The full thing is finally here!! YAY! Sorry it's so long. I really want some BRUTALLY HONEST critiques, please! If you like it, tell me why. If you hate it, tell me why. Chapter Two - Kylar is almost done, hopefully it will be up tomorrow.
Some things I don't like about this chapter that maybe you guys could help me with:
- the dialogue between Colette, Katie, and Kylar at the end of the chapter
- the description of the fisherman and his son (this is supposed to be a fairly dramatic and symbolic scene, but I'm not sure how to make it more detailed without making it weird)
- the ending
Thanks so much for your help, you've all helped me improve my writing a lot!
Some things I don't like about this chapter that maybe you guys could help me with:
- the dialogue between Colette, Katie, and Kylar at the end of the chapter
- the description of the fisherman and his son (this is supposed to be a fairly dramatic and symbolic scene, but I'm not sure how to make it more detailed without making it weird)
- the ending
Thanks so much for your help, you've all helped me improve my writing a lot!
Chapter One
Katie
Katie
Sometimes I think I remember my mom, but most of the time I’m not sure if what I remember is an actual memory or just something my mind conjured up from one of the few stories I’ve been told about her.
I only have one picture that she’s in, and it’s far from recent. She and her older sister are sitting on one of the table tops at Zoe’s Ice Cream, an ice cream shop that is still open today. My mom’s blond locks tumble down in light waves from her ponytail, reaching to her shoulders. In her hand is a melting vanilla ice cream cone topped with multi-colored sprinkles and chocolate syrup. A little dab of the ice cream is on her freckled nose. She is laughing and facing the camera, but her eyes look at her sister. I like to think that it’s a look of admiration, but I suppose it could be amusement. My aunt Georgia, her sister, is five years older and around fifteen in the photo. She has dark, wavy red hair that goes down past her shoulders. In her left hand, she’s holding a chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone. She’s laughing too, but unlike my mom’s, her eyes rest on the camera. They are both wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops – a testament to the Florida weather they grew up in.
I used to spend hours staring at that picture, as though by looking at her when she was a ten year old, I could somehow evoke all those memories of her I’ve missed, or be shown some aspect of her life today, or even just the inkling of a reason why she left me. By age seven, the picture was so ingrained in my mind I could recall every single detail of it with no effort at all.
The edges are worn now, from when I used to carry it around in my pocket wherever I went. A corner of the picture is burnt, from when I was six and Georgia realized my mom wasn’t coming back, so she tried to burn all of the photos we had of her. She didn’t succeed in destroying this one, which I stole. After more than twelve years, Georgia has still not found it buried in the sock drawer of my dresser.
My mom and aunt look so alike, in that picture. They have the same prominent cheekbones and tiny noses, perfect eyebrows and lips that are neither too thin nor too large. They even have the same perfect, straight white teeth.
I have been told my mom was a social butterfly all throughout her school years, constantly having a flock of friends behind her. I look a lot like my mom, my aunt says. I have her very blonde hair, along with the freckles. I share the facial structure with both of them. Truly though, I’m just thankful it’s only her looks I got and not her notoriously wild, spunky demeanor.
I hardly know anything about my dad, except for the useless facts that he was a charmer, had green eyes, was left handed, played football, couldn’t stand Italian food, and was allergic to clams, all of which I have gleaned from Georgia over a long period of time. I used to ask what exactly had happened to him, where he was now, whether or not he was still with my mom, but I stopped doing that because every time I’d bring it up, Georgia would conveniently change the subject. I have come to the conclusion that he was not someone I should miss.
When my mom finally gave birth to me on August 13, at 4:43 p.m. during her senior year of college, her parents had convinced her that she needed to stay in school, but I would be too much of a hassle. I was a burden to her high-powered life and career, so she didn’t want me. Georgia had offered to raise me instead, unable to have kids herself. My mom left me with Georgia in Epsilon, Florida, as soon as I was out of the hospital after I was born. She told my aunt she would visit any time she could, call whenever she got a chance, and come get me when she settled down.
