Young Writers Society

This is the beginning of something I'm working on mostly for the practice writing subtext in my dialogue. For critiquers, that's what I'd most like to be critiqued on.
Gracias!



There is a body in the basement. The body looks like a living being, and was one until very recently: this body once played lacrosse and went on dates and made every excuse not do to its homework. This body experienced a great deal, before it met its death in the basement of its own high school, but there are some things that neither the body nor its former owner will ever get to do. It will never graduate, never go to culinary school as it had intended, never have its own restaurant with fifties décor. This body will never be anything more than a corpse. It will lie in the yellow dark, its eyes seeing but not comprehending, its perfect scarlet hair glinting in the light of one solitary bulb.


THREE WEEKS EARLIER




It was the kind of September that made you want to punch whoever gave credit to Global Warming. Some of the holdouts still wore flip-flops with their jeans and sweaters, but those with any common sense were already wrapped up in scarves and stylish berets. Zoe, however, was not entirely sure that the weather was to blame for the onslaught of another Ice Age: it was equally possible that the frozen pits of Renee Temple’s eyes were sucking all the warmth out of the universe. The mathematical principles involved probably resembled those of black holes.

Zoe dug around in her bag for cigarettes. The pack rustled; the lighter clicked; hot, sticky relief filled her lungs.

“You do not look at all like a walking cliché,” said the voice of Oliver, and Zoe looked away from the human-shaped death-ray that was Renee Temple. Oliver wore turquoise skinny-jeans, a purple plaid shirt and thick-rimmed hipster glasses.

“You don’t look like a raging homosexual. Where’s my mocha?” Zoe blew a tight line of smoke into Oliver’s face.

“Oh yeah, I left it in the trash. Right beside my early acceptance letter to MIT.”

“I’m smoking, darling. Don’t talk to me about real life.”

It was in times like these that Zoe wished she went to a bigger school. If there were, say, a thousand kids in Aprather High instead of their rather pathetic eight hundred, she and Oliver might not be the only smokers huddled six inches off school property, blowing their smoke towards the blacktop as an act of defiance. If there were even just nine hundred students, it might not be painfully apparent that the only two openly gay students in the school were also the only smokers, because if that didn’t draw speculation, then really, what would? She had been meaning to check up in the statistics: there must be at least a couple more closeted gay kids roaming the halls. Right?

Oliver watched her smoke for about three seconds. “I want your lucky cig,” he said bluntly.

“I’m saving it.”

“Are you fucking me? My father’s marrying a bimbo, my mother’s too chemo-brained to remember her own name and I’m giving up my future to play nursemaid for her. You have a physics test. I think my need for luck trumps yours.”

Across the blacktop, kids began filing into the school. It was as though somebody had pulled the stopper out of the drain and the force was too great to resist: everybody was being sucked into a netherworld of rusty pipes and fluorescent hallways.

“Time for school,” Zoe sang. She tossed her half-smoked cigarette onto the sidewalk and crushed it with the heel of her faux leather boot.

It seemed likely that whoever picked out the color scheme for the walls of Aprather high was some sort of sociopath. The ground floor was alright, seeing as it was plain white, but as she trekked up the stairs, through the puke-tan of the second floor, the rotten-orange of the third and finally to the dying-forest-green of the fourth, Zoe imagined the colors negating all the hope she had managed to keep alive in her thus far.

Good thing her first class was in the darkroom. Her eyes would have some time to remember what happy colors looked like. Zoe hung up her bookbag, removed her camera and knocked on the darkroom door, waiting for verification that her entry wouldn’t ruin anyone’s photos.

“Entre-vous,” called Mr. Wiles, and Zoe slipped into the little room.
Now hold on just one second.

There was a new girl. This was senior level Diff Photography: most of these kids had been in this advanced class since freshman year, and all of them were extraordinary photographers. Nobody just walked into Mr. Wiles’ darkroom, especially not a complete stranger. The other four students were already there.

