My Insanity
I've got a blog that i've been working on for about a month or so now...and its the host to an ongoing story ive been writing via my pc...its significantly based off of my life, but im really proud of it and if anyone here has time i'd like some feedback on it...
heres the link
alright, since y'all wont VISIT my site...i'll just put it on here...
The Beginning:
"JACK!"
Jack sat up and looked around the room.
His normal everyday 10th grade english class. He thought about the dream he had been having.
It wasn't an unfamilliar dream; he usually had the same dream every time he slipped into sleep.
It was always about her. This mysterious and beautiful girl whom he had never seen except within his mind. The more he had his dreams tho, the more that he wondered if she could be real. Could she be someone he was destined to meet and fall in love with? Could she already be in his life without him knowing it? Who was she?
Mr. Grank shouted once more, "Jack! Pay attention!"
Jack realized that he had a test in front of him, about some book he knew he hadn't read. "1. What was the main character's reaction to his sister's death?" Hmm...Jack though, he was sad? "He was sad." Maybe this test wouldn't be so bad... "2. When the main character finds this piece of information out, he becomes very happy, what was the information and why was he happy?" Shit.
Jack turned in the test with haphazzard answers and wild guesses, but he knew what the grade would be. "F, F, always an F..."
It's not that Jack was stupid, in fact, he was extremely intelligent, but his efforts were directed more towards his artwork and poetic mind. He was always distracted by something, and that something tended to be anything but school work.
The bell rang and Jack walked out of his class and headed to the only place he knew he was free, a small forgotten garden on the edge of campus, where nobody went and few people even knew about. As he sat there eating his roast beef sandwitch and sipping his pineapple fanta, he pulled out his labor of love, his sketchbook.
The Sketchbook:
Jack's sketchbook was the single most important thing to him on the planet.
The book contained everything from memories to fantasies and all aspects in between. He kept his life's journal as a series of pictures that only those closest to him would ever see. Among those sketches were the secret life he wished he lived, being with the girl of his dreams, and having everything be right in his world.
Because God knew that his life was far from perfect.
His parents divorced when he was 9, and he knew that life was never going to be the same. He tried to fit in with other people, but the pain that came from his parents' divorce caused him to be heavily withdrawn and a social outcast. He never tried to fit in, and so he never did.
Not that he was completely alone in his life. His few dedicated friends stuck by him throughout every ordeal that came his way. His best friend, Mark, knew him better than anyone. Mark never quite understood what it was about Jack that made him stick by him, but he did.
Mark was the exact opposite of Jack. He had lots of friends, and loved to go out and party with them. But Jack was intriguing to Mark, and so he decided to strike up a strong friendship with him. Because of that friendship, Mark learned a lot about himself, and how people can be in general. Because of Mark, Jack was never picked on or bullied, and yet Mark still felt as tho he could never repay Jack for the things he had given him.
Within Jack's sketchbook was one picture that Mark felt a very strong connection. The sketch was of a boy at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean, arms outstretched, apparently ready to jump. The picture was of Mark about a year ago when his mother died. It was because of Jack that he hadn't jumped that day, and the sketch served as a reminder as to what could have been.
As Jack sat in that garden, he looked around for some inspiration.
He realized that today, like so many days before it, was going to be a bad day.
Today he would once again draw the girl of his dreams, and once again he would pine over her, wishing to have her in his life. There were literally hundreds of drawings of this girl in his room, filling several sketchbooks alone, and yet no matter how many times he drew her, he never was satisfied.
"She doesn't look like that," he'd say, "She's more beautiful."
Jack strived to be able to capture her beauty on paper, but no matter how hard he tried, he knew that the only way to accomplish this would be to find her and see her with his own two eyes.
As the bell rang, Jack looked around confused, not quite sure if he had really spent all of his lunch period thinking about his dream girl...until he looked down and saw that he had only taked two bites of his sandwitch and not even half of his soda was drunk. "Damn."
He picked up his things and headed off to his next tortuous class, Chemistry.
Chemistry?
Trudging into his chemistry class, Jack looked around and had much higher spirits.
SUBSTITUTE!!!
As the rest of the class filed in, everyone recognized what must be every single students happiest wish, the teacher is absent. Substitutes in chemistry were the most anticipated, because they always meant films on something blowing up.
