The composition of this story has been in process for almost three years and the first novel is almost done. I want to know who thinks that my introduction/first chapter would draw a reader in, and if it is good enough to send in to a publisher. If you know of a publishing company that would consider this...Please let me know. My uncle's an author but I know squat about getting books published. Anyhoo, enjoy! And don't steal my work...it means more to me than you know and it's not your place to steal my ideas. It's happened to me before. So don't.
Introduction to My Life
Once upon a time, there was a perfect princess, more beautiful than Rapunzel and Snow White, and wittier than either of those airheads put together. She had a flawless appearance, with her glossy mane of gleaming dark brown hair frosted with natural blonde streaks, enchanting wide amber-colored eyes and thick and dark eyelashes, and smooth rose-tinted skin. Guess how many handsome princes called every night, tying up the phone line so her little sister couldn’t use the phone? She had perfect grades, a very exclusive clique of friends, adoration and affection for and from everything and everyone surrounding her, and great personality consisting of flexibility, cleverness, kindness, responsibility, intelligence, and every other redeeming quality you could think of. Of course, that’s more her adoring mother’s description than mine. I’d call her brown-nosing, nastily preppy, spell-casting brat, but no one ever asked me. I swear that girl read the dictionary every night before she went to bed. And I swear that’s completely the opposite of what her idiotic bimbos of friends did. But they must have had charm, either that or magical powers, because everyone loved them. I know the princess at the least had charm, in addition to anything else you could ever want. I said you. That was completely the opposite of what I wanted, completely the opposite of who I was, what my life story was.
That princess was not I. She’s my sister. Well, I thought I might have been adopted. How else could I be related to perfection when I was the furthest from it? That would explain why Madre always preferred her. I didn’t belong in a fairy tale as much as I did in a horror movie, since everyone thought I was so terrible and horrifying, satanic and dark. Screw all of that light fairy music that played whenever that stupid princess entered the room, and add in some emo. Take away all of that inner and outer beauty and replace it with darkness and ugliness. Subtract all of those boyfriends and girl friends, and get a final product of social isolation and complete loneliness. Not that I could ever do math-so replace all of that intelligence and intellect with idiocy. Add an “un” to the beginning of redeeming qualities. The sum? Me. Micaela Melody Rosano-my life story
As told by my mother, that is. Her kingdom was Italy. We lived in America, but it was always “Italy, Italy, Italy”, eating the food, wearing the garb-I wish she would go to Italy and leave me behind. But no. Instead, she stayed in Waterstown, with me, “fulfilling her duties as a mamma”. But to me, if that were fulfilling her duty as a mother, than not fulfilling them would be being kind and compassionate.
I hated my life.
Chapter One
Monday
“Alessandra, where is our papa? Why has he been gone for so long? Is he still sick? Is he better? When will we see him?”
“Micaela, do not burden our mother with the same questions any more”, Alessandra whispered softly to me in Italian, her smooth voice and gentle touch comforting me as she tucked in the warm flannel sheets around me. I snuggled further underneath the covers, and yawned, resting my head upon Alessandra’s shoulder, smiling softly at the teenage girl sitting on my bed.
“Why not, Alessa? If she won’t tell me nothing, I gotta keep asking till she does”, I said rationally, expecting Alessandra to give me a huge smile and tell me that Madre simply missed Padre, but that all hurt she caused herself and us would be healed once he came home from the business trip that he was undoubtedly on. Instead Alessandra’s eyes watered and graceful tears started streaming down her long face. She brushed them away and turned to me, her lips quivering with clear grief. I frowned, confused.
“One day, sooner than you think and want, you will understand. Until then, just be happy, Micaela, just be happy”, Alessandra replied simply. Still confused but perfectly content, I yawned again, stretched, and gently closed my eyes, drifting off into a light sleep, filled with dreams and visions of wonderful things, rainbows and happiness, great lands, and beautiful songs and voices. Suddenly in my dreams, I heard a loud voice, a voice that was more familiar yet less comforting than the ones that I had been hearing in my dream. That was no part of my dream. My eyes snapped open. My bedroom was dark and gloomy, based on the dull moonlight streaming into the room it was at least midnight. I turned to my other side to find Alessandra lying there, her beautiful eyes wide open and a finger pressed against her full lips. She too had been awaken by the sound of Madre talking on the phone, and was trying to hear what the discussion was about and whom Madre was speaking to.
