Before I post what I have been working on, I would like to give a quick explanation about my characters and why they're important to me.

I tend to write stories I never finish. It happens when I have too much time on my hands. But when I get busy, I stop writing and take care of what I need to do. Then when I start writing again, I start on other stories and don't go back to those stories, even though I meant to work on that story.

When I do try to write about the same characters, I dislike what I've done and where I'm trying to go. What I'm doing now is the second time I've done it-- taken characters I've made and completely change their stories.

In this case, Jared and Evan (the main characters) were in a fantasy-like story I was working on in high school. While I enjoyed the story they were in, it was too much like what I was reading in high school, which I've moved away from. Instead of making these two brothers something other than human, they're human and about as normal as they can be.

At the beginning of June, I started writing Evan's story. Right now, it's 47,000 words long and I don't know when it'll be completely done. When a friend on here suggested I post a story, I figured I could write something about Jared from before Evan's story.

Since I'm focusing on writing Evan's unnamed story, I really haven't worked on Jared's that much, which is currently titled "Ocean and Atlantic," (Props to those who get the reference. It was what I was listening to when I started writing.)

So, I'm going to post the first two thousand words I've wrote and post them on here, with the intentions of updating as I go along.

I guess, let me know what you think as I post! Be warned-- I change the plot around without meaning to O_o

(And sorry to the mods-- I don't mean to post twice in a row, but I had to explain why I had to explain what's going on.)

.:Edit:.

Er, well, I can't post two times in a row-- I did not know that O_o I like that, but... I'll just sit here until someone posts underneath me.

