Endless Perspective - Open Role Playing :: The first chapter to the one story of mine I like

MeowBeth · The first chapter to the one story of mine I like (Sat May 13, 2006 6:12 pm)

Okies, this is the first and, so far, only chapter of my story Wishing on a Star. I'm kind of lazy and so haven't written up any more, but I've been told it's pretty good. (shrugs) Opinions are welcome.

A strong breeze blew up suddenly, moving the tree’s limbs around and momentarily obscuring Melody’s view of the stars. They were bright tonight, and large.

Melody grumbled a bit, clutched at her large branch to maintain her balance, and pulled her overlarge sweatshirt tighter around her before beginning to recount the stars. A favorite pastime of hers. Melody lost count again when she heard her father bellow her name.
Wincing slightly, she considered listening to him, go back over to her small, run-down house, get her beating for being outside without permission, and go inside to her bed. But, instead, she chose to ignore him and stay outside. It may be chilly out, Autumn just beginning, but it couldn’t get that cold.

Melody had never seen the stars this clearly before. True, she lived on the outskirts of a small town, and so had an even better view than many did in the nearby big cities. But the smog from the surrounding cities often obscured the stars even out here.

Melody sighed, knowing that in a few years she would also live in one of the cities, and not be able to see the stars. She did want to get away from her father and this hateful town, but she also enjoyed her few moments of peace out here, which would soon be taken away, far out of her reach, until she became old enough to retire and pursue her hobbies any time.

Many of the other sixteen-year-olds in Clearfield could hardly wait, they could make their mark in the world, make their parents proud! But, deep in her heart, Melody knew that she could never hope to impress her father. He hated her.

Melody’s eyes didn’t even burn, she was used to it. How many times had he or others told her this, since she was old enough to understand. Melody had cried then, not understanding why they all hated her. But now she knew. Gloria Burnheart had made sure of that.

Melody shook her head, and turned back to the stars, her only companions and friends. Probably because they had no choice in the matter, and couldn’t tell her they hated her if they wanted to. Somehow she could imagine it, all the stars whispering to each other about the ugly, stupid, little stick creature hiding in a tree. They probably knew everything about her, and blamed her for the misfortunes like everyone else did. This time the tears did come to Melody’s eyes. And she angrily brushed them away, hating herself for being so stupid as to cry over something that retarded. No wonder she had no friends.

Melody stubbornly turned her eyes back to the stars, not caring now if they hated her. It didn’t matter, they had no choice. Like her. Slowly, Melody’s eyes drifted closed, and she slept.

It was peaceful the next morning, birds flew around, warming up after their rest. The rising sun not quite hitting Melody yet. Surprisingly, she was still in her tree. After sleeping in this tree since first grade, Melody had perfected the art of staying in one position.

A tall, bulky man walked over into the small forest. His brown eyes trained on his daughter, peacefully sleeping away, oblivious to the approaching danger. He smirked slightly, and, reaching up, yanked his daughter’s overhanging leg.

Melody gasped and immediately reached for a handhold. But she slipped and fell, cracking her head on the hard ground. She grabbed at her head and twitched slightly, wanting to pound her father’s head into the tree, again and again, until she either knocked the tree down or knocked his head off. Sourly, she decided that the tree would probably fall first. That decided, she scrambled up before Jason decided to help her up. Which usually entailed a kick in the stomach.

“How many times have I told you not to sleep in that tree? You might hurt yourself.” Jason said with a small twitch of his thin lips as she glared at him. “Now, now. You can’t be mad at me for telling the truth. Go get ready for school.”
That said, Jason turned and headed for his job.

Melody almost considered kicking him and running to school the way she was, dealing with the consequences later. But decided that it would be best to change out of these clothes, she had been wearing them for several weeks now.

So she settled for glaring at his steadily retreating back and ran for the house.

Melody paused at the door to the old, ramshackle building and took a deep breath. Then, covering her face with her sweatshirt’s sleeve, she dashed through the living room to her small room. There, she quickly changed into another overlarge sweatshirt and large, baggy jeans and then headed out her door.

Melody drew in a deep breath, inhaling the stale, musty air that stank of her father and whiskey. Wrinkling her nose, Melody walked over to the bathroom and splashed her dirt-covered face with clean-ish water. Then she blindly grabbed a towel and wiped her face off. It didn’t help all that much as the towel was absolutely filthy. Melody made a slight face at the rubbed-around dirt on her face before she snatched a comb from the spider infested cup-board and whisked it through her knotted black hair.
As she did this, Melody ran around the house, searching for her black, thick-rimmed glasses that her father had hidden from her as she took a shower yesterday.

