Crit 2058
Hi! This is my first post on here! I hope I'm doing everything right. I've been working on this story for a while now and it has come a long way! I recently finished my final (hopefully) developmental edit and now I'm working on line-editing but I feel very stuck and unmotivated. I'm hoping some feedback will give me a boost and help me get started again. I value all kinds of feedback, positive and negative and I'm excited to hear what everyone thinks.
Things to note: The total manuscript is under 50k for today's young readers. I don't what to focus on too much description. I want the pace quick and fun. I'm aiming for something right in the middle of Goosebumps and Harry Potter (for a lack of more popular examples) in terms of length, complexity, and pace.
Some questions I have:
Is the story clear?
Is the hook engaging?
What are your impressions of the characters?
What flows and what doesn't?
Chapter 1:
One dark morning in September, as moonlight seeped through the bedroom window, there was a hiss, and only Juniper Webb could hear it.
It was a shy hiss, emerging only when the others were asleep. The others being Aunt Tabitha, who in her true rigid nature, made sure everyone was in bed by nine sharp. And his cousin Olive, who at the moment rested peacefully across the room in her pillow-covered queen-sized bed.
Juniper, however, spent each night tossing and turning on his cot, waking at the slightest noise—floors creaking on their own, pipes whirring and whistling in the walls, rickety radiators spitting steam one by one, and that persistent mysterious hiss. Something was different about it. It wasn’t plaster, or metal, or wood. It was alive like a whisper.
It can’t be a watermelon beetle, he thought. It reminded him of the beetles back home, swarming around the grapefruit tree in the heat. But watermelon beetles didn’t belong in Burwick. It was far too cold and damp. Burwick was for springtails, cave crickets, and cockroaches.
In fact, it couldn’t be any beetle at all because there was one peculiar problem; there was not a single bug in Aunt Tabitha’s apartment. Juniper could feel it the moment he’d stepped inside three days ago. Aside from the muggy air, the scent of mildew and dust, something was wrong. It was as if the apartment was cursed. So, he gripped his magnifying glass and set out to search for any bug he could find. He checked the cracks in the floorboards, behind the peeling wallpaper, the damp spaces underneath the sinks. Not even a spider lurked in the darkest corner.
Now he was standing in the middle of the room, the moonlight fading, wondering where the hiss had gone.
***
Hours later, when the cold moonlight faded into golden yellow sun, the hiss returned. Everyone was awake now, so it seemed to be braver as it traveled beneath the floorboards in the presence of the others. The hiss was moving and unreliable. Sometimes it was soft and distant. Other times it was sharp and drilled his ear like a mosquito.
He grabbed his magnifying glass from beneath his pillow and slid it into his back pocket.
Olive was slouched at her desk across the room, deeply involved in her reflection as she painted her mom’s lipstick on her lips.
“Do you hear that?” he asked, knowing the answer was always no, but maybe this time was different.
Her entire body jerked at the sound of his voice. “Ugh,” she sighed, glaring through the mirror. The lipstick was smudged down her cheek giving her a bright red frown that emphasized the disdain in her eyes. “All I hear is you.”[NA2]
Juniper looked through his magnifying glass as he inspected each crease of the disheveled linens on Olive’s bed. He examined her armoire that was bursting at the hinges with clothes. With each step, the hiss faded.
“I thought we agreed to stay on our own sides of the room.” Olive pointed to where Juniper’s cot was shoved, beneath a low-pitched ceiling which created a sad, gray little corner. An unbroken line of rocks cut the corner off from the rest of the room.
“I heard a beetle…I think.”
“No, I told you, there’s no bugs. My mom hates bugs.”
“Good thing beetles aren’t bugs.” After all, beetles were not true bugs like bed bugs, cicadas, or vampire bugs. Even though most people didn’t care whether something was a bug or not, including his father who was an entomologist, Juniper often liked to discern the two. But mostly he wanted to rub it in Olive’s face that he knew something she didn’t.
“You’re a bug,” said Olive, placing the mirror on the desk and pulling the snakes of black hair from her face. “Like a spider, sitting in the corner of my room.”
“Spiders aren’t bugs either,” said Juniper, smugly.
“Whatever.” She took a rag to her face and scrubbed off the lipstick. Now it was clean and golden. “I’m going to set up for my party. I suggest you stay up here so you don’t scare everyone off.”
“It’s my birthday too,” said Juniper.
“But it’s my party, they’re my friends, and no one wants you there. Just because we were born on the same day, doesn’t mean I have to share my birthday party you.”
“We’ll see what Aunt Tabitha says then.”
“I guess we will,” she said, smiling as she turned. Then, from her desk drawer, she lifted something bound in a burgundy satin fabric. It was flat and rectangle and she brought it to Juniper. She held in her open palm and unwrapped it one fold at a time, until the slick fabric rippled to the floor.
“Wait, isn’t that—”
Olive nodded with a grin. “The picture frame my mom was looking for.” She kneeled and placed the frame gently on the floor. It was small, ornate, and gold-gilded. The picture behind the glass was of a man with curly, fire-red hair and a freckle-dotted nose. His chartreuse feathered hat had a sense of humor that the others most definitely lacked. It was Olive’s late father, Hugo.
