And yes, these are true events, so they're probably very clichéd. But right now I'm not really focusing on that; what I really want feedback on are the characters. Critiques are hugely appreciated and I'd love it if you could answer the questions at the end
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Wind blows across the rain-slick street, sliding through my open coat. I shiver but don't zip it up; it makes me look fat. Instead, I hunch my shoulders, put my hood up and slit my eyes, dialing up the volume on my iPod. (As if being hunched over like a cripple makes me look better than fat.) Somehow, when my head's filled with someone else's thoughts, someone else's noise, the cold doesn't matter as much.
There's a scatter of eight-graders on the curb -- huddling in groups because the concrete's too cold to sit on or hustling money out of one another. My fingers slide over the toonie in my pocket and I decide to escape the damp cold, which even my music can't block out completely.
It's warm inside the store. Seeing Noah, a boy from my class, I make my way to the back aisle of the store.
"Hey homie," he says, "Can I have a dollar?"
"Sure thang biaaaatch," I say, laughing, and tell him to give me some change from the toonie. But he probably won't.
"What are you gonna buy?" I ask. And then I see him.
He comes out of nowhere; I didn't even see him come in. I freeze, my thoughts knocked away. Later, I will wonder how my face looked then, but ... now all I can think of is how perfect his face is. I see his lips move.
"Hi Camille."
My mind shakes violently back into thinking. "Hi," I say automatically. Everything around him looks blurry. Out of focus, like the planes of light and colour are sliding together, overlapping like when you shuffle cards. Queen of Hearts, I think crookedly. I'm sure my eyes are staring.
My lips tremble when I'm sure he's not looking; my shoulders heave and I tip my head back so that it rests against the refrigerator behind me. I scrunch my eyes closed and focus on breathing, but it catches, clawing air back into my lungs. Behind my eyelids I see his face and how it looked the second before he said hi.
His skin milk-pale, slashes of dark brown hair hiding his forehead. He looked almost ... amused, as if saying hi to me were his own private joke. But his eyes were clear and unreadable to me, the same penetrating blue as always. Not blue-ish, or blue with yellow around the pupils -- just blue.
Slowly, I open my eyes. He's with a friend at the back. Not trusting my legs, I keep a hand on the smooth cold glass of the fridge door.
Outside, the air is bare and shockingly cold, somehow feeling wet in my throat, like I can taste the promise of rain. The whole scene looks bleak and unpromising; the last of autumn's leaves swirl along the sidewalk in strange patterns that speak of coldness and despair.
What are you doing to me?
I'm so into you...
The lyrics echo around in my head longer than necessary. I see my friends down the road to the school and think, I should leave before he comes out of the store.
"Meg! Anya!" I call, and run up to meet them. And this time, I really don't feel the cold. I feel like hot metal; I feel vulnerable and edgy and so alive it hurts.
* * *
We're all watching the clock, ready to jump out of our seats as soon as the bell rings. The way the teacher talks makes the silence seem loud when she pauses, her words dropping like stones into a still pool. It sets my teeth on edge and makes me want to grind my pencil to a stub against my paper to ruin the perfect whiteness.
Twenty more minutes. My head slumps against my arm and I stare at my notebook, which should be filled with notes about algebra but isn't. Lazily, I let my pencil guide my hand around the page until the shape of an eye appears, staring at me through outrageously long eyelashes, the pupil not quite black enough to be real.
"Anya!" the teacher, Madame Cardinal, calls out suddenly. Uh-oh, she's in her question-asking mode.
I watch with amused sympathy as my friend jolts awake. "Oui?"
"Tell me, how would you find the area of a triangle? Come on, you should know this. C'est la revue!"
Anya half rolls her eyes and says, "Je n'ai aucune idea, Madame."
Cardinal nails her with a look and starts prattling on about how more than half of us are doomed to fail math in high school. I wonder how it is that she's only 25 and already forgotten what it was like to be young.
My pencil scratches over the paper, adding a sprawling tattoo across the face that is taking shape. I make the lips full and sculpted, the cheekbones pushing up like blades under perfect skin. When I'm done, I realize that I'm looking at the face I wish I could have.
"Camille!" Madame Cardinal is glaring at me, her mouth twisted into a scowl. "I hope those are notes," she says significantly, gesturing at my paper.
I smirk. "Depends on what you call notes."
Her fashionably thin eyebrows disappear under her haphazard, not-so-fashionable bangs, which are highlighted a champagne blonde (which looks terrible because the rest of her hair is black). "Would you care to show them to the class?"
You know you're in trouble when she starts talking in English. "Not particularly." No way in hell, I add in my head.
"Well, that's just too bad. You know I like you to listen when I talk," she says in a harder tone, punctuating the emphasized words with a sharp rap of her knuckles on the blackboard ledge. "I have told you countless times that if you expect to do well in this class, you will pay attention."
I sighed. Why does it feel like I hear this every day? Oh yeah -- because I do hear it every day. She makes it seem like high crime to be disinterested in this week's lesson of algebraic equations. Well, in my opinion, it's high crime to even teach that crap. Like seriously, who gives half a damn what x equals?
When I don't reply, she glares at me and yaps, "Please bring me your notebook, Camille." Her flat, dark eyes allow no refusal. So, spotting a ballpoint pen on the ground a couple feet away, I stretch out my leg and use my foot to slide it over. I rip out the page with my drawing and scrawl 'screw you' on the next page, then get up and place it in her bony hand.
The class is watching. She raises her chin and begins to read aloud: "Sc-" A flush of anger rises in her cheeks. "You can report here at 3 o'clock sharp for detention," she spits at me before tossing the paper back on her desk.
"It'll be my pleasure," I say sarcastically. The bell rings.
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1. Do you start to get a feel for the character and her personality?
2. How do you feel about the details? Too much? Not enough?
3. Are you interested?
Thanks you guys, I really appreciate it. <3
- Camille
PS. let me know if you want me to PM you when I edit this/post more!
But at times, I feel as though he is annoyed at having to cope with me. For example, when I was doing an assessment, he would say "Are you done yet Andy?" I replied "Almost sir." Then he said "Well work faster." When I am contacting him via email, he wouldn't reply back to about 30 percent of my emails.
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