She set the brush down on the buffet table that already held a dozen or so empty beer bottles, and dropped to her hands and knees to search under the lumpy couch and the cluttered buffet table. Scrunching her face up, Melody reached her hand under the couch and promptly drew it right back out as her fingers met broken glass. Cursing her luck and the irony gods, Melody sucked on her cut finger. Then grinned and reached over to the TV and pulled her glasses out from behind the junky television set.

Melody grinned triumphantly and plunked the abused spectacles on her nose and behind her ears. Satisfied that she had found most of her missing things, she ran over to her room, grabbed her backpack, and jogged off to the first day of school.

On her way Melody passed two boys her age. She nervously grinned at them, hoping that they might be friendly so far away from school and the many others who hated her. But they sped up instead, passing her with all haste. Her grinned faded and instead Melody glared at them. Steven and Michael had been her friends when she had first moved here, just before pre-school. But now, in tenth grade, they ignored her. She shrugged, they just wanted friends, like her. Unfortunately, that meant that they couldn’t be friends with her. In third grade they had stood by her, and had gone home with bloody noses and black eyes for their efforts. They didn’t need that now, they had just managed to convince their parents and the many groups at school who despised her that they had absolutely nothing to do with her now. They smiled or nodded at her out of school, that and their new friends were forfeit.

After that Melody ignored all the other kids walking to the high school. As she walked into the building and headed for her locker, she heard the whispers of the many students and their heated glares. She didn’t care, at least no one had knocked her over yet.

A couple of hours later, lunch time, Melody made her way through the crowded hallways to the library. There, Melody smiled at the stuffy librarian, who ignored her, and then made her way over to a corner of the small library to read.

This was a habit of hers, one that annoyed the librarian. In the library, Melody may not get lunch, but she was safe from her harassers. Mrs. Marow did not appreciate having the scandal of the town in her sacred library, but she would not stand-by and let Melody get beaten up in plain sight of her.

Something that everyone knew for a fact. So Melody could sit and read in peace. Secretly, she was rather fond of Mrs. Marow. She may never talk or smile to Melody, but every once in a while she would bring her a snippet of food, or point out a book that she thought Melody might like.

So Melody considered Mrs. Marow her one human friend in this town. No matter how much Mrs. Marow might deny it.

Still smiling, Melody enjoyed her only peaceful time of the school day.
Too soon, the bell rang, and Melody had to put the book back and go back to her stressful day.

She sighed and walked over to the stiff librarian and smiled again, before walking out the door and into the bustling hallways and to her last two classes.

Melody sat in her last class of the day, History. Her history teacher, Mr. Denmarsh, was droning on abut something, Melody wasn’t exactly sure what though. She hated history.
She yawned and stared out the window to her left, right through the dowdy girl sitting there.

This unnerved the girl somewhat, she was new to the town and so didn’t know much about Melody, except that most of the people here hated her for some reason. This confused her, where she came from, the whole town would never hate somebody unless they had done something terribly wrong, and Melody didn’t seem the type to do anything that bad.

“Miss Claris?” Mr. Denmarsh intoned, “Your eyes are to be on the speaker at all times. And Miss Argali is not speaking.”

Melanie Claris flushed a pretty shade of pink at the rebuke and the titters and whispers of the class as she looked back up at Mr. Denmarsh and whispered shyly, “Sorry...”

He continued to frown at her for several more minutes, before he returned to his droning.

Melody felt a little sorry for the new girl, she had just earned herself some trouble. All because she had been staring at Melody. She just shrugged, the new girl would learn eventually. Melody turned back to
Mr. Denmarsh, to suffer through however much more droning he would be able to do before school finally ended and she could escape.

After class, Melody ran for her locker, hoping to get there and get out of the school before everyone else managed to get out. That way, she might be able to say that she had gone through one whole day of school without acquiring a new bruise. But this hope was short-lived, as she turned to corner to see a group of fellow students gathered in front of her locker.
Melody sighed, knowing that they did this purposefully. She clutched her books closer to her chest and walked forward with her face blank.

The students all ignored her as she neared them, and they ignored her first few, quiet inquiries of them to please move. So Melody straightened up, and shoved them out of her way.

