Okay, so I haven't really gotten anywhere in this novel, at all. I wanted the beginning to be just like an average day of life before i get into the real story. Eventually she will wind up being sent back in time to either 1691 or 1693(haven't quite decided) through a portal(a picture of a rare witch burning) in her grandmother's attic. The thing is, I don't know how to go from one scene to the next. As you'll notice from the following, the first scene is obviously just Gracelyn at school. Critique harshly, I just wrote it up without thinking really, because I've been stuck on starting it at all for weeks. Also, how do I just skip to her grandmother's house? Should I just start a new chapter? Though if I did, chapter one would be extremely short! Okay, so this is what I have so far:
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CHAPTER ONE.
“Gracelyn! Hey, Grace, wait up a second!” His voice rang out loud and clear through the steadily growing swarm of bodies that were piling into the hallway to get to their last class of the day, but I didn’t bother to turn around. Instead, I kept my focus forward, forcing myself to keep my legs moving away from his voice. “Grace! Jesus, just let me explain!”
Shaking my head, I turned to walk into the physics classroom when a strong hand gripped my arm. Stopping, I whirled on the spot and glared at him. His face was inches from mine, and his eyes held the heart wrenching look that always got me whenever he was trying to apologize. Sighing, I pulled my arm out of his hand and moved away from the curious eyes of students inside the room. “I don’t think there’s too much that needs to be explained, Chase.” My voice was too quiet for my liking, making me sound as upset as I was feeling. The fact that I couldn’t look him in the eye only made it more obvious.
“Gracie…” His voice whispered close into my ear as he took my hand in his and pulled me towards him. It was so familiar to me that it broke my heart, knowing that he had probably held that other girl just the same way. Not many people got to call me Gracie. It was a nickname specifically for the use of my grandparents, Chase, and the occasional time that my parents would use it. Right now, it didn’t feel like Chase had the right.
“No, you’re not allowed to do that!” My voice was louder now, all the hurt and anger pouring into it. “You think you can go and kiss some other girl and I would be okay with it? How the hell could you think you could just come crawling back!” Tears were pricking my eyes like a thousand needles and I had to blink fast to make them disappear.
The emotions on his face were clear, something that had always drawn me closer to him. He never hid things, never tried to beat around the bush like most guys would. The panic of losing me showed in the muscle twitching by his temple as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. “That’s not what ha-”
“I saw it, Chase! You were both standing in the corner, and you kissed her! You were in the wide open, in front of everyone. Ask Madison, she saw it too.” A group of Chase’s team mates from the basketball team walked by, trying to make it to class before the bell. When they saw Chase standing there they all shot him identical looks of sympathy and it only made me more angry. They had been at the party Saturday night as well. Hell, everybody had been at the party Saturday night. News of Chase and Jessica kissing had spread like wildfire. I didn’t care that those guys were his friends, his team. Not only was it his fault that this was happening in the first place, but he was lying right to my face! How could they possibly feel sorry for him?
“I didn’t kiss her, Gracie!” I opened my mouth to make a smart ass comment back to him but he held up his hand and pressed it over my mouth, making it impossible for me to get a word out. “I didn’t! I promise you, I didn’t. When have I ever lied to you?” It was true, as long as I had known him, which was ever since he moved in next door eleven years ago, he had never lied to me. “Jessica and I were talking, joking around, and then all of a sudden she kissed me. I pushed her away immediately, but of course you had already taken off. I swear to you, Gracelyn, it was nothing. I would never do that to you.”
He moved his hand and I closed my eyes, running my hands over my face and through my hair. It sure hadn’t looked like nothing, with Jessica’s legs trying to wrap themselves all around him like a damn pretzel. “I don’t know… I-I.. I saw it!” I said the words, but I had already forgiven him and he knew it. He knew me well enough after all these years that he could just tell. A goofy smile broke out over his face and he snatched me up in a hug, lifting my feet right up from off the ground. “Ah, baby, you know I only love you.” The bell drowned out my own ‘I love you’, and he set me down and kissed my nose before running off to his own class. “I’ll come by after work to help you clean out your grandma’s attic,” he called, already sliding around the corner.
Smiling to myself, I walked in and sat down in my seat just as my teacher began to talk. Physics had never been my strong point. I really had no idea why I was even continuing with the course at all. My marks had slipped below passing months ago, and it would take a miracle to get them up again now. As my teacher began droning on about the newest section of the textbook, I let my mind slip away and focus on other things, like Chase. He had moved into the house next door to mine when I was five years old. At the time, I was angry that the previous family next door had moved and taken my best friend away from me. It wasn’t even like Madison and her parents were moving across town. They were moving to a whole different province! But when the new neighbours came over to introduce themselves to my parents, my mom and his became pretty good friends. Chase and I grew up playing and spending every holiday and birthday together. I suppose our parents always wanted for us to get hitched one day, and so far that plan seemed to be in the works.
For the longest time we had been just friends, not even beginning to notice the small spark that was beginning to grow between us. And then I turned thirteen, and for the first time in my life a boy was noticing me. Me! The scraggly brown haired, brace face thirteen year old me that was in the middle of a transition from pudgy to awkwardly skinny and lanky. At first, Chase didn’t even seem to care, until the boy came over to my house on his bicycle, one hand on the handlebar and one clutching a teddy bear. Chase and I had been playing out in the front yard, trying to catch a frog that must have wandered from the stream behind our houses, when little Michael Shephard came riding up. The boy was trying not to look nervous, but it hadn’t been working for him at all. When he came up, Chase had backed right off, saying that he had to run home to help his mom with something. I accepted the teddy bear and we started “dating” for a good month after that.
Okay, so I can’t actually call it dating. Instead, it was an entire series of awkward moments. We would say hi and smile to each other at school, something that would make me blush deep crimson when my friends ooh-ed and ahh-ed. Michael would come to my house sometimes, or I would go to his, and we would either help our parents with their baking or go to the park. There were a few times when he would try to hold my hand, but I would get freaked out and yank mine away, spluttering some incoherent excuse about having chores. We even went to a movie once, but as soon as the lights went down we pushed ourselves to the far sides of our seats so we could get as far away from one another as possible. It was one weekend morning when all of that ended. Michael and I had been playing outside when all of a sudden he grabbed my hand and kissed me, completely out of the blue. Maybe not entirely out of the blue, I probably had seen it coming, but I won’t ever admit that. Chase had been spying on us through the fence and, in a heat of adolescent passion, came barging over, punched Michael in the face and screamed at the poor boy to get on his bicycle and go the hell home. I had never heard a cuss word in my life before that, so I was just a little bit shocked at the outburst. I hadn’t hardly seen Chase in weeks, let alone spoken to him, but over time he explained to me that he didn’t like the way Michael looked at me, or the way he always tried to hold my hand.
“Miss Wright? Sorry to interrupt whatever you were thinking about so intently, but could you answer this question for us?” Everybody was staring at me and on the board was a long, complicated physics equation that looked like something from a different language I had never heard of.
Groaning out loud, I did my best to put on a face that showed how deeply I was thinking about the equation, but when I went to answer all I seemed to be able to say was, “Uhm, well. So, yeah, what you have to do is…” I glanced at Madison, letting out a sigh of relief when she answered the question for me.
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