Hello! I would love to know what you think of my first chapter. I have rewritten it so many times I am no longer really objective about it. In this version, I'm particularly worried about the balance between character development and active plot--I want people to get to know my characters and like them, but also to get an idea of the plot and what's to come in the story. In ms. form, this is just under 10 pages. The intended audience is tween girls, and the book is a fantasy.
CHAPTER ONE: The Teacher Behind the Blue Door
If Belle Ravenna knew one thing for certain, it was this: nothing had turned out the way it was supposed to.
A girl—Ashleigh—knocked into Belle as she walked past. Belle's corndog slid off her fries. The stick end landed in the ketchup.
"I hate it when the nobodies just stand there," she said to the lunchroom in general as she paid for her salad, no dressing, and bottled water.
"I hate it that you think you can just walk all over me," Belle told her corndog. She had hoped that maybe the first day of eighth grade would mean Ashleigh would at least ignore her.
But nothing had turned out the way it was supposed to.
"$2.60." The lunch lady didn't look up as she held out her hand.
Belle handed her three dollars. "Have you ever wondered if maybe life should be different from how it is?"
"Change." She handed a quarter, a nickel, and a dime to Belle.
Belle stuffed the coins in her pocket, picked up the tray, and stepped into the lunchroom and its chaos. Students swirled around her, each one darting to a table filled with friends as Belle stood there, alone. It was as if everyone else was flying while she slogged through water.
The lunchroom had been already divided by groups. Belle would gladly sit with any of them, if she just knew which group she belonged to. It's not as if she had no friends, it's just that she had no best friends. And while Belle could get along just fine without them, she had to admit that some would be nice. At least now. During lunch. During the lunch period where she had absolutely no one to sit with.
Belle saw Ashleigh make a bee-line for the most crowded table in the lunchroom, the one where Matt Holland—gorgeous, perfect Matt Holland—reigned over the similarly perfect students of Olen Middle School. Well, there was no way she could sit there. But Veronica, a girl from Belle's first period Spanish class, sat at the next table over with Rebecca and Esperanza. Esperanza glanced up as Belle approached and smiled in a gracious, inviting sort of way that made Belle feel a little better, even if Esperanza nibbled on a salad and was wearing a nicer skirt and top than Belle usually wore to church. A boy came over and snatched two of the empty chairs, dragging them over to Matt Holland's table. His friend reached for the remaining chair. Belle grabbed it before he could take away the last place in the entire lunchroom for her to sit.
Esperanza turned back to Rebecca. "All I'm saying is that it's weird."
"Maybe it's a mistake." Rebecca shrugged and ate another fry.
"What is?" Belle asked.
Esperanza held up her class schedule. The homeroom teachers had passed them out that morning, but Belle had only glanced at hers before shoving it in her pocket.
"Hey, we have English together," Belle said, reading Esperanza's card.
"Yeah, but look at the room number!" When Belle looked confused, Esperanza pointed to the bottom of the card.
Seventh Period—English—Wendt—Room . An empty space where a room number should be.
"It's a typo or something," Rebecca said. "Besides, everyone knows that Ms. Wendt's room is the last one on the English hall. The one with the blue door."
"Oh, my brother had her!" Veronica snatched the card from Esperanza's hand. "He said she was the best teacher he ever had, and he hates English. I don't think he can even read."
"Everyone loves Ms. Wendt," Esperanza said, but she didn't sound happy about it.
Belle leaned back in her chair and slipped her hand into her pocket. She extracted the rumpled yellow card printed with her schedule.
Seventh Period—English—Wendt—Room .
Esperanza caught her eye, a question on her face.
"Mine says the same—" Belle started, but something smacked her in the back of the head. She spun around and saw a crushed chocolate milk carton on the floor.
"Sorry!" Matt Holland—gorgeous, perfect Matt Holland—said. He grinned at Belle apologetically. "I was aiming for the trash!"
Belle felt her cheeks burn as she returned his smile.
"Don't worry," said Ashleigh. "You did hit the trash." She cut her eyes at Belle. "Gawd, where did you get your makeup from? Crayola?" she whispered so that only Belle and the closest eight or nine people could hear. Belle whirled around in her chair and glowered at her corndog stick. Rebecca began talking very loudly about her family's camping trip over the summer to the Grand Canyon and how her brother had ridden all the way to the bottom on a donkey backwards.
Esperanza leaned in close to Belle. "Don't listen to that cow."
Belle shrugged and wished her face didn't flush so much when she was upset, but thinking about it made her face flush more. At least Rebecca and the others let her pretend not to care.
As soon as lunch ended, Belle threw her half-eaten food away and shot down the hall to her locker. She spun the dial and swung the door open. Two things decorated the inside: a small mirror encased in purple plastic that had slid down the door, its magnets too weak to keep it in place, and a big refrigerator magnet designed to look like the movie poster for Audrey Hepburn's 1961 movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. Audrey Hepburn was Belle's secret. She was everything Belle wanted to be: thin, beautiful, graceful, elegant. And an actress. A real actress, not a plastic train-wreck like the "actresses" that littered Belle's TV, but a real actress, like what Belle wanted to be. If she ever got the courage to ever say anything in front of anyone ever.
