z

Young Writers Society


12+

Black Fire - Chapter 4

by ConfusedGlasses


Lizzy rested her chin on a wrist and propped up the elbow on a knee, and watched a spider crawl up a thread of spider web too thin to see with the naked eye. She could probably have seen it better if the sky was not as dark as it was, but she saw it nonetheless; forced herself to keep her eyes on it. The last thing she wanted to see was the face of the boy who insulted her at every word she uttered.

No, said a voice inside her. No, he isn’t as bad as that. You know it.

How would she know? She did not know. Except, every time she thought of Ronnie as a kid who did not deserve to be among them, she heard her mother’s voice telling her, “Sometimes the sidekick is more valuable. Nut the world just doesn’t care.”

She shook the thought off. He was only valuable to her as long as he found her a way back. Instead, she thought of her friends. What would they be doing?

Mira was sure to be meeting up with the kids from the other homerooms, gathering and absorbing any information in general. She would be traipsing the lobby, tracking down teachers and asking for last minute tips. She had seemed very confident about today’s quiz in particular. And Jenna was possibly still doing some last minute cramming at her desk, where Lizzy had left her. She had probably gathered up a bunch of things Lizzy was supposed to explain to her before the quiz started, and was wondering what was taking her so long in the bathroom. Lizzy felt a growing sense of guilt. She had left Jenna hanging, so to speak. Who knew how long it would take to get back.

She sighed. The only sign of anything living, except for the spider, was Ronnie sitting next to her, and the log shifting slightly every time he took a breath. He had done nothing but stare at the ceiling for the past- she checked the time on her wrist watch, it read 10 45- five minutes. She pulled at the left hood string and began to twirl it between her fingers, and that was when she noticed the scarred tissue of the back of her right wrist.

It was a scrape-scar. The jagged edges outlined a laterally inverted ‘R’. Its foot and tail were deeper than its head, and it had been itched, because the skin was beginning to peel and a small trail of blood had been smeared across the its bottom. She remembered itching the exact same spot in the morning when a student assembly was called, as well as when she was sucked out of the building on her way to the bathroom. She could not believe she not noticed the blood before. When had it come out? More importantly, she could tell this was not something trivial, but how had she not even noticed that she had scraped her skin? The curving tail of the letter looked familiar. She had seen it somewhere besides her word processor’s font collection. But, she could not remember where.

She pictured herself standing in the lobby in the morning during the assembly. Who had been standing next to her? She did not know at once why she remembered that particular moment, but she recalled one of the other girls from her class jeering at her, and when she looked around she had seen Ronnie in line right next to her. On her right.

She remembered how he had shifted to the left suddenly, right into her, probably as one of his friends slapped him in the arm, right before she felt that cool itch on that spot.

She snapped her gaze in his direction, and scanning his side profile, and spotted it. Half hidden under his sleeve, she saw the curve of the top of the ‘R’. She stared at it while wondering how on earth she had not noticed the scar in the last three hours. She did, in fact, have a mild case of OCD, and could not bear to have any of her hands were sticky on any side for more than an hour. How?

She was so caught up in her thoughts that she did not notice the movement in the water. Ronnie caught her staring again, and she was just turning away when her eyes fell on the swirling surface of the algae covered water just behind him. It was not raining, the sky was clear. Nothing could live in that water, the algae took up all the sunlight and oxygen. She turned away and shook her head. She was probably hallucinating, what with the sky and everything, she told herself. Was the sky really only a hallucination, though?

She tried to keep from thinking too much about it, and took to cleaning her scar with a nail instead. IT came off in tiny pieces of scab. She was almost done and her eyesight detected Ronnie hunching further, still staring at the ceiling. He began to murmur something under his breath.

“What are you trying to communicate to that slab of concrete, Baker?” she asked.

He stopped abruptly. “None of your business, Crawford.”

She finally let annoyance take control of her sarcasm. “Aww, come on Baker. I’ve been hanging out with you for the past quarter of an hour, even got your fancy bracelet imprinted on my wrist, and that’s what you give me? I thought better of you,” she said in mockery.

