Chapter One (Rough Draft)

Help me out here. I know the transition from the first scene is sloppy and not really well done.

BOOK ONE: Colin 
                                    The Inception

 

Fifteen minutes…tick…tick….sixteen minutes late. Where the hell is this girl? The Seaview Mall was crowded for a Tuesday. Mom’s dragging children; gaggles of giggling pre-pubescent girls fluttered threw the lanes. Twenty minutes….damn. I shoved my overpriced LG phone into my pocket. Marissa Thrall was…a family friend. Our parents liked to tell tales of the days when we were younger and played merrily together. We both felt their disappointment that as we grew older our interest in each other remained platonic. A familiar vibration emanated from my pocket while bright letterings read off Marissa’s name.

“Hello City Morgue?”
”Funny.” Her voice dripped in sarcasm and I knew she was rolling her eyes on the other end.

“Your late missy.”

“I know, I know. But hey do you care if I bring one of my friends along?”

“I don’t know depends.”

“On what?”
“Is she hot?”
 I counted the seconds till she freaked. I was surprised…when she didn’t. I could almost hear the thought process on the other end.
”Well I think so. We’ll be there in a few.” I watched the lines disconnect. Maybe this was gonna be more entertaining than I thought.

 

I saw her before I saw Marissa. I saw the graceful flip to her hair as she turned to laugh at something Marissa had said. The gentle creases in her cheeks with the grin that spread across her face. Her body bounced with her practiced steps. Her hair flowed in molted brown waves. A brown I soon learned spread to her eyes.

“Hey Colin.” Marissa’s voice sounded vacant when she was calling my name. “Colin? Yoo-hoo Colin?”

“Wh-at”

Marissa stood with her hands on her hips. Over the years her attitude had grown with her chest size. At a double D you can imagine the amount of teenaged female agitation that was staring at me.

“What’s the matter with you?” Her bust waved in agitation-as well as her mouth.

“Spacing out.  But you’re here now the least I can do is walk and space.”

I earned the smack; I tried to tell myself as the red handprint of her dainty fingers appeared on my arm. I earned the glare that boiled the blue pools of my eyes.

“Is this normal?” Her voice came out softer as if trying to figure out which one of us was the bigger enigma. And the way she started into my face, I had the feeling that I was in the lead.

Marissa laughed it off and grabbed the young girl by the arm and started to walk away. I composed myself and followed.

We ventured in and out of varying stores for the rest of the evening. My arms got loaded with big rainbow colored bags that wafted towards my nose a mixture of fresh clothing and the obnoxious perfume that I can always associate with my mother’s Vogue magazines. My sinuses ached; I could feel my contacts getting dry on my eyes causing them to tear. But I wouldn’t ask to go. Her name was Hailey. She had gone to school with Marissa for seven years now and Marissa had labeled her “Best friend” for six of them. I couldn’t tell if Hailey was pleased about that…but she accepted that title graciously. The hustle and bustle of the mall around us made it hard for me to really get a good grasp on the human enigma sitting in front of me.

She stood a few inches taller than Marissa; she couldn’t be more than 5’5”. She spoke with her hands and her eyes more than she did with words. She connected to the words you said, not always with a response but her golden eyes changed in tint with each question or conversation that was brought up. Her skin was a natural pale that was sun kissed from the summer sun. Quaint freckles spotted across her face like dust on a window sill. I found myself staring. My ungentlemanly behavior of not offering to throw out the garbage for the girls was a clear indication of what my body felt about her. She was smaller and bigger than her talkative counterpart. Where Marissa was slightly top heavy, Hailey carried her weight in the black jeans that clung to her frame. Marissa had always had a slender frame, I was always afraid that I would break her if I touched her the wrong way. Hailey...though her frame was a different kind of slender from Marissa’s she carried her weight where I wanted. I knew I could do what I wanted to her. Damn. The girls wanted to get up. Damnit couldn’t they give a guy ten seconds here. Her turning around and the stretch that she took didn’t help me either. They didn’t notice. Or if they did they made no mention. And we moved on with our Mallventure.

The night was coming to a quick close. And soon we were traveling across the steaming black top parking lot where the cars seemed like tombstones in a dormant cemetery. Frozen in time, the only representations of their owners left. The world was slowly becoming more and more material. The family was replaced with the television. Susan Homebody became the modern day hooker. Johnny Fairchild became the man with the microphone screaming for the world to change with the sound of bombs blasting in an intricate melody. We were all stuck in some grandiose change that has been slipping through the cracks for generations. I grabbed at the medallion at my neck. Saint George hung bouncing off my chest with the steps I took. Poised high on his stallion ready for the final battle…and I prayed for something bigger than my own soul or the souls of the girls gabbing in the adjoining seating in the small over heated Ford, but for the American soul. Watching the cars stream by with the neon lights of the stores and twenty-four hour food mongers, I realized it would take more than my prayers to save us.