Belle glanced in the mirror, then flipped the magnet of Audrey Hepburn over. She didn't want Audrey seeing how stupid that lipstick really looked. Why did Ashleigh always have to be right? Belle thought as she wiped it off, leaving a violent streak of Pink Starshine Glitter on the back of her hand.
Someone knocked into the back of Belle's locker door so forcefully it slammed shut, and Belle had to jump backwards to avoid being hit. She turned around to snap at whoever had done it, but then saw Mr. Barrymore, the principal. He hadn't even noticed he'd bumped into her locker. He crossed the hallway in two strides (a sixth grader actually squeaked in terror and fled in the other direction rather than cross paths with him) and swung open the bright blue classroom door opposite Belle's locker.
"I want to know what is going on!" Mr. Barrymore roared. The noise in the hallway dimmed as students and teachers both turned to see the source of Mr. Barrymore's rage.
A woman stood inside the classroom. Although short, she stood up so straight that she seemed taller. Her close cropped hair framed her pixie face, but although she looked delicate, her eyes held a fierce flash that belied gentleness. Mr. Barrymore seemed to quell at her unforgiving—and unapologetic—gaze.
So that's Ms. Wendt, Belle thought as the woman stepped around Mr. Barrymore and pushed the electric blue door shut behind him. Without even speaking, it was clear Ms. Wendt wouldn't take any crap from Mr. Barrymore. If only Belle could do that, too, and stand up to Ashleigh and call her out for being such a—
"Won't do any good," the teacher across the hall from Ms. Wendt's brightly painted blue door said to another teacher standing beside her.
Belle spun the dial on her locker and slung it open so she could crouch behind the door, listening. Students dissipated from the halls as the teachers began to herd them into classrooms.
"Someone's always filing a complaint against her," the first teacher told the other one, jerking her head at the closed blue door. She blew on her coffee mug. "She never does hall duty, never coaches, never goes to faculty meetings. Barrymore storms down here at least twice a year as if he'd forgotten she even existed, but he always leaves as if he didn't remember why he was mad in the first place."
"Wonder what she does to him in there," the other teacher snorted, and they both shot secret gleeful looks at the door.
The warning bell rang. The electric blue door opened, and Belle watched as Mr. Barrymore stepped across the threshold. As Mr. Barrymore started down the hall, Belle noticed that he had a vacant look behind his eyes. His steps were unsteady, as if his feet wanted to turn him around, but his mind kept him going forward.
"Get to class," the teacher with the coffee mug told Belle. Belle slammed her locker shut and started down the hall towards the stairs that led to the science hall. She walked slowly, straining her ears for more of the teachers' gossip.
"The way she just showed up one day, out of the blue...the way no one knows anything about her...it's almost like magic, isn't it? She's a bit like Dorothy, plopping down in the middle of our own little Oz."
"More like the Wicked Witch!" the other teacher said, laughing. "Of course," she added, her tone growing darker, "it is weird, you know, that whole thing about... Hey! You! I told you to get to class!"
Belle ran up the stairs, but she still didn't make it on time for Pre-Chemistry. The bell rang as soon as she skidded to the door, and Mrs. Rudolph graced her and the rest of the class with a fifteen minute lecture on the importance of punctuality and blah, blah, blah. Belle had never expected to like Pre-Chem, not after that time she accidentally blew up her frog during biology in seventh grade. Science was not her thing. But Belle had no idea how terrible Pre-Chem was going to be until Mrs. Rudolph quit lecturing her about punctuality and assigned her to be Todd Hutchins's lab partner.
As soon as sixth period ended, Belle shot out of the class, ignoring Todd's less than subtle questions designed to determine how much work he could shaft his new lab partner with. She took the stairs two at a time and jumped the final three to land in the English hall. Up and down the hall, teachers leaned against the walls next to their classroom doors, scanning the crowd of students. No teacher stood by the electric blue door across from Belle's locker. There was not even a cheery laminated poster saying "Welcome to School!" in garish elementary-school styled lettering on the wall by the door.
"Go on." A boy shoved past Belle and entered Ms. Wendt's room. Great. Robert was Matt Holland's—perfect, gorgeous Matt Holland's—best friend, and even though everyone in the school thought he was hilarious, Belle figured Robert never. shut. up. long enough for anyone to notice how annoying he really was.
Belle stepped inside the classroom before anyone else could push her aside. Ms. Wendt had not posted a seating chart, so all the students had clustered according to their traditional groups, rallying around their unspoken ringleaders. The front seats were out of the question; the Suck-Ups had already claimed them. The Hate School Boys goofed off in the far corner of the room. A group of OMG Girls compared Prada and Coach near the door. Belle (barely) resisted
the urge to thwack them upside the heads with the designer handbags they had replaced their book bags with. Robert and his Too Popular To Be Labeled group occupied most of the middle seats.