ill tune in i haven't done writing in so many years myself   

Jared Westfall didn’t think he live a privileged life. Third oldest out of four, everything amazing had already been done by his older brother or sister at some point in their lives. While Jared didn’t strive for greatness, he was overshadowed by his younger brother, Evan for his athletic talent.
But what Jared didn’t have in athletic ability like either of his brothers, or intelligence like his sister, he made up in creativity. But, that wasn’t as impressive to his parents and their peers when they discussed their children’s impressive behaviors.
Jared was just average to them. They didn’t read his stories, or look at how he handled the art of putting words down on paper, or the way his head tilted to one side when he had a brilliant idea he needed to take care of.
If they paid a bit more attention to their third child, they would see he was just as smart as his only sister, but he didn’t flaunt it. He didn’t join the debate team or the quiz bowl team. Instead, he opted for the writing club, where he felt somewhat at home, writing under the perimeters he was given.
The only time he felt at home, was when he posted what he wrote on a forum. It was where no one would judge him the one Westfall children who didn’t live up to everyone’s expectations, but as a faceless writer on a website.
But don’t get Jared wrong—while he was the odd duck in his family and didn’t fit in as well as anyone else, he still loved his family. Even though he wasn’t as close as he could be to his two older siblings, Jared was close to Evan, his younger brother by a year or so.
While everyone else wrote off Jared as someone who just didn’t care about what was going on around him, Evan could tell that Jared cared. Evan was the one that understood Jared’s love of writing, but his inability to figure out where his niche was, exactly.
Evan had been the one to read through most of Jared’s writing attempts. His attempts included short stories, poems, songs, technical writing, sonnets, screenplays— all different types of writings, to just have to settle with one style of writing.
Jared’s style of writing was much like a memoir style. Taking what he had seen in the past and transcribing it into writing. Jared found it the easiest to do this kind of writing over anything else. All of Evan’s favorite stories came from what Jared did in his memoir style writing.
“I think if you tried writing a character from your point of view, you might have something different than your stories… Being about you,” Evan said one night, when both boys were sitting in Evan’s room, Jared’s laptop between them.
“But I don’t know if I can write from another point of view, other than my own,” Jared said, staring at his screen. “I’ve tried, it just doesn’t work.”
“Write in first person, but where someone would say your name, write their name. Make sure you keep up with pronoun use,” Evan said, struggling to get out of bed to do something. “You can do it, you just have to try.”
“Where should I start? I’ve wrote about everything I’ve done with my life so far. I have no fresh material,” Jared said, getting up and putting his hand on Evan’s arm to help him balance.
“You have to do research. Writers do that, you know. They research what they want to write about,” Evan said. “Can you hand me my oxygen line?”
Thinking about what Evan had said, Jared handed him his oxygen line. While Evan six months ago was a great athlete, today’s Evan struggled to breathe. He was sick. Evan was fifteen with lung cancer.
“But what should I research? There’s so much I want to learn about, so where should I start?” Jared asked, Evan getting the line around his head before answering.
“Remember the Hardy Boys novels we would when we were younger? Write a mystery series. I’m sure there’s a lot of research you can do for that.”
Cocking his head and thinking about it, Jared figured Evan was right.
*
* *
*
The next day, Jared sat in his last class—study hall. All of the planning Jared had put into making sure his study hall was his last class of the day backfired when he found out he wasn’t able to leave at the end of the day. New restrictions within the school prevented him from leaving, even though his Jeep was parked outside.
“Don’t you look bored?” Jenna Two asked, sitting down in the desk in front of Jared as the bell rang, starting class. Jared shrugged, getting out a book and his notebook. “Still not talking to me? How mature. This is getting ridiculous.”
Shrugging again, Jared waved his hand, trying to get Jenna Two to abandon the seat so Aurora could sit down and they could continue their discussion on what it takes to be a private investigator.
One of his constant friends from elementary school, Aurora Lombardi’s father had been a private investigator before they moved into the small town.
Being one of his friends since elementary school, Aurora understood the writer who was known as Jared. Like Evan, she cheered for him, even when he was struggling with writer’s block and had no will to even write. And, she was the one who went with Jared on his crazy adventures that he wrote about.
But recently, they were growing apart. Jared wasn’t sure why.
He wasn’t sure if it was Aurora’s dedication to the drama club that was causing it, or if it was the time Jared was putting into making sure Evan was well taken care of when it came to entertainment, even though both him and Aurora made sure he was amused.
