was that it was short and I think you could have extended it to maybe explain more of the characters like Michael... or something along those lines.

I enjoyed it though, serious topic, some humor in there with Benji's "ever-literate" typing. 3nodding Made me chuckle.

@ Akukei: Makes me feel good to have a memorable piece smile The ending trails off because I continued the set of stories in the set. The characters become more detailed as you work your way through the pieces, but I agree, I probably could do more with the characters from the very beginning. Thanks!

@Tsuta: My main purpose for posting things here will be to get the awesome suggestions you all posted, in order to improve upon it and make newer versions. So all in all, it will change smile I'll be developing the characters earlier on in my next draft. Yes, it was a set of 13 short stories, in kind of a "frame tale" (a 'bigger picture' story with several smaller ones inside, like Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales"...though I heartily admit that I am no Chaucer...lol). I never really wrote a frame to go around them, however, just the short stories themselves. Ooh, random musing...might be a good way to get the characterization into the story earlier........going back and creating the introduction and conclusions to the series *insert diabolical laughter* Thank you, I have now gained an insight to my work...see, this is a good thing!

@ Seraf: I tend to drag things out too long in strange ways...so much so that people have to constantly ask me questions until all of the magic is gone from what I thought was amazingly awesome the very same morning it came out of my head. So sue me, it's a character flaw. I'm very glad that everyone gets it, and for once I didn't over-complicate the point of the story. I much appreciate the compliments! Thank you!