Heya, I’ve been looking around in old files and found this old work from high school. It’s not up to my current grammatical standards after some polishing in college, but I wanna know what you guys think, and whether it’s worth continuing. For the upcoming plot, read below; though, be warned, I’d rather a few say what they think of the story thus far without knowing what is upcoming.
Midnight Eclipse Plot
[details=Spoiler]
A boy, trapped in the drug dealing of his local community has lost all he owns. He fights forward by forcibly joining the business to get by. As his shipments grow further and further, he must trade his trusty skateboard for an old junk car, eventually to a sports car that catches his eye; a Midnight Black Mitsubishi Eclipse GT trim. He uses the car to race shipments across the US until a rush delivery from an anonymous clientele causes him to rush halfway across the US in only a few hours. Impressed with his top-notch driving, he is invited to a desert drag race. The winners purse is enough to get him out of the business he so hates, and allow him to make an honest living, but he must risk all he’s earned to pay up the entry fee. He musters forth all of his skills, but to win the race is nowhere near the task of driver or machine to survive the torturous desert.
That’s the general form, though I have plenty of plot twists to come.[/details]
Anyways, onward with the first two chapters I have. I haven’t revised it since I opened it, though I think it is coherent and pleasurably readable.
Any thoughts or comments are welcome.
And without further ado…
Also, I am sorry that the indentations don’t exist. I may fix this if it is a serious problem =/
One: Humble Beginnings
The day it all began wasn't much of a day out of the ordinary. Same old hot summer skies of Georgia. Same back seat in the '82 Oldsmobile Cutlass, mostly thanks to my mom's obsession that I be 13 before I sat in the passenger's side. It wasn't a memorable day in any respect, I still had forgotten the date.
But I would never forget the day.
I don't remember what exactly I was doing until it had happened, I remember always going shopping, banking, driving up the miles in that Oldsmobile. It wasn't that I disliked it, but thanks to a worrywart of a mother, I could never stay at home alone during the summer. Dad was never around, he'd always be out working the typical nine-to-five job, while I was trapped in the cobalt-blue prison of an Oldsmobile.
I never knew why we had such a typical car. Dad was smoothly driving his hot-off-the-line '01 BMW E81 in a fine jet black. At the thought of that, I suddenly withdrew my thought of a lack of an atypical car.
I had only gotten into cars as a sort of social thing to start with. All of the guys around me always seemed to talk about their father's trucks, and always seemed proficient in the mechanics behind them. Though the the local accent and dialect quite bothered me.
"'Ey, Adam! I bet you done heard about my daddy's new four-wheeler!" Was always a phrase that stuck in my mind.
"Yea', Josh! I 'eard 'bout it. I 'eard it was a good one, too! Yamaha 500 cc 4x4?" said another one of my peers.
It had been my first day in school. Or, rather, the elementary school in my newfound southern home. I had to sate my curiosity.
"What's a 4x4... or a 500 cc?"
The entire class was practically ringing in harmonic laughter.
"Where have you spent your life? Stuck in a deer stand?"
"A wha...?"
Another ring of laughter.
"Ne'er been on a four-wheeler?"
"No..."
"Ridden in a truck? Like a Ford, if 'dem things even exist from wherever you came from?"
"We have a Ford!"
"What model?
"What...?"
"What kind is it?" the kid had cut in with a tone that would be reserved for an idiot. Of course, the new kid is the one to be the idiot. I still stared blankly.
"Like a F-one-fitee?"
"Oh... I think it's call a Greh-nay-duh?"
"Gre-nah-duh?" the kid cut back.
"Yeah, that!"
"Boy... you're one sorry city slicker."
And with that the kid had turned on me talking to his friend about all things motorized. I wanted desperately to learn so I could fit it... after that incident, I think I had been isolated from everyone but the teacher. She knew I had potential. I at least paid attention, and chewed with my mouth closed at lunch. It seemed that only those two factors were necessary to consider me civilized.
I didn't really belong here, but my father had gotten a job at a local paper mill, big business for such a small town. The pay seemed to suit him, and being in management, he could work at any big business he had wanted. He just had to have chosen here of all places.
Soon after school, I asked him if he could teach me about cars.
"Dad, all the kids at school know all about cars. The teacher doesn't teach about them, and I wanna fit in... Please, can you teach me?"
"Son, unfortunately, I can't. I probably know less about them than you do, to be honest." My heart had been sunken at this point.
"However," he continued, "The Oldsmobile needs an oil change, and I've met just the mechanic who knows his trade, and he knows it well." My heart had risen again. It had risen so much so, that it was quite at the point of excitement.
"Can we go see him? Please, please, please, please, pleeeeaaase?!" I had responded in the common childish fashion.
"You're in luck, son. I was about to go leave to see him."
"Yessss!" I bellowed at the top of my lungs, hold the s in the pattern you might hear if you were being shushed in a library.
I could barely stand the ride there... excitement surged through me. Had I not been fastened by a seat belt, I think I might have broken a window or two.