            It was a brisk night by the time the girls dropped me off. The summer breeze was fading off into the austere demeanor that was fall.   Fall was the beginning of the end. The end of freedom the end of my peace. I had lived and loved my life on the waving shores of Jersey my whole life. My brother Christopher had described it best once “If New Jersey was a woman, I would never cheat on her.” Though his words were said in a drug induced haze, it stuck with me. In my mind, I personified Jersey. It became more than a state, more than land; it became a person with its own voice and feelings. The way that the wind blew across my skin cooling my body temperature as if it was caressing me. When angered it blew cresting waves of furry and passion on our doorsteps demanding to be heard. I drew from the dregs of the cigarette that dangled lifeless from my lips. The smoke curled around me following with the breeze. My parents had raised me in an upper-middle class lifestyle. At a young age, my parents realized that they enjoyed life, as long as they didn’t have to enjoy it together. They separated shattering the emotional frame of my family. The family is the building block to the social order. And when that building block has a fissure blasted through the very center…it disrupts that social order. But despite that, they separated. And my mother, the gentle yet stern figure in my life, was able to remarry. He brought with him not only his mouth to feed. But his daughter came with them. But they fit. So the family became complete. We were…assorted, yet oddly enough functional.  

At a young age my parents had been given the choice to give me the freedom of public school or the restriction of the local catholic school. And, the good parents that they are, sent me to where they thought I would be happiest. So standing there four years ago on the steps of that catholic school donned in my plain khaki’s and blue collared shirt with the overbearing logo, I hated them. Walking up those steps I couldn’t help but resent their decision. Saint Jude School was a complex place and kept me in a complex state of mind. There was an underlying sense of hierarchy that in the four years that I had spent there still boggled the deeper parts of my mind. The top of the food chain existed like any other school. The more athletically suited you were the better chances of survival you had. They preyed on the weaker underlings that clung to their books and action figures. Bottom feeders. There were middle factions that fizzled and sizzled in their time of fame where the world stopped and noticed them for a moment in time. From the outside we were a normal school. But a secret travelled through the walls of our school. There as we studied the righteous teachings of our lord god, the real faction grew. Parties, where the drugs never came fast enough, and the woman were always eager, is where the true guns showed. And with each student that strolled in. Each boy that held that swagger, each girl with her staggered walk. I felt Saint Jude die inside. Crumble at its foundations. This year I would be entering her doors as a senior. The crème de la crème. But I would walk through her as I walked through every other year. Evanescent. But I had come to love the walls around me. Where students cringed at the attire or the constant underlying religious tone that surrounded the school. I embraced it. The mornings started brisk and I entered the halls and willed the walls to articulate to me what it had hidden beneath the tiles and crumbling frames. The empty rooms that still echoed after the students scrambled out of them. The---

“Are you smoking?!”

Damn.

“Are-You-Smoking?!” My mother’s voice raised an octave with each syllable.

Busted. I threw the bud into the black waters off of our dock. I saw the embers wane in the water then plunge to the depths. When I could no longer see the faint glow of the dying flame, I turned to face my mother.

 

Author's Note

Reviews are AMAZING!!

Reviews

[Mysteral - Night Prowle..]

I think the poetic style in which you write is wonderful, very descriptive. I'm not sure about a storyline yet, probably too soon to pass too much criticism. It started OK with the shopping expedition, but then seemed to get bogged down with too much information from the paragraph that begins "It was a brisk night by the time the girls..." At the end of the chapter, I was beginning to lose interest, so it will depend on what happens next, whether you could draw me, as a reader, back into it.

I noticed a few places where you seem to be a little repetitive with your words. For example:
"From the outside we were a normal school. But a secret travelled through the walls of our school."
I feel the sentences would be better linked with the conjunction then delete the last three words-- to read:
"From the outside we were a normal school, but a secret travelled through the walls."

These and the few typos should be easy to spot when you start editing, so won't go into details. I'm interested to see how you develop the characters from here, so hope you will be adding more chapters. I will watch with anticipation. A very nice piece of writing, thanks for allowing me the chance to read and review.

[Wunderlich]

I agree with Mysteral, so I guess I'll just address some of the grammar and spelling issues. Instead of "furry", I believe you are looking for "fury". The dialogue isn't bad, but when addressing someone, a comment is needed. Here's an example:

"Mary, come here." A common follows the addressee in direct address. The addressee, in this case, is Mary. There also seemed to be a lot of places where there should have been commas, but instead there was either a period or no punctuation at all. I'm sure you'll work this all out whilst polishing it for the final draft though. These mistakes aren't big ones, and don't take away from the story, but it's best if they're fixed. I'm also kind of OCD when it comes to things like that, so other people might have a different look on that subject, but that's another story. I'll read and review the other chapters later.