Young Writers Society

The farmer and Charlie strike up a conversation about something or other. I stare out the window, watching the landscape and thinking and daydreaming. He drops us off in some town in the middle of Idaho. A sign nearby reads:

So now we know where we are. We head into the town. We grab some food at a nearby gas station and sneak into a hotel called The Thunderbird. This one has two beds. We didn't get much sleep though because the motel was right next to the train tracks and the trains were constant. Charlie slept well, I could hear him snoring as loud as the trains.
The next morning, Charlie woke me up early.
"Whatsamatter?" I ask.
"It's Sunday," he says.
"So?" I ask.
"We've gotta go to church!"
"Why?"
"We don't have time to talk about this now. We're gonna be late."
"Fine." I get up, dress, and we sneak back out the window. We wander around the town looking for churches. They're easy to recognize. Charlie chooses one with a stone front and an giant iron cross on the outside. When we walk into the building, the service is already started. We sit in the back of the sanctuary. I don't pay attention, but when I glance over at Charlie, he's gripping the edge of his seat and leaning in. He could be the church's poster child. It must be pretty important to him, if he's paying such close attention. I try to listen for awhile, but lose interest after about five seconds.
I don't notice that the sermon's over until everyone stands up to sing a song. Charlie finds it in the hymnal. It's some old song I've never heard before that goes on forever.
Afterwards, we all shake the pastor's hand.
"Good morning," the pastor says as he shakes our hands, "It's always nice to have visitors. Especially ones so young. Where are you two boys headed?"
"We're just passing through the area," Charlie says, "Our parents couldn't come 'cause they were tuckered out from driving. We're from Washington." I glance at him. He's a better liar than I had expected.
"Ah," says the pastor, "The Lord be with you, feel free to join in fellowship."
"No thanks, we'd better go back to the hotel. Gotta get back on the road," Charlie says.
"Oh, well it was nice to meet you lads." He turns to the next person to shake their hand.
"Charlie," I say, once we're outside, "Are we gonna have to do that every week?"
"Sure," he says, "Why not?"
"It was boring," I say.
He turns to me, getting all serious, "Do you believe in God?"
"Yes, " I lie. The truth is, I'm not sure what I believe. That was my first time at church. God hasn't been that helpful in my life. I've never really needed Him. But if Charlie wanted to, that was his thing. And it didn't mean he had to go to church every week. Lots of people only go on Easter and Christmas, and it works for them fine.
"Well, if Jesus suffered and died on the cross for you, then you can at least go to church and be bored for awhile for Him. And maybe if you'd pay attention, you could learn a little. It can't hurt, can it?"
"Yes," I say.
"No, Bilbo, it couldn't. Eternity seems a pretty big thing to leave to chance."
"You've got to learn how to live like this. If They catch up with us, because we're sitting around in church, then we're dead. They don't care if we're in church. They'd kill us in the pews."
"Then I die a martyr. Come on, Bilbo, it's not that bad. Especially if you pay attention-"
"I'm not going to pay attention, don't think you can get me to do that. It's all just so lame. The preacher probably doesn't even know what he's saying. And my name isn't Bilbo. It's Bill."
"So we can go if I don't force you to pay attention."
"No guarantees," he rolled his eyes at me.
"And I'm not going to Sunday School, and we're sneaking out before it's done. I didn't like shaking the preacher's hand, and it's weird how everyone else stares at you."
"Oh... Fine." He didn't seem happy about it. I wasn't happy either.
Fine," I say, "We'll go to church like good little Christians. Now let's go steal a car."

I'm gonna point one thing out. In your spoiler, it says Goodgle. I'm assuming you meant Google? Anyways, more great work from Tally-wa!
Keep Writing,
Bel

Spiderman Here.

Great as usual. This chapter is pretty hard to critique as theres nothing wrong with it. I would add description of the town in idaho. It doesn't mater if you haven't seen it. Go to google maps and use street view or you can check it out on youtube. Generally the north west is full of evergreens and mountainous. But I think Idaho is more plain like and hilly surrounded by mountains.

Hello there! I have read the other two chapters, but you got decent enough reviews on those and I wanted to keep reading until I hit a point where I thought you could use a boost in review power.

So far I really do like your story and think that the plot is interesting. At the moment I can't really comment on the title, but I think that Hunted works great as a working title. I think sometimes novel titles can't really be chosen until you've written the story and you can go back through and pick out what the novel is about and what would make a good novel. One suggestion is that you could name it after the people chasing the two main characters, if They have a name other than Them...

All in all, I think that this chapter is pretty good, but I do have a few things that I want to point out.

They're not hard to find. When we get there, the service is already started.

Maybe include a bit more detail on choosing which church to go to? As it is, you go from a multitude of churches to them going to 'there' without any mention of what kind of church it is.

"Good morning," the pastor says, "It's always nice to have visitors. Especially ones so young. Where are you two boys headed?"

A bit of a nitpick/style thing, but maybe add something to the speech tag to show that the pastor is talking to Bill and Charlie and not saying this to everyone down the line.

"Ah," says the pastor, "The LORD be with you, feel free to join in fellowship."

"No thanks, we'd better go back to the hotel. Gotta get back on the road."

A nitpick in the first sentence here, I don't think that 'lord' needs to be in all caps. Instead, I would suggest that you have it as simply 'Lord.' As for the second sentence, I think that you should add a speech tag to that dialogue, as you have two characters who could be speaking at that point in time. I mean, the reader can assume that it is Charlie answering, but I can just as well see Bill answering as I can Charlie.

"Well, if Jesus suffered and died on the cross for you, then you can at least go to church and be bored for awhile for Him. And maybe if you'd pay attention, you could learn a little. It can't hurt, can it?"

I have to say that I love this bit of dialogue. I also really like Charlie and his dynamic with Bill.

"Bilbo, no it couldn't. Eternity seems a pretty big thing to leave to chance."

A bit of a nitpick on style here. I, personally, would suggest 'No, Bilbo, it couldn't...' Other than that, I would suggest a comma after the 'no' as well.

"No guarantees," he rolled his eyes at me.

Another nitpick, but I would suggest a period as an ending punctuation, as it is Bill speaking and not Charlie. Using a comma and then having Charlie perform an action makes it seem as though it was Charlie speaking there.

Other than that, I think that it is fairly decent. I would suggest that you run it through a spell checker real quick, but that is all on the critting front. On the plot itself, I really do like this addition to Charlie's character and I like how Bill has kind of lightened up from the first chapter. I feel like Bill now has a purpose in life and I like seeing that in these chapters.

I'm off to read some more of this story, but good luck and feel free to PM me with any questions.

- Tatra