The Second

Michelle

I remember everything that happened that day. How it started and when it finally ended. I remember feeling it coming. Like a snowball rolling down a hill. It starts out small but as it speeds up it gets bigger and bigger until it's reached its final destination. Until it's reached it's time to be done collecting and just stop.

I'm just hoping it will hit a rock or something along the way and burst into nothing. Just so the pain will stop.

Or maybe someday I'll be stuck like this forever.

Bright colors swirled against my closed eyelids, changing and morphing and intertwining. The heat engolfs the front of my body and cold soothes my back as I float on the surface of the lake. I barely hear the shreiks of happiness, splashing, and laughs coming from children on the beach. My ears bob in the liquid beneath me, my hearing of what's above the surface going off and on.

I focus on the bright colors. Red, orange, yellow; I feel as though I'm floating on air, the water below me, the small waves moving underneath me pulls me to and fro. But I let myself lie there, my arms at my sides, my fingers barely touching the surface of the water and my legs resting on the top.

I'm relaxed, at peace, equel; the way every teenage girl should be on summer vacation.

"Michelle!"

I jump and accidently let my head go under water. I absent mindedly breathe in a mouthful of  the sandy liquid and then burst out of the water. I cough and cough, pounding my chest until I can breathe again.

I turn to the person that called my name, realizing it was Jen, my older sister. "What's wrong with you?!" I call to her. She stands in the shallow end of the lake near the sand, her jeans rolled up to her knees to let her feet soak water. "I could have died!" I exaggerate.

She smiles and rolls her eyes, "Well, you didn't." She says and then points behind her, "Barbeque is done. Come on, you smelly fish."

I take in a deep breath, my noes burning from the water that recently passed through it. I swim to the shore, my black hair tangled with my blue bikini. Once I get to the beach I find my pink towel on the sand. I pick it up and let the fuzzy softness surround my body just as the wind blew slightly across the beach. It blended with the  sound of children laughing and splashing in the water, making for a cliche summer environment.

I glance to my right to see four teenage boys sitting in the plastic chairs. They grin at me but trying to hide it. I sigh to myself and continue forward, crossing the sidewalk and reaching the cool grass to where my family had set up our picnic.

"Michelle, come here, look!"  Kyle, my younger brother, yells. He crouches to the ground and picks through the grass, playing with something invisible to me from so far away. I walk over to him and lean over, grasping my towel around my shoulders.

A small turtle sits motionless in the grass. Kyle smiles as if he found a pot of gold. "Aw, he's cute." I admire the turtle, giving my brother the response he expected.

I start walking to the wooden picnic table my family had reserved. A plate full of grilled chicken and hotdogs that we brought frozen from home sit on the table, surrounded by toppings and other plates. A few water bottles sit in the cooler next to the table that used to hold the food.

I reach for a plate and a hotdog but my towel slips off my shoulders and blows in the wind a few feet away. I quickly move to pick it up.

As I pick it up I see a boy walking in my direction from the beach, smiling at me as I slowly stand up from my crouch on the ground. I feel almost naked in my bikini, seeing that he's wearing black swim trunks and he even had the decency to put a white shirt on. I begin to feel exposed and vulnerable.

I wrap my towel around me, tightly holding on to it as the boy with golden brown hair and shining blue eyes approaches me. "Hey." He says, stopping at least two feet before me.

"Hey." I sigh, tugging a strand of my wet, wavy hair behind my ear.

"You're Michelle, right?" He asks. "I heard that girl scream your name." He points behind me. I turn and follow where his finger is pointed, seeing he meant Jen. I laugh quietly, feeling embarassed of my crazy sister.

"Yeah, that's my sister. What's your name?" I ask.

"Ben." He says, reaching out a hand in a request for me to shake it. I accept and we both smile in a greeting.

"Nice to meet you." I say.

"Yeah, you too." He rubs the back of his neck. "Um, my friends and I," - he points behind him to the three other guys that were staring at me when I walked out of the lake - "are having sort of a bonfire, party, cook out tonight."

I look over his shoulder slightly to look at the three other boys. Two are sitting with their backs facing us, looking out at the lake, and another sits perpendicular to them on their left. He keeps glancing up at us, probably wondering how our conversation is going.

"It's not going to be all guys, right? If it is, my mom will never let me go." I say.

"Oh, no. No, no. My buddies and their girlfriend's and our other friends, it's cool. And no drugs or any crazy stuff like that. Totally legit." He says. I realize he's doing everything in his power to make me go. Convincing me to go, with not only the facts of this party but with his eyes, his begging, cool blue eyes. What if he's lying? What if he's only asking me because I'm the first girl he saw and he needed a date?

I shiver as the wind picks up, grasping my towel for a sheild to the wind.

I think about his question for a long time, studying Ben's eyes, looking back and forth between him and his friends. Finally, after a few very long seconds, I tell him I have to ask my parents. After asking mom and telling her the very little detail I know, and after a hesitated yes, I walk back to Ben.

"I'll be there." I say, walking back up to him.

Ben smiles, "Alright. Meet me at the snack bar tonight at seven."

Author's Note

I don't really like this chapter, but it's difficult for me to make it better. Any ideas?

Reviews

[Damac]

This one is has a lighter tone than the first chapter, and is a dramatic shift from the first, but the descriptions were just as good and the dialogue even better!

[Jacques]

i liked this one in a different way than the first . this one feels more lighter tone as the first i could picture it being dark and gloomy but this one i envision it being lighter and i like how you've wrote Ben and Jen . Michelle seems like an interesting character and i'm interesting where it goes from here .

i can see you're progressing your writing and i like this because the tone feels different it's the same book but feels unique seperate which is good because you want your characters to be unique with different perspectives , beliefs and life . very well done