Last year, I published excerpts of my novel-in-progress, The
Power Club™ on this website. I've spent a hectic last three months revising the entire novel for the second time (i.e., my third complete draft). Here's how the first chapter turned out. Let me know what you think.
A
brown-and-white police car pulled up to Damon’s house. Damon sat in the back on a dull leather seat
that reeked of sweat and vomit. Tears
burned his cheeks as he held his breath, trying not to wretch. He couldn’t believe someone had called the
cops. He couldn’t believe they had
arrested him instead of the kids who stole his bike.
“Arrested”
wasn’t the right word. The cops didn’t
put handcuffs on him. Still, the two
officers had their null-guns and shock batons ready. Damon felt like a dangerous criminal.
The officers let Damon out in front
of his house for all the neighbors to see. He wanted to create a darkspace so he could hide from prying eyes—but he knew that would
just get him in more trouble. As if to
hammer this point home, the police warned his mother that Damon must never use
his power in public again.
“Don’t worry about the bike.” Damon’s
mother cleaned his lip where the winged boy had split it before the cops showed
up. “Your father and I will buy you a
new one next spring.”
“Mom!”
he said, exasperated. “I don’t want a
new bike. Call the police chief. Maybe he’ll send some officers to get my bike
back.”
“Honey, that’s not how things work
in the district.”
Ow! Damon’s lip stung as his mom dabbed it with
a damp cloth. She held his arm tight as
he tried to squirm away.
“What were you doing in that
neighborhood?” she said. “You know you’re
not supposed to go there.”
Damon blubbered, “I dunno.” His mother wouldn’t understand. He had lived in the district almost as long
as he could remember, but there were parts of it he hadn’t seen and wanted to
explore. He couldn’t go outside the district without permission
from the government and wasn’t even allowed to use his power except at home or
school. This rule, he’d just found out,
applied even to self defense.
A slight change of subject was in
order. “What did those kids mean, that
they get to use their powers if they belong to a special club?”
His mother folded the damp cloth and
put it aside. She sat on the
ottoman—Damon lounged in the
recliner—and looked at the floor of the living room. “Well, I guess you had to learn about them
sooner or later. The district allows
older kids to use their powers in public if they belong to certain kinds of
clubs. The clubs have to be registered
with the district, and they have to follow certain rules.”
“Rules like being allowed to steal other
kids’ bikes?”
“Oh, hush, honey. There are a lot of things in the district
that aren’t fair. Remember when we first
moved here and your dad’s car got stolen?”
Damon nodded.
“Well, it wasn’t really stolen. Some kid who can bend metal destroyed it. The district gave your dad a new car, but we
had to promise not to tell anyone outside the family what really happened.”
Damon remembered. The new car was smaller and didn’t have
electric windows.
“But why does the district let kids
form special clubs?”
“No one really knows,” his mother
answered. She leaned closer, as if she
were expecting someone to listen in. “They say kids learn to use their powers
better by working together. But some
people think it’s so they can see what you kids can really do.”
“But why would they want to know?”
His mother seemed uncomfortable with
the question. “Honey, it’s been a long
time since we moved to the district.
Have you forgotten that ordinary people like your dad, Eldon, and me—”
“Ords?”
“Honey, I told you, that’s not a
nice term.”
“Sorry,” he said, biting his lip.
“Anyway, ordinary people are
sometimes afraid of kids with powers.”
Damon recalled the incident which
led to him and his family moving to the district. Just after his sixth birthday, he learned
that when he thought dark and exhaled,
a huge, black cloud would appear, blocking both light and sound. His mother told him to keep his ability a
secret, but Damon couldn’t. He shared it
with the neighbor kids.
They loved it! They would run into the “darkspace,” as they
called it, scream with delight, and run back out. They
weren’t afraid.
Things were great until Ryan, a
snotty kid who lived up the street, joined in. He stood at the edge of Damon’s
back yard and demanded a darkspace be created around him. Damon did what Ryan wanted, but as soon as
the darkness appeared, Ryan panicked and ran into the alley. Damon inhaled to make the darkspace go away,
but a car screeched to a halt inches in front of Ryan. It was almost too late.
It was Ryan’s parents who ratted to
the city council that Damon had a power.
He still recalled how he felt when his parents told him they would have
to move to the district. It wasn’t far,
but to Damon, it might as well have been the North Pole.
The memory stung like a open wound “People’re
afraid of me? That’s stupid.”
“It is stupid, honey,” his mother said.
“But we live in a stupid world.
No one knows why some kids develop powers and others don’t. Your brother, for example—”
Damon tuned her out. He was tired of his mother reminding him that
Eldon had demonstrated no special abilities.
He hated it when she pointed out how “ordinary” his kid brother was, as
if being ordinary were an achievement.
Damon felt as if he were being punished for having a power.
He waited patiently for her finish
before he put it out there. “Mom, I want
to join a club.”
Her eyes flashed. “There aren’t any special clubs in this
neighborhood.”
“Then I’ll start one.”
“You’re too young. I think you have to be at least twelve and a
half.”
Damon banged the arm of the
recliner. His twelfth birthday was still
four months away. “Why twelve and a
half? Why not twelve?” he demanded to
know.
“Honey, a lot of the things the
district does don’t make sense. Why let
kids form special clubs in the first place?
Why make kids and their families
live here, like we’re in some kind of top secret city—only out in the open? It’s
better to just accept things as they are and forget about special clubs.”
No comments:
Post a Comment