"Alright class, my name is mister O'Brien, I guess I'll take roll..."
"Amy?"
"here."
"Roland?"
"yep."
As the sub rambled off names from the list, Jack reached into his pocket to check his cell phone...
"2 new messages" flashed on the screen
He pressed "read" and text showed up on the screen.
"Hey wuts up? txt me bak"
The message was from Aerin, the only girl who'd ever put up with Jack long enough to get to know him.
His reply was short and simple, "Sub in chem, movie, ttyl".
...
....
"Jack!? Jack Tama- Tama-
"Tamarosa, and yeah, I'm here."
As Jack sat back in his seat the teacher put on the video, it was about the atom bombs used in world war two. Translation: boring.
Jack pulled out the sketchbook and looked over his work.
A lot of the sketches were symbolic representations of events from his life. There was a lot of focus on the shadows of people rather than the actual figures, and many of the people were reflections.
Jack grabbed his pen and started a quick sketch. This one was of him, simply hanging off a pole. The hanging figure was perfectly in sync with Jack's mood at the moment; relaxed and empathetic. He didn't care about anything at this moment, and was in an unusually cheery mood. Despite failing his english test, he felt like anything could happen and he wouldn't care too much.
He finished the drawing and put the tatty binder away again.
The movie played on, but Jack was far from bored enough to pay attention. He looked around the room, and saw Jill staring straight at him. Jill wasn't the kind to stare at him. She was the kind of girl that other girls wanted to be, and guys wanted to be with, except for Jack, who had never given her much thought. And the thoughts he had given her were critical of her superficial attitude and Abercrombie And Fitch clothing.
But there she was, looking straight at him. Jack tilted his head a little bit in a questioning manner, and she simply smiled at him.
The lights flashed on and the TV turned off as the substitute stopped the movie. "Okay class, thank you for behaving," was heard as the bell blared and the students walked out of the room.
Driving:
Before the bell was finished ringing, Jack had made his way down to the student parking lot.
Waiting for him was Mark, who took him home everyday.
"Hey, wuts up?"
"Not much, Jill was staring at me tho...it was kinda weird."
"Jill? Really? Why was she lookin at you?"
"Dunno."
"Okay. Any new projects?"
"Not really, just some more self-portrait stuff...the usual."
"Oh, yeah, you haven't been doing any heavy stuff lately have you?"
"No, I'm actually feeling pretty good lately, even though I failed my english test."
"Well, what was it on?"
"If I knew, I prolly wouldn't have failed it."
"Oh, that bad?"
"Yeah."
"No biggie, you'll get over it, just don't slack your junior year...that's suicide."
"So I've heard."
As the two of them reached Mark's car, Jack looked over his shoulder as something caught his eye.
It was her.
Or at least, it was for an instant. Jack blinked, and she was gone, but there was Jill, looking his way again. What was it with her? Why had he become so interesting to her suddenly?
"Why would Jill take an interest in me?"
"That my friend, is a question for the ages..."
"Shuddup."
Mark just smiled.
The got into Mark's 1995 Toyota Corolla and set off. Mark lived near Jack, but it was still extremely kind of him to take Jack home everyday. They both lived about 10 miles away from school, and the bus service for the neighborhood didn't go to their school, and neither did Jack's mother.
"How old are you now?" Mark asked.
"I'll be 16 in a couple months, I know, I need to get my permit."
"Yeah, you do."
"Some driver's ed would prolly help me a bit, wouldn't you say?"
Mark signaled to the shoulder and parked the car.
"Yeah, let's start now."
"What!?"
"Drive home. You're gonna have to do it everyday anyway..."
"Yeah, but, with a license..."
"Pft...Just try it."
Jack unsure of himself got into the driver's side.
"Um..."
"Check the mirrors, adjust the seat, whatever you need to..."
"Okay."
Jack situated himself, and prepared to go. He knew enough about driving to signal and check over his shoulders, but he was overconfident, and nearly got clipped as he pulled away from the curb.
"You might want to be more careful next time," Mark said with a white face.
"Yeah, maybe you're right," was Jack's reply, more shaken up than Mark.
Jack made it home safely, but Mark decided not to let him drive his car anymore.
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"Later Mark."
