The feeling of guilt

A story about a high school star that gets hit by a car.

The Feeling of Guilt
By Micah Snow

     Lucas was about six feet tall and really in shape. He had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a perfectly shaped face. Adding to this, Lucas was the captain of his football team; therefore, all of these things added up to him being his high school's star. He was the best all around sports player, best looking, and most popular.
     However, Lucas didn't care that he was the high school's most popular guy; all that he cared about was football. So because of football, like all other nights, he had to go running. If he was going to get into College Football, he had to be fit in everyway possible. Running was important, so he started to run his town pond. The town pond is right in the center of Luke's town; it has perfectly trimmed grass, and a large circling sidewalk. Lucas, for his running, decided that he would run around the pond fifty times every night.     
     So he started to run, and once he got going the air of the pond filled his nostrils, it was a mix of lily pads, and wet grass (A weird smell, but definitely not a bad one). Taking in the smell, Lucas didn't see the huge pile of dog poop sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. He felt the squish as he stepped in it, and let out a groan, and swore. Deciding that his shoes were to gross to run in anymore, he stopped running, and left the park. He was so mad that when he was crossing the street, he didn't even notice the car coming right at him, he heard the beep and looked to the right, and the last thing he saw was blaring headlights, pain in his arm, and then darkness.
    
    Lucas awoke in a daze, not knowing where he was and bearing a massive headache. There was a face staring at him, but Luke couldn’t place who she was because her face was all fuzzy.
    “Luke, Luke’s awake!” he heard the person yell.
    The voice seemed familiar, and as Luke concentrated, his mother, Sharen, came into view. She had perfect blonde hair, which Luke gratefully inherited, and green eyes. The combination with her stern jaw, and straight face gave her a beautiful, but very weird and serious look.
    When Luke made eye contact with her, he felt warm inside, and it made him smile. Sharen was like that, she didn’t even need to do anything, and someone would smile at her. So when she yelled, all of Luke’s friends and family jumped up and smiled, running over to Lucas to see how he was.
    “Is he okay?” Someone said.
    “Are you okay?” Another asked.
    “What do you remember?
    “What were you doing!?”
    The questions started to pile, and Lucas couldn’t concentrate.     
    “I’m fine, I’m fine, but can I just have some privacy with my mom, then people can visit,” Lucas said.
    “Yes that’s okay,” Someone said, “Fine by me, hope you feel better though,” another replied, “But we will see you.”
    The people started to pile out, and Lucas was left with his mother, and the musty hospital room.
    “Hun, how are you really doing?” Sharen asked.
    “I feel like I got hit by a train,” Lucas answered.
    “Well, you kind of were.”
    “Yeah, well my head feels like it got slammed in a car door a billion times,” Lucas said while feeling his head, but only made it worse, and cringed in pain.
    “And my arm, well my arm feels like crap, wait! MY ARM!”
    Lucas never bothered to look at his left arm when he awoke, but now looking at it, he noticed that it was in a cast, and held in place in the air. Which only meant one thing.
    “Hun, when the car hit, your arm smashed into the car first, and all your weight went onto. It’s broken in two different places.”
    “YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS RIGHT?!” Lucas yelled, trying to keep back tears. “IT MEANS I CAN’T FINISH THE FOOTBALL SEASON, MY THROWING ARM IS DONE, I HAVE NO CHANCE FOR COLLEGE BALL.”
    “I know Honey, I know how hard it is; I’m so sorry,” Sharen answered sincerely.
    “No Mom, you don’t know, just wait until Dad finds out about this,” Lucas commented snidely.
    “Your going to have to tell him about the arm Lucas, he’s on his way,” Sharen said.
    “Well I’m screwed.”
    “Oh don’t be like that.”
     “Don’t be like what?”
    “So pessimistic,” Sharen replied. “He’ll be here in a few minutes, I’m going to let you have a few minutes of rest, maybe then you won’t fight with your dad when he gets here.”
    “Well it’s easy for you Mom, caus you don’t even live with him, you were able to divorce him, I can’t divorce him.”
    “Well I hope you figure things out,” Sharen commented, ignoring what Lucas had just said.
    She then got up, and walked out before Lucas could say anything else. Lucas could hear her telling his visitors that he needed rest, and then the mutters of disappointment and shuffling of feet as they left. Lucas put his head back in his pillow and looked around the Hospital room. There was one window with no shades, and Lucas thought for a second that it might actually be a good view, but when he lifted his head to see, he was disappointed to see the parking lot of the hospital. Lucas looked around the floor; there were splotches of muddy dirt all over the floor shaped in footprints. Lucas figured it was because of all the people that had visited, and how the snow outside had turned into slush, and it probably got all over their shoes. Looking closer, Lucas could see there were little rocks in the footprints, he wondered what kind of rocks they were, “Probably granite,” Lucas thought.
