This story needs as much help as the world can give it. The beginning is worse than horrible; it is perfectly capable of making you weep for a reason you may not see. Not because it's sad either, but because it's written so poorly. This is my NaNo story by the way, so we will just say that I wasn't actually in the best state of mind with it. Enough rants. Here we go. If it's too long let me know and I'll break the future parts up more.
The afternoon sun seeped through my blinds and flooded my room, casting its brightest rays upon the chestnut hair of my best friend who lay sprawled on the floor besides my dresser.
“I don’t understand this!” Lydia exclaimed and slammed her algebra book shut. She threw a frustrated glance in my direction and pushed her hair back. I giggled at her.
“It’s not funny, Nat,” She said through clenched teeth, “It’s called ridiculous. Half this stuff we aren’t ever going to look at again in our lives, so I totally do not see the point in doing it now!”
“Exactly” I said just to show her I was listening.
“It’s just a bunch of numbers mixed with dots and dashes and… letters! Since when did math become letters?”
“Who knows?”
“I don’t. If you look up math in the dictionary, I’ll bet it says something like “numbers being added or something” not a combination of X and Y coordinates! It’s stupid!”
“Right,” I said dully lacking interest, “Anything else?”
“Yes,” She said and sighed, “Can you do this for me?”
I laughed and took the book from her.
“What do you need help on?”
“Number fourteen”
I solved the problem for her quickly, and handed it back to her.
“How do you do it?” She asked, glaring at the paper; I shrugged. I leaned back against my bed and amused myself by staring at her to annoy her. I didn’t really understand her. She was so smart when it came to life and fashion, but she seemed to always fail at academics. We were alike in so many ways, but in an equal amount of ways we were extremely different. We were exactly the same height, Lydia being slightly chubbier than I. She had silky, long dark brown hair, and mine was a medium length, light brown shock. She had perfect, olive skin, and dark brown eyes; my skin was pale and my eyes were a dull green. She had a more exciting appearance than I did, and was undoubtedly more interesting. Her style was interesting, too; she loved to dress in the latest fashions and bright striking colors, whereas I was content in plain jeans and a t-shirt.
“What are you looking at?” Lydia snapped at me, and I realized I was almost daydreaming with my eyes in her direction.
“Nothing, I was thinking…” I said, my words trailing off.
“About?”
“About us and just how we are together.”
“How is that? Not bad, right?” She asked, gaining interest.
“Not bad… It’s strange, we’re so alike, but we’re so different in so many ways.” My voice sounded distant, as if I were imagining.
“Name some,” she said, “I want to see if I see things the same”
“Well, I mean, we are different people of course… my hair is light, yours is dark…” I said with a deep breath, telling her exactly what was passing through my mind as I always did. She was my best friend, and we never kept anything from each other.
“Yeah, I’m fatter than you are…” She said continuing my sentence for me.
“You’re more outgoing, and you’re prettier…”
“Not, I think you’re more outgoing and you’re prettier▬”
“Not true, you know you are! I could▬”
“Shush,” she demanded, trying not to laugh, “Let’s just say we’re equal for now. You play basketball…”
“And you play soccer. You hate school, but somehow you love writing.”
“You know, that’s very true… whoa, I never thought of it that way.”
“Huh?”
“I never put it like that… I hate school… Math, History, Science, whatever, but I love writing. Isn’t that pretty ironic?”
“Mm hmm, it is.”
“You know what else I just realized?”
“What?”
“We both hate music… I mean, that’s not normal… teenagers love it, die without it.”
I laughed at her. “You’re just realizing this?”
“Mm hmm, you weren’t wrong when you said▬”
“Said what?” I asked raising my eyebrows at her.
“Nothing, never mind” She said in a little girls voice. I threw a throw pillow from my bed at her and she shrieked and threw it back. I threw it back to her and snatched a few more and threw them after the first one, laughing. We continued pelting each other with pillows until she suddenly exclaimed;
“Ouch!”
“What happened?” I asked, still giggling.
“Oh, ouch!” she said doubling over, as if in pain; I stopped laughing. Her face paled and she clutched her leg.
“Lyd, are you okay?” I asked, beginning to worry.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, my leg… just hurts.”
“I’ll call my Dad, we can▬”
“No, no! Don’t call him, he’ll just worry… it doesn’t hurt as much now, I’m fine. I probably just twisted it the wrong way”
“But you weren’t even moving!” I protested.
“Yes, I was… I was trying to get the silly pillow” I rolled my eyes at her.
“Sure?”
“Positive,” She said, jumping up off the floor and brushing off her jeans.
I eyed her suspiciously and sat down on my bed. She looked at her wristwatch.
“Oh no, I’d better get home,” She said quickly, “I promised to help Mom with dinner tonight.”
“Can’t you stay over for dinner and call to let her know?”
