Working on a Novel; Here’s the First Chapter

Greetings, readers. I’m writing a novel for school. This is the first chapter; tell me what you think:

Plane

“Every new day is exactly like a pretty lady, for each can make you happy without effort, but can deceive you to no end with equal ease.” This is what Fox told me at least, and I am inclined to believe him still, even after all that’s happened.

This is a story about Fox really, buried among all the other disjointed experiences and impressions that I found during that summer in the sun. Most people, when asked what really makes them happy, have a difficult time trying to pin down what they enjoy in life, their ardor, if you will. Me? Well, despite the years that separate us, Cornelian Island makes me happy, and that particular kind of living that it is conducive to. I don’t want to say too much, after all, this is meant to be a story and you’ll have to hear it from the beginning to learn a little about my family and me and why it was all so important.

The 737 hummed and vibrated, making our whole little world buzz with its struggle to keep us all hurtling 30,000 ft up in the sky. My mother had said, before liftoff, that we’d be a little closer to heaven. More like a lot closer to possible death, I had thought silently. But there we were, traveling at 550 MPH in a little metal capsule, going along as thousands do every day, trying to think about the destination more than the trip itself. Probably I was the only one thinking that way really, for everyone else seemed nothing but enthused. Even my two younger sisters, Beau and Bela, chattered gaily and pointed to specs back down on terra firma (while we were still over land) for most of the ride. I was their senior by six years, but there they were, making me look like a fool.

I hadn’t even wanted to go on the vacation from the beginning, as it would be my final summer before college and a last opportunity to see friends I’d known since kindergarten and say my formal goodbyes to my hometown. These facts, however, also seemed to be the exact same reasons why my parents, Walden and Scarlet Waters, insisted on my participation in the trip to Cornelian Island, in the heart of the Caribbean Sea. Some people, it seems, just don’t like goodbyes or perhaps are even afraid of them. It turned out that both of my parents were this way and wanted to make me just like them. They had no business in forcing a vacation on me at age 18 if I didn’t want to go, but there I was, poking glumly at a misshapen airplane sandwich containing a slab of gray meat that I believe they called Kosher and incessantly checking if my carryon was still safely stowed under my seat.

I don’t know where I thought it would go to, there was just some old crone sitting behind me and she had seemed to fall asleep the second the plane had left the paving of the runway. Ironically enough, that was the same exact moment that I gripped my knees almost painfully, and squeezed my eyelids shut as the plane began its assent at an angle that felt like 60°.

Despite what you may think, this was not my first flight. My parents are actually quite wealthy and one neurosurgery by my father probably paid for the entire luxurious month on Cornelian Island, not that I thought about money at the time. Really I had just desired a fun summer at home, before packing off to the University of Chicago and beginning my next life. To say the least, for the entire seven hour plane ride from JFK to Port Wainwright on Cornelian Island, I was dreading the whole affair and wishing my feet were on the ground.

Then of course there was my girlfriend as well, Kristy Andrews and that icy stare she had as I had said farewell to her wetly on the cheek, as my parents winced in the background. They didn’t like goodbyes, and I could agree with them there, when it came to Kristy. I spent a good deal of time during the plane ride, thinking about the goodbye I would have to say before shipping off to Chicago. Kristy had been accepted to Stanford and had of course enrolled, as that particular place had been her dream all through grade-school. Once back from the Caribbean I would have a few weeks with her before we would have to part and go our separate ways.

And so I sat on the Boeing in this condition, squeezed in between my brother Abel, 16, who was sitting by the window, and a young woman named Claire, who we’d just met on the plane. This brings me to Abel, who represents another reason I did not want to come on this vacation. Surely I love my brother, but it’s a deeply repressed affection that often times can be utterly forgotten.

Two minutes into the flight my brother Abel literally leaned across me and began to chat up Claire, who was British, and had an irresistible English accent. Before that I had exchanged the words “hi” with her, and proceeded in uncomfortably making sure my foot did not brush up against hers in the cramped space below the tight seats. My brother Abel quickly amended this and soared effortlessly, as he does in all social interactions, with this young English woman. She could have been no more than twenty, but still at least four years older than my little brother. This however, did not serve as a deterrent in their conversation for a second, and left me simply wanting to switch seats with one of them so I would not have no be caught in the endless minutia of the conversation.

It was laborious to listen to really, almost sickening, and yet fascinating. I was never really that glib, so listening to two peers glide through a lengthy, fluid verbal exchange was pretty interesting, and frustrating. Why had I not been able to start the conversation and talk to this girl? I was easily twice as smart as my little brother and two years closer in age to the British girl. I’ll try to give an example of their conversation, which didn’t really deviate for about the first hundred minutes of the flight:

“So your from London?” asked my brother Abel.

“Well, Oxford really. It’s in Oxfordshire, on the Thames, which does flow through central London at one point,” clarified Claire, leaning rudely across me toward my brother.

“The Thames, I think I’ve heard of that in some movie, or wait-wasn’t it a WWII battle?”

