MeganDaniels

Thanks so much, Brady!

Opening scene/Chapter 1 of A Break in the Sky - Introduces our protagonist, the tone of the novel, and context as to why the protagonist may be on the run. This scene also includes the inciting incident at the end of the chapter that derails our protagonist's life and drives the novel. There is a brief prologue that precedes this chapter but does not include our protagonist, so I thought this a better sample to use for the purpose of this post. Chapter One “If you leave, you’ll lose everyone here. Everything. Your home. Aren’t you afraid of that? Aren’t you afraid of losing it all? Losing me?” “Don’t forget, we are doing unforgivable things.” I am not her. Breath rattles in my chest like bits of glass. My legs move in rhythm – steps of four. The count keeps my head a clear dull white, old wallpaper lining the inside of my skull. The water I run beside is freezing for a November in Chicago, but because of that, most people avoid it. It’s like I have the entire Great Lake to myself – an old quiet friend who never questions why I appreciate this cold so much, who never wonders why I love the precious numbness it brings to my skin, the sting to my eyes, the assault of dry air to my lungs. In two days, I’m supposed to start a surgery rotation. Standard for a third-year medical student. Difficult but doable, like running in November in Chicago. It’s not much different than November was in New York. This is who I am, yes – a near doctor, a potential graduate, a normal twenty-four-year-old. A runner, but not a dreamer, not a reminiscer. My pace quickens. The ache in my thighs, the burn in my chest just enough to push the thought of New York to the back of my head. But the memory of last night’s nightmare forces itself to the spot behind my eyes, where it’s easily recollected. No, I am not her. By the time I make it back to my apartment, it’s close to noon. My phone, left on my bed, flashes with two texts from Ben and one from Lydia. The boyfriend, the best friend. Yes, that is who I am. A best friend. A girlfriend. Ben wishes me a good morning, wonders how I’m spending the day. Lydia asks if I want to go out tonight for one last chance at a social hoopla before surgical rotations begin. As if my social life is normally booming with activity. I text Lydia no. She replies to be ready by nine. She is the one souvenir I have from New York that I haven’t been able to shake. She’s terribly annoying and incredibly persistent, but she’s burrowed deeply, the groundhog of my soul. She’s stitched herself a home there in a way that if she left, it would be like a part of me has torn free. I toss my phone onto my bed, but it bounces off and lands on the floor. The back pops off. Lydia refers to it as my burner phone. She begs me to get a new one, a smart phone with lots of access – the internet in your pocket, the world at your fingertips! She forgets how traceable those are. I shower languidly, taking my time, digging my fingers into my temples when I lather my hair like I can drag last night’s nightmare right out through the thinnest part of my skull. I’m late meeting Ben for coffee, show up with damp hair, ends frozen stiff from the cold. A barista calls out Amy when my order is up. Six years of Amy. Yes, I am Amy. Yes, that is who I am. Amy, Amy, Amy. Amy who grew up in a foster home, hence her lack of parents. Amy who is studious and excels at science and math. Amy who loves simple tasks like test-taking and running, especially running. Amy who even got asked to be on the University of Chicago track and field team in undergrad after the coach spotted her running around campus but declined because she was afraid of what that would mean for her anonymity. Amy who was a hop, skip, and one Lydia away from being a recluse. Ben on the other hand is beautiful and quiet, sort of like the sunrise, or maybe like the streets during a blizzard, when no one is outside, when it’s just the dusting of flurries and flakes on plush cotton hills of snow. Sometimes, like the chirping of a bird early in the morning, he will have soft musings. We met the summer I graduated college, back when I was so unsure of what to do with myself, I’d had an existential crisis every time I looked in the mirror. Lydia agreed to a summer internship in New York City – a dream! A real dream! You can come, please come! But she knew I could never go back to New York. When she left, it was like Ben appeared by magic, a sign from the universe that I could not be left alone to unravel my thoughts from their tangled ball of memory yarn, that I needed distraction. I bumped into Ben – no, literally, my coffee spilled onto his shirt, his hot chocolate into my hair – in Ebelskiver’s, a gimmicky pancake restaurant that would exist nowhere better than it did in a college town. My summer became occupied by the tight grooves of his body. When Lydia returned, she was surprised, was proud of me for keeping him around longer than a night of blissful pleasure, for not adding his number to the blocked graveyard and drowning myself in my textbooks. What she really meant to say, and what she’d never actually vocalize, was that she was proud of me for finally moving on. But as I sat here now with Ben in Ebelskiver’s, watching my reflection in my black coffee, it was hard to shake the nightmare from last night. The dreams, they always lassoed me back, dragging me into the past, a rope around my throat the moment I thought myself free. My mind could never just let me be. Let me love Ben like he wants. Let me live in Chicago happily. Let me worry just of early mornings, and long shifts, and medical school. Any other third year med student would be pulling their hair out, submerged in medical jargon to memorize, case studies to research, pig skin to stitch up; but it became