You’re not the first person to remark on the pace of the story. But I like the way it begins—it’s probably my favorite part of the story. I wrote this with the idea that it should be savored, not read through quickly
Young Adult / Ghost Girl- Chapter 1, Part 1
"Damn!" The tree root had caught Michael again. The slope of the street that led to his house was perfect for skateboarding; but the old sidewalk was lined with big leaf maples whose tree roots caused cracks and ridges which sometimes, like this time, threw him off balance.
Occasionally one would provide enough of a gentle launch for a good jump, but caught unawares the consequences could be painful. He hated the thought of someone seeing him fall.
He gathered up his pack, his board, and replaced his cap backwards on his head. He hated it when people looked at him and smiled, as they often did. He was fifteen, on the verge of maturity; five feet nine, athletic and graceful on his skateboard. Smooth perfect skin, the contours of his face losing their childish roundness, and the edges of cheekbones and chin maturing. His deep-set blue eyes framed by thick black brows and eyelashes often caught the attention of the girls at the skate park and at his school.
But he wasn't very interested in girls right now. Too much had happened. He wasn't interested in much of anything, except maybe school and his skateboard. Today had been one of those days when he hadn't even gone to the skate park. Something seemed to be dragging him home to the dump of a house that his parents had just bought in this shabby old neighborhood.
"Don't worry, it's a fixer-upper, even if it's going to take time," his parents had promised, “These old houses have character that new ones don't. Look at the yard—our old house didn't have a yard even half this big." Yeah, right.
But he missed his old house and his old neighborhood. He took the bus across town now so that he could stay in his school; but having to move from the house in the suburban neighborhood where all his friends lived had hurt. Watching his dad lose his job and looking for work for weeks had hurt. Even though his mom worked too, they had fallen further and further behind on their mortgage payments. When his dad did find a new job, it didn't pay as well; and though they hadn't told him, he knew they were paying more in health insurance benefits.
As a last resort his parents had put their old house up for sale. It was months before it was sold, and then for much less than it was worth. They had to move and that was that. No one had to tell him to not be a baby and complain, because he could see the hurt in his parents’ eyes. Life was hard, right? His thirteen year old sister Kit, the family baby, had taken it a lot harder than him; and there were a few times that if she'd been a brother he would have beaten her up, or at least punched her.
He just didn't understand why they had picked this neighborhood. Some of houses were well kept and had not been allowed to fall to seed. Leaves were raked, gardens lovingly tended, porches were kept repaired and there was no sign of peeling paint. There were even a few kids his age; but they didn't seem to own skateboards, though he saw a few BMX’s like his. He hadn't felt like asking anyone if they'd like to go riding, and they hadn't asked him either.
But a good half of the houses in this neighborhood looked as if no one cared if they fell apart or not. Paint was cracked or peeling, porches sagged, and railings were on the verge of falling, if not fallen already. Fences lay on their side. Windows might be cracked, curtains torn, and yards were full of weeds. At fifteen he had no interest in architecture, but sometimes he glimpsed the design of a collapsing porch, a gable, or framing of a window and realized that once these houses had looked different. This had been a neighborhood where gardeners had kept hedges neatly clipped and lawns mowed; lilacs, rhododendrons, and roses had been pruned and not allowed to grow wild.
At last he reached his house. He looked at the door and felt that overwhelming feeling of sadness that always seemed to greet him. He didn't know why he felt sad. When he'd gotten his first glimpse of the house, his heart had turned over, and in spite of himself he'd asked his parents why they had to live here. He still didn't like the house though he respected the fact that working on it compensated his parents for losing their former home. Sometimes it was fun to help, though smashing a wall to pieces with a sledge hammer had turned out to be harder work than he'd anticipated.
It was just the house. It could be warm or cold by turns, but sometimes a bone chilling cold would suddenly hit that made the hairs on his arms stand straight up. He'd never tell anyone, ever, but there was a something strange about this house—a something so strange he could feel it. His parents didn’t seem to notice it. They put their energy into remodeling, but it didn’t chase those feelings away.
