Chapter 1 (Part 2)
“I missed you too. More than you could imagine.” He grinned, flashing his teeth at me quickly, “Now how about we head out on the road?”
“Sounds perfect.” I agreed, waving to my family and getting in my brother’s car. I closed the door and immediately changed the radio from pop to classical.
“Ugh, Ever. Why do you have to put on that classical crap?” He joked, pulling out of my driveway.
“You know I love it, Ari. That’s why we are going to a ballet after all. Classical music is the music of my life. You know that.”
He shook his head jokingly at me and changed the subject, “So I hear that you’ve been doing well in school. Is that true or just something your parents made up to make prouder of you than I already am?”
“It is true,” I giggled, “Me and my sister got A’s all school year. We are taking mostly honors and AP classes next year.”
“Wow, little sis. I’m really impressed. Has she been getting better grades then you?”
“Not really,” I answered, my brow wrinkling in surprise at the strange question, “Maybe in a couple of classes but overall we are about the same.”
He let out a breath, and glanced over at me like he hoped that I wouldn’t think anything of his strange inquiry. I just shrugged the question off and looked out the window as we flew down the highway towards Boston.
ͻ
After eating, and shopping for hours, we decided to head over to the Opera House for our four o’clock showing of Romeo and Juliet. I dragged Ari down the road, smiling all the while.
“Wait a second, Ever,” He murmured, “I want to show you something.”
I cocked my head at him, a question forming in my mind, when he smiled and pulled me into a jewelry shop.
“What are we doing here?”
“I have a present for you. From me,” He sighed, and walked over to the employee working at the front desk, “Hi. I have an order for Ari.”
The man nodded and disappeared into the back room. Returning in a moment with a small box that he immediately put in Ari’s hand. We nodded our thanks and headed back onto the main street. I begged Ari to show me what was in the box, but he told me to wait until we were inside the theater. Apparently, he didn’t want anyone to steal my present. When we were finally seated, he smiled at me and took the box out of his pocket.
“You are my sister, and I love you very much. Always have, always will. This gift is something from our family. Not your adoptive family, but our birth family. I had it polished here, to make sure it was perfect for you. But you have to promise me something before I give it to you. You have to promise that you will never take it off. Not ever. Do you promise?”
I nodded eagerly at that and he smiled at me, with a quiet laugh. When he opened the box, I saw the most beautiful ruby necklace lying inside it. The stone was encrusted with silver, with greek writing on it. Of course, I couldn’t speak Greek even slightly, but I would have to look up the phrase at home. It was the most beautiful gift I had ever received.
“Ari,” I muttered, speechless, “How did you get this? Is it from our mother?”
His jaw clenched at my question, as our mother had always been a touchy subject for me. I didn’t remember her all that much, but from what I did remember, I never would have thought that she would give me away. I remember being so loved by her. I remember nights where she would come into my room, and sleep in my bed. She would tell me how much she loved me, and that she always would. I still don’t understand why she had to give us up.
“She gave it to me before she left. She wanted you to have it. I promised her that you would someday.”
“I love it,” I whispered, clasping it around my neck just as the lights in the auditorium started fading. I gave him a hug and sat back down in my seat, ready to enjoy the beautiful and tragic love story through dance.
ͻ
“Beautiful, simply beautiful,” I breathed as we left the parking garage.
“What’s beautiful? The ballet, necklace, or me?” He smiled, a twinkle in his eyes.
“The necklace,” I smiled, and laughed at his mock-hurt face, “You on the other hand, are not so beautiful.”
He scowled in my direction, rolling his eyes.
“Do you remember her?” I asked suddenly, wanting to hear more about the woman that gave birth to me.
“I do,” He murmured, avoiding my question.
“Please, Ari. I know you don’t like to but please tell me more. I really don’t know anything about her. And you had to have known that giving me this necklace would only make me want to hear more about her.”
He rubbed his face with one hand and turned to glance at me, “I’ll tell you what I think you should hear about her. That is all, and when I am done just know that this is all you will hear until you are old enough to handle the rest.”
I nodded, hoping that he would understand that I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I needed to know the truth.
“She was a strange woman. Very possessive of us, and our father. She wanted us to be the perfect family, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Dad was more or less what ruined her, and our family. He wasn’t faithful to our mother, and she really couldn’t handle that. I guess she really just couldn’t hang on to her sanity anymore.”
I waited several minutes to reply, hoping that he would decide to tell me more. We merged onto a side road as I finally decided to reply.
“That’s it? She went crazy? How could that be? Even if our father was unfaithful, she should have tried harder to save us from what could have been a horrible life.”
“She couldn’t, Ever. This is why I didn’t tell you! Teenagers don’t understand things like this, and I knew you wouldn’t,” He said, sounding slightly angry. I didn’t reply to him, hurt by the fact that he thought I was acting immaturely. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He was supposed to want to confide in me.
“Everlie, I’m sorry,” He apologized, and turned putting his hand on top of mine. We locked eyes, and I instantly forgave him. I knew that he didn’t want to hurt me, even if I wanted to know.
Just as he started turning back to the wheel, I knew that something was wrong. I felt the impact before I knew what was happening. I blacked out five seconds before our car flipped three times.
ͻ
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125,027 Literary Works • 672,774 Reviews
Hi, Shea! Back again.
This definitely improves on the first instalment. There's more action and interaction, and the conclusion is dramatic and hard-hitting (if a little expected, given how you alluded to her misfortune at the outset of the story). Same as last time, I'll start with nitpicks and close with overall thoughts.
Nitpicks
You're still making the same punctuation errors - you should have a comma after 'perfect' rather than a full stop. However, I'm assuming this is because you wrote this part before I critiqued the previous instalment, so I won't point out the other instances where this happens. I'll leave it up to you to comb through the dialogue when you come back to revise this chapter.
Definitely agree with MJ on this bit of dialogue. It labours the point too much.
Full stop after 'subject', not a comma.
Make me prouder, you mean.
I'd delete that comma.
I doubt he'd use his first name. More likely he'd have placed the order under his surname.
Change the full stop after 'room' to a comma.
'But' doesn't feel like the right conjunction - it's adversative and suggests a contrast. Maybe change it to: 'I couldn't speak Greek even slightly, so I would have to look up the phrase at home'.
It sounds more like it's more of a touchy subject for him, to be honest. Ever doesn't seem that fazed by asking about her mother.
Delete the comma.
I'd put a comma after 'you'.
Try not to spell out the reason why a character has asked something if you can help it. Ideally, we should be able to figure out the motivations from the dialogue itself.
Same here. You're telling too much. Maybe say that he stops making eye contact or something - some kind of body language that suggest he doesn't want to talk about it.
Several minutes is AGES in conversation. Trust me, as someone who studies language and has done transcriptions, even a one or two-second-long silence would be enough for her to figure out whether he was going to elaborate or not. If she paused for minutes, he'd think the subject was over completely. You could easily change it to:
I paused for a moment, hoping he would tell me more.
And it would be fine. But minutes is definitely far too long.
He's being unrealistically unreasonable here, I think. He hasn't given her any proper explanation for why their mother gave them away, so he can't flip his lid when she doesn't understand it. Given that he's a grown adult, I'd expect him to have a bit more awareness about the issue.
It's a great last line, but I think it would be better with that last bit cut off. It almost feels too specific. I think the simplicity of the sentence is what gives it its power.
Overall Thoughts
1) Showing and telling is something I think you ought to focus more on. I think someone brought it up in a previous review, but I'll go over it briefly here. Showing and telling are two types of writing techniques. Telling involves stating something to the reader in explicit terms (e.g. 'I was happy') whereas showing involves implying it and letting the reader gather the meaning for themselves (e.g. 'lightness bubbled in my chest'). They're both important, but showing is the one that new writers tend to struggle with most, and it's the one you need to pay most attention to.
Let's take this line:
The bits in bold are the most glaring bits of telling writing. You only state that Ari sounds angry and state that Ever feels hurt. If you were to show it, you would have to be more specific, more descriptive. Let's look at it against a comparison of mine:
If you say Ari's voice rises, you imply that he's angry rather than just telling us. If you say that Ever has tears in her eyes, you show that she's sad rather than just informing us. It's more immersive. It doesn't spoonfeed the reader information so they have to engage with the words and fill the gaps themselves.
Showing and telling is a huge topic and it is by no means an easy thing to master - ten years of writing and I still haven't cracked it. However this article is great at explaining more about the techniques and what good showing and good telling look like. It's very short and worth a read if you've got the chance.
2) Some of your dialogue is a touch wordy and overly formal. Make sure you read it aloud if you don't already, putting in pitch and intonation like an actor would. See if it feels natural to say. If it doesn't, play around with it until it does.
I'll call the review here. I hope this was helpful! I'll get round to reviewing the next instalment soon. As always, I'm looking forward to more.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Hello Pan!
All of your critiques were really helpful, and I will go over everything when I am set to edit. Everything you said makes sense, and I will work on them!
Thanks for the review
Thanks again,
Shea
Hey there! MJ back for a short review
This seemed a little redundant, especially the 'you know' parts. I would just say something like, "Come on, Ari, you know that I love it. That's why we're going to a ballet, after all."
I think that since Ari is Brae's sister, too (or at least I'm assuming that they're all one family), you can just say Brae. It sounds a little odd to refer to her as 'my sister' when she's a sister to both of them.
As my only real plot note, in the very last section, I would have liked to see more of Ever's thoughts when Ari lashed out at her. That would have given the apology a different angle, and I also think that seeing how the MC reacts to even the smaller events can help the reader gain a better understanding of her personality.
Other than this, I loved the ending. It was a real cliff-hanger, and once again your writing style deserves commendation, so bravo, bravo. I liked seeing the relationship between Ari and Ever, but I was confused on whether Ari had been adopted by the same family as Ever. If you could clear that up for me, I would really appreciate that.
I hope this review was helpful, and if you have any questions, feel free to PM me! Have a nice day, and I can't wait to read more.
MJ out!
*poof*
Hello MJ!
Thanks for your comments!
I just wanted to clarify two things. 1.) Ever and Brae are sisters by adoption, as they are both adopted. Although, ari is only Ever's brother. They come from different biological families. And the 2nd thing is that Ari was not adopted, but he turned 18 shortly after he was put into foster care, so he lives on his own!
I am really glad you liked it! I am currently reviewing yours
Thanks!
Shea
Thank you for the return review, and thank you also for clearing that up! Can't wait to review more!
No problem! I am currently working on it, so I will most likely post tomorrow!
Thanks for being supportive
Shea