As Jack walked up his steps to his front door, he was, like always, greeted by silence. The door opened, but nobody was home. He was on his own until 10 O'clock, same as every day.
The door shut softly behind him.
Home:
Jack fumbled around his house looking for something to do...
His homework maybe? No. Jack preferred to get through his life doing as little work as he could without feeling the heat of his actions. He walked up the stairs to his room.
Click.
The light turned on and he looked around. Stereo, Computer, Tv, Video Games...
All his life his mother had given him everything he had asked for, mostly out of the guilt she felt for never being around, and partly to keep him from asking her to spend time with him. Jack had come to accept that he was better off alone than with anyone trying to figure him out.
He switched on his computer and became slightly comforted by the soft hum that came from the fans. The monitor flickered on and he was greeted with a world where he was free from all ties of the natural world.
He turned on his favorite cd and then just stopped to stare at himself in the mirror.
He wasn't really looking at himself...more like past himslef, through himself...as if he were trying to see something that he knew was there but was hidden...
Everday Jack felt as though part of himself was missing, and every so often he would take moments to reflect on his life, as if he knew what was missing...but had to find it himself.
He never figured it out.
As the sun was setting he pulled out his yearbook from under his bed. He flipped through the pages...people he never knew, people he'd never even seen, and people he'd never care about...his hand stopped as he noticed a particular face...Jill.
Jack had never thought about Jill that much...of course he thought she was pretty...a lot of guys did, hell, a lot of girls did too...
But the look that she gave him today...What was that look? Jack liked the idea that he had of it, but he wondered if that was really what he was meant to think.
No girl had ever given him much thought, except Aerin, but she was like Jack's sister, someone for him to spill his thoughts to every day of the week.
But Jill...Jill was not the person Jack ever expected to take an interest in the epitome of un-popular, namely, himself. Not that he had ever talked to her, and now that she had given him that look, maybe he would.
Simple curiosity was at the steering wheel now...he sought answers to his questions, and only Jill could answer them.
He looked outside and saw that it was pretty dark out...his mom would be home in an hour or so. He walked down the stairs and opened the fridge to find something to make for dinner. He cooked up some pasta with sauce, made a plate for his mother, put it in the fridge, ate, cleaned up, and headed back upstairs.
As he lay on his bed with the soft drone of his computer, he stared up at his blank ceiling. Empty, like he wished his mind could be sometimes, always too many thoughts racing through his brain...he wished he could slow them down, sort them out. But he knew himself well enough to know that his mind literally had a mind of its own, and that he would never figure out how it worked...
His eyes grew heavy, and he slipped into sleep...and that night he dreamed of Jill.
Morning:
As sunlight crept in through his window, Jack slowly opened his eyes.
Morning.
Yawning, Jack sat up in his bed..."Do I really want to wake up today?" he asked himself as he looked around.
Don't be stupid, you have to, its a school day.
"Crap."
Jack got out of his bed an ambled over to his closet. He looked through his wardrobe, pulled down a pair of jeans and rather tight fitting t-shirt and left the room. He made his way over to the bathroom to brush his teeth n wash up a bit, but stopped when he passed the mirror in the hall.
"This is what I look like?" his question was not meant to be out loud, and his voice startled him a bit. "I can't leave looking like this." Unbeknownst to him, this was the first time Jack ever cared much about his looks beyond making sure his hair wasnt off in five directions.
He went back to his room and put on a nicer pair of jeans that fit him better and a dress shirt over the t-shirt. He thought he looked much better.
When he got down the stairs, his mother was already gone. She, like always, had left her coffee cup on the table.
Jack sighed.
He had a bowl of cereal and cleaned up after himself and his mother. Today might be alright, he thought to himself as he grabbed his backpack.
At 7:45 Mark drove up in front of Jack's house. Jack got in and they set off for school.
"What's with the get-up?"
"Huh?"
"Your clothes, what's up with them?
"Oh, nothing. Just felt like wearin sumthin nicer."
"Been thinking about Jill haven't you?"
"No, well, maybe, doesn't matter."
"Look, maybe she looked at you for a reason, but what made you think changing your look would get you another one?"
"Dunno...couldn't hurt could it?"
"Not unless she likes how you look."
"Crap."
"Look, it's no big deal...just button the shirt up and tuck it in...look punkerish...you're pretty close to it with your normal clothes anyway."
