Young Writers Society

I asked you who your mother was, and you told me, she is cloud.
I looked for some sort of a joke on your face, but your dark eyes were always laughing, and your mouth was always holding back another word. Always restraining from telling everything, letting me guess. I told you that my mother worked at a convenience store, and that her manager was named Ben and that when I was little he used to give me snacks when I went there. You said, that sounds nice, and I said, yes, it was very nice, and you looked at me like you were looking for something you'd misplaced.
Then the subway stopped at your station and you smiled and said, see you tomorrow, and I smiled and said, see ya, but you'd already left.



“Sorry I'm late, Gloria. I waited ages for an express train, but you know how unreliable they can be—I had to take a local, and it took forever. Are you hungry?”
“No, I heated up the pasta and had some, it's on the stove if you want it.”
“Thanks honey.” I turned around to watch my mother as she went into our little kitchen. The yellow kitchen light cast her shadow through the doorway where it oozed up the wall next to the bathroom door. One of the kitchen lights was out, and both of us keep forgetting to replace it. “How's your homework going?” I saw her shadow raise an arm and there was a clatter of dishes as she got herself a plate from the pantry. I turned back to my flashcards.
H2CO3
Carbonic acid, common component in acid rain.
“It's okay,” I said.



You asked me who my father was, and I told you he died when I was little. You said, I'm sorry, and I told you, it's not your fault, and you didn't say, that's not what I meant. I didn't ask you who your father was.
You smiled anyway and said, he is sky.
I asked you if it was hard, and you shrugged and said, sometimes, yes, but mostly it's just cold. I said, how cold? And you said, it's so cold, sometimes, that I swallow ice to warm myself. Your face was laughing and I said, I'm sorry, and you didn't say, it's not your fault.


“It's so cold in here!”
I could hear Luisa whispering from two rows behind me.
“Freaking lord, it's freezing.”
“... which has lead many ecologists to wonder about the influence this type of pollution can have on plants and animals. Yes, Luisa? No, why don't you put your coat on? This graph shows the change in levels of various air-borne pollutants over the last eight thousand years...”
I glanced over at you and you were looking at me, and you smiled like I had one of your secrets and you were plotting to get it back.



What are you looking at, you asked. I said, nothing, and you said, it looked like you were watching the clouds. Maybe I was, I said, and you said that you thought it was going to snow. I said, I hope there's a blizzard. You asked me if I'd ever been to the top of the Empire State building in a blizzard, and I said, no, I haven't. And you said, if it blizzards, will you go to the top of the Empire State with me? And I said of course.
Do you really want it to blizzard, you asked me and I said I wanted the biggest blizzard ever. I said, I want the city to be as deep in snow as it is in smog. You said, except the Empire State building, and I laughed and said okay.
I asked you to do my history homework, and you said, sure, if you do my ecology.



I said, they'll never say yes. If we don't ask, it won't matter, you said. You grabbed my hand, and your fingers were so cold that my skin screamed. Colder than the snow that the wind was pushing through the revolving door. You pulled me to the elevator and said, they won't even see us, and that way they can't say no. I said, what about cameras and alarms? They can't say no either, you said, and let go of my hand.



"Are you looking for something?" The woman asked.
"No, thanks." I smiled back at her. "Just visiting my friend's parents."
"They work on the top floor?"
I nodded.
"Well, just watch out—that's quite a storm that's brewing. I wouldn't be surprised if some windows break."
At floor eight, she got out of the elevator.


This is as high as it goes, you said. Now we need to get out and take the stairs the rest of the way. I said, did you mind me lying about your parents, and you said, you weren't lying.


There was more white than I had ever seen. More snow, more ice, more winter on every side of me. I looked at you and saw that you were talking but all I could hear was the wind.
I said, what did you say, and staggered towards you so I could read your lips better. But I couldn't read them because they were white ink on white skin. You kept talking and your eyes were still laughing at something, and I wondered if maybe you were saying it all now, saying all the words that you always kept just inside your teeth and made me guess.
But your words turned to snow and coiled themselves into the dark hair that whipped your face and I didn't know if it was your hair or my hair. And you closed your eyes to protect them from the words. And I wondered if the words hurt.
I lifted one hand up to your face, to read your lips with my fingers. Your face is so cold, I said, and you said something but I was already drawing my fingers back after they had barely touched your cheek and the blizzarding wind was a relief from the cold of your skin and I bent over my burning hand and cradled it against my stomach.