    “HEY LUKE!”
    Lucas turned his head toward the door to see his best friend (And teammate), Robert, standing in the doorway. Robert was the starting wide receiver for Luke’s football team. Robert being extremely fast, and extremely tall made him a really good wide receiver, and a really easy target for Lucas to throw to. So Lucas and Robert together, broke the all time touchdown list for their high school in their junior year.
     “What?” Luke asked, “Why are you yelling.”
    “Dude, I was just yelling your name for the last, like, thirty seconds,” Robert replied. “You were like all in space and crap, Lucas your such a spaceman.”
    “Woah man, I didn’t know that footprints could be so interesting.” Lucas muttered
    “What?”
    “Never mind.”
    “Alright, well whatever, how ya doin man,” Robert asked as he walked in and took a seat in one of the wannabe lush chairs.
    “Well my whole body feels like I got thrown in a ditch and then covered in wet cement, and slowly I’m getting crushed and suffocated.”
    “S**t dude, that’s messed up,” Robert said, then coughed kind of nervously, “I mean, that sounds like it hurts,” he mumbled.
    “Yeah it’s okay,” Lucas said, “But my arms a whole different story, but I won’t explain that, ‘caus you probably will think its to messed up,” Lucas mocked.
    “Aw man shut up,” Robert snapped, but then quickly his face turned frightened, “What do you mean your arm is a different story?”
    “Well when the car crashed, all my weight kind of went into it.”
    “WAIT ITS OKAY, RIGHT?” Robert yelled.
    “Well its kind of okay, I mean it’s kinda broken but-
    “WHAT DO YOU MEAN BROKEN, OH MY GOD WE’RE SCREWED, WE’RE FREAKING SCREWED, HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN? OUT OF ALL TIMES, WHY NOW?!”
    Robert jumped up and started to storm out of the room.
    “Robert, ITS NOT MY FAULT!” Lucas yelled.
    But it was too late; Robert had already left and slammed the door behind him. Lucas was left in his room alone, with thoughts swarming inside him. Why couldn’t I have just looked both ways while crossing, Lucas thought. It’s all my fault; all because of one little stupid wrong move. I will never go to college ball, my team won’t win the championship, Robert won’t win wide receiving title; nothing will happen because of me.
    Guilt started to build up in Lucas, and he started to cry. The tears started to roll down his cheeks and on to his chin, where the built up and fell onto his scrubs. He tried to wipe them away, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t crying. The tears wouldn’t stop no matter how much Lucas tried to wipe them away. Lucas hadn’t cried in a long time, and it seemed like this was all of his anger and guilt coming out all at once.
    There was a knock at the door, “Come in,” Lucas yelped, as he tried to cover up his tears. The door opened and in walked his David, his dad; a tall and muscular man with dark hair and blue eyes. Like Lucas, he was a star in high school and college, but never made it to the bigs. So he made it his hobby to butcher Lucas into anyway possible to make him better at football.  
    “Lucas, how are you doing,” he asked, looking concerned.
    “Not very good dad, I just got hit by a car, what do you think.”
    “Well sorreey, I try to be nice for two seconds, and you have to be little jerk about it, why don’t I just walk out right now,” David snapped.
    “Yippee dad, you broke your record of point five seconds.”
    “Well if you act like that, I am going to leave,” David replied, and he started to walk away.
    Lucas never liked his father, even from a young age. Lucas loved football, but didn’t like the way his father made him work so hard, and from Lucas disagreeing with David’s ways, he grew to strongly dislike his father; vice versa for his father, the only thing keeping them together was football. And if that last thing was not gone, Lucas had to tell his father.
    “Dad, wait.”
    His dad stopped and turned around in the doorway, “That’s what I thought you’d do.”
    “Well believe me, it’s not like I like you or anything, but I have to tell you this.” Lucas said.
    “What?” David asked.
    “I can’t believe you didn’t even notice dad.”
    “Didn’t notice what?”
    “Well while you were being a jerk to me, you didn’t care to look at my arm, it’s broken in two different places, you know what that means right?”
    David looked at Lucas in shock, his face slowly turned into disgust, and then in a dark and cold voice he stated, “How could you let something so stupid happen to yourself? No son of mine is so stupid.”
     Lucas had no idea how to react to what his father had just said, and before Lucas could find the words to answer, David turned on his heel, and left, closing the door behind him. Leaving Lucas in the darkness,  and once again, alone.
 

