Chapter One: HaleA Chapter by Joshua DonahueThis is the very first chapter of my first novel, Forbidden. I do not plan on posting my entire novel up. In fact, I am only looking for reviews on the first 3 chapters so I can try and get published.
Previous Version This is a previous version of Chapter One: Hale. FORBIDDEN BY: J O S H U A D O N A H U E Chapter One Hale “Look,
sweetie, I’ve told you this a million times before, we just have to move okay?
That town"San Francisco"is just too dangerous, too expensive, and too darn big.
It…It’s just not for us, okay? Is that good enough?” my mother said to me out
of obvious frustration. I
turned my head away in response. My
mother, Elana Woods, wanted nothing but the best for me, and I knew that. It
was just that I hated to leave San Francisco. It was so big and so amazing; it
appeared to be stuck in its own magnificent world of adventure. With cool
weather, famous landmarks, and nearly a thousand shops all around (not
including those of Chinatown), I couldn’t help but to smile at the City of
Wonder. But so far, all that my eyes had spotted while on the road were
depressing things like the steamy, mediocre sand, fragile-looking tumbleweeds,
lonesome cacti, odd-shaped cliffs, and everything else that tuned in with a scorching
desert scene. My
mom had decided to drive half the distance to our destination and fly the rest
of the way. I couldn’t have cared less, seeing as how I was going to sleep
anyways, trying to escape my life. Obviously,
this was my first move. I
was born and raised in San Francisco, California. It was my hometown"my true hometown. I knew why we had to move
of course, but picking fights with my mom"was wrong, yes"but it helped me
overcompensate with the ruins that my life seemed so miserably left in. My
mother had been having a hard time keeping up with the bills since six months
ago. Things just seemed to get worse, harder, and rougher for us both since
then. Six months ago was when tragedy attacked us out of nowhere: my dad died. My
father had run a construction business as well as worked in it as one of the
construction workers himself. Once, I asked why he did this, and he said that he
didn’t think it was fair that his workers slaved all day outside while he
remained inside enjoying the cool air conditioning behind a desk overlooking
his buddies. He was a really nice guy. Nevertheless, being a construction
worker required him to put his life at risk everyday when he went to work. My
mother had told him numerous times before that she loved him and that he needed
to be extremely careful. In reply, my exultant dad would merely peck her on the
forehead, promise that nothing awful would occur, and waltz out the door with
merriment. But eventually, that promise was broken. Things
were easy when he was around; there were no worries at all. He always had a
smile on his face no matter what was going on, and he seemed to turn the bad
stuff into good stuff. In fact, he was the only person able to do that for my
mom and me. Sometimes he would play videogames with me as we both tried
desperately to block out the nagging of my mom informing us that staring at the
television would ruin our eyesight. Other times, he and I would throw the
football back and forth through the house as my mother laughed at the sight of
us whenever he or I would plop down on the sofa in the middle of a catch. He
basically did the cool stuff awesome dads typically do. But above all, he knew
what it was like being a teenager as a male. So we connected on some level, I
guess. Then
his death occurred, shadowing things. Because of the tragedy, my mom grieved at
an unbelievably high rate making everything all the more pitiful. It seemed
that his death just sucked the life out of her, draining her of all happiness
that had once been inside. It was as if she was a robot powered by cheap,
knockoff batteries. I wanted to breakdown and succumb to it just as my mother
had; but I wouldn’t. I wasn’t as weak as she was. Since
my father was a construction worker, he did have insurance on himself, but
because he worked with his workers instead of just running the business like
the typical stereotype brought on by some dumb idiot, the insurance settlement
was revoked. Thus, we never saw a dime, leaving us in a tight financial spot. I
even resorted to shoplifting several times in order to get what I wanted, but
my mother didn’t need to know about that, especially with the move and all. We
were headed to some place in South Carolina. Hale, I think was the name of the
small town. Or was it Hell? I couldn’t be sure which, but I knew my new path
was designed to crumble regardless. “But
why to the other side of the nation?” I had questioned her merely a week before. “We
have no family here. No relatives. No nothing. All of them live in South
Carolina. Both mine and your fa"fathers’ family.” She seemed to choke on saying
“father” every time it was brought up in a conversation. Frankly,
I didn’t initially believe her, because I had never thought about having a
grandfather, an aunt, or an uncle. It just didn’t seem important. My mother then
brought out some old family pictures. In them were people I had never laid eyes
on before, but whom my mother claimed were my blood relatives. Some looked
elderly, some young, and there were even a few that were my age. Still, I had
never even known they existed. She had never talked about any of them, and I
had never asked. So whatever or whoever
was waiting for me in this pie-shaped state that I was headed to was a mystery
to me. As
my mother drove, I paid little attention to the outside world which flashed
right on by the vehicle’s window. My too-overly optimistic mother tried so hard
to get me to take photos with her at famous landmarks like it was some celebrated
road trip. Maybe she just didn’t get the fact that this was hard for me and
that all I wanted to do right now was crawl into a dark cave and live there for
the rest of my life. Or maybe she did
get it and that was why she was trying so hard to get me to open up. Still, I
was planning to resent her for a while. So
here I was: ridding in the passenger’s side of my mother’s white jeep in the
beginning month of April. The top was off and stuffed away somewhere under the
few bags we had, and the wind was rustling in my black hair. My eyes, with
their chocolate-brown tint, were feeling the full effects of the intense sun
above, and my skin was attracting more of a tan than I already had due to my
mix of Caucasian and Native American heritage. Back
in November of last year, I had become a sixteen-year-old. Officially, I was a
sixteen-year-old guy that was"unfortunately"stuck in the lame tenth grade of high
school. Only now, I was heading to an unfamiliar
high school. Great.
