User blog:Selenaroxx/Chapter 1 of my new book

Hey guys! Anyway, so I'm writing a book that I'm hoping to one day publish, so I thought I'd share it with all of my fellow A&A'ers, since this started out as an A&A fanfiction! Anywho, Chapter 1 is here, and I'll have separate blog posts for the chapters! And if you read this, let me know what you think! I need praise and/or constructive critism! :) Anyway, enough rambling, onto the chapter:

 Chapter 1: 

 

 The New Student 

 “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” 

 -            Frank Clark 



 As the light slowly crept over to the massive window that resided in the writing classroom that was devoid of any noise except the soft scratching of pencils and pens writing across clean notebook paper, fifteen year old Alison DeVara allowed herself one minute to tune out from her already three quarter filled paper to glance absentmindedly at the beautiful sight coming from the window.



 “Annnnd, time! Make sure your names are on the paper, and then pass it up to the row leaders!” Mrs. Copsworth, the writing teacher, loudly called out to the classroom. Immediately, the serene silence was shattered as kids turned their heads to the side or turned around to talk with a friend sitting near them about their opinions on the writing assignment. As everyone else seemed to have someone to playfully banter with, Alison sat, carefully writing Alison DeVara at the top of her paper, making sure to write it in small, legit able, curly cursive. Right before she handed her paper up, she quickly added an extra swirl at the last letter in her last name and then hastily handed the paper to the girl sitting in front of her.



 “Geez, why do you take a long time just to write out your name?” The girl sitting in front of Alison asked in a tone that suggested she thought Alison had wasted her time, flicking her long blonde hair back and staring at Alison in a reproachful way. Alison merely shrugged; how and why would she tell a complete stranger that writing her name elegantly made her feel sophisticated without getting embarrassed?



 Luckily for Alison, the bell rang obnoxiously, startling the teacher, and so Alison was spared from having to answer the blonde girl’s question. After having arranged her books so that her science book was next, she quickly walked into the thankfully clear hallways. She knew that she had about a minute or two before the traffic jam of loud, bustling students came rushing out, so Alison quickly went to Mr. Dredie’s classroom, waiting patiently behind it as students filed out in an utterly disorderly line.

Upon being able to enter the classroom, Alison sat down at her lab desk, and started the essential question of the day. Within writing the first word of the question, Alison heard her science teacher talking to the assistant principal, and stared at them in a baffled way. She was even more baffled when she saw who the principal had brought with him, a tall for their age boy, with dark brown hair that was decently short, yet hung in his eyes a little at the front. That didn’t stop Alison from noticing his sparkling, radiant olive green eyes that went well with his lightly tanned skin.

“Well, is there any area for Joshua to sit at?” Dr. Harpley, the principal, asked in a booming tone. It wasn’t that the principal could control his loud tone; he just naturally had a loud voice.

“Well, most of the seats are taken up, except for the seat next to Alison DeVara,” Mr. Dredie stated. The principal merely nodded, signaling the end of the discussion, and motioned for Joshua to sit down at the desk next to Alison’s. As Joshua shyly walked down, he sat down in his desk, and stuck his hand out.

“Joshua Salbur,” He quietly introduced himself, sporting a shy yet friendly smile.

“Alison DeVara,” Alison quietly introduced herself, thanking her mother for having insisted that she keep her bangs; that way, they could just sweep into her eyes and slightly block her. It wasn’t that she wanted to be a complete introvert; she just had trouble making friends. At the age most people had started making their first true friend; Alison was always nose deep in books, absorbing their remarkable and not so remarkable qualities. Even when her mother and father had pushed her, saying, “Go on, make new friends,” she just couldn’t. She always stuttered, she would accidently be a klutz, or, and this was her worst mistake ever, have an accident at a open for the whole grade birthday party being held by Susie Starp, the girl who’s parents spoiled her a tad bit. It hadn’t been her fault that she always had a bit of a difficulty realizing that she needed to go until it was too late, but nonetheless, it shut down any sparse remaining chance for her to make friends and have at least a small social circle of friends.

“That’s a cool name,” Joshua said awkwardly, trying to make conversation. It failed though, seeing as neither Alison nor Joshua were quite adequate in being extroverts. Thankfully, they were saved by their science teacher, who then proceeded to start the lesson.

Twenty minutes later, having her long, curly, chestnut brown hair in a bun, Alison stared down at the text, reading it slowly. For her, she loved to read, and could remember many details from various books that she had read, but the problem with her was that she was a slow reader. That quickly eliminated joining any competitive groups that involved reading a certain amount of books by a certain time period. Thus, once more giving her a slimmer chance to make friends.

 As she starts answering the questions, she sucks in a puff of air as she experiences one of those ‘common sense’ questions. She honestly had no idea who would even think of putting questions that were about common sense into the science category, but whoever had done it, in her opinion, had forgotten that common sense and the vast branches of science were very different.