Author's Note

I didn't really edit that much.. so give me some feedback on it if you want.

Reviews

[Ryan D. Mosley]

Hmmm... Mr. Snow, Mr. Snow, Mr. Snow, quite a nice piece of literature you've come up with there, but it need A LOT of work. For starters, it TELLS too much, instead of showing. You need to give details to everything, to SHOW things. Also, the moment of the crash is the most pivotal moment in the story, but it only lasts about five seconds. You need to slow it down and describe what's happening in several paragraphs so the reader can get a good view of what's happening and what happened afterwards. Alongside that, you need to gain a move extensive voacbulary (something I'm still working on myself as well). There were a couple of errors in the story that need to be fixed, so you need to proofread it. Something that really kills me is that the dialogue is plain; it's simply people talking. You need put hangtime inbetwwen key words so there is some suspense.

But the plot is really nice, and that concept of the story is good, and this could be made into a really great short story.

Overall: Potential

[Raef C. Boylan]

Well, I'll echo Ryan Mosley to start with: this has potential.
There are quite a lot of typos throughout, which I suggest you work on improving; if you don't take your work seriously, others will also be reluctant to do so.

Typos

The first word inside brackets doesn't need to be capitalised.
e.g. "and wet grass (A weird smell" - (a weird

"Deciding that his shoes were to gross" [too gross]
"Your going to have to tell him about the arm Lucas" [You're]
"caus you don't even live with him" ['cause ?]
"Lucas your such a spaceman." [you're]
" 'caus you probably will think its to messed up" [think it's too messed up]
"WAIT ITS OKAY, RIGHT" [IT'S]
"Well its kind of okay" [it's]
"Robert, ITS NOT MY FAULT!" [IT'S]
"on to his chin, where the built up" [the = they?]
"hobby to butcher Lucas into anyway possible to make him" ['into anyway possible' doesn't quite make sense]

Suggestion

"[Adding to this], Lucas was the captain of his football team; therefore, all of these things [added up] to him being his high school's star" - should try to avoid using the same phrase twice in one sentence.

"and the last thing he saw was blaring headlights, pain in his arm" [did he see the pain?]


Another thing I agree with Ryan Mosley on is that this story does tell more than it shows.
One way to help this would be to use a little less "he stated", "he mumbled", "she commented" etc - some is ok, but try to avoid doing it all the time. For example, when dialogue is in capslock, the reader should be able to figure out that the speaker is yelling, so you don't have to tell us each time.
Another way might be to let us inside Lucas's head a little more, as the story mostly consist of description re: events. Maybe Lucas could tell us, through his thoughts and memories, how much his dad pressurises him to be great at football, as opposed to your narrator stating the situation as facts?

Again, I agree with Ryan Mosley about the dialogue.

Overall, this is a good foundation for your story but it needs refining a bit in order to make it more original and engaging. Let me know if you do more to it and I'll come have another read.