Half of chapter 1

Cassie is a blue haired girl living on her own in Salt Lake City.

“Please pick up, please pick up…”

Ringtone and then the moment I anticipated �" the click that meant my savior was on the other line.

“Cassie, what’s wrong?”

I loved how Angela always assumed something was wrong. This time, as with 50% of all times, something really was wrong.

“Baby? What’s wrong?” She purred into the receiver, spending extra long on annunciating “Baby”.

“I’m at the police station�"again.” I sighed. Officer Jenkins glanced at me and shot me a coy smile from the water cooler.

It happened like this: I was sitting alone in my apartment and I fancied myself a smoke. It’s Wednesday and Mrs. Wilkins was probably on call at the hospital. She lived upstairs and always complained about anything that smelled even slightly out of the ordinary. I looked out of the peephole in my door to see if any of my neighbors had their doors open. The only person I saw was Angel, the sexy Latino guy who wore a blue jumpsuit and vaccummed the hallway. I opened the door and looked both ways, before calling out his name. He whipped his head around and pointed at himself to make sure it was him whom I was calling. I nodded and he came forward. “You smoke?” I said and made the motion with my lips and fingers. He smiled and slyly nooded. I motioned my head to the inside of the apartment and he came over, leaving his vaccum plugged in, propped on the wall by the janitor’s closet. I invited him in and he looked around at the blue walls with wall art of Albert Eingstein and deformed pigs with limbs of other animals. My gold fish bowl and my vinyl record collection. My record play and open windows and shower curtains flapping as the breeze flowed. They were children’s room blue with rubber ducky pictures on them.

“Cute.” He said, laughing a little.

“YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?” I half-yelled at him.

He scrunched his eyebrows and smiled in amusement.

“Yeah, I’m American. “ he chuckled. 

My sublime record was blaring “Garden Grove”, scratches and all. I lit up the bowl and took the first hit. Angel watched me with his sexual dark brown eyes.

“You like the color blue a lot?” he said, attempting to make conversation.

“Yeah captain obvious.”

My hair is the same color blue as my walls. Also, I don’t like talking while I am stoned. I passed Chulo, the bong, to him and he took a hit.

The record spun and the needle scratched it. I sat back in my garage sale recliner and watched the poster on the wall opposite of me. It had a pig with crazy eyes with lobster claws for hands. The red claws seemed to be just big, misshaped balloons. Angel passed Chulo back to me and I took another hit. They started moving. I took another hit. Somewhere along the line we broke out my secret stash of tequila…

Well anyways the point of this story came down to deciding to take a walk down to the park. I was starting to feel restless and Angel said he needed some fresh air, so it seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone. I put on my plaid jacket and my mittens and let Angel borrow one of my sweatshirts and we set out to Liberty Park, where all the druggies negotiate a hard bargain at the strangest hours of the night.

It was nice, because the alcohol was starting to wane for me a little bit, and I just had my little high going on, which made the night darker, but less threatening. I found myself looking at the 50 foot tall pine trees and wondering when it was going to snow. Angel told me about his life. He lived in Rose Park, AKA the ghetto, with his parents and his four sisters. He had one older brother who was in a gang and he didn’t really hear from him anymore.

“You should come eat dinner with us sometime, my mom makes really good salsa. Secret family recipie.”

“That sounds delicious…” I said, mouth watering for Mexican food. The munchies were starting to settle in.

“Yeah, and I can teach you how to make some bomb tortillas too.” He said.

“Sounds like a plan…” I groaned, feeling my stomach rumble.

“Maybe next weekend or something.”

Suddenly, my suspicion mode started to kick in. I glanced at him, and he was doing the same thing that I was, staring at the cold, cloudy sky.

“Are you asking me out?” I said.

He whipped his head to look at me with a puzzled look on his face, “Oh God no!”

“What? Am I ugly or something?”

“Oh no it’s not that at all…” he said, “It’s just that...” He started to look a little panicked.
“What?” I said, starting to get impatient.

“Can you kind of keep something on the down low for me?” he said.

“Yeah of course!” I said, suddenly becoming a bleeding heart best friend.

“Well…”

“Go on with it man!”

“Um, I don’t know how to�"“

“JUST SAY IT!”

“Ok Ok!” he said, frantically, “I’m not into girls. There. I said it.”

He looked nervous and flustered, as if I would call upon god to smite him or something.

“You think I care?” I asked, laughing, “I’m dating a girl right now.”

“No way. Are you a lesbian?” he asked.

“No. I’ve dated girls but yeah, I don’t know.” I replied casually.

“Dang, you would’ve been my first lesbian friend.” He laughed.

“Well you can meet Angela if you want. She’s pretty much as lesbian as it gets.”

