tl;dr: Post-macaroni, Ben and Julia try to have adult conversation but Julia drops. When she wakes, the city is in a blackout. Ben reveals he lives in some kind of place worse than hell. Foreboding. Lights come up just as Julia reveals she trusts Ben. Ben lectures her all the way back to the motel. He cutely offers to run out and by her groceries. Hot, long kiss. Ben leaves immediately after without explanation.
----I love how right at the beginning of the chapter it seems Ben and Julia are both chastising my trying to make sense of their coming together. Julia is like, "I ran away." and Ben's like, "Okay," and she's like, "Okay?", and then he's like, "It's not like Mommy and Daddy sent you to NY all alone." and I'm just like....facepalm. There goes both the reasons she could have given him for being in NY alone. And one of them is true! But she can't just come out and tell him that at the beginning. She needs a lie. She needs a lie to confess to him at this point, along with telling him she actually ran away. He can't know she is a runaway at the beginning, but he has to "overlook" that she's a teen all alone in the city for some reason. Gawl, it's your book, and I'm sure you can figure it out if anyone can. But it's so vital to their coming together. WHY? WHY do they come together for good reason? We have to figure that out.
“Lucky for me,” he rolled his eyes as he walked not towards Julia, but towards a new part of the room. He pulled the door open and didn’t bother to close it as he stepped further into nothingness. “I didn’t put a finger on you.” ----Keep. Keep. Keep.
----On that note, I think it's logical, their convo post-blackout. The blackout, however, is a little over-dramatic. I could see Ben talking her down from her hysteria, coaxing her to lie down, something of that nature. The blackout seems too convenient a way to get out of the tense situation. Maybe Ben leaves her alone for awhile and she briefly falls asleep as she's trying to calm down/relax. Idk. She could blackout, but it's too convenient at this moment.
{ Julia hesitated, but immediately jumped to her feet to follow him. The living area was illuminated better, moonlight streaming in through the glass double doors. Ben stood in front of them, staring out. Aside from the moonlight, the city outside the window seemed nonexistent, invisible. “Why are all the lights out?”
“Blackout. It’s all over the city. It’s been like this for about an hour.”
She walked to Ben, almost tiptoeing, and didn’t say another word until she was at his side, staring out with him. “It looks like death.”
Ben looked at her momentarily, but only sighed and returned his gaze to the balcony. “In a way, I guess it is.”
“What?” Julia asked as Ben turned and made his way to the couch. She followed, reluctantly taking a seat next to him.
“This is it, Julia. This is my existence. Day in, day out. I go to work, I come home, I eat, I sleep, I wake up, and then I do it all over again. It’s so mundane that I dream of blowing my brains out,” he paused, taking a breath. Julia remained still, but tense, at his side. “But what good would it do? I’d just go to a place worse than this. An existence worse than Hell…is that possible?” }
----Keep everything here. It's absolutely beautiful. I mean, feel free to expand it, word it up, but don't change it. Please. It's perfect.
“My father died when I was three. When I was little, my mother burned through worthless men like most mothers burned through cartons of cigarettes. It seemed like no matter what town we moved to, my mother attracted the loser. They would always beat her, and they would always looked at me like I was next. When I confronted her about it, asking her why we had to do it, she would always look at me with the saddest eyes. She used to say, ‘Benny, someday, it will all be worth it. If not in this life, in the next. Things will be so much nicer then.’ She said in the next life, I’d have my father back.” Ben blinked, his confusion apparent. “She lied, Julie. She lied about everything. The world isn’t a good place. Good people don’t always come out on top. There isn’t a Heaven, and Earth is Hell…” ---Tragically beautiful, and awesomely written. Keep. Definitely KEEP!!!!11!!!
Without warning, the apartment roared to life. The TV came on, static blaring as CNN faded in and out, the refrigerator resumed humming, all the lights brightened at once. The room was suddenly animated, as if it were pleased with her decision. ----Omg Keep.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, stepping towards her, where the only distance between them was vertical. He tilted his chin down to look at her, and she did the opposite to return the gaze. Julia silently nodded, unable to speak at all. ---I'm certainly okay with them kissing here. I'm not okay with him asking her if she trusts him. It seems like he's asked too many times, or he's just asked twice in what seems like a short period. I think you can conjure up something else for him to say here.
-----The bit about the groceries was a keeper to btw.
-----Again, the dilemma with why they came together. That is the something that we need to figure out for the rewrite. Quarantine 2.0 certainly makes a lot more sense than the first draft, <3 , but this thing needs ironing out. We can talk about that. Hopefully you have some ideas in mind. This chapter, however, had some beautifully powerful scenes/foreshadowing. I think you can harness and run with these moments. I admire them very much.
Thu Dec 22, 2016 12:17 am