This surprised them, as she normally stood there and quietly asked them to move for quite a while before she just walked off. The ringleader of the group stomped up to Melody, Gloria Burnheart.

“What do you think you are doing?” Gloria demanded, a smirk on her perfect, full lips.

Melody glowered at the blonde and bit down on her own small, thin lips. Gloria was one of the prettiest girls in the town, and she made sure to announce it to everyone. She had a nice, full-busted figure, shining, middle-of-her-back length, platinum hair, and bright blue eyes.
Melody grimaced, knowing that she was considered the ugliest girl in town, possibly ever born. She was too skinny, had almost no chest, knotted black hair that, when properly brushed, hung flat and straight, and green eyes.

“Gloria asked you a question.” This came from a Hispanic freshman. He was, more than likely, another one of Gloria’s worshippers. It appeared that he was a lowly one at that, as Gloria glared at him and he quickly rushed back behind the other members of the group, utterly embarrassed.
Melody wondered briefly is she should use this distraction to push them all aside and get to her locker, but by the time she actually thought about it, Gloria’s full attention was focused on her once again.

“Answer me.” Gloria prompted, a smile on her face. Amazingly, this made her look uglier than before, as this smile meant that Melody was in for a thrashing.

Unknown to any of them, Mr. Breaky, the principal of their high school, was heading their way.
“What’s happening here?” He questioned suddenly, causing many of the gathered students to jump.

“She came out of nowhere and started shoving us around!” Gloria exclaimed, putting on her best outraged face and pointed directly at Melody.

“ Is this true?” Mr. Breaky asked Melody.
Melody glanced over at Gloria, and knew that she was in for it anyway, so she might as well try to get out of it.

“No, sir. They were standing in front of my locker talking. I asked them, politely, several times to please let me through. But they didn’t. They’ve been doing this for years. And it’s been getting on my nerves. So I pushed them out of the way a bit.” Melody answered quietly, hoping that she might get this one break. But she didn’t.

“So you did start pushing them around. That can be considered harassment, Melody.” Mr. Breaky said, conveniently ignoring the fact that what the other students had been doing was actually harassment. “Why don’t you apologize to Gloria and the others. And we’ll forget you ever did anything.”

Melody opened her mouth to protest, but knew that it was no use. So, instead, she apologized, stowed her books in her locker, grabbed her backpack, and left.

Outside, Melody simmered at the unfairness of it all, wanting nothing more than to run back in there, fists swinging and beat the crud out of all of them. But she wouldn’t, and couldn’t, there was no use.

Sighing she began heading home, but stopped as she felt someone timidly tap her shoulder. Melody turned around, expecting it to be one of Gloria’s cronies. But it was only the new student.

“Umm.... Hi. My name is Melanie. What’s yours?” The girl blushed her cute little pink and hung her head as she waited for an answer.
Melody was stunned, to say the least. No one ever wanted to talk to her. Immediately, she was suspicious, suspecting this Melanie of pretending to want to be friends to distract her while Gloria snuck up behind her.

But, looking around, Melody couldn’t see anyone so she answered her. “My name is Melody. I don’t suggest you be seen talking to me, no one will let you hang out with them if you do.”

“What did you do to make them all hate you so much? You seem like a nice person!” Melanie exclaimed, shock plain on her face.

“It’s not what I did.” Melody said quietly, shame on her face. “It was my mother. And now my father.”

“Why! That’s no reason to hate anyone!” Melanie exclaimed, again. “What did they do?”

A harsh voice spoke out from behind Melanie, causing both girls to jump and quickly look at the speaker. It was Gloria again. She smirked, enjoying being the center of attention.

“Her mother, Abigail, was the town whore, until she left to live in New York with her newest rich boyfriend, Jim. But he broke up with her for another whore, cheaper. So dear Abby decided to get back at him by sleeping with a man he had hated since birth, his older brother, Jason. But poor, dear Abigail got pregnant. So she got stuck marrying Jason. And she had little Melody.” Here she stopped, letting slow Melanie catch up with the line of thought. Gloria smirked even wider at the look of horror on Melanie’s plump face.

Melody glared at Gloria, hoping that, this time, looks could kill and Gloria would just keel over now. But, of course, that didn’t happen.

“After she had Melody, Abigail appeared to settle down. She never went anywhere without her husband or her daughter. Always claiming that her little baby would grow up to be the most beautiful thing in the world.

Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet.” Gloria paused again, so that she could pay full attention to the look on Melody’s face. But, when nothing happened, Gloria shrugged and continued.

