Parallel Beginnings

I've finally updated Theoretically Speaking on inkpop! I had so much rewrites to do and just last night, my USB ( the one I just bought) stopped working. Thankfully, I learned from my last mistake and had everything backed up.

But anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about today. I've been editing STA for a while now (on and off), and every time I'm done with it, I always try to work on its sequel. After restarting the beginning of Say It Once (the sequel) more times than I can count, I was finally satisfied with the last beginning. What I have in mind for the sequel is to have a parallel (more or less parallel) beginning and ending to STA. I changed the beginning of STA a while back and I think this new idea works better. At least I'm hoping it does :P

Here's the rewritten beginning of STA and the beginning of SIO:

Second Time Around - Chapter 1:

Jane and I stared at the five pictures aligned on my bed, showing in embarrassing detail my disastrous fall in the mud puddle last month at the park.

She shook her head and laughed at the last picture. “Your eyes look like they’re ready to pop out of your head.”

I groaned. “I know.”

She pointed to the second picture, which showed my brief moment in the air, right before my butt landed in the mud to make its glorious splash. “This reminds me of freshman year.”

Oh God, I thought, remembering the fall we both had when trying out for the soccer team. Like most of my embarrassing moments, it had been captured on camera and was forever remembered.

“Why was there a pile of clothes there?” she asked as she leaned closer to the pictures.

I sighed and walked to my closet, ready to put the Forest Incident behind, just like I had done with all of my other embarrassing incidents. “They took my clothes while I was changing.”

Jane nodded matter-of-factly as if it all made perfect sense. “You did have it coming for you.”

I turned back and blinked at her. “I broke up with Logan an hour before. How was I supposed to know that his friends would make me run around a forest in my underwear?”

Jane snorted. “It’s called Karma, Ave. Nothing personal," she said with a shrug. "And look at it this way: I would've done the same if I were them." And knowing her, she most likely would have.

Say It Once - Chapter 1:

“You look like Rudolph.”

“She was Rudolph.”

“She’s missing the antlers.”

I glared at both Lucas and Jane before grabbing the pictures off the living room floor. They both laughed and Jane, my best friend, smirked before she walked to the kitchen.  

“I told you to stop carrying that camera around and taking pictures of people. Four years later, you still don’t listen. Karma’s a bitch, Ave,” she called over her shoulder. I rolled my eyes.

“Jane, you need to get over it.” During last month’s Spirit Day – which also happened to be Jane’s Bad Hair Day – I had gone around taking pictures. I’d forgotten to delete her picture from the batch and the newspaper’s editor had used it as the front page of this month’s issue. The paper sold like it never had before, and Jane never let me forget it. “The picture wasn’t even that bad,” I said, reaching over to snatch one of my Rudolph pictures from Lucas’s hand. He moved it out of my reach in time and pulled me by the waist.

He grinned down at me and kissed the tip of my nose. “You make a hot Rudolph, McAdams.”

 “Haha.” I tried to reach behind him but didn’t succeed at much. “Luke, give me the picture.”

Jane came back with a glass of water and shook her head. “Don’t give it to her.”

“Jane, this picture is a thousand times worse than yours was.” She stared at me over her glass of water, unmoved. “I’m wearing a leotard!”

“And tights,” Lucas added, his eyes back to the picture.

I glared at him. Sometimes I wondered how he and I were still together after a whole year.