TITLE: Just One Day
GENRE: YA Contemporary
My vovó is dead. I buried her in the backyard, deep. Just like she told me.
Before she went, she explained that she’d been told she was dying a month ago. But it was last week when she finally believed it and started to make a plan for me. This plan where I don’t tell anyone she’d dead. Seven days. That’s all it took for my life to be over because I am not me anymore despite my chest continuing to rise and fall with the breaths I cannot stop taking. Seven days. Though I guess all it ever takes is just one.
A week ago
Pulling the strap of my bag over my head and onto one shoulder, I move down the stairs as quickly, the thuds making the family photos quiver on the wall.
“Meu coração?” my grandmother calls from her room, a whisper question that also means ‘where are you going?’ I have been home for three days straight, since the never ending cold she’s got started keeping us both up at night. She says it will pass.
I start to go out the door, to pretend I didn’t hear her but then she coughs, an awful, deep chested noise. So, I trudge back up to her door at the top of the stairs.
“Sim?” I stand in the doorway looking into to her tidy peach flavored room. The warm honey wood of her headboard, dresser, and night table each with some flowery something on it.
I like the sentiment of your first paragraph, but I think more editing is required to tighten this piece up. I feel like you could benefit from more showing and less telling.
ReplyDeleteI feel like it would have been a better visual to show show the character's dirty hands with a shovel sticking up in the disturbed ground rather than just come out and say 'Grandma's dead'.
I also wonder about the implications of burying a body. I cant tell from this excerpt whether the main character is a boy or a girl. Digging a hole by hand is a lot of work.
The following sentence really stumped me. It's very run-on and I couldn't decipher exactly what it was trying to get across - That’s all it took for my life to be over because I am not me anymore despite my chest continuing to rise and fall with the breaths I cannot stop taking.
Great opening line.
ReplyDeleteI really like the mystery you set up--why would Grandma ask this teenager to bury her in the yard and not want anyone to know?? I want to know more, which means you've done a great job hooking me.
"I move down the stairs as quickly" is a grammatical error. As quickly as what? Otherwise you can just say "I move down the stairs quickly."
"The warm honey wood of her headboard, dresser, and night table each with some flowery something on it" isn't a complete sentence. Did you mean "each have a flowery something on it"? I think you can find more specific language than "some flowery something," especially considering your very nice description of a "peach-flavored room" the sentence before.
Overall, this is interesting, and I want to read more. Just make sure to proofread carefully (or get someone to copy edit it) before submitting.
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DeleteHaha, you caught where I edited out a few words so I could get to the end of the last sentence in the submission! Ah! Haste makes waste as they say. Thanks ;)
DeleteI loved the writing here, but got thrown off a bit by the timing. The first segment seemed rather confusing, and I'm not sure you need it. You could start off with the MC's conversation with the grandmother, but add something to set up the sense of anticipation or the tone for a mystery. I was drawn in by the rest of the paragraphs and the beautiful descriptions.
ReplyDelete