Well, my birthday is in two days and as of then, I will have been in Epsilon for eighteen years. Until I was three, she visited often. Georgia tells me we appeared to have so close a bond she felt like she was intruding on something whenever she was in the room. I don’t know if that’s true or if she made it up to appease me. After a while, those visits ceased, and she essentially dropped off the face of the earth.
I know she is still there, because once a month, Georgia gets an envelope in the mail filled with money without a return address. But there is always a note inside, and every time it says the same thing: ‘Georgia – for things for Katie.’ That’s it, only it, and always it. A long time ago, I stopped trying to find hidden meaning in the messages. I used to think that maybe she was a hostage and she was leaving clues to where she was for us somehow for us to find her, but I gave up on that.
I figure that if she really cared about what I needed at all, even the slightest bit, she would contact me somehow. She’s missed all those precious birthdays and Christmases, and my first words, my first day of school, graduation, and, soon, college. She doesn’t really care about me. And that money? It’s just a weak form of child support that’s not legally necessary. Something she sends to ease her own soul.
Georgia always gives that money Mom sends to her to me instead. I never buy anything with it. To me, spending it would be like relying on her, needing her – which is something I’ve taught myself not to do.
Actually, once I had to help buy myself a new pair of flippers for scuba diving, but that wasn’t optional, and the cost was so high to get good ones that I chipped in to split the cost with Georgia, so it doesn’t really count. I left them on the boat deck before a big storm and in the gale-force winds, they blew into the ocean and have been lost at sea ever since.
Scuba diving is my thing. Like how some people run, or play baseball, or paint, I scuba dive. The feeling I get is incredible, incomprehensible, indescribable. The ocean is so huge; I feel like just one cloud in the sky, one little grain of sand on the beach. Like I can feel the whole world around me, but that I’m still important.
I’m part of a squad of five divers working at Morley Aquarium. We’re all going to be going to college this fall, and we’re lead by Joe Hendrickson. Joe is one of those people who becomes less mature the older he gets.
It's our – me, Colette, Brenna, Pablo, and Kylar – job to check up on Kohana Reef, which is about a mile or two off the northwestern coast of Cielorojo Key. Ironically, Morley Aquarium is on Havana Key, a mile to the north, so we have to take a boat out to the reef whenever we’re diving there. Kylar, Colette, and I all live on Cielorojo. Cielorojo, and, specifically, Epsilon, its biggest and only city – which isn’t saying much since there’s less than a hundred people on the whole island – used to be a super vacation spot for tourists, before consumerist places like Miami started popping up all over the place, offering resorts that don’t let you see Florida for what it really is.
Back when Epsilon was thriving, scuba diving was offered to the public at Kohana. That was before people started trying to smuggle chunks of coral out of the reef to take home as souvenirs. Not long after that became a common act, Kohana Reef nearly died out because of bleaching, something that keeps the coral from getting food to survive, and then it closed to people altogether.
Now, about twenty years after the bleaching episode, the reef has nearly returned to its full glory. This doesn’t matter though, because it won’t ever be open for the public to visit again. When the bleaching started, the state of Florida made Kohana its own little reservation and put Morley Aquarium in charge of diving weekly and reporting on the condition of the coral.
We dive Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It’s not like the reef changes a whole lot from day to day but it’s just so we have more data from a short time span if something happens in the long run. I guess then we’d be able to tell when something started, if it ever did.
Kylar can’t always dive with us; most of the time he’s lucky to dive more than once or twice in a month. He has asthma, which basically means his lungs don’t expand enough or something and this is bad, especially when you factor in the cool air from the tanks and the pressure under the water. Whenever he doesn’t dive – which is more often than not; he can’t dive is he’s had an attack in the last few days, or if he’s sick – he either watches the boat or helps out with odd jobs around Morley. The manager, Rhonda, loves him. She thinks he’s the nicest teenager she’s ever met and has informed him, multiple times, that if being a doctor doesn’t work out he’s got a full-time job waiting at Morley.