Just Great. * * * After our
plane ride, we drove a little bit longer. I had already listened to every song
on my iPod at least three times and sent at least a million text messages on my
cell phone. During the ride, more photos tried to be taken, and in fact, I got
out for one just to make my mother leave me alone. I did not smile, however. I
just made a simple frown, allowed the flash to occur, and then back into the
jeep I went. She tried jokes as well to open me up, but she was such a poor
joke teller that it just made the entire thing worse. Were parents supposed to
act like this? Not
long afterwards, I saw it: the sign that indicated to the small town that my
mother was dragging me all the way across the United States to"the sign to the
town of Hale, South Carolina. This
place deserved more of the title “village” rather than “town” actually. It
merely contained a post office, a small gas station, a tiny seafood restaurant,
a bank, a movie rental store, a small mini mart, and a church. Oh, and only two
stoplights out the whole thing! Instantly, I could tell that it was one of
those places where everybody knew everyone else; and if anything big happened,
then the whole town (village) would know about it in an hour. It was just so little!
Nothing.
Like. San Francisco. At. All. My mother looked at me and forced a
smile upon her face. I just looked away disgustingly. We passed through the town so fast
that it took only about eighteen seconds. Afterwards, we turned onto a back
street by the gas station and passed several other streets with
pleasant-looking houses. They all seemed to be inspired by a scene from Marry
Poppins, with children playing out in the yards. Then we turned onto one of those
streets that had MCGREGOR STREET on the corner post. The street had houses
lined on each side"most of them white, but all with various shades of window
shutters. It
just seemed too happy and peaceful.
Where was the drama or the excitement? Did these people just live off of birds,
grass, and the sunshine? It was like watching one of those wretched PBS Kids
shows where they try to lie to you and tell you what a wonderful place the
world can be. I
could already tell that the name of this town was indeed wrong. It was not Hale
like the sign had said, but the actual Hell below my feet. Only, instead of
under me, it was now around me. My mother turned into the driveway
that had the number 592 imprinted on the mailbox. It was the only home that had
the biggest yard. But other than that, it looked just like any other house
around: happy and joyful. It did have a small, waist-high fence that outlined
its perimeter though"again, another Mary Poppins reminder. The structure itself
was a two-story with black shutters surrounding the windows. The only other
noticeable thing about it was that it had two mover’s trucks in the front yard,
unloading all of our belongings via the front door. My
mom had told me it was some heirloom of some sort that she had inherited. This
lightened me up a smidge, because we had a home finally and not an apartment.
But still, I loved our apartment before. I would welcome it back into my
surroundings any day. Upon parking in the garage (it had
one of those too), my frantic mother rushed over to the trucks to make sure
that none of her stuff was being misplaced, leaving me to sulk"thankfully. On the
contrary to her actions, I took no rush to get out of
the jeep. In fact, I took my time, gathering all of my electronic junk and
piling it into my traveling bag that I had for totally useless times that
referred to uprooting my life and destroying it by moving across the country
such as these. Procrastinating
no longer, I climbed out. When my sneakers touched the concrete below me, I
could instantly sense the outlandishness in the place surrounding me. The
boringness was everywhere, I knew. I didn’t need to glance around any longer
because I already knew what I wouldn’t see: San Francisco; so I let out a groan
of small horror and frustration, and then I rushed up into the house. Through the garage, I found myself
in the kitchen. It had a hard, wooden floor with an island counter in the
middle and lots of cabinets surrounding it. After the kitchen, I roamed around
until I found the stairs. I passed a dining room, a living room, a closet, and
a bathroom along the way, I recalled. Most of them were being furnished by the
movers, so I continued on up the stairs to not to be an obstacle for them. After
I climbed the stairs, I began glancing into every room. All of the rooms were
already furnished the way my mother had instructed the movers before we left,
so it was easy to find mine. It
was painted a pure, pearly white, with a black, fluffy carpet to boot"the
curtains were checkered to match the color scheme. All of my CDs were placed on
a shelf with my small stereo under it, and my laptop was set up on the desk by
the window. My gaming systems were already hooked up to my television, waiting
to be toyed with. My bed was in the corner of the room, covered with black
sheets; and all of the other junk that belonged to me was either on the
shelves, in a dresser, or in the closet. Everything was fit to my taste, I
concluded. I
wanted to kick off my shoes, crawl onto the bed with my laptop, and check my
email; and I did just that. I had about thirty new email
messages from my friends, and then another hundred or so that were ads or
commercial things that wanted me to buy their product. It took me about an hour
to read the important ones and reply to them. Most of them were asking me how
my new home was and what it was like. But regardless, I was a slow typer. I
pecked at the keyboard at a slow pace (which explained my F in typing class).
But after I was done, I went to Google and searched up Hale, South Carolina. I
wanted to get some information on the place. Was there some secret hangout that
I had not seen on my way in? Was there secretly a Stepford wife thing going on
here? I could only hope. But according to the web, there was only one unique
thing that helped explain Hale better: at the local video store, if you rent
two movies, you get the third free on Mondays, according to their
advertisement. Wow, how exhilarating that bit of information was! Irritated with my research, I logged
out and put the laptop to sleep. I laid it down on the bed’s soft sheets and
went to the window, opening up the blinds. The sun was going down, and I could
see everyone on McGregor Street: men mowing the front lawn, children playing
Hop-Scotch on the sidewalk, people going for a jog and walking their dogs, and
old couples resting on their front porches in rocking chairs, watching the
youth roam with energy. The
warmth that the sun provided as it sunk lower, as if seeping into the Earth’s
surface, was unusual to me. Back in San Francisco, it was just warm enough to
get by, if not cold or cool. The weather would be another change for me to have
to adjust to. The colors, however, were remarkable. They streaked across the
sky, surrounding the sun, as if a small child had been messing with paints and
mixed bright, vivid colors together to produce the scene before me. I had to
admit: it was magnificent; but then I remembered where I was and the current
predicament I was in. I looked away in repulsion. Glancing
back through the view, my eyes detected that the movers had apparently left. I
also noticed a single tree in our front yard that reached a little above my
window, providing shade. I liked that, because I loved the dark. It was my
home, like it was a shield for me and it protected me. Interrupting
my train of thoughts, came the loud laughter of my mother. Happiness spurred
inside of me because my brain couldn’t remember ever hearing my mom laugh
since…since before things changed. Then confusion busted in my skull because I
didn’t have the faintest clue as to why
she was even laughing. I closed the blinds of my window and crept down to get a
good look. She was talking to a man and a woman
who looked like they were in their middle thirties, I observed. The woman was
wearing a dark-colored skirt and a pink top; the man was wearing a pair of
khaki pants and a blue sweater. Great, I’m
officially surrounded by a pile of preppy, rich, snobby people, I mentally
said to myself. I also noticed that my mother was holding something that was
either a casserole or a cake. But just as I was observing the scene from the
stairway, my mother saw me and said, “Evan! Come! Meet Mr. and Mrs. Woods! They
are your aunt and uncle. Your dad’s brother and his wife.” I came out of hiding, walked on over
casually like I hadn’t been snooping, and I shook their hands with reluctance,
but hiding it well. “Hello, young man. I am Daryl Woods.
And this is my wife, Sarah Woods,” the man said as neighborly as possible. “Hello, I am Evan. Evan Woods.” I
tried to put on a grin for them; but it looked a little too forced, so I pushed
it away. “Yes. I have heard all about you. My
brother’s son, and my nephew no doubt,” Daryl said. “So what grade are you in,
son?” “Ten"Tenth grade,” I stammered out.