She twisted her face. “Nah, I’d better get home Nat, remember what I said about promises?”
“Yeah…”
“So… yeah, I need to kind of go… byes.” And with that she walked out of my bedroom leaving me standing there confusedly staring at the spot where she just stood a minute before.
Lydia and I had been friends since fifth grade, and we were in tenth grade then. Lydia loved fashion, writing and soccer, whereas I enjoyed reading and basketball. We used to be on an all girls baseball team together, but after 7th grade we decided that we had different interests in sports and Lydia joined the soccer team. I took up basketball.
I’ve been at every one of Lydia’s soccer games and she has been at all of my basketball games. In other situations, we have always been there for each other; she was there for me when my parents split up, and I was there for her when her dog Lucy died.
She had only had Lucy for two weeks, but she had grown extremely attached to her. On her 12th day with Lucy, the dog got very sick. Two nights later, it lay down for bed and never got back up. Lydia was heartbroken, and even I felt like I couldn’t do enough for her.
My parents split when I was thirteen. They didn’t click, and it was for our sake that they split. Mom took my now eighteen year old brother, Matt, and a piece of my heart with her. Dad kept me with him; I visited my mother about twice a month. It’s wasn’t enough, and Lydia’s mom knows it. She tries her best to fill in the places only a Mother could fill. But it’s not the same.
Lydia and I were like sisters. Every year, on the twenty-fifth of June, we would camp out in Lydia’s backyard—rain or clear skies—and we make promises to each other. Sometimes we promised each other silly things, but our biggest promise, the one sealed with five promises, is the one we promise to keep forever.
“Natalie?” Lydia had asked me as we lay beneath the stars, on the twenty-fifth of June right after graduating from fifth grade.
“Yes Lydia?”
“Do you think we’ll be friends forever?” She asked with so much eagerness in her voice. I had thought little of it at the time, but as I look back on it, I remember the amount of hope that she put into the question.
“Yes, if we promise,” I had said, not entirely sure what I was saying and inventing half of it at the moment.
“How do we promise?”
“We promise each other everything we have. I remember reading about two girls who promised and they stayed friends forever, until one of them died.”
“Oh. That’s so sad”
“Yes, but they were old when they died, so the promise stayed true”
“Oh.”
“Lydia?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to promise?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“Yes, I really, really do.”
“Okay, you go first.” She said, so I promised first.
“Lydia, I promise that I will be your friend forever and ever, until we are died.”
“Do you really, really promise?” She asked, ignoring my lapse of lingy.
“I promise.”
“Natalie, I promise that I will be your best friend forever and ever until we die.”
“Promise…?”
“I promise, really.”
“In the book I read they sealed the promise,” I had said to her, “They promised to keep their promises too”
“How did they do that?”
“They promised to keep their promises▬”
“Do it then”
“Lydia, I promise to be your friend forever, and I promise to keep that promise, and promise to keep that promise.”
“And Nat, I promise to be your friend forever, and I promise to keep that promise and that promise and… oh, I can keep going on forever, really, I can.”
“I know you can, and I can too…”
So we made it official. The ridiculous practice of promising what was already obvious occurred every year on June twenty-fifth. Year after year, we would slip beneath the stars to make promises to each other and seal them with promises on top of promises. Sometimes our promises would be something we could hold. In seventh grade, I gave Lydia a necklace in the shape of half the yin-yang symbol that said “Best” on it. I had the other half, that said “Friends”. We wore them everyday, even though Lydia’s chain was slightly rusted and the words on mine started to fade off the metal. That year, I gave Lydia a diary with a golden lock. She wrote in it every day, and every weekend she let me read her entries. If there’s ever anything she can’t tell me directly, she writes it in the diary and I scrawl my comments besides her paragraphs.
In my thirteenth and fourteenth years, I vacationed with Lydia’s family in the summertime. I always wanted to spend the summers with my mom, but neither my mother nor father would let me. My Mother wouldn’t let me because she was “too busy”, and my father wouldn’t let me because he would either have to drop me off at Moms or Mom would have to come pick me up. Both ways involved them seeing each other and neither of them wanted that. Just when I always thought that I was going to break down and cry, Lydia always seemed to appear and say in her most demanding tone:
“Get up; pack your bags. It’s time for vacation.”
To me, Lydia was the most amazing person I could wish for as a friend. She supported me in everything I did, and always made sure that I never gave up. I remember once in eighth grade, we had a science project and mine was failing. Everything was too much for me to handle then, and when Lydia called me the night before it was due, I cried over it. She listened to me without talking, and then in a low voice said goodbye and hung up. I was so hurt; I thought she didn’t care, but in a few minutes she was standing on my doorstep in her pink bunny pajamas with her books in her arms grinning at me. I almost suffocated her; I hugged her with everything I had inside of me. I was so thankful that she had come over; I couldn’t find the words to speak my thanks. That night, we finished our homework together and because of her help, I got an A on that assignment.
Whenever Lydia did something for me, I would always tell her that I hope I’ll have a chance to repay her, but she always shook her head and said;
“No, because that would mean that I am in need, and I don’t think I want to be in that much need of help”
“It’s the least I can do, and I feel I owe it to you.” I always protested.
“You’ve thanked me enough accepting it Natalie.”
Whenever she called me “Natalie”, instead of “Nat” I could never argue with her. There was a gentle seriousness in her voice that I respected her for and never tried to argue with her at those moments.
I once asked her if she respected me. She told me she did with her entire heart and would never do anything disrespectful to me or hurt me in anyway. After that we promised with “everything our hearts contained” that we would be there for each other—forever.
“Natalie!” My father called from the bottom of the stairs, the same night Lydia injured her leg, “Time for dinner!”
“I’m coming!” I shouted back and sighed. In those days, dinner was my least favorite part of the day. I couldn’t help looking at the two empty seats at the table and hoping that my mother and brother were sitting there sharing our dinner and conversation with us. It’s not like my father and I had conversations at dinner anyway—it was mostly a silent meal. The emptiness made me feel more at home at Lydia’s house, eating with her, her parents and her older brother.
I closed my school books and went down stairs to the kitchen. Dad was setting the table; only two cups, two plates, two forks. The same routine with no family feel to the atmosphere.
I took my usual seat across from him at the table and served myself some of the lasagna he cooked and ate in silence. I finished and was about to get up when Dad said;
“Sit. Eat more.”
“But I’m full, Dad.” I protested; his conversations were always a hotbed for arguments.
“I said eat more,” he said sternly, “You need to eat more than you do, you are too thin for your age”
“What!” I exclaimed, “Dad, no I am not!” A twinge of regret pinched me; I felt like I had acted too dramatically too fast.
“Don’t talk back to me Natalie! You are getting to be too thin for your age.”
“Dad! That’s not true!” I retorted.
“Natalie, look at you compared to Lydia… you are too skinny!”
I looked down at my arms, examining them and trying to keep myself from crying. I told myself I was overreacting—and I knew I was, but I had dumped all the blame on him.
“Eat.” He demanded.
“No Dad!” I screamed, letting everything out I rightfully should have held back, and stood up from my chair, “It’s not fair! I am not too skinny! And don’t you dare ever compare me to Lydia again!”
I ran out of the kitchen regardless of the fact that Dad was calling my name and upstairs to my room. I flung myself across the bed, buried my head into my pillow and cried. After a while, I was too mad to cry anymore, so I decided to call Lydia.
The phone rang twice before someone picked up.
“Hello?” Lydia’s mother answered the phone.
“Hi, it’s Natalie, is Lydia there?”
“Oh, hi Nat,” She said in her soft voice, “Lydia actually went to go lie down, she wasn’t feeling too good…”
My heart skipped a beat. Lydia never went to bed before ten. “Is she okay?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure she is… she’s probably just a bit tired from gym today, but, I’ll see if she’s up to talking.”
“Thanks,” was the only reply I could get out. I reminded myself that I was being a drama queen and ordered myself to relax.
“Hello?” A weary voice said on the phone after a moment of silence.
“Lydia?”
“Yeah… Nat?”
“Gosh, you sound so tired, are you alright?” I asked teasingly.
“I don’t know,” She said, her answer making my heart drop. “I feel sick”
“Sick? Like what kind of sick?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like cold, kind of sick? Or like flu-ish?”
“I don’t know,” She said weakly, “I feel really dizzy, I need to go lie down.”
“Lyd, are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, Nat, I’m fine, just had a long day.” She faked a laugh.
Unconvinced, I told her: “Go lay down Lyd, see you in school tomorrow.”
“Yep, bye-bye.”
I gently placed the receiver back in its cradle and flopped backwards onto my bed. I am over reacting, I’m overreacting, I told myself; I knew it, but tried to tell myself I wasn’t. Not knowing what had gotten into me, I decided to shower and head to bed.
On my way to the bathroom I over heard bits of my father’s conversation on the telephone down the hall.
“I know Marie… but she needs to… No, No, but not anymore… Yes, she does… No, but she needs to… she isn’t eating enough either… she’s yours too.”
Infuriated, I rushed into the bathroom and forcefully turned the shower on full blast. He must’ve been talking to my mother, I thought, and I’ll bet he wants me to move in with her. I took my clothes off and stepped into the shower letting the hot water refresh my senses.
Opening sentences are probably the trickiest - for me, a least. An opening sentence needs something to fire the imagination of reader. Make the reader want to know what happens next - something that pulls them into the story. Makes them ask questions - who is this, what's happening, what's going to happen?