Every Sunday after diving, Joe treats all of us to ice cream at Zoe’s, which is right between the church (its real name is something long and complicated, so everyone just calls it ‘the church,’ since it’s the one on Cielorojo anyway.) and the Seven-Eleven. The sign in front of Zoe’s, ‘Best Ice Cream on Cielorojo,’ is from years ago, when there used to be more than one ice cream parlor on the island. Now it’s kind of a joke – of course it’s the best; it’s the only. I think that even if there were a thousand other ice cream parlors, Zoe’s would still be the best. Seriously, where else can you get lime soft serve?
I hate the fact that my mom was here. I love Zoe’s, but the fact that Mom sat on one of their picnic tables pollutes it all for me. Because of that picture I have, and Georgia’s rare stories, I know that she and her sister visited Zoe’s frequently as kids. Going to Zoe’s is the closest I’ve gotten to her presence in fifteen years. My conscience tells me to go on with my life, to not hang around thinking about my mother. I listen; if I never went to Zoe’s just because my mom went there, what kind of person would I be? I can’t let her mistakes overshadow the rest of my life.
One thing I try to follow her example of: ignorance. If she can pretend I don’t exist, I should be able to pretend she doesn’t exist either.
▲▼▲
Kylar, Colette, and I live for the summers. They are, after all, what our lives are marked in terms of. The summer before seventh grade, we started diving. The summer before sixth grade, Colette moved to Epsilon. The summer before fourth grade, Kylar’s dad died.
During school, we go about business as usual. We do what is expected of us, when it is expected, and nothing more. But as soon as school lets out, we come to life.
If our summers ever seem monotonous, it’s probably because, to anyone but us, they would be. But this, this is what we do. This is who we are. We long ago developed the attitude that everything we do, no matter how many times we’ve done it before, is a new adventure, and requires proper enthusiasm. Also, today might be your last day, so live it like it’s the best of your life.
This stems from a pact we made the summer before ninth grade after watching “The Bucket List.” Every Friday at Kylar’s, we have movie night. I bring pop. Colette brings popcorn. Kylar supplies a movie.
After we watched it, we had a stroke of realization and discovered there were so many things we wanted to do that we had not. So, like in the movie, we made a list. Lie on the beach in the middle of the night and just look at the stars. Walk through the sand barefoot early in the morning. Dive off of Hartley’s Bridge. Spend the night in the lifeguard shack. See the infamous ‘green flash’ when the sun is setting. Go to Paris. Surf. Skydive. Go to an amusement park and ride every single roller coaster. Go to Cadillac Mountain in Maine on New Year’s and be the first people to greet the new year.
Together, we completed nearly every one of those that summer. Of course, there was no way we could go to Paris, or arrange to skydive, and New Year’s isn’t in the summer. But we laid on the beach and looked at the stars; we walked barefoot through the sand; we dove off of Hartley’s Bridge, which has become a routine thing – it’s what we do on Fridays on our way home from Morley; we spent the night in the lifeguard shack; we surfed; we went to Six Flags and rode every single coaster.
That was probably one of the greatest summers of my life. It was the greatest summer of all of our lives, and that’s what inspired our pact. We realized that we had so much fun not for all we did, but for the fact that everything we did was a new, however simple, adventure. We treated each adventure with excitement, and that’s why the summer was so great. From then on, we decided to approach everything this way. Everything in the summers, at least.
It was Kylar’s idea to extend our “Bucket Summer” attitude to all the other summers, so they’d all be just as fun. It was he who understood it best. Even though we all came from disjointed families, me with no mom or dad – Georgia never really counted as either – and Colette with no dad to speak of, Kylar was the only one of us who truly lost a parent. Mine and Colette’s families were messed up, but neither of us had actually had a parent die. I don’t know my mom and dad, but even at the time I was fairly sure they were still alive.