Or it could be the problem that was sitting in Aurora’s seat. Well, Jenna Two was annoying, but part of a bigger picture Jared wished he didn’t see. One that walked in the door the moment before Aurora did, causing Jenna Two to stand up and switch seats.
Freaking Roxanne Stuart was sitting in Aurora’s seat. And there was no way for Jared to ask her to move. That would have been social suicide to ask Roxanne Stuart to move so Aurora could sit in front of Jared. But Jared didn’t care about that.
The only reason why he cared was because his mom cared. It had gotten back to her somehow (from Roxanne to Roxanne’s mom to his mom) that Jared refused to speak or even look at Roxanne Stuart in class, out of class, out of school, or even in his own house.
He just didn’t like her. It was simple as that. He refused to be paired with such an obnoxious girl who thought she was privileged to the whole world, including Jared’s valuable time.
Watching the hurt register on Aurora’s face that Jared refused to even knowledge Roxanne to move, Aurora took a seat close to the front of the room—the only seat left open in the classroom.
Frustrated that Jared couldn’t even move to sit near Aurora, he hunkered back into his desk and opened the book he was reading—a mystery Jared found in the school library. Opening it with his notebook opened to a new page, he wondered what he should even write.
He could make note of all of the clues, the characters—anything that stood out to him. Hopefully what he put down on paper would help him figure out who the bad guy was before the book was over.
With the pen between his fingers and eyes on the book, Jared tried to get himself lost in the text. But, something was bugging him. It wasn’t how loud the classroom was, going unchecked by the teacher in charge of study hall. It wasn’t that Jared hadn’t been careful picking out his book, but it was the feeling of him being watched.
Glancing up from his book, he noticed that Roxanne was watching him. Every moment, every twitch, she noticed. And even when he stared at her, trying his best to make her feel uncomfortable, she wouldn’t look away.
“Let me see your notebook,” she said once his eyes went back to his book. Without hesitating, Jared tried to make sure his arm was firmly on top of the notebook, but it wasn’t working. Roxanne had slipped it out from underneath his arm without a problem.
Putting the book down and trying to snatch the notebook back form Roxanne, the notebook got passed to Jenna Two, who was giggling as Jenna One laughed loudly from his right.
Angry, Jared slumped back in his seat and shook his head. No one was allowed to read that notebook. Not even Aurora, even though she hinted at wanting to look at what he had put down on the pages. She knew he had put things down about her that while they were indeed, best friends, he would rather not say to her.
Not yet, at least.
“What’s in the notebook Jared goes nowhere with? Would you believe how many times I’ve went over to dinner to his place for dinner with his parents, and he’s sitting in the kitchen, scribbling in that? I’ve seen it so many times. Now, I get to see it,” Roxanne said, triumph as Jared flinched.
Aurora turned around to see what was going on. Her eyes followed from where Jared was staring stonily at the stolen notebook, to where Roxanne and Jenna Two were looking through the pages, giggling.
Mouthing ‘sorry’ to Aurora, Jared sat back and waited for the worst possible thing to happen—the girls start discussing what he’s put in the notebook. It would take a lot of flipping through to get to the pages they really wanted to look at, but it wouldn’t take long.
“All that’s in here is notes about a story,” Jenna One whined as Jared shut his eyes and opened them again to see Aurora walking down the row of desk with the notebook in her hand. Jumping up as she passed, Jared shouted for permission to go the bathroom, Mr. Tito waving his hand, granting Jared the permission to go.
Slipping into the hallway, he knew where Aurora would have went to drop the notebook off- either her locker or his, but Aurora’s was closer.
Walking with purpose through the hall to Aurora’s locker, Jared had no idea what he was going to say to Aurora—especially now that she had the notebook he did his hardest to make sure no one looked at.
Approaching Aurora’s locker, Jared took a deep breath and leaned on the locker next to Aurora’s. He didn’t say anything as Aurora rearranged everything in her locker before she shut it and looked at him.
“Thank you for getting my notebook…” Jared said, giving Aurora the biggest smile that he could. “I didn’t mean for the Prep Squad to get ahold of it,” he said, shaking his head. “You didn’t have to—they would have given it back to me, hopefully…”
Aurora shrugged, leaning against her locker. Looking at the notebooks and books in her arm to see if she had put his notebook in her pile, Jared saw that she hadn’t.
“Where’s my notebook?” he asked, looking at Aurora as she smiled. “Don’t tell me you’re keeping it now—I swear, there’s nothing about you in it! Can I have it back?”
“Like the Prep Squad, I wanna know what’s in it, and I have the full intention of making myself a huge pot of tea tonight and finding out what you scribble in that thing,” Aurora said, stepping around Jared and walking back to class. “I’ll instant message you my commentary as I do so.”
“You’re seriously going to do this to me? That’s no fair…” Jared called, watching her walk back to class. “I won’t give you a ride home tonight!”
“I don’t care!” Aurora called back, Jared sighing as he followed her back to class.

