Ini merupakan percubaan saya dalam menghasilkan sebuah novel for teenagers out there. Saya sangat2 mengharapkan feedback dari sape2 yg sudi membacanye kerana saya ingin meneruskan hajat untuk menulis sebuah novel english... Berikutnya merupakan petikan dari novel saya yg baru separuh jalan ditulis... So hope you guys will give me some comments on it...
CHAPTER 1
The new mission
The summer holiday had come. And I could feel the same sensation that I was going through it alone again. Really alone without any companion (except, of course, Lisa). Because my dog, Ben just died fortnight ago. I still felt raw about it. Mom gave the cold shoulder to buy a new dog for me, because Ben had previously made our house smelt like dog’s faeces. My mom was an interior designer at the Highgate. My parents had divorced since I was nine. I was living with my mom, my brothers, Dean and Lex, my younger sisters, Allison and Evanna and my mom’s foster son, Pete.
My name is Emma, Tiffany Emma Wellington. I was fifteen. Dean was twenty-two, Lex, twenty, Allise, twelve, Anne, ten and Pete, seven. We lived in a six-room house at North London. I had to say that the house was pretty big. I owned a room myself. Allise and Anne shared a room. Dean and Lex shared a room as the room was a big room. Soon, Pete was going to move in into their room when he is big enough. Mom owned a room. Since we had two guests’ rooms, dean slept in one of the room. We had a well-trimmed garden and a plant-less backyard. My dad lived at the Mosel Hall, with his new wife.
“Emma, lunch is ready. Get down now, honey.” That’s mom.
I closed my diary and kept it save in the drawer as I didn’t want the ‘Annoying Allise and Anne’ making mess with it. Allise and Anne always entered my room when I wasn’t there. They would turn everything upside down. They even read my diary. And one day, I wrote something nasty about reading someone’s diary in it. I knew that they would read those lies. And it worked. Till now, they weren’t dare to read my diary again. But still, they got into my room and messed with my clothes and papers.
I was starving and went down quickly to check out the meal.
“What’s for lunch?” I asked mom as I took a sit at the dine table.
Apparently mom was busy sitting Pete on his chair and didn’t hear my question, which provided Lex the room to tease me.
“Dog’s tail soup for you, Emma”, Lex said and then he burst laughing.
“Yeah, right. Do you want some?” I said back. Lex always teased me. Lex was quit good-looking. And so was Dean. But Dean looked more matured than Lex.
Dean just arrived at the dine table from his room. He was quite busy lately as he just opened up a café near mom’s office building and he wanted to impress mom as she was a bit mad about him dropping off the university.
“Stop it, Lex.” Dean always gets into my side. And I was closer to Dean than my mom and others. “Heyya, Emma. Whassup?” he asked me.
“Well, let me see. Oh, I’ve got nothing to do this summer.”
“Cool. You can come to my café,” Dean said and raising his voice so mom can hear him, “my café is having so many customers lately and I’m getting loads of cash.”
“I love to. As I don’t have any plan for this summer, I think I will.”
“You can be my assistant there and I’ll pay you, of course.”
Lex, who was eavesdropping us, looked at Dean with exultant face.
“Whoa, Can I join you too? I’m a better worker than Emma,” he said.
Dean turned at him with flabbergast look. I knew what he was thinking.
“I guess… you can,” Dean replied awkwardly.
Mom put down a jug of apple juice on the table and sat beside Pete.
“Enough of that, boys, girls,” mom said, “And put the magazine down Allison.”
Allise was reading mom’s beauty mag. She was what I think ‘trying to find her own identity’.
We ate peacefully without any phone call as always. Mom always got phone calls from her clients. Anne was helping mom washing the dishes, who was listening to Allise babbling about her needs of beauty product to ensure that she looks pretty. Eww...
I took Pete to the living room where Dean and Lex were watching TV. It was two-thirty. It was weird to see Dean at home at that time as he always being busy at the café. Dean had a very classy look with dark hair as mine. But he didn’t even care about girls. I was amazed by such a cool boy like him. There were crowds of girl trying to go out with him. I knew it because I was the one who had to pass Dean Love letters or messages.
“Aren’t you going back to the café?” I asked Dean, putting Pete on Lex’s lap to sit between them. Pete was holding his lollipop and dropped it on Lex’s shirt.
“Hey! What the hell you think you’re doing,” he shouted, “get him off me, Emma!”
“Serves you right, you prat,” Dean said to him.
I took Pete on my lap. Lex was mumbling a curse to me.
“I’ll go later. I’d got some workers for me. Why?” he asked. Dean looked more striking when he was serious. A shirt and jeans was enough to make him looked gorgeous.
“Nuh. I just don’t have anything to do this evening,” I said to him.
Lex butted in, “Ohh… sweet Emma don’t have anything to do this evening. Let me see… Hmm... Why don’t you go into Ben’s grave?” he mocked me.
“I’m not going to. But I can see the future that you are the one who’s going into.”
“Oh, shut up,” he said, pulling off his all- spattered -with-Pete-dribble shirt and threw it at me.
I’d said to Dean that I would go to the café tomorrow at nine-thirty. I dialed Lisa’s phone number. I wanted to inform her as soon as possible about it, so that she could come too. She was my next door neighbor and my image consultant if I had an occasion or a date. We were friends since we were about nine. She always loved to share her tips of getting a suitable dress, makeup, perfume and even how to tackle boys. She was so good in doing makeup. And I wasn’t. I was more into photographing art. So I wanted to ask her how should I look for tomorrow.
“Hey, Emma. Already miss me?” she said when she took up the phone.
“Yeah, right. I want to ask you about-” she interrupted me.
“How you should look on the first day of holiday?” guessed her.
“Well, actually, how I should look on the day at the cafe?” I said, correcting her.
“I’ll go to your house in ten minutes,” she said, ending the conversation.
“So. Let see what you got in your wardrobe.”
She rummaged in my wardrobe and put the clothes in two categories.
“This… I should put at the rejects,” she said holding my long sleeve turquoise blouse.
“And this one… I think it should go to the selected,” putting the pink strapless top on the pile of dresses on my bed. She got a high-taste for clothes. Her mom worked as a counselor. Her father was a bank manager. She got only an older brother called Louis. And both of them got a good-looking gene flowing in their blood. And they were quite posh. Their house looked like, what I could portray as a chalet with a swimming pool. I loved to go to her house. But mostly, we would hang out at my back garden as Mom had locate a park bench and sweet stone-made table-sculpture with a small fountain, (which we can watch birds went bathing their smooth feather in the water), at the back garden. We would spread a mat and lay back, guessing what the cloud looks like. Louis was always home with his cute friends. So, there was no way we can chat freely with them around us.
“So, what do you think about this? I swear I’d never see you wear this dress. Genuinely fab. You should wear this tomorrow. You will take every boy’s eyes out. Just take my word Emma,” said Lisa, showing me the wide-neck yellow flowery tank top with lace on the sleeve.
“It looks bored and even looks like it have been ripped off, Lisa. And I don’t want to catch any boy’s eyes. Mom bought it when she had an outstation job at the France, remember?” I said, “I sleepover at your house that night.”
“Oh, yeah, right. I’d forget about it,” she thoughtlessly said, putting the dress on her, “but I still want you to wear this, Emma.” There was urging tone in her voice.
“Okay, okay…” no point arguing with Lisa if she’d made assessment.
“Where are you going tomorrow?” Lisa asked me, staring at me with wide eyes.
“To the café. Would you want to come too. It’s monotonous without you.”
“okay. At what time?”
“At nine-thirty sharp,” I said, relieved to have Lissa to come with me too.
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