We had been sitting in the lifeguard shack, playing Monopoly – one of our favorite pastimes – which Colette was creaming us at, when Kylar asked us a very deep question promptly after buying Park Place.
“If you died tomorrow,” he said, “would you be happy?”
“Well,” Colette had said at first, taking the dice from him, “I’d be dead. I don’t imagine I’d be happy or sad.”
“Okay…” he said flatly. “Let me rephrase that. If you suddenly found out that you had a terminal illness and were going to die tomorrow, would you be happy with the way your life went?”
“Please don’t tell me we’re making another bucket list,” I had said.
He frowned, frustrated. “No. That’s not what I’m getting at. I’m saying, wouldn’t you want your life to have been as happy as it could be?” Colette and I nodded slowly, unsure of where this was going. “Well, wouldn’t you guys agree that this was the greatest summer yet?” We continued to nod. “And why was that?”
“The Bucket List,” Colette said.
“Watching you puke your guts out at Six Flags definitely made it the greatest,” I joked.
He glared at me. “Seriously. It was great because we were happy all the time. Because each thing we did was new and we were excited about those things, so, like I said, we were happy. Agreed?” We nodded again. “So doesn’t it make sense that if we were always excited about things, we’d be happy all the time?”
“What is this?” Colette muttered, rolling doubles for the second time in a row. “The Optimist’s Club?”
“Yeah, with the resident pessimist.” He smirked and I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Anyways,” he continued, “my point is, what if there was some terrible accident tomorrow and one of us died? Like my dad. He didn’t know that he was going to be paralyzed, and end up dying. No one can predict that. We need to be happy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Colette said.
“I get it,” I said.
“So,” Kylar said, “let’s be like that all the time. Let’s not be all bored. Let’s just be excited and try every new thing we can, but appreciate the things we’ve done before. Everything is a new adventure.”
“Remind me to get that on a t-shirt,” Colette said dryly, rolling the dice once again.
Kylar smiled slowly at her. “I believe that was three doubles in a row. You are going to jail.”
That was the night we decided to take the Bucket Summer attitude and continue it to all our other summers. We called it the Bucket Summer Pact; we all officially became optimists. After a while, even Colette started to warm to the idea.
The way we looked at it, summers only came around every so often, and, at the time of our Bucket Summer Pact, we only had a few of them left together.
Around that time is when we developed our routine. Sundays, we dive and go to Zoe’s. Tuesdays, we dive. Wednesdays, we make an event of going to the pier, stopping at Federico’s for some of his world famous hot dogs. We actually go to the pier every evening, to watch the sunset because we never did see the green flash during the Bucket Summer and Kylar swears he will see one before he dies. So, every evening, we go down to the pier with a video camera. Thursdays, we dive, and then hang out in the lifeguard shack or at the new place we just found, the lighthouse. Fridays are movie night at Kylar’s. Saturdays, we dive. Sundays, we start all over again.
Long ago, this stopped being monotonous and started just being life. Long ago, we stopped getting tired of each other and instead just looked forward to each other’s company. This is the way we live. Anything else just throws everything off-kilter.
▲▼▲
Fried in a gallon of grease and made out of all the disgusting parts of the meat no one else wants, Federico’s hot dogs look absolutely sick but taste like heaven.
“Oh my, God,” Colette says, sinking her teeth into one. “These are so amazing.”
She, Kylar, I are sitting down at the pier, waiting for the sun to go down and watching the little diving birds to pass the time. They hover in the air for mere moments, staring down at the waves exponentially larger than they themselves, then crash down into the water. Seconds later, they reappear, carrying a minnow in their tiny beaks.
Mr. Federico himself, whose cart is only a few yards down, smiles at us. “The hot dogs are good, kids? Yes?”