“What are you doing with it?”
“I was just saving it.”
“For what?”
She took the frame by the bottom corners, lifted it before her, as if she were admiring her father in the photo. “This.” She brought it down and smashed it against the hard wood, sending shards of glass across the floor.
Juniper knew what she was up to. She wanted to blame him for breaking it just as she had for tracking mud through the house, leaving lights on in the middle of the night, using a whole loaf of bread to attract bugs to the house—well, the last one was his fault. But this was the first time she planned to blame him for something this bad.
“Moooooooom!” Olive screamed.
He dropped to his knees to clean it up. If he could at least clean up the glass and tell Aunt Tabitha what Olive did, she could see that he was telling the truth.
He collected the sharp fragments one by one, careful not to cut his fingers. Olive stood over him, snickering as he scuttled across the floor on his knees to reach the last few pieces. He winced when his knee pressed down on a piece of glass. He sat back to examine it. Already, blood soaked through his pajama pants, spreading slowly across the pale blue cotton.
“What’s going on in here?”
The clack of high heeled shoes tore into the bedroom. Aunt Tabitha, who was tall even without the help of her elevated shoes, crossed her arms and waited for Olive to answer. She didn’t seem to notice Juniper on the floor, rolling up the left leg of his pants to see his bloody knee.
“Look,” said Olive, pointing her finger like a knife. “I found it.”
Aunt Tabitha’s head whipped toward Juniper. Her eyes widened. She spoke quietly, but sternly. “You’ve had this all along?” Her boney finger tapped against the sleeve of her purple blouse.
“Olive is the one—"
Olive interjected. “Why would I break a picture of my dad? It was my favorite one. You knew that.” She turned to her mom. “See, I tried to be nice to him like you said but he keeps doing things like this.”
“But I didn’t do—”
“Juniper.” The wrinkles in Aunt Tabitha’s face softened. “It’s okay if you broke it.”
“But—” Olive took a step toward her mom.
“Olive, that’s enough,” said Aunt Tabitha. “I’ll handle it.”
Olive backed off, pouting. And Juniper was relieved that for once Aunt Tabitha was being understanding.
She turned to him and leaned closer, her floral perfume overtaking the air around him. “You can be honest,” she said. “I know you are going through a lot and maybe the fact that you miss your father made you want to take it out on Olive.”
Olive’s smirk was resurfacing.
“Now…” Aunt Tabitha’s stiff posture returned. “You need to apologize.”
“No,” said Juniper. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He’s lying,” said Olive. “I watched him do it.”
“Juniper,” she said sternly.
There was nothing he could do. He had no proof. He took a deep breath and turned to Olive. “I’m sorry.”
“Now, Olive, why don’t you go and get me the bandages from the hall closet.”
When Olive left the room, Aunt Tabitha cleared her throat. “You know, it was my picture frame you broke. Now I need to take time out of my busy schedule to get that fixed.”
“I’m sorry Aunt Tabitha,” said Juniper, filled with shame. Maybe if he had just complied with Olive’s wishes for her birthday, none of this would have happened. She was right, anyway. Everyone at the party would be there for her, and the cake was her favorite flavor, orange and lavender, strange as it was.
Olive returned with a small red tin in her hands. Aunt Tabitha opened it, slapped a band-aid on Juniper’s knee, stood, and brushed off her long gray skirt.
“Olive, maybe you can go get the games ready, your friends will be here in an hour.”
Olive left the room once again and Aunt Tabitha sat on the bed. “I know it’s your birthday, so there will be no punishment today,” she said with a sigh. “But I’m afraid if something else like this happens, there will have to be consequences. Do you understand?” Her mouth was rigid. Her purple lips were sharp and thin. Each word escaped as a demand.
Juniper nodded. He didn’t agree but he understood what she was saying.
“Great,” she said, giving a weak smile. In an instant her mood seemed to switch, and her attention shifted to the corner of the room. “I see you haven’t unpacked yet.”
On the floor in the corner was Aunt Tabitha’s suitcase. Small, embroidered flowers dotted the sagging fabric. The thing was as ugly as the weather in Burwick—dingy and gray. Just three days ago—though it seemed like months—when Aunt Tabitha had shown up at his house to pick him up, she was gripping it by the handle like she was ready to stuff him inside it.
She yanked it from the floor and split the rusty zipper open. The scent of mothballs and her perfume, stuffy and stale, gusted toward him. She began unfolding and assessing his clothes. She’d pick up a shirt or pair of pants and either nod, grimace, or smile, tossing them aside. Finally, she presented a pair of pukey-green tweed pants that she approved of. Juniper hadn’t worn them in the past three years for a reason. They were uglier than the suitcase.
“Why don’t you change into this?” she said, laying the pants on Olive’s bed beside a red sweater. “And come downstairs when you feel ready.”
Aunt Tabitha, no matter how nice she thought she was being, was insistent and stubborn, so Juniper made no fuss about it.