“Yes, Mamma, and I thank you for being so generous with your money and helping us out in our time of need and paying our bills for us, but that is an absurd idea. For weeks and weeks you have been going on about it! I have never left Italy in all of my life and I never plan to. Besides, the girls would be very sad if we moved to America, they would never see their friends again or possibly even Italy!” Madre exclaimed in exasperation from the hallway outside of my bedroom where she was standing. I perked up at the word “Mamma”, my expression brightening and my ears listening closely. Madre was talking to Nonna Caprice, my grandma and her mother! Nonna Caprice was a gentle, kind-hearted woman who treated Alessandra and I with equal love and doting, and not only this but was very wise and had the solution for every problem, from who got the last cookie to where Alessa and I should go to school. I had no idea what my madre and nonna were discussing, but hoped it was about when Nonna Caprice would next visit. I smiled hazily, preparing myself to return to slumber, thinking everything was perfectly fine. However, when I saw the extremely worried look upon Alessandra’s face, I realized it wasn’t.
“How could going to America possibly change our money problems? If anything, that would make it worse. We would have to pay to have not only us ourselves but our belongings taken to America, and not only that but we would have to buy a new house and I would have to find a new job. Where is the logic in that, Mamma?” Madre sputtered. She paused for a few moments, breathing heavily.
“Opportunity? Opportunity? That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. We have just as much opportunity here!" Madre whisper-screamed. I could see her pacing wildly back and forth through the tiny crack of my slightly open heavy oak door. I bit my tiny lip. America? I had heard of such a place in nursery school in between playtime when our teacher, Ms. Iacaveli, would give us small lessons on the world beyond Italy. But to my playmates and I, America, like Africa, Asia, Australia, and all other places mattered not, because our world consisted only of Siena, Italy, and why would it need to consist of anything else or more, when we were perfectly content here? What about America could make my mother so frazzled and angry, my sister so worried, and my grandmother attempt to be so persuasive? And what did it have to do with Alessandra and I?
Suddenly Madre became very silent. I saw her feet stop moving in front of my door, and for fear of being caught eavesdropping, cast the covers over my head, leaving only an ear visible. Alessandra quickly sunk down into the warm layers of comfort next to me, but didn’t yet pretend to be asleep.
“It is true that women get better pay and jobs in America. Do you really think I could get a better job than I have here?” Madre asked in a hushed tone, sounding more like a forlorn, lost child than the strong, easily angered woman I now knew her to be.
“Well, yes, I do know English. After all, I am a tour guide. But my English is nowhere near as good as Alessandra’s. She’s been studying it in and after school.” Madre’s voice suddenly sounded proud rather than unsure. “I...I suppose she could teach me more English. And, yes, yes, Mamma, I know she can get a job in a year. You’ll help? You’ll help pay?” There was a slight pause.
“No, I do not want to go. Stop acting so cocky, Mamma”, Madre snapped. Her unpleasant disposition and her loud voice had returned. “But I will, you have proved that it’s the best thing. We’ll be on our way to America in a month.” There was a loud beep as Madre hung up the cordless phone, and a loud slam as Madre opened my bedroom door.
“Micaela, Alessandra, I have news for you.”
There was a swirl of color and light as my dream changed, but that was all right, my dream self thought, I knew what had happened between those events. Everything after Alessandra and my late night discussion with Madre was a blur as we prepared to sell our quaint stone cottage, pack up our belongings, buy a house in America off a real estate web site, and finally, move to, America, a blend of vague memories, money, and overall confusion. Even after a few weeks of adjusting to the fact that we were permanently leaving Italy, I still had not managed to comprehend what exactly Madre had meant the night she confronted Alessa and I. “We have, obviously, hit some hard times, and leaving Italy is the best option. We are in great need of money, so we are going to move into a small house, I am going to get a better paying job, and soon enough Alessandra will begin work. Understand?” I had nodded yes even though I didn’t understand at all. What was this hard time? Why did we suddenly need money, when Padre was such a successful businessman? And, mostly importantly, where was Padre?
Finally, just like Madre had promised, a month later, Alessandra, Madre, and I had boarded the plane and were now in flight. Smooth tears were streaming down Alessandra’s rosy cheeks, her dark eyelashes and eyes glistening, her mouth trembling.
“I...I just can’t believe that we’re never going to see Italy again, that Siena isn’t our home anymore”, Alessandra whispered, gently rubbing her forehead as the flight attendant handed out snacks and drinks to the passengers. She looked over at Madre, who was seated to her right, me at her left.