Having become quite into the question answering and her own mental debate on common sense questions, she’s quite startled when the bell once more rings loudly. It startles her enough to accidently jostle into Joshua’s elbow.

“Sorry,” Alison muttered, quickly grabbing her stuff and mentally slapping herself for having made it much harder to try and make a new friend from Joshua. She groans to herself as she steps out of the science lab and classroom to face a huge crowd full of teenagers. Worse, the science period after her period was filled with sweaty jocks that enjoyed pushing each other around a lot, so many times; Alison would get the misfortune of accidently getting pushed into. Today was no exception; one of the tall jocks was shoved by one of his buddies, and the jock lost his balance, and spread his arms out wide to try and regain balance. Unfortunately, for Alison, the jock’s spread out arms crashed into her, and so she fell to the floor, her belongings scattering all across the floor.

“Not again…” Alison groaned, immediately starting to pick up items. Usually, she has to pick up all the items by herself and then hope that she won’t be late to her next class, so when she sees another pair of arms gathering up some of her stuff, she’s pleasantly surprised. She’s even more surprised when it turns out to be Joshua Salbur, the new kid whom she thought she had scared off due to her klutziness.

“Thanks,” Alison said, a thankful and small smile appearing on her face.

“No problem,” Joshua replied, modestly waving a hand. Alison is about to thank him even further, but then the warning bell goes off, and she immediately starts running towards her AP History class.

Once Alison slips into her chair, she’s just in time as Mrs. Picito appears, wearing her usual dark gray slate colored suit that went well with her ash blonde short hair, pale complexion, and piercing gray eyes.

“Hello class. Today, we’re going to be talking about a collaboration project between your writing class and this class,” Mrs. Picito said, getting right to the point, “Now, we’ve recently been going over the European countries and looking over interesting aspects of their history. In your writing class, you’ve been researching unique supernatural forces. Since the fall semester is close to an end, we have decided to create a fresh project. Each of you will pick a preternatural force from this hat,” Mrs. Picito continues, gesturing to a black magician hat filled to the rim with white, folded up paper, “Each of you will get a force that will apply to only you. After getting your force, you will need to create a power point including pictures, you’ll need to include a European country that has history with your supernatural force, and then I’ll ask three questions that I expect you to be able to answer.”

As Mrs. Picito brought the important hat over to every student, Alison hoped to get an unearthly force that would be interesting to work on, yet wouldn’t be too time consuming. As Mrs. Picito approached Alison with the hat, she nervously stuck her fingers in there, feeling the cool, smooth paper before hastily grabbing a particularly oddly cut piece of paper.

Opening the paper slowly, Alison slumps in disappointment as she sees an unfamiliar name on the paper. The Slender Man is what is written on the paper, and Alison sadly resigns herself to having to research a lot about this mysterious man who seemed, at least to Alison, to be a slender man.

After getting through a particularly boring Math lesson to Alison, seeing as they were doing Geometry proofs, her worst sub-subject, Alison trudged home with a heavy backpack filled with her geometry textbook, her writing composition notebook, and her writing binder. That’s of course, not including her special calculator, her pencil bag, her different books to read for fun, and her planner. Even after the school county district hadn’t made agendas an essential, Alison had still kept hers while many others had happily thrown the idea of planners out of their brain. The organization that came with planners was always a welcome sight to Alison, especially with the hectic and chaotic thing called high school.

“Mom! Dad! Anita! I’m home!” Alison called out, and she was about to think that they had all gone shopping when she saw Anita’s sleep rumpled hair out of the corner of her eye.

“How was school?” Anita asked, giving Alison a hug, and yawning. Anita was a successful pediatrician, but of course everyone had expected something good out of Anita. Anita and Alison looked much alike, with their shade of hair the exact same precise shade, and their eyes both resembled doe eyes, but that was where the resemblance ended. Whereas Alison was a petite, tan girl with long curly spirals of chestnut brown hair and an extraordinary shade of purple eyes, Anita was a tall, slim girl with shoulder length, pin straight, chestnut brown hair, a very light tan, and blue eyes that always looked as if a cloud were slightly distorting them.

Anita and Alison both had quite the contrasting personalities as well. Anita was born to be a leader, and had proven many times that she didn’t have an ounce of shyness in her blood. Alison had always been a shy bookworm, usually having books as her best friend, and she had never been particularly brave nor leader like.

“Alison, how was school? Did you ace your writing essay challenge?” Sasha DeVara sternly asked, giving Alison a quick hug. Alison nodded in reply, feeling slightly annoyed as usual that her parents had such high standards for her. She appreciated that it meant that her parents thought she had high potential; she just hated how they were so strict on it. They’d practically planned out her whole life! They’d already planned that she would become an engineer and graduate from Georgia Tech, and if it weren’t for Alison’s politeness and shyness, Alison could have gone up to them saying, “Geez, let me do my life. My life, my choices.” Of course, not everything was always up to us in our own life…

