The cold air slips into my lungs. It is one of the last breaths I will ever take. You stand beside me and hold my arm in your hand. It is too hard of a grip for it to be a caring gesture. I breath out. My breath is hurled into the air, twisting and turning, a river of white silk. It rides the wind up to the stars, curls over itself, and dies away. Just like us I suppose. I wonder at what point had you changed your mind. Chose her over me.
Your eyes were what first struck me. Not your crippled leg. Not the limp that that leg had given you. Your eyes were the color of blue jade, of the sky after a storm. They were beautiful. You had an uncertain look in your eyes on that first day I saw you. I was the little girl you saw, peeking around a corner. That girl you waved to and smiled. I was 12. You, 14.
We went to Starbucks together. You ordered the same drink I did. Cherry blossom frappucino. But for some reason, you wanted yours to be blue, so they put loads of food coloring in. They were just like your eyes. We laughed together. Remember? You had to use the restroom and I stole some of your drink. You came back and looked at me. I said I didn’t do it. Then you reached forward and wiped a drop of blue cream off my cheek. My mom called and ruined that moment. When we left, you held the door for me.
“Ladies first,” you had said. I was 14. You, 16.
There was the pool party at the end of the school year. You convinced me to jump off the diving board with you. I shrieked as you betrayed me and pushed me off. I got my revenge by doing the same. The sun was warm on my back and your breath was warm on my neck. You got a sunburn, and I rubbed coconut oil onto your body.
Your excuse that day for pushing me off the board was, “Ladies first.” I was 17. You, 19.
On Christmas morning, you came to my house. We sat under the tree, talking. You were ranting on and on about how you couldn’t find me a perfect gift because nothing was worthy of being in my possession. And then you leaned towards me and we kissed. Our first kiss. Your lip pressed to mine, your hand gently resting against the small of my back. Your breath was sweet in my nose, of the smell of the chocolate you had eaten. The smell of you. At the end of the day, you said you actually had a present for me. And I had a last gift for you too. But you leaned over into the back seat and pulled out a present. It was small. And wrapped in red paper. I wanted you to open yours first but you insisted.
You justified this with a, “Ladies first.” I was 19. You, 21.
Then you met her. That was the day my life crumbled. She burned it in front of my eyes, brilliant, gold flares tossed into the sky, consuming it. It burned. When it had eaten me away, she kept it going, stoking the flames with tiny pieces of my soul. She slowly tore me apart. She saw you almost every day from then on. You went with her, forgetting me, drowning me in those frothing, writhing blue eyes of yours, pushing my head under the water and holding it there, until I drowned.
When I asked you why you spent less and less time with me, you replied, “Ladies come first.” Something you suppose I’m not, something I never was. I was 22. You, 24.
She said I was hateful, horrible. Jealous. And that I couldn’t stand your leg. You believed that. You fell into the dark trap she set you, following her instructions hoping that it would get you out. It only led to this. I knocked on your door later that night. You told me to go away. You screamed at me to stop coming to you, to stop ruining your life when all you did was ruin mine. Our voices echoed down the street. Neighbors shut their windows after shouting curses. My face aches at the spot where your hand left a print. It still hurts.
“My relationship is with her only!” you shouted in my face, even though I was just two feet away from you. I was 23, you 25.
She told you I was planning to end your life. Why would I? You believed everything. She made you her minion, her pawn. She ruled over your every move, discarded every thought that had anything to do with going out with me. And when she said, “Get her out of my life,” you obliged. I am 24, you 26.
You told me you wanted to make up for everything that has happened. You wanted to go to a “special spot.” I was all too happy to go with you. You led me to a clifftop. Beneath us, the crashing bodies of icy salt water slammed into the rocks and created a spray of fine mist that veiled my vision. Here I stand, next to you. My arm tightly gripped in your hand. You say you are tired of choosing the wrong person. Tired of living with the decision, with all the things you said about me. You ask me to fly with you, into the embrace of the ocean. I reply, foolishly, “Yes.”
Your hand holding mine, we face the sunset. The waves gnawed at the ankles of the cliff and lapped at the sand. You looked happy, content. You looked at me and I felt a hard nudge prod my back. Your hand was no longer in mine and I was tipping over the edge, losing balance, falling. And you stood, steady, on the cliff.
I let you force me through unfamiliar landscapes of events, climbing over the boulders of your doubts, ducking under the branches that tried to stop me from reaching to you, wading through raging rivers of your anger. After all that and I stayed with you. But you left me. The cold spray of the ocean engulfed me, shrouding you from my sight. But not before I saw. I saw you. With her. And that was the last of you I had before the mist close around me.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,808 Reviews
This was the only short story that I had watched for 2 times on YWS.
Breathtaking, sad, misunderstood, love......All the small details painted a nice and beautiful picture of the whole story. This short story would be wonderful that if it's a painting. That was so heartbreaking when I saw the ending. Oh, how I wish that the ending would be perfect and adorable. Why would the boy abandon the girl. You really catch my heart when I saw the tragic end.