Esperanza stood near the back, and Belle made her way over to her, glad there was at least one other member of the Not Cool Enough to Even Have a Group group with whom she could sit. Belle let her book bag drop to the floor. It was purple, three years old, with one strap broken. She slid into the desk and tugged the bottom of her t-shirt down over her stomach. Esperanza sat in the desk beside Belle, gracefully tucking the hem of her size two skirt under her before she swept her long, shining dark hair over her shoulder. Belle tucked a fly-away strand of mouse brown hair behind her ear and sank lower into her seat.
The start of class bell rang.
Silence.
Nothing happened.
The students began shooting furtive looks to the back of the room, where the teacher's desk stood caddy-cornered behind the students' desks. It had ancient, peeling cream paint that revealed a darker past. The top of the desk contained various stacks of sliding papers and precariously placed books. Ms. Wendt leaned back in a bright red office chair, her feet propped on the shortest pile of books. She twitched one black-booted foot as she licked her finger and turned the page of a novel. The man on the cover had no shirt and was attempting to put the woman on the cover in the same situation.
Whispers.
Ms. Wendt sighed and closed her book, tilting her head as she did so, trying to catch one more word of the story. She walked out from behind her desk to the front of the room. Belle noticed she limped. Ms. Wendt's boots did not tap out a rhythmic staccato, but sounded off-beat like one hand playing the piano out of tune.
Every student watched her, heads turning as she passed.
Ms. Wendt looked average—average height, average width, average face—but something about her, maybe her vivid blue eyes or the cheerful way she walked (despite the limp), made her seem not-average. She wore a short black sleeveless dress that did not match her heavy black boots, but still made her seem cool somehow.
"So." Ms. Wendt's smile broadened. "First things first. I'm Ms. Wendt."
As if any of them hadn't known.
"Welcome to English. We'll be studying World Lit, starting with Ancient Egypt. This class will be a little...different from your other classes. Yes?" Ms. Wendt nodded at Kendall, the Suck Up sitting in the center of the front row.
"Should we be taking notes now?" Kendall flicked open a brand new spiral bound notebook and held her pencil over the first crisp sheet of paper.
"I don't care if you ever take notes in class," Ms. Wendt said, a hint of laughter in her voice. "I'd much rather you spent your time learning instead of taking notes."
Kendall looked confused.
"We're going to start our lessons with—yes?"
"We're starting now?" Ben wasthe current leader of the Hate School Boys. He hadn't bothered bringing a book bag or notebook to class, and he looked resentful that Ms. Wendt expected him to learn something on the first day.
"Of course. I've only got you for a semester; we'd better start learning now."
Ben slouched in his seat.
"We're going to start with Egypt. What do you know about Egypt?"
"Pyramids!" Kendall said.
"Mummies," Robert said.
"Camels," said Taylor, although she seemed more interested in showing off her Dolce and Gabana sunglasses to Jodi.
Belle tugged at her t-shirt and noticed for the first time she was sweating. She felt as if the sun's rays were beating down on her. When she looked around, she realized there were no windows in the classroom, just painted cinderblock covered with posters of art work and famous quotes. That was odd. Why weren't there any windows?
"In order to understand the importance of a work of literature, you must understand the culture of the people who wrote it," Ms. Wendt said. "You have to put yourself in the world in which the story was written."
Esperanza discreetly covered her nose and mouth with her hand. Belle sniffed. A distinct—though subtle—musky odor that reminded Belle vaguely of the circus permeated the room.
"When we read works from Egypt, you have to think about not just the story, but also Egypt itself."
Belle shifted in her seat, and her foot slipped across something grainy on the floor. She peered over the edge of her desk. Sand?
The lights burst. Everyone flinched away from the sudden brightness of the room, but when the light didn't fade, they all looked back up, shading their eyes with their hands.
The flickering fluorescent lights were gone. So was the ceiling. In their place was an azure sky with a blazing sun bearing down oppressively upon them. A vast desert of golden sandy hills spread around them, wavering lines of heat rising in the distance.
Kendall screamed.
Belle stood up, and as soon as she did, her desk disappeared. As the others stood, their desks evaporated in the heat, too, and soon the only thing remaining from the classroom was the bright blue door. It stood frameless in the sand, hanging absurdly without any walls around it. Iron hinges stuck out at one side. A tiny silver line usually hidden by the frame ran around the edge of the door. It sparkled in the sun.
Because no one had paid any attention to her the first time, Kendall screamed again.
"Welcome to Egypt," Ms. Wendt said.
So, what do you think?
Does the first chapter grab your attention? Would you read on?
Where any parts slow/boring? Which ones?
Do you get a good idea of the characters? Of the upcoming magic?
Thanks in advance to anyone willing to post comments and give me some ideas on improving this chapter.