Josh Galvin was the mechanic's name. I would never forget that name. I remember back when we still had the Oldsmobile and an '81 Ford Granada. The guy would always let his customers watch his work to make sure they were pleased with his work. And I always did. He was practically like a free built-in babysitter as I could spend the whole day with him and the car.
Whether it was as normal as an oil change or as complex as replacing a clutch, I'd always watch the guy, ask questions, and he'd always get me an answer. I'd even help him with the more mundane of tasks, like holding the light. Still, it was free help for him, and free knowledge for me. I thought it was a fair trade.
Once the Granada had been traded in for a nice Beemer, well, the guy turned on us a bit. I had learned most maintenance needed, changing the oil, replacing filters, refilling and checking fluids, all of it. He was pretty patriotic and when he saw an import roll into his garage, he refused kindly by claiming that he only had tools in standard measurements, not metric. I knew it was crap, since Ford used German parts in its cars. But I understood. Apparently, a local dealership claimed that domestic cars "drove" the American economy. I hated puns. And the taking advantage of people's ignorance of import taxes.
The guy still liked me, though. And whenever that Oldsmobile rolled back, he knew he was in good company. I continued following him through all of my elementary years, even through middle school. The teacher was quite right when she saw potential in me, I was learning something quite useful. Despite my training as an apprentice mechanic, it wouldn't be able to fix the car troubles of a day I had yet to forget.
It was a summer day, a hot one, too. I had been out of school, and with my father tied at his job, Mom would take the liberty of watching me by making me run errands with her.
I was always a good shopper, my quick reading skills always let me find a coupon if we had one as I was walking alongside my mother down the countless aisles of the local grocery stores.
The bank was always a good stop for me, too. I'd get paid a little bit of money for my chores around the house, but nothing major. My mom decided to let me start my own bank account, and I started depositing the five and one dollar bills into my own little savings account. I never had much use for them. Almost everything I had needed or wanted was already provided.
The post office was a good place to entertain myself in places most people would find extraordinarily boring. Prompted by my mom for things to do while she was busy with the stamp machine or another task, I joined a stamp collector's club. They'd mail me newsletters and magazines of the latest stamps in stock. I had my own little notebook full of little pieces of art.
It seemed that we had always been doing errands. It was as if the tasks were never finished, and there was always something to pick up, something to do, somewhere to go. I had grown used to it, along with my back seat Mom had kept me stuck in. However, I was thankful that fateful day.
It was a day not any different from the normal. Only until I had looked up at the intersection had I already noticed a problem.
We had just been caught by the yellow light, and Mom would never speed up to beat the light. I simply watched as the cars zoomed by from the perpendicular directions of traffic. The light remained at its halting red. The traffic on our left and right was subsiding, yet the light held us at our position.
Suddenly, I saw a car in the distance, a junker, but still a car. It was headed in the left lane towards us. It was traveling at a breakneck pace, especially when nearing a a red light. It quickly closed the gap between it and the stationary light.
Despite the clear light, perhaps the lack of traffic headed oppositely that was stopped in front of the mad-dashing car. In either case, even if a 12-year-old knew one of the most basic rules of the road, surely anyone who could even own a car, no matter how dinged and rusty it was would, right?
But I had been mistaken, a lack of traffic on our right and left until the one critical point had prevented the junker from hell from stopping. It was our Coupe against what appeared to be a force of nature. We were alone.
That is, until the worst possible second. One lone small sedan raced from our left side. The junker was hell-bent on crossing a red light, but the speeding sedan slowed the junker down. I began to see a much worse history of it... Dents, paint scrapes, rust, and other various defects covered the faded grey exterior of the car.
I had no time to examine it as it came into focus. The sedan had also caused the junker to pull towards the sedan. Now it was headed straight at us. The junker was coming closer to us. My heart was racing, yet my eyes closed at I heard the spine-tignling crunch that only metal-on-metal could provide.
The force of impact surged us backwards into the low-riding subcompact behind us. It didn't absorb any impact, it actually was a useful ramp for the junker from hell.
I felt gravity's distortion. I was in air, eyes shut with the force equal to what the junker had hit us with. I heard my mother's shrieks only momentarily, until a second crunch had silenced her.
I was frozen... but unharmed, I thought. Nearly an eternity after the sounds had ceased, I opened my eyes. I wished I hadn't.
In front of me was a collapsed front portion of a chassis, the car had nose-dived into the pavement at an angle. However, the front top portion had practically caved in, and judging from gravity, I was hanging upside-down, only being held in place by a seat belt.
In front of me, an arm was draped from the wreckage. It was stained at points in a common crimson, blood. I shook the arm.
"Mommy? Are you okay?" I instinctively asked as I shook the limp arm vigorously. However, despite my attempts, it fell back limp.
"Mommy! Wake up!" I commanded the limp arm, adding more fervor to my sakes. Yet it would not move on it's own will.
