Chapter 1

A very late stage of the first chapter

-Chapter 1-

"Well, here it goes" I thought as the bus pulled up to the bus stop. I was one third excited, one third nervous, and one third insanely terrified. Great. The first day of middle school and I was hyperventilating from the thought of it.
My name is Garry Hartson, and I've known Peirce Flint since 2nd grade. We were the weird kids, the crazy kid who always lost his temper, and the kid who was only seven and was making homemade windup toys.

Peirce had saved a seat for me on the bus. "Hey dude, you should keep your phone on when you're in that garage of yours, I’ve been trying to reach you for a week!"
"That's why I turned it off."

Peirce thought about this. "Why? Was it because of some stupid project you were working on?"

"How much have you and your band gotten done!?" I said, louder than I would’ve wanted to on a city bus.

"Sorry, I’m just nervous about the first day of school." "Yeah, me too." then we sat in awkward silence.

I scanned the bus. I saw a cute brown-haired girl who was the only person who hadn't looked up from the ruckus. She had a coat on, which was strange for September. She was short, and wore her hair down. Besides the girl, the only others on the bus were people going to work and homeless people.

The bus stopped. Peirce started to get up and sure enough, the girl did too. I knew what stop we were getting off at, but daydreams had gotten the better of me. It was only 8:13 and class started at 8:30.

So me and Peirce were standing in the courtyard, trying not to get in a fight with the other kids. We ended up standing in the shadows, trying not to get noticed by the a******s all around us. I was making Peirce laugh by imitating one of the kids fighting by holding my fists up and bouncing back and forth like they do in MMA. The guy who appeared to have started the fight saw me and gave me a look like, "I'll get you later." Gulp.

I started tinkering with a bunch of springs and screws and some other stuff I brought from my garage. Peirce looked at what I was doing. "Christ man! You have got to stop doing that everywhere you go! It makes you look stupid." I bounced back."And you flailing whenever you listen to your own crappy music doesn’t?" "Whatever, I was just making a point, geez."

Then it was 8:30, finally. As we walked into the school I realized that some of the students watching the fights were teachers. That didn’t give any reassurance for the year that was to come. My homeroom was Mrs. Cotters, who I thought was kind of nice, until this kid named Michael asked to go to the bathroom and then she told him to shut up and deal with it.

Second period was torture: Algebra. I'm good at math, but it seems like a waste of time to me if I’m just learning what I already learned on my own.

Third period was history, and I had it with Peirce but all we did was make snoring sounds to piss off the teacher. He never found out it was us.

That's when a bully saved my life. In between classes me and Pierce were both going to be late for class and were putting our books for the year in our lockers in a hurry. I had just gotten the lock off when someone slammed my head into the locker door from behind "Hey! F**k off!" Peirce yelled.

Then Peirce made the stupid mistake of punching the attacker in the gut. And then the guy swung his arm at Peirce, full force to the face. Peirce stepped back, so the blow went to his right shoulder instead. Then I realized that this was the one I saw fighting earlier in the courtyard. F**k. We're gonna die.

Peirce yelled "Shut up!" either to confuse the enemy or maybe he did get some of that last hit to his head. But it didn’t matter. This was my chance.

I swung my arm at an angle at the back of bully's head. It landed clean. He turned around before I could even react, and punched me in the chin. Peirce came back to his senses and went for a punch in the ribs, but was blocked and got that punch right back to the nose.

I was out of energy. I couldn’t put up any more fight. Neither could Peirce. The crazy a*****e picked up Peirce by the collar, stuffed him in his locker and locked it.

Holy s**t. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. I reached to close the lock on my locker, but it was too late. He pinned my hand against the door, opened the locker, and shoved me in it. S**t. I thought.

I barely fit in there with my backpack. At least I could breathe. The lockers at Fourtree middle were huge in size due to under-enrollment. I looked through the vent and saw that the crowd we had attracted was leaving.

Peirce and I were too tired to call for help and I didn’t think we were going to get any, anyway. I looked at my watch. 12:54. We were going to have to eat here. I heard Peirce sigh in the locker next to me.

Then I said "Can you hear me?" "Ahh! Oh, yeah I can hear you." "You okay?" I asked. "I had a bloody nose but now I'm fine." I said. "That guy is f*****g insane."

"Yeah, he really can take a hit." "Why didn’t we tell the teachers when he was fighting earlier?" said Pierce "Did you see the ones egging him on?" I said. "Yeah, but that was only like, half the teachers... Wait, that's a lot" "It's 1:00" I said. "Wonderful," Pierce remarked. "I bet we're not going to get out of here until tomorrow." "Just our luck."

We stood in silence until I heard an explosion far in front of me. The force slammed my head against the back of my locker and I blacked out.

Author's Note

Tell me if this moves WAY too fast.

Reviews

[Luca]

I like that you jumped right into the action. No fluff, no beating around the bush, just dive right in. However, you have to divide into paragraphs. Otherwise, it's harder to follow. Don't just tell us who they were, show us. Show us Garry losing his temper, some way or another. You did it once, but he just exploded in a second. Even people with the shortest tempers need a little more than that to get mad. Maybe feature Peirce making a windup toy. If the girl was short, show her reaching for something high up. It's better than saying she was short. Extend the descriptions of the blocks during the school, so that it's easier to picture the two of them at their first day of school. The nausea, the hyperventilation, etc. It's good so far.

[ALITR]

You got Garry and Pierce mixed around, Garry is the mechanic, and Pierce has a bad temper. I guess that's my fault because I didn't say which was which, but Garry fumbling with the nuts and bolt outside the school gate was supposed to clear that up.

[Luca]

Oh, sorry. I had to skim through because I had to get something done.

[ALITR]

I divided the paragraphs. Does it look as rushed as it was? Or does it help the flow. (Yes I will be doing this with all of my current chapters of ALITR)

[Luca]

It helps the flow. However, some paragraphs should be longer than others. Also, when writing dialogue, they should each have a different line. If you think it's too short with only dialogue per lines when it appears, you should talk about what they do with their hands, or their body language. You did it sometimes, but others you didn't.