#5. And I Could Tell You...

I want to think alot of us have tried to write a novel of some sort during some point in our lives. Honestly, I have something like a novel that's about two years in the making. It's embarassing, really. It's about two-fifths complete. People say the first novel you write will always be the most personal. I think that's right in some aspects, in the sense that the emotions and some of the more major events have a basis in reality. So the basis of my work would have to be pieced together from things that have happened to my friends, my family, or me. But it can also be highly fictitious in other aspects of that realm.
I used time warping as I was trying to piece out my novel. I wasn't actually aware that time warping came from Vonnegut. I mean, I don't have flying spaceships, an abducted protagonist, or Tralfamadorians in it, but it's cuts and cuts of flashbacks told in real time. It was difficult trying to limit what I told, which character types I threw in, and where I would set the novel. I ended up creating a fictitious city close to Toronto as my setting, as I have lived in Southeastern Ontario for a very long time. I also tried adding in places I have visited or people I knew well have visited; cities such as Orlando and small towns such as Spring Lake. I didn't want to write about places I didn't know.
What I want people to learn from my novel is that there is no such thing as fairy tales in real life. There are happily-ever-after's, I won't argue with that. But I think that when I was a child, someone had forgot to tell me that storybook weddings weren't real. I think I would have come to peace with things (that have happened) years earlier had someone just told me so. I hate how exaggerated some television shows are, especially 90210 and Private Practice. I think a novel should have its awkward moments, scenes that don't make sense, and questions left unaswered. Because as trite as it sounds, that's what life is. So that's what my novel will be like. I want to say alot of awful things have happened to me, which I don't know if it's true in relation to other people's lives. I also hate talking about personal matters in person, which is probably why I text a whole lot more than I talk.
My novel would be realistic fiction. The general plot centers in on a girl throughout the first twenty years of her life, complete with flashbacks, a prologue, and (there will be) an epilogue.
That's all.

#4. Born on the 17th [Time-Warping]

Sabrina Song walked along the gritty sidewalk of her New Jersey hometown, Spring Lake. As if on cue, the grey clouds had cracked open, and summer rain was pouring down from the broken sky. It was night time, yet somehow the clouds lit up heaven's field. The bitter wind bit fiercely at her bare legs. She let her mind replay that day’s events as to distract herself from the cold. Earlier on the beach sands, she had watched the headlights land on her before the Audi had swerved away, taking Pierre and Sebastian Langlois along with it. It wasn't her fault. They knew that, but they refused to do admit it.  Sabrina didn't want to think about Alexis Riverton's death. Yet Sebastian's words permeated her mind...

"There’s nothing we can do to bring back Alexis. Just face it. It might be the wrong thing to do, but I just want to forget about her, about this, and about you."

They were no longer the eight-year-olds who ran around playing ding-dong-ditch on neighborhood doors. Although she was thirteen already, she felt absolutely hopeless. Her feet kept moving along in a perfunctory manner, but her head was somewhere else. She couldn’t walk backwards in time, just like how she couldn’t save Alexis. Her suicide had been unforeseen, but the guilt had engulfed Sabrina whole. Though she couldn't have handled Alexis entirely on her own, she regretted never understanding the depth of the situation. Sebastian and Pierre were the ones who had drifted away from them. It wasn't just her fault.

A half hour later, Sabrina found herself fumbling through the front door of her middle-class house. No one was home, and no lights were on. She liked it that way. She walked slowly up the wooden stairs and continued walking down the hallway until she reached a wall. Turning right, she blundered into the bathroom and that was when her vision began to blur. She weakly shut the door and sat there in the darkness. Reality dawned upon her then. Alexis Riverton, her best friend of eight years, really was gone forever. There she lay, collapsed on the bathroom floor, balling her eyes out.

The bitter tears fell fast and quick down her alabaster cheeks. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in her bedroom. Sabrina looked around at the four walls that contained her, trying to piece together the answers in her mind. She didn’t know how she ended up in this situation.  Liam Everson, her ex-beau, was not the kind of boy she had thought she would end up with. Senior year was supposed to have been…different.

She heard a knock on her bedroom door. Knowing very well who it was, she took her both her flip flops and chucked them at the door. She then proceeded with screaming a slur of expletives.

“Sab, I’m so sorry,” was the hesitant reply.

 Sabrina ignored Liam. She lied there calmly on the carpeted floor. At almost eye level with the floor , she could scan the entire area underneath her bed. Her vision caught hold of a memory box that she had stashed there months ago. It was the wooden gift that her best guy friend Cody Carrasco had sawed and pieced together for her  as a sixteenth birthday gift. She reached for it and opened the lid. The first thing she saw was a tiny manila envelope with her name scrawled upon it in a familiar bubbly handwriting. She emptied it of its contents. Folded notes poured out. Sabrina picked one up and opened it. She touched the letters as she read the words, and wisps of seasons-old memories crashed into her mind like tidal waves.

What was Cody askin u bout earlier today?

She was suddenly in Law class again, watching a CSI episode that Mr. Garlick had thrown into the tape player.  Actually, Sabrina had had her head down on the desk until she felt something light bounce off her head. Her best friend Brooklyn Costa had chucked a note at her. Sabrina had discreetly plucked the note off the floor and unwrinkled the scrap of lined paper.

Not wanting to answer immediately (or at all), Sabrina feigned interest in the television screen. It was a scene where a terrorized girl had run up the stairs, disturbed because there was an intruder in her house. She raced into her closet and shut it closed. She was breathing heavily, and suspenseful music played in the background. Suddenly, two hands from the darkness behind her reached out and gagged her mouth. It turned out the man had been in her closet the whole time.

At this scene, Sabrina literally jumped in her seat. The rest of the class noticed and then laughed. Mr. Garlick, who stood at his podium desk marking assignments, had a half-smile on his face. Brooklyn chuckled and raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. Sabrina shoved the note in her pocket and pushed down an uneasy sensation. She stared at Brooklyn and couldn’t help but wonder.

Sabrina knew how it all ends, and how it all began. And she hated that.