Anyway, it was a really nice piece for a 13 year old. Looking forward to your future works!
This has to be one of the most detailed, short story's iv'e ever read. and coming from a 13 year old, that's very well impressive. Iv'e seen like nothing wrong with this piece, It was made to perfection.
Im looking forward to reading more of your story's.
~xxx maddie
Breathtaking story.
You're extremely talented with your descriptions. I never once lost focus or got bored while reading. As I am one of the most critical, nitpicking reviewers I know, this is one of the biggest compliments you can get from me.
BUT. (There is always a but with me, please bear with it)
BUT...
There is no but. This is another first. I cannot find it. I cannot find something to critique. While the drama in it, especially the finale, is quite exaggerated to improve and emphasize the contrast between the siren villain, and our innocent, sweet girl, I feel that in a piece like this it can be overlooked due to the sheer talent you display. Are you really 13??
About the drama part, it is only visible when one detaches themselves from the piece and reads logically to nitpick. Like I said, it's okay. Women like that exist, they're rare, but they exist. Think Lola from the Shark Tale movie.
You capture very well the crushing feeling of being replaced, shoved outside the heart to accommodate another, less deserving person. Of seeing your love float away not because of you, but because of the person people said you were. Crushing agony. Flaring pain.
I could mention a few lapses in grammar, but not this time. Your lapses do not detract from the story and I am 100% certain you could see them on your own if you read this over a few times. I'm going to let it slide, once.
I want to see more from you. I'm going to check on you pretty often, be your mentor if you want me to be (though I daresay at this rate you'll have no need for one soon)
Please, please keep writing.
Love, Desdemona.
Thanks for reviewing! Yas, I'm 13...I miss 12...I reread the story again, but I cannot find any grammar mistakes. Can you please point them out for me? Thank youuuu!!!
This is truly a magnificent piece. I don't usually read romance, but I thought i could give this a shot. This is filled with imagery and plenty of figurative language. It's a story of love, loss, and hurt. This is real. This points out the story of how love can be changed with the manipulations of a rivaling woman. And you know what? This is true. It CAN happen. It happened to me before, and as much as my heart ached, I kept reading. This is a great piece. And it's something else if I can read this as a romance story.
Awww, I'm so sorry that happened
I can only imagine what you are going through. I believe you are strong!!! Ice cream will make you feel better...well, that's advice coming from a kid.
Okay. This is just amazing. Can I say more ? Amazing, great, fabulous, fantastic, magnificent - if I knew more adjectives for great, then I would write them. It is just that darn awesome. I cannot say how much I love this story. It is sad and beautiful and realistic and painful and true and everything a good short story should be. The characters - despite not even having proper names - are amazingly designed and created. I just adore the way it is written, every single word of it. I love the way one of the main characters is a fool in love, willing to do anything for his love while not understanding all the ways how she is killing him. I love the femme fatale description of the main villain and the contrast of the pure innocence which you have given your lead. I love how the whole story is essentially a flashback, an afterthought on how she has landed in this situation. I love how you portray their life during various (crucial) points. I love the ambiguity. I love the poetic beauty. Fuh, I think I said everything. This is just amazing and I hope reading more from you in the future.
Extraordinary, marvelous, wonderful, awesome, astonishing, impressive, breathtaking, incredible, prodigious, astounding, marvelous, miraculous, striking, exceptional, fantastic, outstanding, phenomenal, remarkable, and stupendous to name a few.
Whoops you already wrote fantastic...oh well. XD
Thank you xD My history teacher was talking about love and dating so I was like *rubs hands*
Hi! I really enjoyed this! Strikes a chord somewhere inside me
When I've read a piece that's cyclical I like to go back to the start to read through again with my knowledge of the plot... great fun!
When i first read through your piece I thought all of the characters were female, I'm still not entirely sure if the limped character is Male or not, although about 90% because of 'Ladies first', so perhaps an indication of gender might be needed? On my second time round however; I read it with the friend being male, and that made quite a different story in my mind. Perhaps leaving it ambiguous is to your advantage; just a perspective to consider.
One thing that struck me throughout is that the main characters devotion to their friend seems to be their only emotion. Reading in the first person I felt lost and passive. That was one of the ways I connected with the piece, as in life one can often feel helpless at times, an allure of the piece to me is that most of the emotion and action is delivered from other characters, but it would have been even better if the main characters emotions came over at the same time. I think that when the main character is knocking on the friends door would be a great spot to try something like this. Perhaps a line of the friend telling the main character to 'stop pretending to cry' or describing how the hand print from the slap made her feel.
Given me a fair bit of inspiration, and I think from this I'll challenge myself to write a piece conveyed from other characters points of view. So all in all great work. Keep it up, and keep experimenting!
Hello,
Well, I agree with what Charlotte said: This is an amazing piece. Truly.
It's skillful and smart; the way it snakes toward its conclusion is done with such delicacy and intelligence. You painted pictures with your descriptions—beautiful, vivid, clear pictures. Real pictures. Every bit of imagery felt tangible.
