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Catnap 🌙💜🐱
Smilling Critters, draw by me! (I'm author) 🌙💜🐱
First chapter of my book
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.Beep. Beep. SLAM!
Alice Veroux slammed her fist down on her alarm. She glared at the clock.
5:15. She groaned.
"Why does morning come so soon!?!?!?"
She put her pillow over her face and exhaled. Its the first day of school. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. She grabbed her school uniform and towel off her dresser and went to the bathroom.
She breathed in the familiar smell of her vanilla and rose soap. I don't want to go. I want to crawl back to bed. Maybe have a blueberry Poptart and watch some anime. She turned off the water and dried off. Her long lavender hair fell like waterfalls of satin behind her back, curling at the ends flirtatiously. Her uniform fit loosely around her petite body. She frowned as she looked down at her chest. This uniform definitely isn't flattering. She gazed in the mirror and sighed at the pale reflection. She pinned her hair up in two panda buns like Sailor Moon. She put on purple eye shadow, winged eyeliner, mascara, blush, and pink lip gloss.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Get out of the bathroom I need to finish getting ready for work!" Anthony pounded harder on the door.
"Okay!" Alice pulled up her white knee high socks and then slipped into her blue and white shoes. She checked the time.
6:15. Shit. No time for breakfast.
She opened the door after grabbing her crescent moon shaped backpack and wand. "Give me $10." She reached for his wallet in his pocket.
Anthony grabbed his wallet before she could steal it. "What? Why?" He held it above her reach.
"No time for breakfast." She flicked her wand and $10 came out of the wallet into Alice's hand. "Thanks." She muttered sarcastically.
Anthony rolled his eyes. She heard him yelling your welcome as she slammed the door.
She glanced down at her clock. 6:20. I'm going to have to run. She glanced down at her backpack that had 3 textbooks. This is going to be fun. She sighed and started running. Alice got to the train station and looked at her clock. 6:28. Two minutes early. Alice exhaled sharply trying to catch her breath.
"Need this?" A dark husky voice was low in her ear. Followed by the scent of mint and cologne.
Alice tensed up and looked up. An 18 year old boy looked at her smiling holding a water bottle. Alice's aqua blue eyes darkened into a stormy blue gray and she glared at him.
The boy was caught in her glare, like a bug trapped in a spiders web. It's as if she's staring into my very soul, condemning me to a hellish death of fire and misery.
"No". Alice backhanded the bottle.
He watched, as if in slow motion, as the bottle hit the tracks below being hit by the nearby train. He looked up only to see the ends of her hair waving goodbye in the wind as she entered her train.
Pfft. What a creep. Alice sat in a vacant seat. She pulled out her iphone and headphones and listened to music. She sighed blissfully as she stared out the window, her favorite part of the day had always been the train rides to and from school.
Her stop came up and she got off. She was surprised by the size of the college. It looked like it never ended. Alice's brother had taken her stuff the night before insisting her to stay for breakfast. So much for that. Her stomach growled and she looked at the school map for the cafe.
She found it with ease and ordered a vanilla bean Frappuccino with coconut milk and a blueberry bagel. Her first class started at 8:05 so she had 30 minutes to kill.
She walked around until she found her class, healing magic. All she had to do now was wait.
Lorax Rewrite Excerpt
Without focusing on Ted, the story can start earlier and show more of Once-ler's background trying to sell his Thneed. What bad influences did he have when it came to running a business? Some of the advice in this chapter are real things I've been told...
Excerpt below:
He pulled the Thneed from his neck, and spread it on the table. "Ah, you know what, let me just show you."
"It's brilliant," said the main representative immediately.
He was the shortest man and wore a sleek white suit. "The audacity is stunning. It's the perfect balance between essential and useless. Whimsical enough to capture the imagination, yet quaint enough to be marketed as a necessity. This is, indeed, something everyone needs. We would just have to make it out of a better material. For the most part, there's not a single thing that could be improved. However…" He looked up from his spinny chair at the long table. "There's one problem."
His colleagues in smaller chairs around him nodded their heads knowingly.
"Whaddya mean?" asked Once-ler.
The salesman pressed his fingers together and leaned forward. "To sell a product, you need to have a certain degree of charisma," he explained. "The creator's image is even more important than the thing itself when it comes to commerce. That is, you can't just come into a company in your dirty lumberjack clothes, dragging a mule, singing out of tune, and expect to be a success."
Once-ler turned red. There were no barns in North Nitch, so he'd been taking Melvin everywhere with him on a leash. The buildings were so big it hadn't occurred to him there was anything wrong with it. Plus Melvin was such a well-behaved mule, or maybe it was just that he hadn't had any human friends in so long, Once-ler had unconsciously started to think of him as a person.
He also resented his spiffy new outfit being called dirty lumberjack clothes. The fashion of his old town must've looked that way to outsiders no matter how new or clean they were. He observed the stiff, sleek blazers the businessmen wore and took note.
"There seem to be two of you here right now, Mr. Ler," the salesman said, and Once-ler got the feeling he wasn't talking about the fact that he'd brought his mule.
"On one hand, I see a powerful inventor with an ingenious work ethic, capable of bringing impressive ideas to life. But you can’t let humility hold you back. My advice to you is to try and think of yourself a little more selfishly, if you know what I mean."
"No, sir… Could you expand on that?"
"I mean stop thinking of yourself as someone small from a lowly background. You have to imagine yourself as bigger than everyone else."
The salesman hopped from his chair and drew his own short body to its full height in front of the towering woodsman.
"It doesn't matter if you're the tallest person in the world, if you never think you can reach anything." The businessman threw a pointed glance at a geeky young intern with glasses and braces. "Isn't that right, Aloysius?"
"I get it, Dad." The teenager rolled his eyes.
The salesman folded up the Thneed, and handed it back to Once-ler. "You have potential, but come back when your marketing strategy has improved. Have you ever read The Virtue of Selfishness? I look forward to hearing back from you. In the meantime, have you considered applying to other job options at one of the O'Hare companies?" He handed Once-ler a pamphlet.
Once-ler walked out of the building buzzing with embarrassment. He'd butchered his delivery on his first try. Why was it so easy to sing about Thneeds at his family's farm, in the forest, or the privacy of his wagon? He hadn't expected to start shaking like a leaf the instant he started playing for other people. He needed to practice.
Full story here:
