I have started rewriting everything which is, well, overwhelming to say the least.
I guess the real question I am getting at here is do I trunk VEGA? I love it, I really do but I have queried so many agents and gotten so little interest. Do I move on?
As you mull over that here is my new opening to my book...
Chapter
1
I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following
me. Watching me. As I walked into the usually bustling lobby
of the building where my doctor’s office was located, I saw that the room was
completely empty. I felt a chill come
over my body. Thoughts of terror movies
came to mind. I was in that moment where
everyone watching would be yelling at me, “GET OUT!” I tried to rid my mind of these ridiculous thoughts. I was a sixteen year old girl going to my annual check-up. Why would anyone be following me here? I walked to the elevator and pushed the up button. As I waited I scanned the room around me and saw that I was still alone. I began to laugh at myself. I needed to stop watching those cop dramas right before going to bed every night.
I realized I had been so lost in my thoughts that the elevator was standing open, waiting for me. I quickly made my way on as the door began to close behind me. Just as the door was about to shut completely, a hand appeared in the small opening. I jumped. I imagined a serial killing maniac with a butcher knife on the other side of the hand and backed up into the corner of elevator.
In the moments that it took for the elevator door to open again, my mind went into full argument mode. Part of me was telling me I was being absurd. I had been on this elevator hundreds of times before. But the other part of me was almost sure I wasn’t imagining that someone was following me. I stuck my hand into my backpack wishing that I had listened to my dad and carried the pepper spray he had given me as a birthday gift last year. Instead I found a binder full of papers and a couple of pens and pencils. I grabbed a pencil and held it in my backpack as the door finally opened completely. I looked out of the door and saw no one there.
This I was not imagining.
Even if I wasn’t in danger, this was a weird situation. Just as I was about to run out of the
elevator toward the front door of the lobby, a figure came from the left of the
door and entered the elevator. The girl
quickly hit the door shut button and I stood there staring. She looked back at me smiling. I looked away from her and then turned back
to her.
“Hey, Mia,” the girl said.I stood there dumbfounded.
The girl began to laugh.
“Don’t worry. I know exactly what you are thinking and feeling. This is the kind of moment that one can never forget,” the girl explained.
“Are you?” I finally got out.
The girl nodded.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Seventeen,” the girl responded.
I reached out my hand against the elevator wall in order to hold myself up. This was a lot to take in.
I heard the elevator start to beep, asking for us to push a button.
The girl pressed the button for the fourth floor where my doctor’s office was located, but as soon as the elevator began to move she pressed the emergency stop button.
“It probably wouldn’t be a good thing for anyone to see us together,” she said.
I nodded my head.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
Thoughts of my parent’s ultra-messy divorce flashed through my mind.
“Fine,” I said quietly. I knew that she knew I was lying but I didn’t want to talk about this.
“Did you really come here, follow me, and scare me half to death to ask me about my parents?” I asked.
“No,” she said quietly.
As she sat silently for a moment I finally got my bearings enough to ask some real questions.
“How are you here? Is this a dream?” I asked.
The girl shook her head as she said, “All of your questions will be answered but right now we don’t have enough time to get into it.”
I trusted her enough to accept that as an answer.
“You need to go to Vega,” she continued.
“Vega?” I asked. I vaguely remembered a pamphlet coming in the mail for a boarding school called Vega.
“Vega is where you will get all of your questions answered and get to do,” she said as she pointed to herself, “well, all of this.”
“Is what you do, what I think it is?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Why me?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment.
“I’m not completely sure yet. That’s something I’m trying to figure out, too,” she said.
She pressed the button to get the elevator started again. Hundreds of questions that I wanted to ask this girl raced through my mind.
I opened my mouth to ask my first question, when she stopped me.
“Don’t ask me questions you don’t really want the answers to,” she said.
The elevator doors opened and she quickly stepped off.
“Will I see you again?” I asked.
“Probably not,” she said as she hurried down the hallway.
I stood in the hall confused and amazed as I watched the future me disappear around the corner.
Any opinions would be great. And don't worry about my feelings...I have kinda become a tin can through this process so critique away...please :)