The relationship of these two characters was explored in such a clever way, too. As Charlotte said, the way you state their ages in that distinct, reoccurring way was quite clever, and an excellent way to move readers through the story, to show them an overview of these characters' lives and walk them through the key moments, to express the elapse of time... just brilliant. Really, I mean that. And furthermore, I also loved the way you used his line—"ladies first"—throughout the story; in particular, the fact that the last time he said it was in regards to his girlfriend, as he's shifting away from the narrator, and then he sticks to his philosophy at the very end—when he pushes her over, mirroring how he pushed her off the diving board and representing this line... Suffice it to say, that was masterful. Absolutely masterful. This was such a full-circle story in that regard, too—it was so neat, so well-planned. It felt carefully considered and expertly constructed. Are you seriously thirteen?? I don't mean to condescend, but damn—at thirteen, you're already writing far better than most adults, with actual skill and a strong, well-developed voice, and just... gah, you're amazing. That's all.
Okay, so all that being said, I have some (very mild) suggestions and nitpicks and such—and I feel a bit bad about including these, since this is already so great on its own, but I must. Here they are:
So, one thing I'd caution you about is overwriting. Don't get me wrong, this is beautiful imagery, and cleverly written. But the line between beautiful writing and overwrought, pretentious descriptions is a very, very thin one, and this sentence I've quoted is walking it. I think there's a few things that are dragging this bit down—the "just like us I suppose" feels a bit melodramatic, something I could picture a soap opera character saying while looking wistfully in the distance and dotting her eyes with a tissue. You know? And I also feel that the "river of white silk" imagery would stand out more if the sentences that surrounded it were written more plainly, more simply, so as not to be verbose. When you have a great description, a clever bit of imagery, it will always stand out more if it's not marooned in the midst of melodramatic and overwrought sentences competing for attention.
Should be "were."
"Yours" is repetitive here, and I don't think it's really necessary to add the line about the food coloring. It would be neater and smoother just to say that he wanted his to be blue.
This section, again, is treading that line—the overwrought-or-beautiful one—and not very successfully, I'd say. It's coming off a bit soapy and melodramatic. Something about "your lips pressed to mine"—which could be said in a far more straightforward way—and "our bodies caressed each other" really isn't working. One of them would already be pushing things into overwrought territory, but both? Right next to each other? It's just too much. And it's not even that the writing is bad, just—as I said—too much. You don't always have to be artful or delicate or flowery; sometimes it's best to be straightforward and simple, concise. As I said before, the concision will help make the parts that are artful and delicate stand out more—that contrast is very important.
This sounds weird. And also, a bit overwrought. There's gotta be a simpler, less strange way to put this.
"One" is repetitive here. Maybe try, "And I had one last gift for you too."
"Life" is repetitive here, and again, the beauty of this imagery is getting lost by the excess of it. Maybe change "the day my life crumbled" to "that was the day our friendship stopped making sense" or something like that—it's less flowery and will make the following part more meaningful. Also, "eaten my life away" just sounds so overly dramatic. Maybe "eaten me away"? And "tiny pieces of my soul" is—you guessed it—also coming off as overwrought.
I'd put a paragraph break between these lines.
You never need to capitalize the first letter of a pronoun after dialogue, unless that pronoun is "I." So, in this case, the Y in "you" should be lowercase.
So she's saying she wouldn't be motivated to do so, then gives a reason why she'd be motivated to do so. It doesn't make sense. I'd strike the "even though you had ended mine" bit for that reason.
The period should be inside the quotation marks.
Strike that comma; it's not necessary.
You switched tenses here. Notice how you start off in present tense—"stand," "say," "are," "ask"—then switch to past-tense ("was"). You also switch tenses in the following paragraph as well. Watch out for that—it's an incredibly easy mistake to make and very common, and will confuse the reader.
So, overall? This piece is great. You did a wonderful job writing it—seriously, you should be proud. The fact that you're thirteen is boggling my mind. It's a glorious piece of work, and—so long as you're careful to avoid the dreaded pit of overwrought drama—I see a long, prosperous writing career in your future. Well done.
Thank you soo much for reviewing! When I reread this story, I realized that you are totally right! Repetitive words and over describing stuff... I will go back and edit when I have the time. Thank you!!
This story is amazing and very realistically written. Many people suffer from heartbreaks everywhere, and the way in which you describe the character's emotions is unique and gripping. I felt myself become more and more intrigued as the story went on, and I couldn't have stopped reading if I tried.
I also really liked the way you wrote the same sentence to tell the reader the character's ages, this is a clever technique which really fascinated me intensely!
Choice of wording is also very intelligent and I really enjoyed reading them.
Your sentence structures were very professional and they were a vary of different types, which allows you to include as much detail as you can in an effective way.
I can't find any areas for you to improve! This is a very positive thing
Keep up the amazing work and please continue to write, you're very good!
Charlotte
Thank you for reviewing! The internet is really laggy rn...sleepy...zzzz...