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, Crow-face,” he said without even so much as a sideways glance.

She felt the anger almost making her blind. She was far from a crow’s appearance. She took after her mother, who, half of their neighborhood agreed, was one of the prettiest people to walk the earth.

“Wait,” he said in a second, turning away from the ceiling in one swift motion. “Did you just say you have my bracelet imprinted on your wrist?”

“Tsk. You hear pretty well for a baker.” She put her arm up for show.

He squinted at it, clearly recognizing the size and the meanders of the curved letter. He pulled on his sleeve to expose the original, and kept looking from it to her hand, and then back. “No way,” he whispered. “When… How…?”

“At assembly,” she provided, and watched his eyes squint at something above her head. Probably just taking a trip down memory lane, she thought. His reaction just a second later left her reeling for solid ground. His eyes widened in horrific realization, as if she were some sort of unbeatable monster he had summoned up. She felt as though she had found a lead to whatever was happening, but could not quite grasp it; as she closed her fist around it, it disintegrated like smoke.

She saw ripples in the water again, and focused her eyes on the water with minimal movement. There was definitely something under the water. She was only vaguely aware of his hand grasping her wrist.

“What’s that?” she said, her voice quiet and wary. He turned to face the water as if struck by an electric shock. They sat there, motionless, afraid that something would go wrong if they moved. A humongous burst of water made the hairs on their hands and the backs of their necks stand on end.

A submarine floated on the water.


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22 Reviews


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Mon Dec 07, 2015 2:28 am
Caitlyn says...



This is amazing! Please continue it!






Thanks Caitlyn! I'll try my best to post as soon as I can



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Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:48 am
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Megrim wrote a review...



Hi back for ch4 finally!

I like the spider as something to focus on. It not only provides a visual, I guess you could call it setting, but it gives a jumping off point for introspection, too. And I liked the contrast of how she shrugs off Ronnie and instead thinks about what her friends would be doing at that moment. I also like that we're getting more pieces of the puzzle.

The memory of Ronnie bumping into her felt a tiny bit retconned. I can see how it might be giving away too much to say it in the prologue, but I think a good compromise would be to put in the prologue that "someone" shoved into her, without her seeing who it is. Then you have a good event you can call back to and we'll be like "oh yeah that did happen!" and then the reveal that it was Ronnie will be like connecting some dots.

There are a few typos and things, but I thought I would comment on this one: " Nothing could live in that water, the algae took up all the sunlight and oxygen." That comma should be a semicolon; semicolons are used to separate two related statements that could stand as sentences on their own ;)

"His reaction just a second later left her reeling for solid ground." - I try to be careful about the order of cause and effect. I know sometimes people use statements to preface the description, to give it a kind of emotional context (even published famous authors), but it doesn't always work for me. I kind of feel like if the thing that's being described floors the main character, the description should be flooring in and of itself. Something to think about, I suppose.

Overall I'd say your writing is quite good. Good enough that you're past little problems like verb choices or not enough sentence variation or big infodumps. The thing that came to mind for me while reading this chapter was, "This needs to be tightened." Which is such a subtle, hard to describe thing... I'm not sure I can point out much in the way of specific examples. Right now the writing is smooth, but you could make it even better. It seems like often more words are used to say something than are needed, and a lot of places could be trimmed and tightened. The more efficient you are, the faster of a read it is; it feels like we cover more ground more quickly, even though the same things are being said.

Let's see... "She remembered itching the exact same spot in the morning when a student assembly was called, as well as when she was sucked out of the building on her way to the bathroom." That's a lot of words, eh? I don't know if I can make it better, but quicker maybe: "She'd itched that same spot at the morning assembly, and again right before she'd been sucked out of the building." It's only a small difference but it's 20 words down from 33. Imagine if you did that in a lot of places, it would really add up and sharpen the pace. Descriptions are probably the biggest areas to look at for tightening. You could drop any details that seem superfluous, but I guess what I'm really talking about it is rewording things to be more concise without changing the essence of what's said.