Mr. Wiles acknowledged Zoe with a nod and turned to the new girl. “Now that everyone’s here, Molly, would you like to introduce yourself?”

The girl gave a shrug and a smile; in Zoe’s experience, people who shrugged and smiled simultaneously were apologizing for something. Molly wore a scarf, which was rather impractical of her given that they would soon be bending over containers of toxic chemicals. “I’m Molly,” she said with a little wave. Her eyes briefly examined Jonathan, Annie, Paul and Wes, but Zoe saw: they completely skipped over her. “I’m from, um… New Hampshire, originally. And now I’m here.“

Mr. Wiles tilted his head like a confused dog. Zoe furrowed her brow: what the hell was going on in her darkroom?

“On-y va,” said Mr. Wiles, and the lights went out.




When the twelve-fifteen bell clanged, Zoe took advantage of her senior lunch privilege to stand on the sidewalk and smoke. Usually she could make it through the school day without a cigarette, but not today, not with Little Miss Molly messing up everyone’s rhythm in the darkroom and with Renee Temple shooting icicles out of her irises every time they passed one another in the hall. Thankfully, Oliver had a different lunch period and would not be inserting his various life tragedies into her alone time.

“Can I borrow a nail?”

That would be the new girl. “What?”

“Nail. Like, for my coffin.”

“Excuse me?”

Molly turned around, took a few steps away and came back. “Hi, I’m Molly. May I please have a cigarette?”

Groups of girls were gathering on the blacktop, huddling together for warmth, shoulders touching. Zoe handed Molly her pack and lighter. “Nails in the coffin. ‘Cause smoking will kill you. Got it.”

Molly lit up her cig. “So what’s your deal?” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“Don’t play me. I saw you scowling at me every time the lights were on in photo class. I’m not the kind of girl who likes drama, especially not on my first day at a new school. If you have a problem with me, please. Say it to my face.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was expected to smile at all times.”

Molly paused for a millisecond, cigarette halfway to her lips. “I just meant…”

“I know what you meant. You’re upset because I don’t care about pleasing you enough to pretend to be happier than I am.”

The sharp air cut at the exposed skin of Zoe’s hands and face. She pretended to watch the girls on the blacktop, but in actuality she was studying Aprather High’s third smoker. Molly was petite, and even bundled up in a scarf and sweater she was obviously very attractive. Her jeans were tight, her posture erect and her reddish hair gracefully swept back. She knew how to handle cigarette, too: she smoked with ease, as though it was an art form she had mastered at a young age.

“I really liked your photo,” she said. “The one of the girl in the fountain.”

“It’s alright, I guess.”

“It must have been hell to set up. The lighting’s fantastic. Do you know the girl?”

Zoe closed her eyes, trying to find within her the peace of the darkroom. These were her places; that room, where the smell of the developing solutions and the silent, ritualized movements let her float away from concerns; and this sidewalk, where she could look at the school from a distance, put it in perspective. First Oliver, now this. Not even a ninety-nine could make up for this.

“The girl in the fountain, her name’s Renee.”

“Renee Temple?”

“That’s the one.”

“She’s a sweetheart! She helped me find my way to English earlier. This school’s a fucking maze, you might not be aware. Are you two friends?”

“We’re… no. Not exactly.”

Molly blew a wobbly smoke ring. “Hey listen,” she said. “I don’t know if you have any plans, but my dad can’t pick me up until like four-thirty. Do you think you could show me around a little after school?”

What is this girl’s deal? Zoe thought. Experience taught her that it was better not to get involved with this sort of uncertainty, but it was as though Molly had some sort of hold on her. She nodded. She even smiled a little. “I think I could manage that.”

Molly stamped out her cigarette and handed Zoe back her lighter and pack as she walked back towards school. Zoe checked the pack, just to see how long til she’s need to buy another, and almost gasped. Bitch smoked my lucky cigarette! Sure enough, the one that Zoe’d turned upside down the moment she started the pack was missing. But strangely, Zoe wasn’t upset, not really. She watched Molly’s ass as the girl retreated towards the double doors. This might be alright after all.




