Weekend Writing Warriors 7/28/13

Street Glass is my novel-in-progress. My tagline: Underprivileged 18-yr-old Latino leaves street gang and befriends white, over-privileged musicians.

While some of the plot is subject to change (draft two is a pretty early draft, after all) the basic elements will stay, as will the character "voices." So these excerpts will still give you a good idea of how the plot plays out and what the characters are like. The year is 1986, in Los Angeles, California.

All the previous excerpts are collected here.

After Neal’s dramatic gesture, the band decides to go along with letting him live in the mansion. Sandy and Len take Neal to a clothing retailer for some new threads; there’s a bit of a scene when a teenaged fan recognizes the band members, but today’s excerpt concerns Neal’s reaction to wearing new clothes bought just for him. He’s spent the last 8 years with a street gang and had no place of his own to live in; the only new stuff he’s gotten has been stolen and he hasn’t thought of those things as truly his.

At the store, he tries on some clothes and is surprised when the mirror shows him how different (and, he thinks, better) he looks.

About the mention of his skin color: he’s part Latino, not African-American. That’s clear in the full story but in these excerpts, it might get confusing.

We continue in Neal’s POV (MF refers to the gang he was part of):

But the pale shirt made his dark eyes and hair, and especially his skin, so obvious. Thanks to his mother’s family his skin was lighter than most of his friends, though that was all he could thank her for; still, there wasn’t any sense in making himself stand out.

He pulled off the shirt and put on a brown one with black stripes; yeah, that was better. He couldn’t remember the last time he wore anything but the same t-shirt and baggy pants everybody in MF wore.

He smiled at his reflection, then stuffed his baggie into the back pocket of his new jeans. 

On the way back to the store entrance, people turned to watch him and his new friends. He slowed down. These people’s eyes were interested, not scared or pissed. So this must be what it was like to be normal.

Hmmm, what's in that baggie that makes it important enough to carry with him??

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