hard to focus on those things when my mind had taken to the plague again. There were phases. Months of peace followed by months of egregiously sleepless nights, all of which were better than the nights I did fall asleep, only to be tossed back along the Hudson. Purple lights glowing beneath the water. Wind whipping her hair. A hand in hers, warm, rough, holding tightly, fingers woven together like cross stitch. “My everything, my everything.” “Amy?” I look up from my coffee reflection to see Ben peering at me, hooded eyes concerned. He’s wearing his big glasses – the black plastic ones that make me think of Harry Potter. He hates bitter things, so like always, he sips a hot chocolate. “I am a bitter thing,” I told him once. “You’re like the sour sugar on candy,” he’d said. “Complex. Interesting. Layered. But not bitter.” “Yeah?” I say. “Did I lose you?” “Hm?” “You . . . disassociated, as you like to say.” I smile at the word. He remembers all my words, a classic boyfriend, so good on paper. Disassociating was such a problem for me, especially when I first got to Chicago with Lydia. Staring off into space, coming back and realizing I had started to cry and Lydia was rubbing my back and holding a tissue to my nose and saying I was an ugly crier so that I’d laugh instead. “Sorry.” I take a swig of my coffee. I gulp more than I should and feel it burn on the way down. “Lots on my mind.” “I bet,” he says, reaching across the table to take my hand. He nudges a half-eaten Nutella stuffed pancake out of the way. “Surgery is a huge commitment.” His hand is smooth. Until I came here with Lydia, hers was the only soft hand I’d ever touched. Ben went to prep school. His mother was an attorney general in Delaware and his father was the CEO of a tech company in San Francisco. He grew up bicoastal and wealthy. One home was on the beach; the other had a spiral staircase and an elevator. His hands had never seen labor, and as a soon-to-be lawyer, they never would. “Do you think it’s a field you’d want to specialize in?” He always asks this at the start of each new rotation. “Maybe.” I hadn’t given it much thought. He sighs. I am the Queen of Maybes. Do you want to spend the night? Maybe. Do you want to come to California to meet my family for Christmas? Maybe. Do you want to get married one day? Maybe. To me? Maybe. Have my kids? Maybe. Maybe always meant no. I wasn’t sure if he knew that. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to admit it to myself. But if anyone knew what maybe meant, it was Lydia, who wouldn’t allow that bullshit in our apartment. “Do you want to go to a party with me?” she’d ask. “Maybe.” “Change now,” she’d say. “Are you okay?” Ben asks. I force a smile. It pulls at my cheeks so unnaturally, I wonder if my muscles can hold it for long. “Yeah, of course.” He gnaws on his lower lip and swirls his hot chocolate, watching the foam on top dissolve in the center. “You sleeping alright?” I make sure my smile doesn’t falter. “Like a baby.” “Like a baby,” he repeats to himself. I don’t ask why he wants to know – it’s clear he noticed something wrong in the middle of the night. Either that I screamed and shot up in bed, or changed out of my sweaty clothes in the corner, or left to splash cold water on my face. He could’ve noticed a myriad of things, but when I returned to bed, he had kept his eyes closed and his breath even. “Listen, I should go,” I tell him, throwing back another too-big glug of coffee and savoring the burn. “Lydia wants me to . . .” I try to come up with something. Usually, I’m good at lying, but I’m tired and the exhaustion creates a fog in my head that slows my cogs. Really, I just want to nap, want it to be a black landscape of nothing, want to trade the possibility of good dreams for the promise of no bad ones, want to see nothing instead. “Right,” Ben says. He doesn’t like to see me struggle for words. “Text me when you get home?” “Sure.” When we stand and walk outside together, he gives me a kiss and an I love you, and then we head in opposite directions. We live on different sides of town. By the time I get back to the apartment, Lydia is waiting with a black dress on a hanger. It’s looped on the back of her chair at the kitchen table, where she enjoys a sandwich. The type is indiscernible – I definitely smell peanut butter, but also hear a crunch when she bites down. A box of Cheerios sits off to the side, and upon closer inspection, a few of the tan O’s can be seen poking through the crust of the bread. Lydia tucks her red hair behind her ear and rests her chin between her pointer finger and thumb. She dabs the corners of her mouth with a napkin and gets up. She is striking company to have, with her vibrant hair and emerald eyes and line of interested suitors. Her social life could rival that of the most popular of sorority girls, yet she has made the conscious decision to live with me for the past six years. “You’re wearing this.” Lydia indicates the dress. “I’m not going out tonight,” I say, heading to the kitchen. There are some lingering dishes beside the sink that Lydia graciously left for me to wash, so I lather a sponge and avoid her gaze. “Ben will be there.” I roll my eyes. When Lydia waits for an actual remark, I mutter, “So?” She appears beside me, footsteps surprisingly quiet considering the clickety-clacking she is capable of in her high-heeled boots, and still, it baffles me that she does not take them off immediately upon entering our home. She turns off the sink despite the suds all over my hands. “Then break up with him,” she dares. I revert to chewing on my bottom lip in place of saying anything. “What? You want to be an asshole? You want to drag that boy along for years? Break up if you hate seeing him.” I grab a towel, wipe the soap from my hands, leave the dirty dish on the