Wednesday, June 21, 2006

JADE: The First Chapter of a Not-Very-Good Zombie Story from the Nerd's Childhood

After finding the undelivered letter to my cousin, posted below, I’ve become a bit obsessed with my old correspondences, notebooks, book reports, diaries, anything. I was looking through a box of old notebooks when I found one on the verge of disintegration. In it is a story called “Jade,” that I wrote when I was around 10 or 11 years old (additionally, on what’s left of the cover of the spiral bound notebook, I’ve drawn a pair of giant hearts that are linked together by a smaller heart. In the giant hearts, I’ve written in careful cursive letters “Christian Slater” and “Sabila K.”). The story, which I suspect is unfinished, consists of seven (not very good) chapters.

And now, for your reading (dis)pleasure, I present to you the first chapter of the zombie thriller “Jade”! I’ll try to keep my present-day parenthetical comments to a minimum.

Summary:
A group of college students from Kettleburg University, an all boys prep college (what exactly is an all boys prep college?), find a way to communicate with the dead. Now the college doors are locked by a supernatural power, the phone lines are dead because of the hurricane that is raging outside and a terror caused by the mystical power of Jade is taking over.

Story:

Zach (because all cute boys back in the day seemed to be called Zach) Thompson, a junior at Kettleburg University was sitting outside campus (outside campus? What’s that?) and enjoying the autumn leaves that were on the ground around him.

Zach was a good looking blonde and had no trouble making friends. First of all, his family was one of the riches in all of NY and he was also one of the smartest guys at Kettleburg, which was located in Southern California (a hurricane in SoCal?). He wasn’t the snobby type, like some of his friends. He liked small towns instead of big cities. He enjoyed the country air instead of noisy streets and he liked trees instead of tall skyscrapers. He was a little old fashioned, but that was his style.

“Hi Mike,” Zach said as he saw his friendly but snobby friend.

A twinkle appeared in Michael Edwards’ green eyes when he heard Zach greet him.

“Hey Zach, how’s it going?” Mike asked with a childish look on his face (huh?) that made him look more like a high school freshman than a college freshman

Zach had always been like a big brother to Mike. They had grown up together despite the age difference. Ever since Michael’s older brother Nick died in a car crash, Zach had always stayed with him like Nick used to. Plus, Zach’s father, David Thompson, and Mike’s father, Marshall Edwards, were good friends and business partners.

Michael was spoiled by his family. He got everything he asked for. Ever since Nick died, he got more attention than ever. He usually caused trouble but was never struck by trouble itself (damn, that’s deep).

He always wanted to do with Zach did. Mike got into Harvard and Princeton but came to Kettleburg because Zach went to school there (how Felicity of him). He shopped at the same stores Zach shopped, got the same hair style that Zach had, and said everything that Zach said (how very single white female of him). It was a pain to Zach but he was used to his friend.

“Okay,” Zach responded to Mike’s question.

“Working hard as usual, Mr. Brain?” Mike asked as he pulled out a pocket-sized mirror and started to comb his black hair.

“Hey, look who’s talking. I wasn’t 15 points away from a perfect score on the SATs.”

“Well, excuse me,” Mike said with a funny look on his face. “I can’t help it if I’m smart, okay.”

“Har, har, har,” Zach joked. He looked at his watch and suddenly stood up. “Hey, I’m late for Psychology. Catch you later or Mr. Ross is going to blow a fuse.” He cursed at himself silently for being late as he ran towards the building, leaving Mike staring at him in disbelief (what’s so unbelievable about this anyway?).

Zach entered his psychology class right on time. As he took his place, he looked around at the small classroom. It was the same boys in the same building, and the same balding teacher. And then he realized that he would have to sit through the same 30 minutes of boring lectures.

*End of chapter 1. I’ll post the second chapter up tomorrow.

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