Just now got around to reading this. I like it! Hopefully we get to see the next installment soon.

Good job so far.

Jared wound up not driving Aurora home that afternoon after she reminded him that she had a drama club meeting after school. Jared offered to hang around to take her home, but Aurora said her cousin was going to pick her up and take her to go to the big family dinner, which meant something was going on in the Lombardi family that required a family dinner.
A huge family dinner which would take most of the evening. While Jared himself had never attended the Lombardi family dinners, Aurora always had something to say about them.
In McAlister, there were many Italian families. Not Italian diluted with American blood, but pure Italian blood, to the point where the kids Aurora’s age and Aurora herself were born in Italy, but moved while they were still young.
Trying to keep the younger generations close to their heritage, the Lombardi’s made sure all of the kids spoke Italian, had an understanding of Italian culture and ways of life. Depending on what exactly was going on with her family, Aurora either did or did not like what was going on with her family.
Sitting in his room and waiting for his mom and Evan to get home from Evan’s chemotherapy appointment and his dad to get home from work, Jared wondered what he could do with the house to himself. If Aurora was over, they would be in the basement, working on his detective story.
Or they would be talking, or playing video games. That was what they did, along with working on the personal projects for both Jared and Aurora. It was either his writing or her acting that they worked n if they had to, but their time together was spent having fun instead of doing other things.
Finally, everyone got home. His mom put together a quick dinner for Jared, his dad and her, since Evan was too weak and feeling sick after his chemo to join dinner.
It was a quiet dinner; a quiet evening. Jared didn’t even get a text from Aurora that night.
It was Friday, another day that Jared didn’t have to pick up Aurora from her house to take her to school. Instead, Jared would sit in his first period class and work in his notebook, but he didn’t have his notebook. So, he waited for Aurora in the hall her locker was in.
Leaning against the lockers and watching the minute hand tick by slowly, waiting for Aurora to get out of whatever meeting she was in. Five till the bell, she appeared in the hall, pulling Jared away from her locker and toward their first period classes.
“Sorry, not enough time. I’ll get it back to you before lunch. There’s a few things I still want to read,” Aurora said, Jared sighing and frowning. “I’m sorry—I really am. Last night was hectic with the family dinner and what happened afterwards…”
“What happened?” Jared asked, concerned. Usually, Aurora would spend a good two or three hours over dinner alone, then the adults would continue to talk among themselves for the rest of the evening.
In short, it wasn’t good if Aurora had to stick around for the after dinner discussions. If she had to stay around for the discussions, something big was happening.
“Something I would like to talk about at lunch. I gotta go,” without another word, Aurora disappeared from Jared’s side before he slipped in with the bell ringing.
Sighing and walking to his class, Jared wasn’t sure what to think about Aurora’s actions towards him. Usually, she would hang out as long as she could before having to go to class, and so would he. It was always something they both competed for—who could walk in right at the bell and get away with it.
In short, it was very unlike Aurora behavior.
Sitting down in class, Jared didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have a backup notebook to write in—he didn’t expect to have to resort to this as he pulled out a big five subject notebook he used for classes.
Flipping to the empty section in the back of his notebook, Jared started writing. Everything that he would have put down last night to now was going down, and his hand wasn’t stopping it.
Jared also started writing the beginning to his mystery story. But what he started with felt weird, like it didn’t belong. He didn’t even know what the mystery was.
Stopping to watch his teacher, Jared acted like he was listening. They liked when Jared looked up, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, even though he wasn’t actually paying attention. If he made just enough eye contact, they wouldn’t call on him for any reason.
Making sure he made sufficient eye contact with his teacher, Jared looked back at his notebook. Something just wasn’t right, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the notebook he wanted to write in—that didn’t matter, even though the fact that it was unfinished bugged him.
Scribbling down some notes for class, the bell rang, ending the first period of many—he had a whole day to go through still, before he could hopefully get his notebook back from Aurora.
And the day went by slowly.
Sitting in his car with the music on, Jared acted like he was asleep. Sometime, Aurora would show up, and they would drive to the nearest park and eat in the back of his Jeep and talk. It beat sitting in the school cafeteria and having to spend money on fast food. No matter what, Aurora would show up. It would be unlike her to.
But now, lunch was half way over. Jared’s stomach rumbled, but he wasn’t going to eat lunch without Aurora, but if she wasn’t going to show up…