As he buttoned up the shirt Jack asked, "Why did she look at me?"
"How the hell would I know? Ask her yourself."
"You think I should?"
"If it makes you act normal again, then absolutely yes."
"Shuddup."
Mark just laughed as they drove on.
Yeah, Jack thought to himself as Mark was parking his car, I will ask her...
Today I will talk to Jill...I hope she talks back.
Jack's thoughts were interrupted as Mark stopped his engine.
"Come on, let's get to class."
"Yeah, okay."
In your first post one question was 'what was his reaction with his sisters death?' and then it said he was very happy and why was he happy. The question afterwards gave the answer to the question before, and I don't something like that would be in the test. Also I tried to read some but it just didn't grab my attetion. Sorry.
blackcat>you're referring to this line: "1. What was the main character's reaction to his sister's death?" Hmm...Jack though, he was sad? "He was sad." Maybe this test wouldn't be so bad... "2. When the main character finds this piece of information out, he becomes very happy, what was the information and why was he happy?" Shit.
he was bullshitting his answers...the point of this was to show his confusion and utter lack of comprehension as to what the test was about...obviously I succeeded because you were confused...
The Dream:
Trudging into his first class, Jack thought about his dream the night before...
Like he was really going to pay attention in math anyway.
He sat back and searched his mind, trying to replay the images that he had created in his mind.
She was there.
Not his dream girl, Jill.
She was sitting under a tree in a flowing white gown, holding a red rose in perfect contrast to the dress. All around small white flowers were raining down from the tree, which he noticed was a willow, its branches long and majestic, with long beautiful vines reaching almost to the ground. Behind the willow was a lake, and a small boat for two. Jack walked over to Jill and put out his hand near hers. She took his hand and the two walked down towards the shore of the lake. He helped her into the boad and then climbed in himself. He rowed slowly off in a random direction, not having any specific destination, happy simply to be with her. As he rowed on she looked around at all the amazing sights, the birds in the sky, fish in the lake, rabbits in the field by the shore.
Soon the lake narrowed and Jack noticed that he was rowing down a small canal. Both banks of the canal were lined with willows, creating a beautiful canopy over the small boat. He kept rowing, as if he knew what was up ahead, knew where he was goin...
And in a few minutes their destination became visible to him, a dock on one side of the bank, and a white bridge spanning the canal a little bit ahead of that. He pointed to it and Jill looked over. She looked back and smiled with the same smile she had given him in chemistry the day before.
He arrived at the dock and tied the boat down, then escorted Jill onto the dock. They walked hand in hand over to the bridge, and started across it. As they got to the center of the bridge, they stopped and looked in the direction he had been rowing.
Beautiful...
They were looking at the most gorgeous sunset that Jack had ever seen...it was so beautiful that he could barely believe he had imagined it.
And as the sun was setting, he looked into Jill's eyes, and she looked into his. And he leaned forward, and she did too. And as they got nearer and nearer to one another their eyes closed, and just as they were touching, they puckered their lips, ready for that tantilizing kiss, and...
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Huh?"
As the world came back into focus, Jack saw the other kids in his class filing out of the room, and realized that he had had the dream again, he really did fall asleep...
"DAMN!" He scrambled to grab his things and got out of his seat and headed for the door.
As he walked out of the room, Jack thought to himself that he had really missed a lot of school over the past two days...he decided he would try to pay attention when he got to history.
Jack decided that in trying to pay more attention in class, he would simply stop thinking about Jill…Yeah, right.
The more he tried not to think about her, the more he happened to think of her.
The more that he thought of her, the more he needed to see her again, any way possible.
Of course, he thought.
He pulled out the sketchbook. He began to draw.
It wasn’t his typical style. Instead of a symbolic picture, he instead decided on something realistic, something from memory, something to simply satisfy his desires for her image.
He drew the lake. He illustrated his dream. There was the bank of the river, he wanted to see more, the picture started to take shape. First the water, then the willow. The soft sand, the long grass, more and more the forms from the dream became a reality. And then he started on the figure. But he wondered, how could he possibly capture the beauty of such a divine creature? “There’s no point in this, I couldn’t possibly…”
But he did, and the succeeded. As he started to work on her image, he noticed how carefully he was working. He noticed his hand movements as he gently sculpted her features; the delicate lines of her cheek, the softness of her brow. Her eyes were the most difficult, he wanted nothing more than to capture the look in her eyes from that day back in chemistry. He tried as hard as he could, but finally, he knew, it was impossible. He wanted to succeed, but he could not.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but Jill was not a rose. Jack could not capture the divine beauty of Jill, could not begin to understand what made her beautiful, could not draw her the way he wanted to.