A submarine is a pretty unexpected turn of events! Be careful about ending up like the show Lost, where instead of resolving anything they just distract you with a new weird and interesting development. But for now I'll buy into it for another chapter ;)

Cheers and happy writing!






Thank you for the review Megrim! I'll think about tightening things. Glad you like it so far. Will post the next chapter as soon as it's typed up and I have enough points.



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Sun Jun 28, 2015 4:46 pm
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Noelle wrote a review...



Hi there! Noelle back again for another Review Day review!

I'm all caught up now! Go me :D

Lizzy rested her chin on a wrist and propped up the elbow on a knee, and watched a spider crawl up a thread of spider web too thin to see with the naked eye.

This sentence reads a little awkward. I think it's because of all the descriptions of how she's sitting. We don't really need to know that she's sitting exactly like that. In fact, you could just say that she was watching a spider. That would've been good enough for us.

No, said a voice inside her. No, he isn’t as bad as that. You know it.

Since these are thoughts, they should be in italics. So they'll be separate from the narration.

I really don't have much to say about this chapter. It's written very well and the narration is strong. This'll probably end up being a shorter review.

This chapter was a bit boring to me. I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm just making a statement. They're both sitting there while Ronnie does his little meditation and Lizzy's mind ends up wandering. She's thinking about her friends and the school, all things that I don't really care about at this moment. I want to know what's going on with Ronnie and what he's making happen. I appreciate the internal dialogue that Lizzy goes through, but it really didn't interest me, especially after the conversation filled chapter from before.

Your writing style is wonderful. I do believe I tell you this more than not, but that's because it's true. I don't think there are any moments that I can pick out where one sentence doesn't flow into the other or paragraphs the same. The narration goes from one thing to another almost seamlessly. It's fun to read.

I like how Lizzy is wondering if the sky was just a hallucination or not. That's what I've been looking for. It was something small, but it's getting there. If I were in her shoes I'd probably think that I was just hallucinating as well, or that someone's pulling a prank. And I'm surprised that she hasn't asked Ronnie why the sky looks like that. I mean, she probably did, but then she dropped it. Her curiosity should kick in more there.

I'm a bit unclear as to if Ronnie was calling that submarine or if it came up by itself. You mention that both of them are staring at it, but that doesn't really prove that he didn't know it was coming. He had been staring at the water before which made me assume that he was using magic or some other kind of force to do something. Maybe bring up the submarine was it. There's nothing here that tells us without a shadow of a doubt that he's not responsible for it.

I'm really enjoying this novel. I hope you post the next chapter soon! I'll be waiting.

Keep writing!
**Noelle**






Thank you for finally catching up to all the chapters, Noelle! Glad you like it so far.



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Fri Jun 19, 2015 1:34 am
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Carlito wrote a review...



And I am back for more :)

Lizzy rested her chin on a wrist and propped up the elbow on a knee,

Change all of the bold words to "her".

but she saw it nonetheless; (, and she) forced herself to keep her eyes on it.


The last thing she wanted to see was the face of the boy who insulted her at every word she uttered.

No, said a voice inside her. No, he isn’t as bad as that. You know it.

How would she know? She did not know. Except, every time she thought of Ronnie as a kid who did not deserve to be among them, she heard her mother’s voice telling her, “Sometimes the sidekick is more valuable. Nut the world just doesn’t care.”

I'm confused by her back and forth feelings about him. (Which I mentioned in the last chapter).
I'm extra confused about the part I put in bold. Read that sentence out loud (it's a really long sentence by the way). The wording is really weird to me and I have no idea what it means or how it relates to the story.

Mira was sure to be meeting up with the kids from the other homerooms, gathering and absorbing any information in general. She would be traipsing the lobby, tracking down teachers and asking for last minute tips. She had seemed very confident about today’s quiz in particular. And Jenna was possibly still doing some last minute cramming at her desk, where Lizzy had left her. She had probably gathered up a bunch of things Lizzy was supposed to explain to her before the quiz started, and was wondering what was taking her so long in the bathroom. Lizzy felt a growing sense of guilt. She had left Jenna hanging, so to speak. Who knew how long it would take to get back.