“It took me a while to figure out,” Zoe said, “but you’ll get used to it. The school is split up into four Blocks, each with two freshman classes, two sophomore, two junior and two senior. See how the school is shaped like an I? Second and Third Blocks are at that end, and Fourth and Fifth Blocks are over there.”

“What happened to First Block?” asked Molly. They stood at the smoking spot, toes on the blacktop, looking at the four-story gray hulk of Aprather High.

Zoe shrugged. “Nobody knows. We always tell the freshmen it’s in the basement. You know, like where the send the naughty kids to die. Come on, let’s go. So anyway, you’ve got your English classrooms and language classrooms and whatnot on the top and bottom of the I, and then in the middle are all the science labs, gyms, stages, music rooms, cafeterias, bathrooms.”

“This is insane.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Zoe pushed through the main entrance and held the door after her for Molly. The entryway was fluorescent-lit and decorated with the same artwork that had been there on Zoe’s first day of school as a ninth grader. They were in the center of the I. To the left were administrative offices, the teacher’s lounge and the computer lab. To the right was the cafeteria, with the door to the basement right beside it.
The headed up the stairs, to the puke-colored second floor. “So tell me about the photography group,” Molly said. “You guys seem really tight.”

“It’s called Diff Photo,” Zoe replied. “We call our AP classes Diff, I don’t know if that’s normal or what, but we do. You get into it freshman year, usually, and it’s super intensive and everything. Those guys are some of my best friends. Nobody really gets in after sophomore year.”

“Uh-huh.”

They wandered past the theater and greenrooms towards Second and Third Block.
“You seemed to hold your own, though. In class. Mr. Wiles can be kind of intense.”
Out of the corner of her eye Zoe caught Molly’s smile. “I didn’t want to make a big deal about it,” Molly said. “But last year I was going to a photography school in Paris. It was incredible, it totally redefined my entire life, but I just didn’t want to be, you know, the Photography Girl, or the Girl who Lived in Paris.”

So that was why Mr. Wiles kept speaking French in class.

“I’d love to see some of your work,” Zoe said quietly.

They stopped in front of a little side room, from whence the piercing quasi-music of a freshman clarinet lesson emerged. “I don’t do work, really.” Molly said. “That’s what got me into L’École in the first place. I play.”

The rest of the tour went quickly and in good humor. Zoe showed Molly the hallway on the back stairs, where the first three classes to graduate Aprather High back in the 40’s had been permitted to paint self-congratulatory murals on the landings. She showed Molly the sorry little lounge at the top of the fourth-floor landing where, seniors always staked out the under-stuffed sofa and never let anybody else sit down. She showed Molly the trick to locking the bathroom stalls, the photo class’ table in the cafeteria and the little area behind the gym that was perfect for an illicit smoke break. At four-twenty-five, they made their way out to the blacktop, where gray clouds cast the yard into a dry, grim landscape.

“So…” Zoe began, smiling all the way up to her forehead, “Lemme ask you something.”

“Did my paparazzi find you? Because I told them you were off limits. I hope they didn’t give anything away.”

“I want you to help me pull off the most fantastic senior prank ever to grace the hellish halls of Aprather High. And we’re talking epic.”

“But what did you want to ask me?” Molly said with a grin.

“Fuck off. Will you do it?”

“My probation officer said no more killing people or it’s off to high security for me.”

“Yeah, that’s hilarious,” Zoe replied dryly. “Just think about it, okay? You, me, the cover of darkness…”

“Thanks for showing me around,” said Molly. “You gave me some great ideas on where to hide the bodies.” She tipped her head at the pick-up truck that idled outside the old side-gate that nobody used anymore.

“The gate’s really heavy, let me help.” She started to follow Molly across the blacktop, but Molly turned and held up a hand.

“I got it. Thanks.”