Heaving a sigh, he took out his key and opened the door. The day was warm so he left the door partially open, and then went upstairs to his room. He put his board down and threw his backpack on the bed, and saw that his Harley poster had fallen off his wall again. "Damn." He really liked that poster, it was his favorite; but since he came here it never stayed on the wall. They hadn't gotten around to re-finishing the upstairs rooms yet, and were still replacing the old "Christmas tree" wiring, meaning a lot of the walls would have to be re-built. He covered the old, peeling wallpaper in his room with posters.
This particular poster showed a vintage Harley-Davidson chopper with one scantily clad girl mounted on the seat and another leaning on it. It wasn't the sort of poster most parents might allow, but his parents had a philosophy of rewarding good behavior by accepting some things that might be borderline questionable if it didn't go too far. (Besides, the girls were more covered than they would be in bikinis) He got good grades in school, and didn't hang out with losers. His worst vice was his love of his skateboard. Kit liked to make fun of him, saying that as long as he had his skate board he wouldn't need a girlfriend. His parents would shush her, knowing that she was trespassing on sacred territory.
He picked up his Harley poster and re-hung it. It was a good thing that his walls would have to be re-furbished—he had to keep finding different places to position the poster because of all the holes he had made trying to keep this poster on the wall. None of the other posters fell. Not his skating posters, his bike posters, none of his movie posters—just this particular one.
He turned on his computer and sat back on his bed for a minute when he suddenly heard a crash. He ran downstairs and saw that the front door had flown open, banging itself against the wall. He stepped outside to see if the wind could have caused it, but there was barely a breeze. He turned and walked back into the living room and he felt that cold again. The hair on his arms was standing straight up; looking like someone was pulling it by the roots.
"I'm getting out of here”, he said to no one in particular, grabbed his bike and helmet, and rode and jumped and did every trick he knew until it started to get dark, and he knew his parents would be home.
When he got home, his parents were unloading groceries from his mom's Mazda. He remembered when the Mazda had been a Lexus and his dad's Explorer had been a Land Rover. Promising to come and help, he carried his bike upstairs to his room and found that his Harley poster had been neatly torn in four pieces and scattered across the floor. In a hurry to leave his room, he left his bike on the floor and went to help his parents.
That night he lay awake for a long time. Something was happening here. He didn’t think Kit had destroyed the poster; they pretty much had an agreement to leave the other’s things alone. The feeling of wrongness that he felt in this house seemed to trouble no one but him, but was so strong he could almost reach out and touch it. He suddenly remembered that he hadn't picked up the pieces of his poster, when he felt the coldness rush through the room and the pieces of the poster ruffle on the floor.
Gradually he drifted off to sleep. In his dream, he saw a girl standing in front of his closet. She wasn't much taller than his sister, but she looked closer to his age. She was wearing a pair of his sister's jeans, along with her t-shirt and red jacket. He struggled to wake, to sit up, but all he could was to mutter, "Who are you?"
"You can't hang up that awful poster again, now can you?" The apparition's voice was like that of a normal girl. She seemed corporeal, flesh and blood; a light flowery scent seemed to surround her. Then she laughed and her body seemed to shimmer and slowly disappear until he could no longer see her.
"Damn! He sat up with a start. The girl was gone, along with the remains of the poster. He burrowed down in his covers, pulling them over his head. "No ghosts," he told himself, "No way. Not real. Not real. And those just looked like Kit's clothes, they weren't hers." He lay curled up in a ball until his alarm woke him, jolting him back into reality; but reality had taken a sudden shift, and the disappearance of his poster made him wonder if reality would truly be the same again.
He grabbed his clothes and went into the bathroom and took a shower, washed his hair,. Dreams are, after all, dreams—right? The hot water ran down his body as he washed his hair. He brushed his teeth, combed out his hair; in other words, did all the things that made his life feel normal. Routine made life make sense. He dried his long hair, dressed, and went back to his room to grab his backpack and cap, but stopped frozen in his doorway.
His bed had been made—he never made his bed, even forbid his mother to do it. His clothes had been picked up from the floor and put in laundry hamper that he never used. His BMX was balanced carefully against the wall. His backpack and his cap, along with his jacket, were on his bed.