And when I looked up I couldn't find you, and I said, I am blind from the clouds and deaf from the sky and numb from the snow that is deeper than the smog. And you didn't say, I know. And you didn't say, so am I. And you didn't say,
mostly it's just cold.

This isn't the easiest story to follow but I like that to some degree, as it forces readers to pay more attention and read slowly. Same with the lack of quotation marks, it takes more care to read. Since this is classified as a short story, I don't know whether grammar rules are more strictly in place, but I like the places where your formatting deviates from the correct punctuation. Makes it more fun. xD
I don't quite completely understand the other character's parents being clouds and sky, but I still love the idea. Speaking of ideas I love, I now really want to be on the top of the Empire State Building during a blizzard. It sounds amazing. I thought the repetition of "and you didn't say" really worked to call attention to each of the statements that followed, particularly the last.
I really like the way you describe things; your style is very distinct. The pacing is perfect. My favorite part is the last. This review is kind of inarticulate. xD
In conclusion. Awesome. Good day.

Okay, I don't get it. But I'm touched.
The only explanation I can think of is that the protagonist's friend was ice/snow and they disappeared in a blizzard, but it seems a bit silly, especially since it's in general fiction, not fantasy.
Or maybe they were just considering themselves to be ice/snow, because they lost their parents at a young age and they built this belief upon their family to comfort themselves; and they disappeared in the blizzard, because they got knocked off the roof?

No, I surrender

You have some mistakes, though. The one that was the most annoying was your reluctance to use quotation marks. It really got me thinking several times, who was saying what and what is actually going on. So you could really make the story more readable by adding those.

Also. I got a bad impression that this wasn't really a story, but a collection of short scenes that were only loosely connected to each other. Maybe this was your point, I don't know, but I don't like this.

But, I also got an impression that you were opposing the pollution, which I find positive and like very much. Actually, most of my review is based on impressions, because I really didn't get what was going on in the story and I don't want to make assumptions here.
But I'm touched. I have no idea why, but I am.

I like this a lot, it's mysterious and leaves you with questions and wondering. I love that. It leaves a lot to the imagination and lets the reader's imagination have some fun. I love the way you wrote it, the style of your words. It's the type of thing that you never forget about, even though it's a short story. I like it a lot. It might be the best thing I've read today.
-tgirly

Hey Azi, it's Tiger here to review.

Okay. I've read this, re-read it, and read this again. Now I think I understand--mostly--what the story is about. At the very least, I have two possibilities:

-This person our narrator is talking to is a dead sibling or friend. The mother Cloud and father Sky is a reference to their death, and the coldness is perhaps the emptiness of the afterlife or what life is like as a ghost. I think they're sort-of stuck in purgatory on earth, and they are released in the storm at the top of the Empire State Building. I'm not certain how they died, maybe because of the acid rain? Though that seems very unlikely.

-Or, because of the constant references to acid rain, I think the person is symbolic of rain. Although seeing as the season is Winter, I'm not sure how common rain would be. Maybe that's why it seems only the narrator can see them? And perhaps they become acid rain in the blizzard...yeah, I'm not really sure.

Really, the best thing about this is, as tgirly pointed out, the fact that a lot of the story and whys about it can be left to the reader's imagination. The story is really very abstract, a fact even you probably noticed in putting this in the 'other' category. But I like it. The mother Cloud and father Sky thing, even though I don't fully understand it, gives a bit of an ethereal feel to the story, as does the lack of name for Gloria's friend. The references to acid rain I feel are an underlying message, and it's annoying because I understand them just as much as I don't. I have theories, but I'm not absolutely sure about them.

But my favourite part is the description at the end. That's when you enter into abstract, ethereal, magically-realistic writing and it is awesome. Per usual. I don't know why, but that last part made me think of Gloria's friend as some sort of god or demigod, and now I'm going down a completely different path of interpretation.

I don't really have any nitpicks; the style of speech the character's use to communicate is different and I think it works in this sort of story, so I'd have to disagree with the second comment. Apart from that non-nitpick, I have nothing. Great story, it's the sort that sticks with you. Sorry this wasn't more helpful, and KEEP WRITING!

Tiger

The writing here is strong and the image you conjure, particularly at the close, is crisp and enticing. I don't have too much to say about the story, for me it was one of those ambiguous for the sake of ambiguity pieces, but in a way that was it's strength. It keeps the reader guessing the whole way through, even the last few lines, didn't resolve much, it just asked more questions.