“I think your talking about the Seine, and that’s in France, Paris actually. You must mean that.”

“I dunno, whatever,” responded my brother in true stupid American fashion. “I love your accent, it’s awesome.”

“Oh that’s sweet, thanks. And I love the American accent, isn’t that funny, always seems to work out that way.”

“Ha-ha,” an excessively loud laugh from Abel. “Ya, I’ve noticed that too, Americans and English people always like each others accents. So, ah, were you visiting the U.S.”

“Ya, I’m on holiday right now. I’m just coming off about a month and a half in the U.S. New York was the last leg of my trip on the continent, is that where you’re from?”

“Yep, I’m a New Yorker. Born and bred on Long Island.”

“I’m so jealous, I’ve always wished that I was born in the U.S. It must be great.”

“No way!” my brother exclaimed; I already knew what was coming. “I’ve always wished that I was born in England.”

“Get Out!” said Claire in an obnoxiously feminine voice as the two shared a laugh. I tried to smile between them, as I was rereading the safety line on the back of the seat in front of me for the 100th time: “In the event of a water landing, use your seat cushion as a floatation device,” followed by the picture of a little safety guy who didn’t look like he had much of a future in front of him.

“No, I’m totally serious,” managed my brother after a bout of suspiciously sincere and hearty laughter.

“Well that’s great. Is there anything specific that interests you about the U.K.?”

“Well, you know, its just different to begin with. I get sick of the U.S. and the whole thing. Like my brother says, its the Plastic Society,” said Abel, with a pat on my shoulder.

Claire, a symbol of every pretty girl I’d ever felt uncomfortable around, turned to me and began to speak as I felt an unrelenting cord wrap around my stomach and pull tight; squeezing.

“Plastic, ah, that’s funny. Really,” said Claire in an insufferable voice. What was it, a mix of superficiality, curiosity, and resentment, all glazed over with sugar-with her English accent? Hard to say, but either way it all rushed back for the millionth time. I could have started to talk to her first, could have so easily avoided the jealousy and the regret. But there I was, speaking as an outsider, as always.

“Thanks. Ya, I call it that because it all seems so flippant to me, it’s like we really are witnessing the decay of society as we once knew it.” As I said that I felt blunt railroad spikes being driven into my abdomen with a sledgehammer, and nails into my legs with a ball-peen hammer.

“Yes, I agree completely,” said Claire. Her voice sounded unchanged, but I knew better, for there was no way I was going to recover from that comment. Rule of thumb, never drop an intellectual bomb on an otherwise casual conversation. If only I could take my own advice.

“Hey, did you get to Cali?” interceded Abel graciously without realizing it.

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe. Before New York I was in San Francisco…” and so it continued for about another hour, interrupted only by a few more moments of blinding self-consciousness, like twisting an ankle with an already dull pain. I do not want anyone to take me for a social outcast, for that would be far from the truth. While among a small group of people I know well, like classmates or Kristy, I will always be good humored and can really enjoy myself. This episode with the English girl on the plane was really an ideal situation for failure. My brother was there of course, who is much more extroverted than I, and the girl was beautiful and unknown to me. All of these elements contributed to the catastrophic breakdown above. Then again, the whole thing is most probably just blown out of proportion in my mind, I’m sure to an outsider I would have looked totally at ease, sitting there in the second seat of three.

The majority of the remainder of the journey on the 737 was spent with English girl asking if her cell phone would crash the plane, my brother listening to Jay-z or some similar rubbish and I watching Lawrence of Arabia on my iPod. Sure, the screen was tiny, but the movie was still a classic and it was still enjoyable. English girl never seemed to notice I was watching a British classic; whoever said Brits are more cultured than Yankees was certainly making an invalid generalization.

So this was my mindset as I skirted the clouds five miles up, wanting to be back on Long Island, lounging away the hours on the beach or at the amusement park with Kristy or some friends I’ve known my entire life. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy travel as much as anyone, or more, but the final summer among school friends, and a serious-soon to depart girlfriend, is not the time to pick up and head down to Cornelian Island, or at least so I thought, before actually seeing the place and later meeting Fox. Really, as the distance to go waned, I was just hoping my final, yet to arrive graduation present would be waiting in a Fed Ex box at the residence my father had arranged for. It had to be shipped to the Island as we were leaving home a day after it was ordered, and the gift was specifically for the trip.

After nearly seven hours in the air, Beau exclaimed “I can see land, that must be the Island!” With this, her twin, Bela, tore her earbuds out and leaned across to see out the window to the Earth below. I checked the altimeter on the screen above the seat and saw we were cruising at 5,000 ft and slowly continuing our dissent. Luckily I had already finished Lawrence of Arabia, but was still cursing Peter O’Toole for blemishing an otherwise perfect film with his ever-present dark eyeliner. I gripped my knees tightly again and, much to Abel’s amusement, closed my eyes until we touched down. The last thing I did before disembarking was to steal a last glance at the perfect body of the English Girl that I’d just been two inches from for a third of the day.

“Plastic indeed,” I had thought.