Mr. Federico is over sixty years old, but still has dreadlocks and tanned, leathery, Jamaican skin. He claims Bob Marley was his cousin, but we think he’s lying.
“Yes,” Kylar says. “They’re very good.”
Mr. Federico smiles, exposing a mouthful of yellowed teeth.
There’s a cheer coming from down at the end of the pier and we look to see a fisherman pull a giant tarpon out of the water. The guy next to him gives him a high-five and they hold it up so they can admire it. It flops at the end of the line and its silvery scales glint in the fading light.
“Big fish,” Mr. Federico says, absently scrubbing the cash register with a tattered old rag.
A little boy not more than seven runs up to the fisherman and hugs his leg. The fisherman attempts to awkwardly hug him back and I realize they must be father and son.
Kylar looks away, but I can’t seem to tear my eyes from the scene.
I watch as a woman walks out of the shadows with a camera and takes a picture of them.
For moments afterwards, the bright flash remains ingrained on my eyelids; I keep seeing the father and son, and the devoted mom, long after they’ve walked away.
Kylar clears his throat and wads up the paper his hot dog was in. I take the last bite of mine, and then wad up the paper and throw it at him.
“Hey!” he laughs and returns it, nailing me in the calf.
“Guys,” Colette says, pointing out in the distance where the sun has nearly reached the horizon. Kylar whips the video camera out of his pocket and begins filming.
Day and night are in the midst of a battle. Their disagreement is reflected on the water like a fractured mirror. Although the rest of the sky is darkening, daylight won’t succumb without one last burst of violets and crimsons. It shoots its brilliant tentacles across the sky, but finally, in the fading light, night prevails. The sun, defeated, sinks below the horizon without so much dignity as to give one last green flash of light to prove it’s a fighter. Once more, dusk settles settles over Epsilon with an old and familiar blanket.
“Dang,” Kylar mutters, shutting the camera.
“I don’t think the green flash is real,” Colette says and kicks at a pebble. It falls into the violet water below with a soft plop. “We’ve been coming here almost every night of the week for the past four years and we haven’t seen it once.”
“It happens once in a million sunsets,” he points out.
“So that’s, what? Once every three thousand years? It’s not even going to happen in your lifetime, Kylar.”
“You don’t know that,” he murmurs.
“Kylar,” I intervene. “Look. I know you want to see one and all, but you’re more likely to win the lottery, or walk out in the street and get hit by a bus.”
“Thanks, guys,” he says sarcastically. “I appreciate your vote of confidence. I hope you know that when I become rich and famous for being the first person to record a green flash sunset, I’m not going to be friends with either one of you.”
I know he’s lying. He wouldn’t know what to do without me. And, to be honest, I don’t think I’d know what to do without him either.
I lay back on the asphalt of the pier, feeling the rough gritty tarmac beneath my back. Up in the sky, the first few stars are beginning to shyly peek out from behind the clouds. Kylar lays down beside me and points up in the sky. “That’s Orion,” he informs me.
“That’s cool.”
“No. That’s Orion.”
I smirk. “Funny.”
Colette lays down on my other side. The three of us stay like that for a long time, until Federico leaves with his hot dog cart, until the fisherman and his son are long gone, until the stars have come out of hiding and are winking down at us, until the moon makes an appearance in the sky directly overhead. We stay like that until we’re all dreaming of worlds far beyond what we’ve always known.
I applaud you if you read this entire thing in one sitting. By now, I've proofread it so many times that I practically have it memorized, so I'd really like some new input on it. Thanks!
Oh! Also, if you can, can you tell me what you think of the characters right now? Like, their characteristics and stuff? I want to make sure I'm portraying them the right way.
Eek, please help! I've just noticed I really need help on my teenager dialogue. And I know that sounds stupid because I am a teenager, but for some reason my characters never have quite the light-hearted, life-is-great teenager dialogue like I want them to.
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