Here’s the intro to the most recent draft I’m working with. What’s changed from earlier drafts:
- Lyra is no longer so angry (and immature); in fact, she’s the opposite; she holds in her emotions.
- Jonah’s text about God not wanting their relationship to work now has greater significance in my “post-religious” world.
- I try to explain the world my characters live in.
- I try to get to the action quickly.
I don’t yet have feedback on this from other readers; I think it’s good, but I also know I can’t rely on my judgement alone. Something may be clear in my head, but I may not have explained it well on paper. I struggle with believability (especially when dealing with an improbable scenario–super cells–to begin with.) I don’t yet know if I’m making my readers roll their eyes, but at this stage, that’s ok. I’m just trying to fix up my story the best way I know how right now; fixing it up the story the best way others know how comes later.
Feel free to let me know what you think.
God?
God?
Lyra slides down her locker to the cold hard floor, cell phone in hand, staring at the text from her boyfriend Jonah. Staring at the text from, it seems, her now ex-boyfriend Jonah.
God doesn’t want our relationship to work. Sorry.
It’s Monday afternoon in mid-June, the last week of Lyra’s last year of high school. The day’s final shrill bell has rung and kids spill into the hall. It’s an unusually warm spring day in Thorin Hill, a normally temperate northeastern Atlantic coastal town, and the students are impatient to surge outside. They shout, and slam lockers and stampede toward the door.
Lyra, by contrast, does not move. She sits still, a rock around which the swell of students swirls.
God.
Lyra doesn’t understand. No one invokes God these days. Any mention of God or religion is an archaic throwback to the Conflicts, the period of time decades ago before their world evolved into a post-religious society. Post religion doesn’t mean anti-religion, of course. There’s no law against religion. People are free to speak of God, worship or practice any sort of religion if they choose; it’s just that no one chooses. No one needs to. The idea of a higher being, an all-knowing ephemeral, intangible deity who controls the lives of humans is simply irrelevant. It took time for people to move beyond religion, but they did it in a natural, organic evolution. No politician, group or organization coerced the population of the First World to such views. People finally realized that years, decades, centuries of conflicts—prejudice, assaults, wars, genocides—were often the result of strict religious dogma and the more they questioned their belief in God, in spirituality, in religion, the more it dissolved, like tendrils of clouds dissipating into the sky. It’s not that people mourned the death of God; it’s that God likely never existed in the first place.
Why, then, would Jonah speak of God? That worries her more than him breaking up with her. They’d been growing apart for a while; Lyra had suspected that the end of high school would be the end of their relationship and it saddened her, but God?
Lyra closes her eyes, the din of halls seeping into her head, making it hurt. She clutches the phone, her hands folded against her chest.
God. It doesn’t make sense.
“Hey, Lee-Ree, what’s up? You’re as pale as a ghost.” Ivy, Lyra’s younger sister, nudges her with her wedge sandals and laughs at her own lame joke. Lyra is always pale, her skin milky white, ghost white. Snow white. That’s her dad’s nickname for her. With her long dark raven hair and her large, jewel-green eyes, her dad insists Lyra is the human embodiment of the fairy tale character.
When Lyra says nothing, Ivy crouches low, peering at her sister’s face. “What is it?” she asks, serious now. Lyra blinks a few times, then hands Ivy her phone.
Ivy scans the text, her Cinderella-blue eyes widening. “What the hell?”
Lyra leans her head against the cool metal locker, despondent.
“This is bad,” Ivy says. “Has he ever mentioned God before?” She looks up and down the hall, as if the swarm of students in front of her has the answers.
Lyra shakes her head. Jonah talking about God would be as likely as Jonah talking about his feelings.
Ivy bounces up and tugs Lyra’s hand. “You gotta find him, you know that.”
Lyra sighs, and gets to her feet. She’s taller and thinner than her petite sister. “Mom’s waiting,” Lyra says. She drifts toward the front of the school.
“Dad’s flight doesn’t get in for another hour,” Ivy plants her feet and crosses her arms. “Find out what’s going on with Jonah first. You know it’s more important.”
Lyra wants to ignore her sister, but she’s afraid Ivy’s right. With what’s been happening these past few months, Jonah’s comment warrants attention.
But he wouldn’t… not Jonah…
Ivy follows on Lyra’s heels, eager for answers. The girls turn the corner into the school’s grand entrance hall, a neo-gothic monstrosity of stone arches and pillars. Kids still mill about the open space, their shouts and cries echoing around the hall. Lyra spots a familiar figure across the way and stops short at the sight of her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—hovering near the heavy oak door. Jonah is the same height as Lyra, and thin, too, like her. He’s lean and wiry with a mop of tangled brown curls, and usually juts out his chin with a cocky confidence, but now he hunches his shoulders as if he carries the weight of the world. Lyra’s heart hammers, her pulse races. She senses, more than understands, that Jonah’s posture is a harbinger.
It can’t be true…
Jonah’s eyes lock on Lyra’s. She sees anguish, guilt, sorrow, hurt. She knows him better than anyone since they’d been dating for almost a year, yet his stare is that of a stranger’s. It strangles her, crushes her. Pained, she reaches out as if her hand could bridge the divide between them, but at the same moment Jonah opens his black coat and Lyra knows why he’s wearing it on such a hot day. Lyra sucks in a breath—it should have been her last—as Jonah raises his hand, presses the detonator and blows up the school.