Well, this is only the first chapter, because the rest of this is about Hannah avoiding being caught and coming to terms with what she did, becasue (I cover this later), she knows that it’s unlikely that she would be charged with anything, but the fact that she actually killed him keeps hanging over her head.
Crime, Thrillers & Mystery / Gone
“Hey, John, hold up, I left my scarf!” Hannah Feldman called over her shoulder as she spun around in the gloomy grey fog of that fateful rainy day.” You go on ahead, ‘kay?”
Her younger brother by a year, John, nodded, and turned to walk up their driveway.
Hannah was 16, and it was with a mournful look in her blue eyes that she turned to trudge back up Juan’s walkway. The 14 year old kid from Mexico lived in a duplex, the back half occupied by Jason Clarks, the fourth best friend, who was a year older than Hannah. Rarely did you see the four apart; they were so close that they called each other brothers and sister.
And with a toss of her long sun streaked brown hair, Hannah Feldman disappeared.
“Do you have any idea where she is?” asked the broad, tough-looking detective. His badge read James Norris.
Jason Clarks settled back in the wooden dining room chair and shrugged. “No clue.”
They were sitting in the Feldman’s kitchen, Jason with a defiant expression, Norris with a frustrated one. “Are you positive? I know for a fact you, the girl, her brother, and that Mexican kid were best friends. Maybe she told you three something.”
“Are you implying that I’m lying? And Hannah could be lying somewhere, hurt, and you call her ‘the girl’?” Jason retorted. “Besides, you don’t care; I wouldn’t tell you a damn thing.”
“Well, I suppose you can go. We may talk again.” Norris shook his head. Poor kid; he was obviously shaken by his ‘sister’ vanishing. But it was a job, and Norris had to be tough. Jason Clarks was right; Hannah could be laying in a ditch somewhere, which was why Norris had to question everyone thoroughly.
Jason walked out of the kitchen into the den, where two younger boys looked up at him with pain, firelight flickering on their faces. Jason plopped onto a black micro-suede beanbag between Juan Miguel and John Feldman and sighed. The beanbags were there from last week, when the four had spread out the classifieds and discussed pooling their money and buying a car that would seat them all comfortably. Hannah’s deep purple on sat desolate in the corner.
The three plaid, worn couches sat empty save for one. A teenage girl named Joanna Campbell sat, playing with her shoulder length, banged brown hair. Her brown eyes darted around nervously, as if she were afraid of something.
“Joanna, you OK? You want some cocoa or something?” asked John, glancing over at the girl.
“Yeah, thanks,” she replied, calming down once the hot chocolate was poured into her mouth.
“Um, Hannah’s friends Shay, Halley, and Kale are here,” a voice said from the doorway. It was Liv, John and Hannah’s mom.
In rushed Shay, a somewhat chubby blonde, Halley, a skinny brunette, and Kale, a slender exotic beauty with full, curly black hair. All were pretty in their own way.
“Um, could we talk to them alone?” asked Kale hesitantly, her warm brown eyes blinking.
The door closing, Shay spun around, her cheeks flushed red. “Humongous news. Absolutely ginormous. Hannah called.”
“What?!” cried John, leaping up.
Juan’s eyes brightened as he looked more closely at the three girls. Jason, too, gazed steadily at the girls.
“She said to tell Juan, Jason, and John she was OK…..Who are you?!” exclaimed Halley, catching sight of Joanna.
“She’s a friend of the family, kinda close with Hannah,” explained John, shaking his head. “Why can’t she come home? And did you tell the detectives?”
“She made us swear only to tell you three, but I guess Joanna can know. Anyway, she can’t come home because, well, she killed someone.”
The three boys gasped, and Joanna’s eyes widened.
“She was walking home from Juan’s house when this drunk dude came up on her and started groping her. She shoved him backwards; he tripped, and hit his head. He got back up and attacked her, but she pulled her pocket knife out of her pocket….Well, you get the picture. She panicked and ran.”
“Oh. My. God,” said Joanna. “Is she okay?”
“Are you absolutely sure she’s close with Hannah?” asked Shay doubtfully, eyeing the younger girl apprehensively.
“Well, not in a friends way; Hannah doesn’t really like Joanna, but loves her like a cousin because of how long we’ve known each other,” John replied softly, glancing at the tiny girl.
Hannah wrapped her thick jacket tighter around herself. The soft sounds of Christmas music were playing in the distance, drifting out of the open door into the department store. She slipped her hand in her pocket and fingered her money; the seven hundred dollars she had crept into her house to get. She shuddered as she thought back to that terrifying day; rolling his fat body down the hill, into the small patch of forest, and into the creek.
Biting her lip, she pulled a rubber-banded stack of crumpled photos out of another pocket. Flipping through them, she smiled gently at her own face, surrounded by her ‘brothers’ in one photo, her best friends in the next, and them all seven of them together in a enormous hammock, laughing as Liv took the shot. Shay was dripping water from a bottle of Deer Park down Kale’s back, both were giggling at Halley who was flung across the others, posing herself like a movie star while John, Jason, and Juan stuck their tongues out, and there was Hannah, who was punching Jason playfully, and laughing.