He walked into his bedroom cautiously, afraid that at any moment he’d be swept up into a vortex and whisked away from his world forever. “I don’t believe in spooks”, he said out loud. He went to the laundry hamper and pulled out his clothes and dumped them in a pile on the floor. He turned around, grabbed his pack, his skateboard, and his jacket, put on his cap then turned again, only to find to his dismay that the clothes had vanished neatly into the hamper.
“Damn,” he said, the only word that expressed what he was feeling. What could he do, call “Ghostbusters”, or something? He smiled grimly at his futile attempt at humor. This was anything but funny. These things only happened on stupid television shows and people who believed in ghosts were flakes. It was this house, it was all the house’s fault. His parents should have stuck it out and stayed where they were. This shouldn’t be happening to him.
He ran down the stairs to the kitchen to grab something to eat before school, something he could take with him so he could get out of here. He opened and closed cupboards, looked in the refrigerator, then went back to the cupboards finding nothing he wanted. All right, he decided, he’d skip breakfast.
He turned around and collided with his mother.
“Honey, are you all right?” she asked, her grave blue eyes full of concern.
“I can’t find anything to eat. I gotta run.”
“Now I know you’re not all right,” she laughed gently, “Bagels and cream cheese. Peanut butter and jelly if you want it. You in a hurry or something?” She didn’t wait for an answer but sliced a bagel and spread it thickly with cream cheese. She wrapped it in plastic wrap and stuck it in his pocket, and put an apple in his pack. “Go catch your bus before I start to worry about you.” She gave him a quick hug and kissed the top of his cap.
It was not one of those mornings where he was in the mood to hug back but he was careful to tell her he’d see her when he got back from the skate park. Though it wasn’t necessary, he ran to the bus stop as though it would help clear the memories of the morning out of his head. He was torn between wanting to tell someone, but afraid of how it would sound. His friends would be sure to give him a hard time and make “Exorcist” jokes if he tried to tell them what happened. A ghost girl his age, especially one as pretty as her? Forget it.
It was a relief when the bus arrived. He took his usual seat in the handicap section and suddenly she was there, staring at him. He looked away and she was gone; but she’d been there, looking as much alive as him. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and slowly counted to ten, then opened them, just to be sure. No, no sign of her. No sign that anyone was talking to a pretty girl with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen and long dark hair that swung as she moved.
Usually he tried to will the bus to travel as slowly as possible to delay its arrival at the stop in front of his school, but today he was grateful when he got to school. His friends Dewey and Short Round were waiting for him at their usual post at the flagpole; but this morning they looked at him strangely, like something about him just seemed, well, wrong.
“What’s the matter with you jerks?” he said, trying to say it lightly but his irritation was hard to hide.
“Dude, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Short Round, who had adopted the name for himself after seeing “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. He was Hmong, the only one in his school; in fact, his was the only family in town that could claim that ethnicity.
“Yeah, right, and what have you been smoking?” His heart was beating hard and he hoped they couldn’t hear it in his voice.
“My family knows all about that stuff. I’m from ‘Nam, remember? I’m tribal, we believe in all that crap. And you do look like you’ve seen one.”
“I ain’t seen no god damn ghosts”. Mike pretended to pummel Short Round, who, in spite of his size, could more than hold his own. “And besides, you weren’t born in ‘Nam you were born here. I’m going to whip your ass at the park today. Those tree roots on my street have really helped my jumps.”
“You wish,” Short Round countered, and the three friends went into the school, flirting with the skate girls who watched the three boys and considered them hotter than the jocks, but were far more elusive.
They dumped their stuff and their boards in their lockers and went off to their respective classes. Instead of paying attention in class, though, his mind seemed to be wandering. Even in history, his favorite subject, he seemed to be drifting off. "Mikey," Ms. Miller said teasingly, "Are you with the living?"
"Huh?" he said, and shook his head, the class laughing. He looked around, confused, "Did you ask me something?"
"You okay, kid?" his teacher asked gently. Molly was cool. Not the oldest teacher in the school, but older than a lot of the younger ones, Molly Miller was a school favorite. She taught history and anthropology and made them seem interesting. Students would fight to transfer into her classes. Her clothes could range from casual to gypsy, and she was free with compliments to all her students. They knew they could talk to her, she was a good listener, and no secret told to her was revealed without the teller's permission. The only exceptions were when she felt a student was in serious trouble or danger.
Plus, she had an uncanny ability to read her students. He suddenly got "the look", the “I don't know what is happening but I know something has happened” look that her students knew well. She clicked her neat, unpolished nails on his desk.
"You don't look sick, but you don't look right." She went to her desk and pulled out a hall and library pass. "Go get some fresh air then straight to the library. It's going to embarrass me immensely if you fall asleep in my class." She brought the pieces of paper back to him. "Most of the lecture is covered in your book. Any questions you have, I'll check my notes to see if I added material. Now go. And stay away from your skateboard," she warned.
He gathered his things and left. Leave it to Molly. (In class she was "Ms. Miller" but, fondly, to the students she was Molly.) It wasn't good that she had dismissed him from class, but it was no punishment either--he did need the fresh air.
He walked out the doors, showing the pass and note attached and saw her standing at the flag pole, blue eyes staring at him. He quickly turned around and went back into the school and headed to the library. Then he saw her standing among the book stacks before he even had a chance to sit down. Much to his relief, she vanished immediately. He sat down and pulled out his history book and forced his attention on the chapter and taking notes, deliberately pushing her out of his mind.
That afternoon at the skate park he was a person possessed. He was almost careless, attempting jumps and tricks he'd never tried before, pushing for speed, desperate to keep her out of his head. It seemed to work, until the three friends picked up their boards and walked together to his bus stop, when he suddenly stopped cold.
She was there, waiting for him. He stood, frozen, not willing to move even though he didn’t want to miss his bus. To his friends he seemed to be staring at nothing. Dewey moved a hand back and forth in front of his eyes, saying, "Earth calling Mikey, earth calling Mikey. Dude, what has you so freaked out?"
"Go home, Dewey, I'll catch up," said Short Round, Dewey looked at him in surprise. "Dude, I mean it. Just give me a minute; I'll take care of this." Dewey looked, and then nodded. A year older than the other two, he sometimes seemed slow, but a lot went on behind his blue eyes that no one guessed at.
"See you," he said, then took off on his board. They called themselves the Band of Brothers, and looked out for their own.
Short Round watched Dewey leave. "You see something, don't you?" he asked Mike bluntly, "Don't bother denying it because I can see her, too. Your sister is going to be pissed when she finds out her jacket is missing."
"You can see her?" Mike was incredulous. He thought that this was his own private nightmare, though now she had disappeared again. He looked at his watch, ten minutes before the bus. "Don't mess with me dude."
"Told you I'm tribal. My great grandfather was a shaman. We believe in spirits and all that stuff. I don't think she expected me to see her because she's here for you." He turned to him and purposely gave him his ”inscrutable oriental” look. "She's not going to hurt you, but she wants something from you. She has something she wants to tell you."
"Yeah, right, so what do I do?" Great. A ghost who wanted to communicate with him, when he wasn’t even much in the mood to talk to girls who were living.
"I think you have to figure this one out on your own, Blondie. Your bus is coming. See you at school tomorrow." Short Round abruptly jumped on his board and sped off.
Michael walked slowly to the bus, his board under his arm. He walked by her and did not look at her. “You aren’t there,” he thought to himself, “If you are there, go away and leave me alone. I don’t need you and I don’t care if you need me.” The next time he looked up, giving in to curiosity, she was gone.
He heaved a sigh of relief. All during the ride home there was no sign of the girl with the heart breaking blue eyes. At his stop, he ran down the steps of the bus and jumped onto his board. He crouched down as it sped downhill, mindful of the tree roots. He counted it as a good omen that today he didn’t get jolted from his board even once.
He refused to look at any of the houses. Until he came to his own house, all that existed was the sidewalk and his skateboard. He unlocked the door, and pleasant warmth greeted him. He went up to his room and threw his pack on the floor. He looked around, then pulled out his books and his notebooks, and for the first time in days sat down to study without the feeling that someone was looking over his shoulder. There was no fragrance, no girl, just math, science, history, and soon the smell of his mom cooking dinner.