“That’s your girlfriend?” he asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that.” I said. It was true. In fact, it was even more so than that, since Angela just broke up with me, leaving me to pay the November rent. I didn’t feel like revealing this much just now, even though Angel had just revealed his secret to me. Angela was still in my life though. She was the only person whose phone number I had memorized. She wasn’t the most stable figure, often running out on me or not telling me where she was going, but she answered her cell phone when you called. This quality is what made her my savior.

We came upon the little swing set and playground in the middle of the park, now desolate. I wasn’t even sure what time of the morning it was. I automatically went for the swings, resting my butt on the cold seat and grabbing the metallic chains with my mitted hands. The swings were always my favorite thing when I was a kid. I felt like I was flying. I think it was because I was high.

Angel and I sat on two swings in rest- I ground the nubs and he rolled the joint. I put the grinder in my pocket and he talked about his life,

“I came out last year, junior year of high school,” he started.

“Wait,” I said, “You’re still in high school?”

“Yeah, I go to West.

“Ah right on. I wouldn’t have guessed you went to West.”

Actually, that was my first guess.

There was a pause between our passing the joint and then Angel asked, “So how old are you?”

I took a hit and paused for a moment, “I’m 19” I said.

“Wow, I would’ve guessed that you were older.”

I gave him a mock offended look and gasped.

“No I didn’t mean like you look old,” he said quickly, “I just meant that I didn’t think that someone so young would have the money to live on their own. I mean, my oldest brother is 22 and he’s STILL living with us.”

“That’s because your parents sound generous,” I said, “My parents said, either you go to the U or go on your own. And I don’t know, I missed the deadline and stuff. I couldn’t get the scholarships that I wanted. So they said, well, you’re on your own now. So here I am on my own.”

Angel just looked at me in awe.

“It’s not a big deal really I run into them every once in awhile. Now that they don’t have to worry about the kids anymore they kind of just do the traveling thing. I think they said they were going to move to Florida…”

“Don’t they help you at all?” Angel asked, big brown eyes wide with sympathy, the sympathy I didn’t really want.

“Yeah if I need it.” I lied. I work for all my money.

“Weird. Why would they move to Florida if you’re still here?”

“Because they can. And it’s warmer.” I shrugged. I didn’t mind what my parents did so much anymore, if they wanted to travel, fine. If they wanted to move to India, become despots, form a coup and rule with an iron fist, what did I care?

I passed the roach back over to him, and then stared at my feet dragging big fat lines in the snow where I was slowly swinging. As Angel started to inhale, I heard the faint rustle of a car turning on it’s engine and the tires crunching. We turned our heads towards the headlights, and I squinted to see it better. Right as I did the blue and red lights flashed.

Author's Note

Second half of this chapter is still in progress.

Reviews

[Amanda Dawn Sanderson-G..]

Well your other review pretty much sums up my critiques, so I am just going to note that 'numbers17' has very good advice and if you are willing to take it then it could strengthen your story a lot. I will say though that I am still interested even though your first chapter wasn't as intriguing as others I've read (or slightly bland as he put it)... but I, too, think you have great potential and you are a very good writer and I look forward to reading more. Sorry if this review sounded critical... but I didn't know what to say...

I will say that I really liked Cassie's character and look forwarded to getting to know her more. :)

[numbers17]

I'm reviewing this as I go. Note that when I review stories I always try my best to find some flaws. I don't criticize your story or you as a writer, but rather I do it so you can have a perfect story.

Your intro is solid. It's always great to begin a story with dialogue or action. I found "Jenkins" to be a rather bland last name for an officer mostly because I've seen that name rehashed over and over in other stories. You should probably change it. Reword the line, "It happened like this," to something a little more readable. Sexual is kind of an odd word to use when describing someone's eyes. You might just want to keep it at sexy so it's simple.

The line, "Angel passed Chulo back to me and I took another hit." could just be reworded to, "the bong" rather than Chulo. It simplifies things unless you want to emphasize that the narrator has an attachment to the name. "Anyways" is not a word, by the way, its a pluralization of the world "Anyway", but if you are sly the narrator doesn't know this.

The quality of the story starts to pick up the more I read. There are various grammatical errors (mostly punctuation) that I'm nitpicking about. To be honest the story is a little bland. I know this is half of the first chapter, but things are a little dull. Things flow okay in terms of prose, but the content itself just feels like someone is telling me about their last weekend. While I may enjoy that from my friends I don't really enjoy reading it.

I'm going to suggest something drastic that you may not like. Instead of telling it from the first person narrator flashback view just tell it through a conversation with Cassie and Angela with various detailing inserts that are kind of flashing back to what happened. Not only will it be more interesting, but the reader will be interested trying to figure out how Cassie got arrested.

Unless you are trying to go for a different angle. I'm just going off of the first chapter.

Still, in the scheme of it all you are a decent writer. Most of the time things flow together well and there aren't very many complaints from my end in terms of your style. Just make sure the story is actually going somewhere first.