“Well, you’d better”, Madre replied rather impatiently, snapping her fingers at the flight attendant. “Peanuts, puh-lease!” Her thin, harsh eyebrows were knitted, her lips pursed in a scowl. Alessandra brushed away her tears and placed a slender arm around me, smiling sadly. I chose to ignore the gesture, knowing that if I looked at my sorrowful sister then, even if I didn’t know why she was sad, I too would start crying. And if I looked at Madre, she would snap at me that it was impolite to stare. She had been very angry lately. Longing for my padre’s sweet, funny disposition, I peered at the window beside me, where a faint reflection of myself resided. A small, adorable girl with full, freckled cheeks, bright brown eyes, short thick brown hair, and thin lips stared back at me. I struggled to look beyond my reflection at the scenery around the plane, and gasped.
The plane was gliding gracefully through a powder blue and fresh sky. The sky was clear of anything other than a few wisps of non-threatening white clouds, through which rays of bright sunlight were streaming. I clapped at the sight, closing my eyes and smiling wide. I heard a few other passengers utter the words “cute” and “aw” and “adorable. Alessandra patted me lightly on the back.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it, Caela?” she asked quietly and happily. I nodded wildly.
“Yes, yes! Alessa, it looks like heaven. I think we’re in a heaven!” I replied. Madre tried to muffle a sneer. At this point in my life, she didn’t favor Alessandra more than me, and knew I was as vulnerable, innocent, and unaware as Bambi the fawn. But she couldn’t resist responding, and destroyed my unawareness.
“This is very far from heaven, darling”, she said flatly. I whipped my head around and stared at her blankly. “We should have told you sooner, but we thought you would figure it out, because of that wretched hamster you had. We explained the process of death to you then, don’t you remember?”
I blinked rapidly. Rosetta? What did my hamster, Rosetta have to do with what was going on now?
About a year ago from this day, I had gone to her cage to play with her, to find that she was slumbering peacefully, not at all budging. I lifted her out of the cage, and strangely enough, she remained asleep. I frowned and poked her. She didn’t stir. I ran into the kitchen and up to Madre and Padre, who were sitting at the table. “Look, look, look!” I squealed. “She must be really sleepy, she won’t wake up.” Madre had spit a piece of bagel out of her mouth. Padre gently took her from me and sighed.
“She’s not going to wake up, Micaela, honey. You see...” He sat me on his lap and handed Rosetta to me. “This is part of the circle of life. An animal or person is born. In the case of a hamster, they are a baby and then an adult. In the case of a person they are a baby, a child, an adult, a senior citizen, and then they go. They go from this world. They go to a better place than this world. Rosetta has now completed her circle of life. She has gone on to that better place. Do you understand?” My eyes widened and I nodded, only partially understanding it.
I shook my head and looked in confusion at Madre. “What does any of that have to do with this?” I squeaked, tugging on a strand of hair.
“We are going here, because Padre has gone on. His circle of life has ended. We told you, did we not, that his disease would never go away?” Madre replied. My mouth hung open and trembled.
“But...but...but...I thought you meant he would live with it”, I sputtered. Alessandra hid her face with her hands.
“Well, you thought wrong, then, I guess.” Madre smiled weakly and smoothed my hair, picked up a magazine, and began reading it like nothing was wrong, but it was.
My eyes snapped open.
I called them real life dreams, because these were clearly not normal nightmares, just vivid figments of my imagination. It was like living my life, my worst memories, and my biggest regrets over and over again repeatedly, until I knew every detail of what had happened and beyond that. What were these supposed “real-life dreams”? Just look up at what I’ve just said. They were my most horrible, dreadful memories and biggest regrets. While I was asleep, I would relive them, re-experience them. A certain real-life dream would only go away after I had solved the problem behind them. But there were certain problems I could not solve or move on from. For instance, how could I ever learn to forget my father’s death? So I relived the moments that I was clued into his death over and over again. As though it wasn’t hard enough when I was awake...
“Wake up, Micaela!” a piercing and shrill shriek approached my ears, and suddenly, I wasn’t looking at the blank and desolate stretch of ceiling of what my mother called a bedroom and I considered a dungeon, but was looking into the cold and unforgiving eyes of Carmelina Rosano, my mother. In paintings and photographs, she looked the same as she did now—a curtain of medium-length dark hair, attractive brown eyes, fair and rosy skin, a slightly chubby figure. But in pictures she smiled. She looked happy. And here, now, with me, she could be described as many things—pressuring, impatient, unforgiving, mean—but happy was not one of them. And either 1) there was something wrong with the muscles in her face or 2) she was just generally upset, because she rarely smiled. If offered which it was at the time, I would have said Number 2, and I wouldn’t have been talking about having to go to the bathroom.