“Dammit.” Jack’s feeling of defeat swept over him and he knew that he had failed on two counts; the first was that he failed to concentrate during class, he had no idea what class he was in, nor what he was supposed to be working on. The second was trying to remind himself of Jill’s stare, the stare that he couldn’t get out of his head and yet couldn’t re-create on paper. The piercing stare that he longed to see again.
As the bell rang Jack felt his failure sweep over him, and as he headed to lunch (he realized he was back in English class), he tried not to think about the hour of self-loathing he had in front of him.
Sitting alone in his spot, he looked around for something worth seeing, there was nothing. He turned away to keep from looking at anything and simply stared off into the sky, focusing on the clouds and the way they moved; so lightly, weightlessly, divinely.
“Um?”
Jack blinked his eyes, someone was near him.
He looked around, and froze in wonderment.
“Jill?”
She was standing there, more gorgeous than he had ever seen her in his mind. She had on a brown corduroy jacket and a small white skirt, sexy but not skanky. He looked at her and wondered how anyone so beautiful could ever walk on this earth…
She gazed at him with the same look as she had given him a few days earlier. The look that pierced the soul, that gave wonderment and amazement to the mind…
“What are you doing here all alone?” Her voice broke the beautiful silence with an even more beautiful sound.
“I..I’m here because, this is my spot…This is my place, where I feel free.”
“free from what?”
“From everything, school, humanity, stupidity, superficiality, ignorance, recklessness…Free.”
“Why do you want to be free?”
“Because there is so much that I cant stand, I need to be free. It’s like meditation, I come here to escape the realities I hate so much. What are YOU doing here?”
“Well, I, I mean, I kinda came, to see you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. I know a lot of people, but they’re all too fake for me, I want to know someone that is real, you know, like you, someone who looks for places to escape, and who has things that they want to escape from.”
“But you’re superficial, look at you…”
“What? You mean my clothes? My hair? My friends? Looking good doesn’t mean I’m superficial, it means that I like looking good. You do what you want to feel good, and I do what I want. By the way, it wouldn’t hurt for you to clean up your style a little bit.”
“so now you’re gonna criticize me?”
“No, I didn’t mean that, I just meant that we all have our own ways of doing things, I just wanna know more about you’re ways.”
“Jill, in case you didn’t notice, I’m about the most unpopular kid in school, I have 2 friends and low grades. I don’t care about much, but what I do care about very few people have ever even hard about. And for the record, I’m neither good looking nor a “bad boy.””
“I never said I was looking for a bad boy or a knockout. I was looking at you.”
“well then, I guess I could pencil you into my life…”
He pulled out the sketchbook and looked at it for a second.
“Sit down, I want to show you something.”
She sad down beside him and he opened the book. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of his sketches, his tormented images staight from his soul. He saw her eyes light up as he came to the sketches from his dreams, of the beautiful landscapes and the rolling hills, the clam river and the weeping willows.
“This is my escape.”
“Oh my God, they’re beautiful.”
“Not…as beautiful as you…”
With that her eyes moved up from the pages and onto his face, she gazed at him, but not like before with her questioning stare. This was a look that gave him the feeling that he could one eye on the side of his head and an ear on his nose and she wouldn’t care…
She continued to stare at him, and he slowly reached for her hand. As her hand closed around his, they started to lean forward.
Jack had never kissed a girl, he didn’t know what to expet, what to do, he was nervous.
But his nervousness was premature, because right as they got close enough to where he could hear her breath, the bell rang.
A startled Jill looked away from Jack and she stood up suddenly.
“Um, I gotta go…” She said as she started to move away.
“Wait!” Jack called.
“Here.” She grabbed his sketchbook and pencil and wrote something down quickly…
“Use it.” Was all she said as she took off toward class.
When she had gone, he took the sketchbook in his hand once again. He looked down to where she had scribbled somtihng…..
It was her phone number.