Monday Mania: First Page

We have two submissions to read today. So after reading the first, scroll down to the second.

Janette Rallison submitted the first page of a novel she's writing. Feel free to make comments, but please keep them constructive.

Critique Archive 0008:


A fairy godmother’s guide to saving troubled teenagers.
Extra credit report
For Master Sagewick Goldengill

Dear Sir,
Thank you for allowing me to raise my semester grade through this extra credit project. Here is some pertinent background information about the troubled teenage souls involved, and how using fairy skills I was able to improve their dreary little lives, thus proving I have mastered the magic necessary to pass apprentice level.
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Boys weren’t a problem for Anne. They only paid attention to her while asking for help with homework. She always knew the answers. See, no problem at all.

It wasn’t because she wasn’t pretty enough. She was. She had long dark hair the color of milk chocolate, hair that she usually wore pulled back into a pony tail because that way it took her two minutes to do and didn’t fall into her face while she looked down at her school work.

Her eyes were the same candy bar color—and really who doesn’t like chocolate? Certainly not the boys in her senior class. Her eyes were pretty enough even behind the glasses she always wore. It was unfortunately, her air of extreme competence that scared them away. In many times and places—as she slid things in and out of an immaculately organized locker, as she encouraged the students in her tutoring sessions—she didn’t seem to be a teenage girl at all. She was somebody’s mother, just waiting to happen.

Many perfumes promise to lure men to women. None of them reek of motherhood. None of them proclaim the wearer to be tidy, thrifty, and sensible. At least not in high school. Those traits become attractive much later on, when guys wake up and realize they’re not living somebody else’s life.

So there was Anne, walking out of the school building with a backpack which was heavier than it needed to be, because after all it couldn’t hurt to read over her Shakespeare assignment one more time. As happens with most important life changing events, she was not thinking about anything important at all. If she had thought of Hunter that day, those wishes, those half formed sighs of longing had faded as soon as the bell rang after calculus. He had picked up his books and tucked them under his arm without a glance in her direction.