"M-m-m-mommy?" I asked in horrified childish fashion. When she wouldn't wake up, I looked at my blood-stained hand.
Shocked, I did the only thing a kid could do. Cry. I whimpered silently as tears clouded my vision, rolling out of my eyes upwards, and dripping off of my forehead.
"You gotta be okay, Mommy! Who will take care of me and Daddy...?" The childish fashion was practically textbook. At the time, I was going to pieces.
The door finally was wrenched from it original position, as a fresh air filled the car that didn't seem quiet as still or as stale as the car's air. As the rescue crew cut me free from my seat belt with ease, it had been a harder task to free my shocked grip from my mother's limp hand. Eventually, though, the men's physical strength had surpassed my will to hang on. I remembered being carried out, I remember being placed in a stretcher, but for a day so seemingly unforgettable, I still struggled to remember the rest.
That had been me six years ago. Now that I had lost any innocence provided by childhood, I was in the real world now. I was sadly jobless and in my senior high school year. Of course college was on its way down, but I tended not to think of things, much like a typical teenager.
I had learned a lot. Like for one thing, my mother had been taken by a cocaine-fueled driver who had been on a binge for three days straight. He even tried to somehow pull a not guilty off despite the testimony of myself and the thankful subcompact driver with a new car thanks to insurance. He had taken a life. Even the judge saw his lack of remorse and gave the guy a life sentence.
I had learned to drive, too. A sitck, even. My dad's faithful E81 had become mine when he switched his faithful european provider to Mercedes. And a fine '07 CLS 550 is always a good bargaining chip to get anyone to switch.
I couldn't believe that anybody would have trouble with the simple clutching and shifting that accompanied a stick shift. Regardless, I was driving a BMW to my school, and feeling pretty high on life about it.
Though the scars of my mother's untimely death haunted both my father and I, we each possessed different coping techniques. I dealt with it as best as I could. Dad took up marijuana to take away the pain of his lost wife. I knew it hit us both equally hard, but whatever friends I could say I had were now zombie slaves to the stuff. Though he had offered the potent plant to me, I kindly had refused.
Though I had a BMW and definitely enough money in the family to pay for a mechanic, I still did my own maintenance. Our old mechanic, Josh, was the only guy I'd ever trust with the precious import. However, it had been an import, and he still frowned on my father's choice. I had just been the lucky son to inherit it. And despite enough to pay for gas to send me to California and back, I really liked to travel by skates. It was a workout, and after learning a couple tricks on the half-pipe at the local skate park, I commanded attention from many even with some moves as simple as fakies or ollies. The park usually held its Friday local talent concerts while I had still been skating after school. When the early crowd or roadies had come in, I was usually commanding attention either by the most basic of tricks or by showing off too much and hurting myself. Either way, it still got me some recognition.
School was a breeze for me. I seldom studied, yet could make straight As in any given class. Whether as logical as math or as creative as visual arts, I was still making As. Most people thought I was some sort of genius, but I shrugged most of their thoughts. I really only had good memory, I thought.
Despite people's preoccupation with my intellect and cunning, I wasn't very well-known on a deeper level. And I preferred it that way.
With time, people had changed, but not their groupings. I still remember that time long ago when I was criticized on common knowledge of anything automotive. But I knew now. I wasn't much of a grease monkey, nor did I ever really fit in with the group of southerners priding themselves in ATVs, trucks, hunting, drinking, and improper syntax. Especially the improper double, triple, and the rare quadruple negatives. My favorite example was "I ain't not never done nothing."
Though a classmate for several years now, I didn't fit in with most of my graduating class. Most thought they were some sort of friend, but I knew they were all just plain acquaintances, with maybe a fair-weather friend or two mixed in. However, there was never much fair weather in my mind. It's not like much of it mattered, though. I was set to graduate from that accursed high school, and I wouldn't talk to most of, if any, of my graduating class after we would be finished soon.
I considered college, but one drug bust on my house screwed me out of any financial aid. We could afford some of it, but I knew how it would be. Dad would be stoning out of his mind because I wouldn't be around to physically remind him that I have more needs than just pot. And at that point, I'd be left to take out loans for college.
The military wasn't much of an option for me, either. I knew that it wouldn't be worth whatever money it would pay. Sure, I had the discipline tenfold of some of my classmates who had already enlisted. I remember a constant class cutter who refused to wake up any time before the sun. I at least had the decency to arise by 6 in the morning. But I wasn't the one who set him up for that kind of hell. He did it on his own accord. I don't wish him well or ill. It would be by the strength of his own will that he would succeed or fail.
So, here I was, genius, stuck at a high school education thanks to drugs. People used to wonder why I refused any medication while suffering from fevers, allergies, or any of the normal riff-raff of life. Sure, they were medicine, but still drugs. People would rather take a pill than take a nap, which was a sombering thought.
I didn't know where I was going after high school. I was going to have to just get a job, live paycheck to paycheck, and not go anywhere without any sort of higher education. However, I didn't expect anything to get worse. But it did.