Me? I wasn’t that awful, although my name was. So I stuck with the name Melody, my middle name. But of course, anything that wasn’t Princess Alessandra herself was awful to my mother, but the near opposite of her? That was enough to make Madre scream. And she’d never quite managed to stifle that scream. Every time she looked at me, she got that look on her face, like she wished I would just go crawl in a hole. But she never said it. I knew she loved me, but as far as I was concerned she loved Princess Alessandra more. I understood. Who would you have chosen- a princess or...or someone like me? What exactly was I? I was Goth. No, I didn’t worship Satan or anything like that, but I dressed all in black, only lonely and dismal thoughts crossed my mind, and only my worst traits came out of me, so what other word was there for me, other than Melody? A scary devil to you, a misguided soul to me. That’s what I was, why when I sat outside in the unilluminated, inky darkness, the only source of light being the dimly shining stars and aircraft streaking across the sky, that I blended in with the world around me. It was the only time when I did. The rest of the time, I walked about, with the same insecurities, doubts, worries, and misunderstandings everyone else had and understood, but with an appearance that no one else had and everyone feared.
And today was no exception. After eating toast smeared with jam, the purple spread staining the skin around my lips and causing me to wear the only color I had in three years, I left the house. I left the misery and depression, just to enter another dimension of just as much angst and sadness. To most people in Waterstown, this world is known as Grover High School, a school for the gifted. Not only did they except science geeks and mathematical geniuses, but also kids gifted at more creative, art-related activities like literature, writing, dancing, gymnastics, painting, drawing, and other things like that. So basically everyone that had any amount of talent whatsoever got in. Most of the kids in my area went to this school because the public high school was miles away in the next town and too hard to commute to according to their parents.
Well, that’s beyond the point. You’d think I’d fit in a school consisting of a bunch of weirdo artsy braniac kids, right? Maybe so. I didn’t know. Because my school didn’t consist of “a bunch of weirdo artsy braniac kids”. There were those few, but they usually left because the kids that attended my school had a terrible gift, a talent. They were the most talented people at torturing I had ever come across.
And that morning, as I walked through the school, kids jumping aside as I passed them as though they feared deadly laser beams would shoot out of my eyes if they didn’t (let me tell you, if I could have shot laser beams out of my eyes, the ones jumping aside would get it), I bumped into the girl I would have voted most likely to grow up to be the next Bloody Mary, the queen of the torturers, Megan Brewer.
Cobalt eyes framed with dark eyelashes and too much mascara and eye shadow, a cascade of gleaming platinum blonde hair reaching her shoulders, a long nose sprinkled with freckles and surrounded by full rosy cheeks, full lips layered with lip gloss beneath with straight white teeth resided, a tall and slim figure—there was no denying it, Megan Brewer was pretty. Maybe when she grew up and wasn’t torturing humanity, humanity would watch her stride down a runway. But as Alessandra and her pep squad would have said so brilliantly and intelligently, “She’s hot, but her personality is so not. Oh my god, I am a poet and I didn’t know it!” Turn the girl inside out, and modeling would be out of the question. She had a reputation as GHS for being the stupidest, cruelest, most unforgiving, bitchiest, and regardless of that, popular, girl in the entire school. Four hundred people attended our school, so that was saying a lot. And I never said anything.
Neither did she. Heading in the opposite directions, we collided with one another. Megan shrieked as she crashed and toppled to the floor, probably fearful that her lip-gloss was smudged. But fortunately for her, the only damage was that her possessions scattered all over the floor. But from the way she looked at me, it would seem she had broken her entire body because of my negligence. As she looked at me scathingly and with loathing, there was nothing pretty about those extraordinary blue eyes. She quickly collected her things and left me sitting there on the floor, all alone.