After that, there was no sign of her. She did not haunt his dreams; she did not appear on the bus. He did not see her in his room or at school. He was right when he decided that all he had to do was ignore her and she would go away. Short Round was wrong; you could make a ghost go away. You didn’t have to listen.
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Treatsa reviewed Version 1 -
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First paragraph – ‘caused cracks’ is passive. Use ‘cracked’ to be active. More punch.
I love the mention of him hating the idea of someone seeing his fall. This rings so true for a teenager.
You use a comma after ‘his parents had promised,’ It should be a period. In the same paragraph I think that the hyphen could be a period too.
I enjoy the descriptions of the new neighborhood.
“heaving a sigh” – I noticed this in the other chapter I reviewed and decided that it was a style difference. If it’s peppered throughout the work then it’s going to lose any effectiveness. ”Sighing” works fine without so much focus.
“re-furbished” I don’t think that this is the right word choice here. Firstly it doesn’t require a hyphen and second it usually refers to an item that you dismantle and rebuild. Walls are usually repaired, repainted, but not refurbished.
I do love the name, Short Round. It really adds personality.
I’m enjoying the story overall. Just needs some tightening up and minor edits. Good work.
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vkloss reviewed Version 1 -
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Hi there,
This piece was a different genre to the Young Adult I’m used to seeing on the shops, which is quite refreshing. Mike is well defined as a character and you painted a nice miserable picture of his house!
In terms of improvement, I felt the piece could have moved slightly quicker. It took a while to really get going and the pace picked up (and my interest) when he met the ghost girl which I thought was a good idea. Also I liked the way you painted her as attractive rather than the more traditional scary-type ghosts.
Overall there are lots of good elements in there, well done!
-Victor
TrickySkye reviewed Version 1 -
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first page “five feet nine” sounded strange to me you might consider changing it to five foot nine instead but I did like the way you describe your characters in the story. I also liked how you used a nice way about the cool breeze. Why did you put [besides the girls where more covered than they would be in bikinis]. you also say damn to much but all and all it is a good story.
Marvin reviewed Version 1 -
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Good opening. Immediate action and intro to character. well done.
“and chin maturing.”—fine description, although you used “maturing” a sentence or two earlier. maybe consider another word choice here.
good exposition about the family/moving. it’s short enough not to be an info-dump and it keeps the narrative moving.
“His worst vice was his love of his skateboard”—is it fair to consider this a “vice?” seems more virtuous to me, a positive outlet.
so far, a few pages in, things are moving very well. it reads tight with fine description and set-up. well done again.
“just this particular one.”—good distinction and subtle foreshadowing of things that happen in the house and the house’s mystery itself.
“I’m getting out of here”, he said to no one in particular, grabbed his bike and helmet, and rode and jumped and did every trick he knew until it started to get dark, and he knew his parents would be home.”—good segment but maybe consider shortening it or breaking it up into two or three sentences. it might read easier.
“took a shower, washed his hair,. Dr”—punctuation boo boo.
“in other words, did all the things that made his life feel normal.”—this read odd. maybe consider trying to make the whole “shower scene” more concise.
“his bed, even forbid”—he even forbid. might read better.
“Short Round,”—i immediately think of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Is this bad? No. The “Ghostbusters” reference earlier was also interesting. Sprinkling bits of pop culture into a story can be effective. But “Short Round” might be too much.
“his mind seemed to be wandering”—sometimes ambiguity works, but i don’t think it works here. in my humble opinion. it’s a failure to commit and takes the power away from the words. how about, “his mind wandered?”
overall-
good, linear narrative. it pushes forward well. nice air of mystery, tension. well done. it’s perfect for a young adult audience.
as per deeper meaning, it could be a tale of a young man’s reaction to the stresses of his parents projected onto him, as well as the stresses of being a young person. he’s trying to adjust to big changes.
criticisms?
a bit wordy at times. maybe consider trying to tighten it up a bit, make your ideas and descriptions more concise, pack more punch.
but it’s well on its way. good work.
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