Opening his glove box and pulling out his phone, Jared wondered if Aurora would have sent him a text message about lunch. He wasn’t holding his breath, but it would be worth checking.
Grunting when he scrolled through his messages, there was one from Aurora, telling him that she wouldn’t be able to make it to lunch. She had other things going on that she couldn’t miss.
Sighing, Jared turned his car on and pulled out of his parking spot. He’ll just go to a park a few blocks over from the school and eat his lunch. Make it back in time to go to class. Try and not be mad that Aurora was suddenly standing him up.
Turning down a street, Jared pulled into a parking lot and turned his car off. Getting out and grabbing his lunch from the backseat, Jared opened the hatch and sat down in the back. Opening his bag going through his food, Jared pulled his phone out and responded to Aurora’s message.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked her, wondering if it would be better for him to talk to her in person than through text. But anymore, he couldn’t get Aurora to talk to him in person.
Lost in his thoughts, staring at the cement, Jared didn’t look up when a car passed him, turned around and pulled into the parking lot he was sitting in.
Whoever it was probably there for the park—a mother with her young child to play or a man and his dog for a game of fetch. It wouldn’t have been the first time that someone had stopped in the park, gave Jared and Aurora a strange look and go on with their day.
“Care if I join you?” a voice asked, Jared lifting his head to look at who was talking to him. “I come in peace, I swear,” Roxanne said, throwing her hands up in the air. “You looked… lonely from the road.”
“Sure,” Jared said, scooting over so he was leaning against the side of his Jeep. Roxanne hopped up and sat at the other end. He didn’t know what to say—not to someone like Roxanne, who he had nothing in common with.
“So… I’m sorry about your notebook. I know it was uncool and everything…” she said after a moment of silence. “I… I just really wanted to know what you wrote in it. You always have something to say, and you write it down. I have no idea how that even works for someone—I guess I wasn’t gifted with the power of words.”
Sitting in silence, Jared thought about what he could say, with his words. His words were precious to him, and some of the reason why he didn’t allow many to look into the actual form his words took in privacy. There was no way he would be able to be able to explain this to Roxanne, even if he tried.
“You read enough to know what I can do and will do with my words then, haven’t you?” Jared asked, pushing himself further against the car, closing his eyes. He could hear the music his words made to him on paper as he opened and looked at Roxanne.
“Yes… It was what I got to read. It wasn’t what I set out to read, but it was,” she said, turning to face him. “Why don’t you talk to me? We’ve known each other for years, but you don’t… Seem interested in me.”
“You’re out of my league,” Jared said simply. He was tall and skinny, with messy black hair that hid his face. He was plain—something that Jared found to be his advantage after spending so long wondering why girls weren’t interested in him.
While he was plain and just there, Roxanne was the complete obvious. While he wasn’t going to admit it, she was pretty—beyond pretty, where words like beautiful and gorgeous weren’t capable of describing her outer appearances. Her golden hair hung in a thick mass down her back, always teased into the perfect shape she wanted. Her skin tone, also golden and even, shone even in the darkest days of winter. Her eyes were bright and shining, always making eye contact, laughing moments before she did. Her smile—her best feature, was infectious, but not right then as she spoke to Jared.
“How am I out of your league?” she asked, taken aback as her mouth became tiny. So tiny it nearly disappeared. He confused her. She didn’t understand why Jared didn’t think he had any chance with a girl like Roxanne—the cheerleader, the homecoming court favorite. The girl that dated only guys of her caliber, which were not the same people Jared associated himself with.
“You just are,” Jared said, a huge rant forming in his head. But he wasn’t going to give in and tell her exactly what he thought. He was going to make her beg for it. He was going to be aloof and distant. Not to tease her of course, but to keep her disinterested.
He had no interest in Roxanne. Not when he was too busy with other things. Like the yearbook and his writing. Making sure Evan felt like a normal kid, and not some depressed cancer patient. A guy who had a busy social calendar and no time for a girlfriend.
Who was he kidding? He was nearing desperate himself—this was the first time in over a year a girl besides Aurora seemed interested in him. He could, hypothetically, throw himself at Roxanne and be a lovesick puppy, but that wasn’t Jared.
“How, though? Is it because we don’t hang out with the same people? Our mom’s know each other? I don’t understand,” she said, looking lost as Jared pulled out his phone and checked the time.
“Time to get back,” he said, standing up and waiting for Roxanne to move, feeling a tiny bit smug with himself.

Another great write! I found myself feeling disappointed when I reached the end. I now have to favorite this thread so that I don't miss the updates. lol Keep it up!