I only stuttered because a sudden blast of strong scent extended from this man
before me. It was like putting cologne on so much that it smelled really
horrible. And I mean it; this guy seemed as if he used three bottles in the
process. “Yes, you are a Woods indeed,” he
chuckled, examining me thoroughly. He zoomed in on me so disturbingly that I
almost thought he was going to munch on me like a piece of meat. “So the move is going well, then?”
Sarah asked with such a soft and gentle-like voice towards my mom. “Oh yes. Very much. Evan has been in
his room since we arrived. I think he really likes it.” I didn’t feel like arguing with her,
so I just ignored her comment by letting out an incoherent sigh. Then
Daryl glanced down at his watch. “Well, I hate to cut this introduction short,
but Sarah and I have to go pick up Derek and Michael who are at a friend’s
house expecting a ride home. So you’ll come then, right?” He looked as if he
would miss looking at me, like I was a prize possession that he wanted to make
sure he really wanted. Then he looked at my mother
expecting a response for his question. “Umm, yes. Saturday, right? At one
‘o clock?” she answered and questioned simultaneously. “Yes. We’ll see you then, Elana. It
was very nice to meet you for the first time, Evan. But we’ll get to know more
about each other on Saturday. I’ll see you two there. And if there is anything
you need at all, just give us a call!” “And I hope you really enjoy the
cake! It was nice seeing you, Elana, and nice meeting you, Evan. Bye,” Sarah
said while following her husband out the door. Then
Daryl and his wife Sarah were out of the house. However, I looked out the window
just to make sure before I asked: “Saturday? What’s Saturday?” She stalked off to the kitchen with
the gift from Sarah in her hands, ignoring my question. Of course, I was very persistent so
I was determined to get that answer out of her. I wanted to know what dumb, preppy,
waste-of-my-time thing my mother had just pushed me into. I followed behind
her. “What’s Saturday?” I questioned
again, anger beginning to rise in me. She was placing the pan"which had
the now-realized cake on it", into the fridge. Then she turned and looked at me
like she was depending on how to answer me. “Well?”
I said with a bit of accusation in my voice. “Oh alright, Evan, seeing as how you
can’t leave anything alone. Saturday we are attending a family cookout over at
the Woods’ place. Both my family and your father’s will be there. There. Satisfied?” “No, I’m not satisfied, and I’m not
damn going.” “Watch your mouth! And yes. You.
Will. Evan Woods. That is the whole reason we came to this town: to meet and
get to know some of your relatives.” “Don’t say ‘we’ as if we both decided to move here to this hell hole! You and
I both know that you made this decision, not me. Besides, like I wanna meet
some people that are allegedly kin to me.
I’ve never even heard of them for Christ’s sake!” “Evan Woods, we moved here for a
good reason. And these people are not allegedly kin to you, either. They are kin to you, and you will go whether
you like it or not.” I scowled at her. I gave a grumbling
sound out of frustration, and I stormed out of the kitchen to my room. I plowed onto my bed when I got
there and dug my head deep into the pillows, letting out a roar to help relieve
the stress. How could she? Who did she think she was? Oh, right, my mother. Duh, I thought. Of
course I loved her, but sometimes she just made me so…so…ill! I
let out another roar into my pillow. And another. And then three more after
that. I was starting to feel a little better now, although my throat was not. So many changes… So many new things… So many head spins… It was all just too much of “so many”
going on right now. Then,
releasing my head from the containment of the pillow, I thought: what’s the day? I
searched my brain for a moment and realized that it was Thursday. So I had two
more days to convince my mother that I was not going to that cook-out thing. Two
more days to prepare for the worst. And
two more days to cope with the fact that I was indeed going to have to go to
that dumb thing Saturday, no matter how much I wanted to resist and ignore the
incontrovertible cold, hard fact. How bad could it be?, I pondered to myself. Then,
weirdly enough, I fell asleep on my still-odd-to-me bed, not being able to
answer my own question that was nagging at me consistently. © 2010 Joshua DonahueAuthor's Note
Featured Review
Reviews
|
StatsAuthorJoshua DonahueJefferson, SCAboutUPDATE! 06.27.13 Hello, WritersCafe! I realize that I have abandoned my account since the summer of 2013. Since then I have started college, and I have experienced... a lot. However, this does no.. more..Writing
Related WritingPeople who liked this story also liked..
|