“But, when Melody was two, a handsome young man showed up at Abigail’s house. And she left with him. Leaving Melody screaming outside the house in her play crib, and dinner cooking on the stove. Jason returned from work to find his house in flames, and about to collapse on his tiny daughter. So he rescued Melody and watched his house burn down. Thinking that Abigail had been trapped inside and was dying in there. But he could do nothing.” Gloria stopped. Pretending to look sad. Her trick worked on Melanie, who erupted in tears.

Melody only glared at the ground. Wanting it to open up and swallow Gloria up. But, this didn’t happen either. So she continued to glare anyway, hoping that her persistence would pay off eventually.
“The next day, a neighbor told Jason the truth. And he was very angry. And became a drunk. And we good people lived happily ever after.”

Gloria finished her story, grinning openly.
Melanie was still sobbing. Gloria gave a derisive snort and walked off, pulling Melanie after her.

Leaving Melody, once again, by herself. Knowing that the same time the next day, Melanie wouldn’t even consider talking to her. Melody shrugged, used to it. Although it still stung a bit. It seemed unfair, why should she be punished for something her parents did? That wasn’t the way things were supposed to go! She was supposed to be able to make her own mark, to be herself, to be seen as herself! But it seemed that it wasn’t the way here. Only rich or attractive people were given a chance really.

Melody sighed one more time, and then walked back towards her house.

The lights were all off, so Melody decided that her dad was probably still working at the local bar or passed out on the couch. She decided to risk going inside and grabbing a bite to eat before escaping back to her tree. She padded over to the door and pressed her ear to it, hearing nothing, she eased the door open a crack and tried to quietly make her way across the messy room to the kitchen. She was halfway across the room when a loud snore erupted from right in front of her. Melody jumped slightly at the unexpected sound and slipped on a beer bottle. She quickly scrambled to her hands and knees and scampered behind the couch.

There she paused and listened again. The snoring resumed. Melody sighed with relief and peeked over the top of the ripped couch. Her father was passed out in the doorway of the kitchen, still clutching an empty bottle.

Melody gave a snort of disgust, of course Jason had to be difficult and collapse there, right where he would most be in her way. So she glared at him a minute more before giving up on food that night. Then Melody stalked over to the door and walked out to her tree for the night. She clambered up into the tree and headed up until she reached her branch. It was thick and curved slightly, shaped just right to be able to cradle her body while she slept.

Melody looked up at the stars again.

“I hate you too…” She whispered before closing her eyes and falling asleep.

"I have the perfect body, but it's in my trunk and beginning to smell."
"I'm searching for myself, have you seen me anywhere?"
"You couldn't understand a hint if it jumped out naked, said boo, danced the macarina, and attempted to murder you with a rusty spoon!"
"When life gives you lemons, Find someone you don't like and squeeze it in their eye."
<(>.<<)
<(>.<)>
(>>.<)>
<(o.o<)
<(o.o)>
(>O.o)>
<(^.^<)
<(^.^)>
(>^.^)>
(^^.^^)
KIRBY DANCE!!!!!! ^_^

Sky · (Sat May 13, 2006 8:14 pm)

Wow. Very good so far, very very good! Keep with it, this should turn out to be one heck of a story. =)

MeowBeth · (Sun May 14, 2006 12:21 am)

Thank you. ^///^ I'm working on it, it's just that it takes me forever to actually get things written up. I have the entire story planned out, but I just can't get going... It took me around half a year to get this much written up, and I see so many mistakes!!! NAH! lol I spent a month planning the story, another month convincing myself it was worth it, 2 months to bother getting any of it written down, a month to stare at what I had written and utterly despise it, and then one more month for my family to get sick of it and post it on an original works site I had discovered for me. lol Since then I've just sat around staring at this and rereading it. I think this summer I'll work on getting the second chapter written up. Maybe it'll get easier after time. lol

"I have the perfect body, but it's in my trunk and beginning to smell."
"I'm searching for myself, have you seen me anywhere?"
"You couldn't understand a hint if it jumped out naked, said boo, danced the macarina, and attempted to murder you with a rusty spoon!"
"When life gives you lemons, Find someone you don't like and squeeze it in their eye."
<(>.<<)
<(>.<)>
(>>.<)>
<(o.o<)
<(o.o)>
(>O.o)>
<(^.^<)
<(^.^)>
(>^.^)>
(^^.^^)
KIRBY DANCE!!!!!! ^_^