I liked this part. We get a good sense of who Mira and Jenna are based on what they're supposedly doing. We even get a better sense of who Lizzy is based on how she might be interacting with them.

She pulled at the left hood string and began to twirl it between her fingers, and that was when she noticed the scarred tissue of the back of her right wrist.

I liked this paragraph.

It was a scrape-scar.

Not really sure what this means. Take it out. The next sentence gives a better description of what the scar looks like.

She could not believe she not noticed the blood before.

You're missing a word between "she" and "not". You could do "she had not" or "she did not".

When had it come out? More importantly, she could tell this was not something trivial, but how had she not even noticed that she had scraped her skin?


She did not know at once why she remembered that particular moment, but she recalled one of the other girls from her class jeering at her, and when she looked around she had seen Ronnie in line right next to her. On her right.

Not sure why "on her right" needs its own sentence. Is the fact that he was on her right really that significant?

She did, in fact, have a mild case of OCD, and could not bear to have any of her hands were sticky on any side for more than an hour. How?

I don't think this is needed. The OCD sentence was confusing and the "How" is just repetitive.

Was the sky really only a hallucination, though?

Not needed.

She tried to keep from thinking too much about it, and took to cleaning her scar with a nail instead. IT came off in tiny pieces of scab.

Um, why would you pick a scar with a nail? That seems really unsanitary... And "it" doesn't need to be in all caps. And if it's a scar, it wouldn't come off as a scab.

She was almost done and her eyesight detected Ronnie hunching further, still staring at the ceiling.

The bold part sounds really awkward to me. You can just say "she saw".

“What are you trying to communicate to that slab of concrete, Baker?” she asked.

At the beginning of the chapter she didn't want to look at him because he's rude to her whenever she talks - it was almost making her sound like some sort of victim. But she seems to instigate a lot herself...

She finally let annoyance take control of her sarcasm.

This sounds awkward to me.

She felt the anger almost making her blind. She was far from a crow’s appearance. She took after her mother, who, half of their neighborhood agreed, was one of the prettiest people to walk the earth.

This seems really out of the blue. Show her anger and develop this more. Slow it down.

His reaction just a second later left her reeling for solid ground. (But then) His eyes widened in horrific realization,


as if she were some sort of unbeatable monster he had summoned up. She felt as though she had found a lead to whatever was happening, but could not quite grasp it; as she closed her fist around it, it disintegrated like smoke.

HUH?

and focused her eyes on the water with minimal movement.

This is phrased weird. What has minimal movement, her eyes or the water?


I'm still kind of confused about what's going on (same general idea as in the last chapter), but I liked this chapter better than the last one. I feel like I learned a little more about Lizzy and there was some nice added suspense.

Let's talk about that suspense! There's so much going on here! I want to keep reading because I want to know if Lizzy is going to get back into school and what's going to happen when she does and why she got out in the first place. I want to know more about this weird relationship between Lizzy and (still can't remember his name). I want to know about this R thing on her arm from his bracelet because I feel like that has significance. And now I want to know about this submarine. There's probably more, but those are the big things that come to mind. You do a really good job of raising questions in the reader's mind and creating suspense and tension. That's great! Not everyone can do that.

In terms of things I think you could work on - still slowing down (not going to re-state everything I said in the last chapter, but the same sort of thing applies). I also think you could benefit from reading things out loud. You have some awkward phrasing that I think you would catch easier by reading it out loud to yourself.

Let me know if you have any questions or if something didn't make sense! Also, if you would like me to keep reviewing this piece when you post more, please let me know! PM me or post in my Will Review for Food or just reply on here :)






Thank you for the review Carlito! The things you pointed out do need working. This is only a draft near the beginning, so rest assured, things will get better. I'm glad I'm having the effect I want, and glad that you like it! Could I perhaps tag you in a wall post when I post the next chapters?



Carlito says...


No problem, and sure thing! :)




A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde