So, I hate romance. And I hate it when people end the first chapter with two strangers making out. And not prostitute strangers, presumably. But I wanted to see if I was capable of writing a romance; mostly because I have writers block. I will only write more of this if I get more than three reviews. Good luck.
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Cretia, whose name was actually Lucretia but refused to be called such, was bored. She was on her back under a drooping sycamore trying to get her friend Lucy to stop talking.
Somehow, turning fourteen had turned Lucy into a goblin. Or perhaps only half-goblin. She was suddenly sure that every thought she had was worthy of publication and then, subsequently, critical acclaim. Cretia disagreed.
The sun was a dour yellow, half-hidden by the clouds and giving no warmth whatsoever. If it was to rain, Cretia hoped it might put out the nasty fire in Lucy's mouth.
“Luce?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you stop talking?”
And with that, Lucy got slowly to her feet and walked away, glaring at Cretia with her ugliest face. That had been much easier than had been expected.
Before Cretia could decide if laying on her back under a tree was a good pastime in itself, she heard the rumbling of a motorcycle and clamped her hands over her ears, waiting for it to end. It got closer until she was sure it must be riding around in her head and then suddenly there was a resounding crash and she leapt to her feet, feeling thoroughly terrified.
Across the street, both trash cans had been throw into the air and the swing-set lay on its back like a dying spider. A dirty motorcycle was embedded in an oak tree and a boy was on his back on the ground, breathing unevenly.
“Oh--Oh my god!” cried the horrified girl, racing across the street.
“No, no. I'm okay. Look. I'm fine.” The boy's voice was a little cracked; dry from fear, she was sure.
“Should I--should I call the--”
“No, I said I'm fine. Are you deaf or something? Stupid girl . . . “ He got gingerly to his feet, groaning audibly.
Cretia didn’t know what to say at first, and so she busied herself staring at the boy, who was peeling his jacket off and taking some skin with it. He had dirty, orange hair, a colorless complexion, and torpid, grey eyes. She guessed that he was sixteen or seventeen but he acted more like a nine year old; the sixteen and seventeen-year-olds always paid her much closer attention.
“Did you just call me stupid? My name is--”
“I didn’t ask for your name. I called you stupid because you weren’t paying close enough attention to me to realize that I didn‘t want your attention, or need it, at all. You were too busy thinking about yourself. Yourself. Yourself. Yourself.” He paused, licking his lips and glancing at his bleeding arms. “But, I’m guessing you’re my neighbor and since I just moved into this tree, I guess I should meet you. Hi, I’m Locke, I’m fourteen and--and, that’s it. My last name is Locke, not my first name. I don’t give out my first to . . . little girls.” Then he laughed in a forced way that sounded like he knew how forced it was.
“What the fuck?” Cretia really needed to say something and that was all that came to her. No one had ever talked to her like that. Ever. And she didn’t like being humiliated.
“Wow. Strong language for a little kid. Where did you learn that?”
“I’m not a little kid and--and--”
“I bet no one has ever told you something true about yourself. I bet that when they insult you they call you ugly, which you’re not, or retarded, which you’re probably not. Right? I bet I’m right.” He laughed again and then stopped abruptly, gazing at her in an attempted serious way.
“You’re a bastard.” Insulting him only made her feel a little better.
“Technically, yes. I bet you’ll die from telling the truth.”
She could think of nothing to say and hoped he would continue talking; he didn’t.
There was a short silence that made her hate him even more. If she hated him at all. And then he kicked her in the shin and ran, slamming his gate behind him. She cried out, angry and in pain, and then kicked the broken swing-set.
“You stupid jerk! Stupid, stupid, stupid, asshole!” But there was no response and so she sat down in the grass, rubbing her shin.
Before she could fully understand what had just happened, if that was even possible, she heard her mom’s voice.
“Lucretia! Lucretia! Was that you yelling?”
Her mom was standing on the porch, holding a dead potted plant and looking old and irritated.
“No, of course not,” answered Cretia, hating her mom for calling her by her real name.
“It was you because I recognized your voice! Now, get over her so I can stop yelling across the street!”
“No. I’m busy,” said Cretia, not raising her voice enough for her mom to hear.
“What? What did you say? Nevermind, I don’t want to know. Get over here, now.”
“No!” shouted Cretia, too angry to reach even normal intelligence.
“Grounded,” said her mom, and then vanished back into the house.
What? Grounded for saying one stupid word? She didn’t get up but she could hear laughing behind her. Damn, she hated that kid.
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Cretia was not known across the globe for her unfathomable intelligence. She wasn’t a stupid girl, she simply didn’t value cleverness or thought; mostly because she found her face so fascinating.
Like a lot of freshman girls she wanted a boyfriend. Not because she was particularly interested in guys, other than something nice to look at, but because she was sure they all liked her. And it would be mean not to like them back, right? Well, that was as far as her lack of logic took her, and so what had happened last night had been immensely troubling.
It was Saturday and she was on the floor in her room, staring at the patterned light on the ceiling that slipped through the trees.
Of course, there were other things to do. For instance, she could call Lance or James or maybe even Charlie. But she couldn’t decide which one, so she didn’t call any of them. Whenever she thought of going outside she involuntarily remembered Locke and clenched her fists, stupidly frustrated.
“Lucretia!” It was her mom again. And the annoying voice reminded her that she was grounded; something she had somehow forgot. It was good that she hadn’t decided to call someone.
“Yes, mother?” she shouted sarcastically, feeling pleased with herself.
“Get down here and take the neighbors dog for a walk!”
What? Why couldn’t the neighbors walk their own dog?
“I’m grounded! I can’t!” She smiled, somehow unaware that her ploy would neither get her out of the irritating job nor make her mother particularly happy.
“If you don’t get down now you won’t go to school for a week!”
Now, in a normal situation, that kind of threat would probably be completely ineffective. But Cretia, having just started Highschool, could not imagine risking what would happen if she vanished and Lance or James or Charlie started paying more attention to someone else. A nightmare, at the very least.
“Alright!” she screamed, getting to her feet. “I will now go downstairs and do a stupid job for a stupid person who is too stupid to be smart enough to do something as stupid as walking a stupid dog.” This made her feel remotely better.
As she stomped down the stairs, she shivered; annoyed that it had been sweaty in her room. It was one of those days that couldn’t decide whether to be cold or warm. The sun came and went, the breeze breathed warm and then cold, and the asphalt burned your feet while the pavement froze them.
Her mom was standing at the door, talking to a man in a red sweater and odd grey pants. He must have been about fifty, and couldn’t have looked more capable of walking his dog.
“Oh, darling, there you are. Mr. Vaslevsky recently underwent surgery and needs someone sweet like you to walk his dog for him. You love dogs so I knew you would be glad.” Her mom wrinkled her face into toothy smile and grabbed Cretia’s arm, dragging her outside.
Mr. Vaslevsky didn’t smile as Mother handed Cretia a worn leash attached to a medium-sized, boring-looking half-breed who was missing a few toes.
“Of you go, then! She just loves dogs,” continued Mother to Mr. Vaslevsky as Cretia walked sullenly down the driveway. Of course she didn’t love dogs and of course her mom knew that, but all’s fair in front of strangers and their dogs.
The sky was a strangled mix of white, gold and blue, and shafts of chilly sunlight slid across brick and stone. Cretia’s pajama shorts and baggy sweatshirt were really quite incapable of keeping her even slightly comfortable, and she sweat and shivered down the street.
Every five or ten seconds she would jump, sure she had heard a snotty voice shouting something stupid, but it was never so. By the time she had circled both blocks she was in such a fit of nerves that a garbage can very nearly became her armchair.
It wasn’t until she passed the broken swing set for a third time that a non-imaginary voice broke the silence and startled her so badly she began to cry. Perhaps she was hoping for sympathy, it was hard to tell.
“Hey! You with the ugly dog!” She glanced up, finding a boy hanging out of a window. That boy. “God, what the hell? Are you crying? Anyway, watch, I’m going to jump out the window.”
She screamed something unintelligible and he toppled out the window. Squeezing her eyes shut, she listened for the sound of cracking bones or the yelp of someone in a large amount of sudden pain, but all she could hear was the rustling of leaves, a shout of delight, and then a stream of laughing.
“Open your eyes, you stupid girl. C’mon, look.” She felt someone poke her in the side and jumped back, eyes wide. Locke was standing perfectly intact in front of her, a grin on his wide face.
“What--what is wrong with--”
“Oh, it worked fine. I just buried a small trampoline in leaves and then--”
“No, I won’t talk to you. Go away.” And she turned away, clutching the dog leash tightly and taking even steps down the block.
“Ah-ha! I see how it is. If I insult you and don’t treat you like the princess that you must be, you jump to the conclusion that ignoring me will be a just punishment.”
She ignored him and kept walking.
“Well, you would be wrong!” he yelled. “If you really want to hurt me, you’ll have to start following me around everywhere and telling me all the boring, stupid things that come into your head!”
It was wise to assume that the whole neighborhood had been privy to the end of that conversation and, being something of an ordinary neighborhood, it was slightly taken aback by the odd boy‘s pronouncement.
Suddenly, Cretia turned back, realizing she had passed her house and that she simply could not handle another walk around the block. Refusing to meet Locke’s eyes, she turned up her nose and therefore was not looking very carefully where she was going.
Locke took the opportunity to be a little bit funny.
I'm curious to read what happens next. I think I found a grammatical error though...
