The Book of Flops

Chemistry, and Not Just the Science Kind

Ooh boy, my first attempt at writing romance. This was written LAST YEAR, back when I knew even less about what I was doing than what I do now. How do I even give this context? *pinches the bridge of my nose* So this was an English project, and we basically had to make a character and write a story about them, and Hazel was born. We did no focus on plot structure whatsoever, just character development, which might be part of the cringe factor. I chose to make this a romantic piece of writing, and that was a BIG mistake. Well, at least it's not graphic. Copying this from my other doc to get it here, I'm gonna give you another warning. This is 22 double spaced pages of pure cringe. This is your last chance to run. 

27, 28, 29, 30. Hazel stopped compressing his chest and pinched his nostrils. She blew two breaths into his mouth and could see his chest rising and falling. Hazel put her ear to his chest. Still nothing. As she continued compressions, she checked the clock. Ten minutes. A long wait for an ambulance when you lived in a city. 13, 14, 15, 16... She watched the green light on his neck blink as she continued compressions.

"You can stop now, everyone.", she heard Mrs. Edmundsen say. Hazel got up and stared at the torso of a mannequin meant to look like a patient who needed CPR. The blinking light on his neck that had been green before, turned yellow and was beeping like a heart monitor. Then it turned red and emitted a flatline tone. Hazel looked around the room at the rest of the night class as she tightened her ponytail and smoothed out the flyaways in her wavy, brown hair.

"Have a nice night! Next week we'll be learning how to tie a tourniquet."

She stepped outside into the brisk, night air, and started toward her apartment. It was only two blocks away. Florence Hall, the medical science building where Hazel had come from, was right next to Darwin Hall, the biology building where she took daytime classes. She hadn't ever dreamed of pursuing medical science, being around all the germs, infected people, and blood in a hospital was enough to make her gag. Still, she wanted to learn basic emergency training just in case she ever needed it. It was exhausting, but she loved it. Hazel passed by Darwin Hall and entered her apartment complex. She went up three flights of stairs and entered her apartment.

Hazel had moved into the academy the day before she turned 14. She had been given her own apartment, her own laptop, and all of her textbooks. Her mom and dad had been there, but she hadn't missed them very much. They were the strictest parents ever, and Hazel was glad to be in a place where she could be free to make her own life decisions. Her mom and dad had always called her independent, after all. Hazel didn't even have a chance to write to them. They had been fatally killed in a car crash on their way home from dropping her off.

She had made a friend soon after her parents' death. Another girl her age, named Lily, had moved in right next door just a week after Hazel. They became best friends, and Hazel considered Lily the sister she never had. Since Hazel had showered before she went to night class, she brushed her teeth, set her alarm for the next morning, and went to sleep.

Meanwhile, a tall, skinny man with graying hair had no intention of going to sleep. The light in his office was the only one on across the whole campus. He pressed a button underneath his desk, and a bookshelf swung out across the room. A door was revealed, and the mysterious man turned the knob. He stared into a pitch-black hallway. The man grabbed a headlamp off of a hook a few feet into the abyss and put it on. He turned it on, and journeyed into the darkness, with his headlamp as his only source of light. The man seemed to know where he was going, casually dragging his hand across the dirt walls, making expertly timed turns through the twisting, winding labyrinth he liked to call The Maze. The man suddenly turned left and arrived in a monstrous, round, room with a domed ceiling. Little tapping sounds of metal on metal, the soft scraping of shovels digging, and the grinding of machinery could be heard echoing through the dimly lit space.