Hannah remembered that day. They’d been at the lake. That was the day Shay pushed Kale off of the diving board, and Juan did a back flip off of the same diving board, and John ate five hamburgers in five minutes on a dare and then puked his guts out, and Jason did a belly flop and had to put an ice pack on his stomach, and Hannah beat her brothers at the foosball table that was set up on the dock, and Hannah and John’s parents had gotten into a water gun war with the seven of them.
A tiny tear trickled down her cheek, and she wondered to herself how she was going to leave her family, her friends, and her life. Suddenly, she pictured the secret place.
Boxwood bushes grown into a circle with a gate into the middle, it wouldn’t have been half as roomy if the bushes hadn’t formed rooms that branched off from the center, like leafy caverns. There was the guy’s special room, and her special room, and her place, which was where one of the branches grew out into the open, but still surrounded by the bushes, forming a soft, padded bench she could lie down on under the sun and read. There were even little emergency exits, which were holes near the ground where the bushes hadn’t grown together.
The house on the land was empty, waiting to be sold, but it wasn’t likely. The renovations it needed weren’t allowed to happen because the house was in the historical society. Hannah thought….but, no; it was right across the street from her house, someone would notice…..or would they?
Sighing, she whipped her cell phone out of her pocket and speed dialed Shay.
“Hey, let me get that real quick,” said Shay, hitting the button on the remote so that Orlando Bloom’s face stopped short of kissing Keira Knightley’s.
The seven teens were still crowded in the Feldman’s den, waiting for Hannah to call again like she had apparently had told Kale the first time she’d called. The three boys looked up hopefully from the dim light of the three game boys.
“Hannah? Hold on, girl; say that a little slower……You did what, now? You’re where?” Shay was asking incredulously. “Man, I know you would have missed us, but…..Okay, we’ll be there. By the way, there’s this girl Joanna, she was in the room when we told you brothers….Alright, see you in a few hours.”
“We-ell, she said she was going to the hideout, and that her brothers would know what she meant. She’ll be there in a few hours, which gives us time to leave secretly. Jason will go with us under the pretense of checking our car- it is snowing outside. Juan can go later like he’s going home, and then John and Joanna can go to find out if Jason went home. We’ll pull our car around and park in Jason’s driveway, because she said it was in walking distance. Everybody got it?” said Shay in a rush.
Three hours later, they were clustered in the small space that the boxwood bushes left. There were three stone benches, but they were piled high with snow. Everyone stood silently, fiddling with their clothes and glancing at the gate.
Finally, with a muffled squeak, Hannah was back.
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Kody_Boye reviewed Version 1 -
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I’d cut out the whole first part; it’d look better and give it more of a suspense intrigue.
Also, don’t use stuff like ‘In rushed Shay.’ It usually don’t work well, and in this case, it really doesn’t.
This is just something I personally have, but when people wonder or think ‘to themselves,’ it’s usually not needed. You usually don’t think or wonder to other people anyway. : )
Also, alright is technically improper, as it is the standard of all right.
Overall, this is a good story. I like the way it’s set up. : )
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mm_storyteller reviewed Version 1 -
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Good start, a few grammar errors but nothing major. It would be nice to have a hint of what was to come. What is this story really about, a runaway and her friends, or something more. I’d give readers a little taste so they’ll want to turn the page. With what you have now the only reason to turn the page is to see where Hannah is going next. What will be her next step? That’s not a bad hook, but it could be better in my opinion. Over all good job.
-May
BigMamaMags reviewed Version 1 -
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Actually, I think it was good. The only problem I see, is that there just wasn’t enough of it. I could have read on. Think of expanding it. As far as the characters. You have quite a few, but that is not unusual for several teens to hang out together. There was good conversation going on. You get an idea of what they are like from the conversation and Hannah’s description of them. I would like to read more of you writings in the future.
jeremycage reviewed Version 1 -
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If you’re really thirteen, this is pretty good. It needs a lot of help, but the basics are there. You’ve set up a story pretty well and given a basic conflict. Like a lot of young writers you have too many characters involved in the setup. Maybe some of these characters will come in handy later, but see if you can rewrite this and take out at least three or four of the characters. Save them for later and concentrate on giving really vivid descriptions of the central characters so that I become more emotionally involved in the story. But you’ve got talent, that much is clear.
YolandaRenee reviewed Version 1 -
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Good work, needs a little editing, spell check, grammar. But great start keep writing, you have talent!
EES reviewed Version 1 -
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“Her younger brother by a year” This sounds awkward and we don’t even know how old she is yet.
That third paragraph is really rough. Man, I cannot for the life of me understand what you are talking about.
” were best friends” It seems funny to me that I cop would use a phrase like that. I would replace it with the word “close” to sound more coppish if you know what I mean.
What? Hmmmm. she killed someone. You really drop that on us. I wonder if there could be a different sort of preamble. When did she have time to kill somebody? I mean, fetching her scarf?
Wouldn’t the cop notice the dead drunk? Put the two together. Those police are smarter than you would think. They figure those things out.
Shay pushed Kale off the diving board? But you just said you were at the lake? Perhaps she pushed her off of the dock>?
I like it. It doesn’t seem like the end though. There is deff the wholse suspension of disbelief factor, but yeah…
SeattleghostWriter reviewed Version 1 -
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It definitely is interesting and did well to captivate me. There are a few areas where the sentence sturcture is choppy. The one problem was the one sentence where you kept saying “and…and…and…”
Definitely a good piece. There is a story there and with some cleaning up, it definitely has its own voice and style.
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