Some of the descriptions seemed to be forced in for contrast, the homework scene. It adds just enough to justify its assertion into an otherwise lovely piece. I mean what does it add, we get an approximate age of the narrator, a wee bit of character, and you play upon the climate change idea a little more with the acid rain reference. But is it enough? like I said it only just adds enough. You could cut this down, refine it and you wouldn't lose much.

I like the character, not the one being addressed, but the narrator. She seems so dreamy and vacant. Her dialogue paints her as overly naive, but that's fine it adds to the innocence of her voice. Anyway I don't have much else to really address her, it feels like a missed the point at times, a vignette, lacking purpose but beautiful none the less.

JP

Hey Azila -- here's my opinion!

Dialogue

This is generally good, especially this sentence: "Well, just watch out—that's quite a storm that's brewing.". It sounds natural and human, unlike the conversation with the narrator's mother.

“Sorry I'm late, Gloria. I waited ages for an express train, but you know how unreliable they can be—I had to take a local, and it took forever. Are you hungry?”
“No, I heated up the pasta and had some, it's on the stove if you want it.”
“Thanks honey.”

For some reason this dialogue doesn't sound normal -- I think it's because you haven't broken up the speech in the "x," she said, "y." style. It feels to me like the first line needs to be broken after "Gloria." and the second line needs to be broken after "pasta". I'd also recommend removing "and had some" because it's sort of implied in the next part of the conversation.

The more unusual conversations with The Weatherman are very natural, and I really like the observations you make about how people talk to each other, but more about that in a bit. First I'd like to draw your attention to this paragraph:

What are you looking at, you asked. I said, nothing, and you said, it looked like you were watching the clouds. Maybe I was, I said, and you said that you thought it was going to snow. I said, I hope there's a blizzard. You asked me if I'd ever been to the top of the Empire State building in a blizzard, and I said, no, I haven't. And you said, if it blizzards, will you go to the top of the Empire State with me? And I said of course.

It does seem to get a bit "and I said, and you said"-y! I know it's hard to avoid, and I know that you don't want to overcompensate by finding lots of synonyms for "said" (because that would be worse, really!) but I think you should try to cut down on the repetition a little bit.

Observations

Yay observations!

"you smiled like I had one of your secrets and you were plotting to get it back"

"and you didn't say, that's not what I meant"

"one of the kitchen lights was out, and both of us keep forgetting to replace it"

I *really* like these. It's these sorts of casual phrases that make your writing seem alive -- anyone can identify with them, and it makes the reader smile in recognition. I'd encourage you to write more of them, and to try and spot these nuances in everyday life. Very good work!

The only problem can be that the reality you create from this is easily disturbed:

"I wouldn't be surprised if some windows break."

What on earth? The woman in the elevator just lets them go up to the top floor when there's a chance that the windows might get smashed in?! Either she's an unusually reckless woman or safety is a thing of the past in the Empire State building... To be honest, it's not even necessary -- the danger is blatantly clear when the reader "sees it" in the final paragraph.

Focus

I like the balance of Weatherman-Otherpeople-Weatherman-Otherpeople-etc that you've got going on. But I think the inherent ambiguity of this story means you need to be very aware of your focus. Because it's not entirely clear what's going on, I think you need to make sure the reader knows what's important through emphasis in your writing.

So the paragraph which has Gloria's mum arriving home is lovely, but does it really have any particular relevance to the story at all? Joshuapaul suggested that it characterises Gloria a little, but I wouldn't even go that far -- I think we learn a lot more about Gloria from listening to her voice in the narrative.

And the real problem, apart from it being fluff, is that the reader isn't sure whether there is some crucial symbolism or message hidden in this bit! I reread the paragraph a few times to try and work it out, but the only conclusion I could reach was that it was a way of mentioning "acid rain". I think that if you're writing a mysterious and ambiguous piece then you need to be careful not to get carried away with fillers.

As far as the penultimate paragraph goes, I loved it. The story culminated really well and I thought the scene itself was so epic and cinematic that I didn't mind not understanding it completely. If you could focus the story towards this point a bit more, if it had a little more direction at the start, then I think it would be fantastic.

(On a side note: "it's so cold, sometimes, that I swallow ice to warm myself" <-- That is pure *genius*!)

Overall

Sorry for the lengthy ramble -- I don't seem to be able to write short reviews.

To summarise: I like your use of the "poetry of the everyday moments", I'm afraid I didn't understand who The Weatherman was meant to be, and I think it would help if you looked over the "filler" paragraphs and tried to make their focus in the story a bit clearer. Apart from that it was well written and there were no technical errors to speak of, which is always nice to see! Keep writing and practicing and maybe you'll invite me to the redraft!


Charlie