counter. I don’t hate seeing him. Say it out loud, say it out loud. It seems to stick to the insides of my mouth the more I try. Instead, I place my hands on my hips and just stare at Lydia, who stands at least two inches shorter than me despite the shoes lifting her up. Still, her presence is inflatable. It can fill a room from corner to corner. “I know you’ve been having the dreams again,” she says. No, I am not her. My arms fall, and I try to step around Lydia, toward my room. She knows I will do anything to escape that conversation, knows I am prone to sidestep deflection and plummet into avoidance. But Lydia swivels to block me and extends her arms to either side of the threshold of my bedroom door. “You screamed last night. I heard you through the wall. Ben is worried. He texted me about it.” Easily, I could push past her, but she’s confident in the fact that I won’t. In reality, she is all I have and all I trust. She is a bridge I could never burn. “Ben will be fine.” Lydia’s eyes hold mine. “You’re screaming his name.” No, please. Please, I am not her. My fingers find the spot above my brows, and I push there in an effort to prevent the inevitable headache encroaching. I try to shove the image of him out from behind my eyes, try to pick it from the crevices it likes to hide in and lock it back in the dark nook where it belongs. “Ben will be fine,” I say again. And to prevent any further questioning, I add, “I’ll go out and wear your dress. Just let this be.” Reluctantly, after a few seconds of prolonged eye contact, Lydia lets her arms drop. Immediately, I pass by her and close my bedroom door behind me. Breathe in, breath out. You are not her anymore. You have nothing to worry about. They are just dreams, and you are free, and you will be a doctor, and you will help people, and you will never be her again. Never again. Never again. * There’s loud music and gyrating bodies and the smell of liquor and Ben’s arm over my shoulders. He can fit in anywhere, easy, flowing like a river wherever he goes. I feel tense in a club, an overload to my senses. Ben has a beer in his free hand, a dopey grin smeared across his face. His curly dark hair sits atop his head like a mop. He just finished an exam that afternoon, after we parted ways, so he’s breathing easy now. He could go anywhere after this last year of law school, but he’s trying to stay in Chicago because of me. He should come to his senses, return to reality, realize what I am. The entire evening, I’ve been trying to recall the dream I had last night, the one that made me scream. It’s hard for me to remember anything beyond the feeling of dread left behind. Instead, a different memory forces its way in: One of blood on my hands, a head in my lap, warm tears on my face. Then another: red braids, a fire, a baby crying. All things I’ve worked hard to scrape clean from the spot behind my eyes. The head so heavy. The blood so dark. The tears so warm. “Shots?” Lydia shouts against the music. I blink at her. “I have rounds in –” “In two days. Not tomorrow. Live a little.” Ben squeezes my shoulder as Lydia calls the bartender over. “What are you thinking about?” he asks. I pay him a smile and lie. “Surgery.” “You’ll do fine,” he assures before kissing me on the side of the head. When Lydia returns with tequila shots, I don’t question her. I just take one, shoot it back, savor the burn. When she asks to dance, I do, and when Ben asks to dance, I do. And when more shots are brought I do those, too. And slowly, I become less like a glass sculpture and more like the sand that makes it. Eventually, I reach a point where I can forget what I want to forget, can kiss Ben and laugh with Lydia. I can sway to the music and toss my head back against Ben’s shoulder. I can skirt the past and live under the flashing lights and booming bass, where it is safe. Ben wants to come home with us, with me. He really wants to move in with me, but I’ve said no to that more times than I can count. He spends a lot of time in our apartment, and it’s silly to pay rent for his own place when he’s never there, and he loves waking up beside me, he’s tried to justify. I can’t say yes to him, but for tonight, I can let him lead me down my hallway with Lydia a few steps behind. I can relish the warmth I know his soft hands will bring to my skin. I can forget about everything else. I fumble with my key as Ben hushes our drunken giggles. The moment I open the door, I fall silent and the keys slip from my fingers, clattering against the hardwood. It becomes the loudest thing I have ever heard. Time is slow, is thick in the air as it stalls. I turn to Lydia, who immediately knows something is wrong, but cannot stop me before I quickly say, “Make sure Ben gets home,” and close the door behind me. I click the deadbolt into place and ignore her shouting from the other side. I have to risk the second I take to inhale, because I know everything will change the moment I turn around. I regret the drinks, regret the swirl in my head, the stickiness of my reflexes. I even regret moving to Chicago when it becomes clear I should’ve gone somewhere further, somewhere more obscure, somewhere alone and without Lydia. When I spin, I have to keep my hand on the doorknob to stay stationary, to stop my knees from giving out like they are merely loose balls in rickety sockets. “Taylor,” I manage. He is sitting on my living room sofa, leaning back, one dirty boot propped on the coffee table as if he’s been waiting a while. He looks as he has always looked – sun-kissed skin, a bandana folded thin and tied around his forehead to keep his chin-length hair out of his eyes, an unbuttoned red plaid shirt over a grey hoodie. His face remains expressionless – a blank slate – when his eyes meet mine. “Amber.” I have not heard that name in six years.