Ch. 1 - Part 3

Sitting on the football field, I really couldn’t wait for it to be over. Wearing graduation gowns when it’s over ninety degrees outside, sitting directly in the sun for hours while they make speeches and call up everyone one by one… It was more relieving to throw my hat in the air and feel a breeze against my head than to actually receive my diploma.

            After the whole ceremony was over we had gone home to have parties with parents, family friends and little blue cupcakes that said “2015” on them. But I’m not going to bore you with that. Let’s just skip to later " the real graduation party.

This is really the first party I’m going to go to. I used to turn down invitations until I didn’t get them anymore. I guess tonight is different. I’ve literally spent my whole life doing homework, doing after school activities, or going to work at this little restaurant down the street. But here’s my chance to change that. I’m no longer in high school anymore and tonight is going to be all about that.

 

             The party is slow at first by they have all kinds of booze, all kinds of people and all kinds of music. I follow my friends over to get a drink and down a shot of Vodka. Then we all sit in a circle on the curved brick wall around fire place. I look across the yard. There’s a giant swimming pool. A hot tub. Whoever’s house this is must be loaded because it’s f*****g gorgeous. There’s even disco lights on the patio. And a live band. It’s amazing.

 

            “Do you think Sam will be here?” one of my friends, Chelsea, asks.

 

            “Later, people like him have other parties to go to first,” another one replies. The conversation continues like this. The party is really just starting and no one is really straying out of their friend group yet, keeping it safe, and having light hearted conversation. But as time passes people start to have more fun. Except my friends, they just stay there gossiping. Sam arrived but Chelsea is too nervous to talk to him, or maybe just hasn’t had enough beer yet.

            I try beer, it tastes icky and doesn’t do s**t, I decide I don’t really like it. Straight vodka is my drink, well that and cappuccinos. I tell my friends I’m getting another drink and go up to the bar. Yeah, this kid has an outside bar.

            While I’m walking to the bar I notice this gorgeous guy standing there. I’m not really attracted to him seeing as he looks too much like a pretty boy, but he seems so much more chill than anyone else at this party. Still, I’m too nervous to talk to him " he looks a lot older.

 

            “One shot of Vodka, please,” I say. Why’s he staring at me?

 

            “Make that two,” So he likes Vodka as well? “Hey, I’m Chase”

 

            “Mackenzie”

 

            “Nice name, you part of the graduating class?”

 

            “Yeah, you?”

 

            “Nah I graduated like, what is it now, five years ago.”

 

            “Oh okay, that explains why I don’t recognize you.” I take my shot. He takes his.

 

            “Want another?” He asks with the sexiest smirk I’ve ever seen.

 

            “Ha ha, sure,” I reply. This time he asks for it mixed with something that I’ve never even heard of. I guess I should question this but I don’t really care, it just sounds like a syrup. When the bartender hands them over Chase takes both of them, winks at me and tells me to follow him. Once again, what the hell.

            He takes me over to his friends, they’re all sitting in a circle, and they all seem a lot older.

 

            “This is Mackenzie,” he introduces me.

 

            “Jasmine.”

 

            “Dylan.”

 

            “Jayden.”

 

            “Hey, nice to meet you all,” I reply. “So where are you guys from?”

 

            “Everywhere,” Dylan mysteriously and slightly sarcastically says.

 

            “We’re travelers,” Jasmine expands, “we kind of associate with hippies but we’re not really big into labels, we just live in a van and go where ever we feel like.”

 

            “Sounds fun, how did you end up in Minnesota?” I ask.

 

            “We’re just passing by, and Jayden’s cousin is throwing the party so we thought we’d stop by,” Jasmine answers.

     

            And then he looked up at me and smiled. Not Chase. Jayden. And in that moment every guy seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. Jayden was the only one that mattered. He’d just said his name. That’s all I knew about him, but somehow I seemed to know so much more.

            He suddenly looked the other direction and I needed his sapphire blue eyes penetrating my skin again. Jasmine kept talking but I didn’t hear a word she said. My whole focus was on Jayden and his chocolate brown hair. He wasn’t as stereotypically gorgeous as Chase, but he was mysterious, different… Beautiful.

            He looked up at me again and this time I looked away. Chase bought me another drink and I don’t even know what it was again but I just started sipping at it trying to pay attention to the conversation. By this time in the party a lot of people had started dancing and doing crazy s**t that people tend to do at parties.

            “You guys want to dance?” Jasmine asked. I realized this was my time to impress. I grabbed Jasmine and Dylan’s hands and pulled them over to the patio with Chase and Jayden on our tail.

And we danced.

It was crazy fun. Dancing seemed to give me crazy confidence, so I grabbed Chase’s hand and danced around him. I grinded into him while I looked directly at Jayden. I danced with Jasmine. These people were great fun to party with, not like my friends. I knew I had to do something to impress them, really get in their crowd.

            I slipped off my flip flops but kept my tank top and shorts on, then jumped in the pool. I know it’s pretty stereotypical at parties with pools and drunk people and really not that impressive, but it got their attention. I guess being the first in the pool makes you fun… Soon the whole party who crammed into the pool having a blast. And for the first time I had made a statement. When I bumped into Jayden and he held his hands against my waist for less than half a second, I felt my heart flutter for the first time since middle school.  

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Reviews

[O V Montoya]

Harley, its an interesting read. This story has great potential to be a romance, a drama or a combination of both. I have my bachelors degree in psychology. Bipolar disorder is a serious issue for a teenager trying to understand the world coming into adulthood. You have a gem in you hands, but put great effort into writing this story.

Suggestions: I will be gentle in giving critique, but honest. I believe that as your peers, we want you to succeed and be an accomplished writer.

Here is a book I suggest you read which will help you with expression, particularly emotional dialogue for your main character: The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression, by Angela Ackerman. She describes how a simple choice of words can make the difference in the world when describing emotions. She give several examples and sets a guideline to increase your efficacy in expression.

Another book to dissect is:
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print, by Renni Browne. It will teach you to catch simple grammatical and structural errors in your writing, as you type them. A good example is your paragraph spacing. Give yourself an extra space. Another example is punctuation. Commas are pesky in the wrong place.

I hope these two books can help you out. Although there are a slew of books to help you with the mechanics of writing, when it all boils down, imagination is the key. I will complement you on your imagination, and continue to dream.

[missymeish]

I hope you continue writing this as I am intrigued as to where it is going. Very cool.

[Harley Sapphire]

Thank you! I have a little more that I will post soon. Just editing some stuff :P

[Justin]

that was really great :) u were able to talk about what many high school students do on the weekends :)