That was all I had ever been, completely and utterly alone. A solitary and dim light in a wide room of pure darkness. How ironic was that thought, when in reality, in trueness, I was darkness in a sea of brightness, with my dark wardrobe and dark attitude? When I entered my classroom, people, including my hateful teacher Mr. Park, surrounded me but I knew that for all that mattered, I could be sitting in an empty classroom. How well that would have suited me, me with my empty heart. It seemed that sadness was all I had ever known, whether Alessandra was with me or not. And even when she wasn’t with me, her presence was obvious. Because Alessandra was the invisible barrier between me and my mother, the dam separating me from my peers, the water surrounding me that I needed to swim across to reach love and affection. Since I had been born fourteen years ago in Italy, I had been expected to be just like Alessandra Edna Rosano. Expected to be extraordinarily beautiful. Expected to be excessively talented. Expected to be extremely intelligent. Expected to be an angel. And then the unexpected happened when I was plain looking, untalented, somewhat dull, and devilish. They pushed me and pushed me to become her—”wear make-up”, “try sports or dance”, do this, do that! They pushed me so hard that I fell. I fell off the bridge to becoming whoever, whatever it was I was destined to be. Because my fate couldn’t be this. It couldn’t be looking into the mirror every morning, sunlight flooding into the room but darkness clouding your face. It couldn’t be being treated like a leper. It couldn’t be this misery and evil. It couldn’t be this sadness and depression that filled the empty space in my heart that had become vacant after all of that pushing and pulling, after all of those barriers and mazes, after all of those hardships and difficulties. There had been happy times, and this was not one of them. Ever since we came to America, and specifically that, that one horrible event, I had hated my sister. The last happiness I could remember was when Alessandra left for Princeton. Madre cried. I cried too, but mine were tears of happiness. “Goodbye, Princess Alessandra”, I whispered as the teacher said “Hello.”***
To: AOLMESSAGEBOARDS@aol.com
From: GuitarChcik90@aol.com
Time: 8:01 PM Eastern
Subject: <No Subject>
Hello. This is the first time I have said hello in what seems like an eternity but in reality is only a few years. I mean, who would desire to begin a discussion with me? No one I know of. It is amazing that I have endured trekking and traveling throughout those years, lasting throughout a time that seems everlasting and never-ending. It’s the only amazing thing in my life. My life is unbearably dull and unsurprisingly consistent. Is that my fault? Or is it my fate? Those questions constantly repeat in my mind like some irritating pop song. But they have more of a meaning than “Oops I Did It Again!” because the answers to those questions determine my purpose. I already know the purpose of my peers: to label and reject me, to misunderstand me like I misunderstand how the pieces of the puzzle of my life fit together. But Sherlock Holmes is out of my reach and I need to determine what picture the puzzle is supposed to make on my own. Does anyone else feel this way? I don’t have anyone to ask this, so I am asking you, an unknown person. But maybe, just maybe, one of you isn’t like the people I know. Maybe one of you, one of you reading this post on the AOL message boards. Is real, not like the Barbies and Kens at my school. I hope so. But I hope a lot of things, and I have yet to see a time when hopefulness turns into truth. Bye. I’ve must go back to reality.
I clicked send and sauntered dejectedly over to my bed. My bedding was strewn untidily across my lumpy mattress, unorganized papers were scattered about, and soft feathers were escaping a massive hole in my flattened pillow. My small bed appeared precisely how my mind felt—unorganized. To those who saw me, I was a satanically and darkly dressed and minded rebel, to be avoided at all costs. But within the black hole of my heart that deeply matched my wardrobe and reputation, like my loathsome sister would have desired, I knew otherwise. I knew that my outlook and perspective of life was stunningly beautiful and deep, not horrific and idiotic like those blinded by the dazzling lights that radiated from my mind and soul, but mistaking the light for darkness, assumed it to be. I flopped on my bed and closed my eyes to see the darkness that my peers thought they saw in me. And I drifted into an uneasy and light sleep, deeply wanting for the darkness to disperse and fade into the world of beauty and hope that was only existent throughout my dreams—that is, when they weren’t real-life dreams.
But that evening, beauty and hope’s existence actually extended to my consciousness. It was a miracle! And this miracle occurred with the least miraculous object.
“You’ve got mail!” a robotic voice reverberated throughout my depressing and desolate bedroom, awakening me from a world of beauty just to lead me to another. My wardrobe may have consisted solely of black, but the beginning of my beauty was pink.
To: GuitarChick009@aol.com
From: PrettyinPink@aol.com
Time: 9:06 PM East Coast
Subject: Your Post
I know what image MY puzzle is supposed to create. The picture is blurry, but the purpose is clear. I’ve never seen your face, but it’s on the puzzle box. For so long, I am in the presence of others, but am truly alone. I say love and they say “hot guy” I say friendship and they say “friendship bracelets”. I say haven and they say “Ralph Lauren”. But hot guys will leave, friendship bracelets will break, and Ralph Lauren will close. What matters in the end is more than that, but since they are at the beginning they remain blind to this. You are the only one that feels the same way I do. I hope you’ll write back soon. Because I’m on the edge of a pier, about to sink into the sea of similarity, and your post is my only lifesaver and it won’t last long.
PrettyinPink
That morning I had stated that the last time I was ever happy was when Alessandra left for college. But I couldn’t say that anymore, because I went to bed wearing black clothes and a smile. ***
I really like it, and i think you've got some good personal descriptions of how your characters are feeling, especially the main character who is emo XD
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