Will the Story Surgeon and Novel Nurse be able to save an injured story?
Watch the video here to see us operate on the story “Yumi: The Beginning” by J.
Scroll down to read the rest of the rewrite!
Here’s the Story Surgeon’s rewrite of the opening (all ideas and characters originally created by J).
Be sure to check out the video to see the original version, and what we focused on when we changed it!
Yumi: The Beginning
Part 1, Chapter 1The school bus ride home was even lonelier today. I sat in my always spot, good old dependable row number one right at the front, directly across from the driver, Gustaphon.
Back when I was in kindergarten—and extremely stupid—my parents had told me that the seat at the front of the bus was a place of honor, a throne at the head of the royal yellow procession of wheels and windows headed to our sacred place of learning. With their words laced in my ears, I’d thought I was so lucky the first time I got on the bus, saw that the front seat was open, and slid right into it. I sat there holding my unicorn pencil bag, bobbing my black braided pigtails in pink bows, feeling like a princess.
For about two days. It took me that long to figure out that the back of the bus was actually where the cool kids sat. Far away from Gustaphon’s view, my five-year-old classmates could lean over the aisle and laugh about the latest episodes of Spongebob, or put earbuds in each others’ ears and share the Gwen Stefani album that had just come out. I wasn’t allowed to watch Spongebob. Or listen to Gewn Stefani. My parents didn’t let me. They didn’t let me do anything.
And the bus seat was the first time I realized that, maybe, they weren’t right about all that.
“Hey little Yumi,” said Gustaphon to me. “Something wrong over there?”
His voice was as bright as the smile on his face. Gustaphon had his “summer hat” on, a sunflower-pattern baseball cap that didn’t come anywhere close to matching his blue bus driver uniform. His other three “season hats” lay at the front of the dashboard, leaning into the bus windshield, patiently waiting their turn. Gustaphon rotated the big steering wheel around like a grinding stone as he looked over at me and pulled the bus through the intersection.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said.
Gustaphon laughed out loud. He knows when I’m lying. He’s known me ever since that first day with the braided pigtails all the way up to today, the last day of eighth grade. He’s basically my second dad. Or maybe my first dad. I’ve spent more quality time with Gustaphon than my real one.
Embarrassed, I tried to hide behind my long black hair now dangling in front of my eyes. Not that it did anything. Gustaphon—or anyone with at least one eye for that matter—could see exactly what was wrong. Aside from me, the entire bus was empty.
“What are you doing hanging out with little old me today, Yumi?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be where everyone else is?”
I groaned and leaned back in the cushioned seat. “I don’t know where everyone is. Maybe they’re all sick.”
“Ooh, that’s two lies you’ve told today,” Gustaphon cackled. “You know what they say. Three strikes and you gotta walk an extra mile home.”
“I’ve never heard that before,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“Of course you haven’t. It’s part of the bus driver’s code. We keep the important parts secret.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re lying.”
“Oh I most certainly am not! In fact, I’ve got a nice spot in mind to drop you off at, right by the 7-Eleven. They’ve got dollar ice cream sandwiches and a clean bathroom! I’ve been dying to stop there for years.”
“That’s not even a mile away from my house!” I said, forgetting my misery for a moment. “It’s like… an extra thousand feet. Tops.”
Gustaphon glanced over, his smile compressed into pursed concern. “Little Yumi, are you gonna stop stalling and tell me what’s really going on?”
He’d backed me into a corner. A cushioned corner with no seatbelts. I brushed the hair out of my face and crossed my arms, as pale white now in June as they were in January, when Gustaphon had his winter hat on.
“Everyone’s at the end-of-year party, at the school pool. My parents said that… I couldn’t go.”
Gustaphon didn’t say anything. For a while the bus kept bumping along the road, the twenty-five other empty cushioned seats rattling without any bodyweight to hold them down. We drove past the 7-Eleven in silence. Past two other street corners we usually stopped at, but not today. Gustaphon looked deep in thought. We were nearly at my stop by the time he spoke up.
“Well, your parents mean well,” he said. “They’re looking out for you, you know? Pool parties can be a bit… dangerous, I guess. They don’t want you to get hurt is all.”
I wasn’t sure which hurt worse, the lingering misery from the discussion my parents and I had about the same subject last week, or the fact that Gustaphon was just parroting their words back to me. I couldn’t even manage a response. I rolled my head to the side and stared out the window. Summer stared back at me. Bright sun, blue sky, trees with shade just begging to be sat under with a good book and snack. And of course, I would be able to do none of it.
My parents were control freaks, to put it nicely. They lived by—as they sweetly put it—the three H’s: homework, housework, and hibernation. That last one they always said with a laugh that I pretended to share. Four hours of homework every day, no matter what; they’d make new homework for me if I didn’t have enough. Two hours or housework on weekdays, six on weekends, doing everything from cleaning the bathroom to vacuuming to weeding the garden. And then, of course, eight hours of sleep every single night, no matter what. That didn’t leave a lot of time for seeing friends. Or making friends. Or ever even really talking to anyone since I was always that weird girl who people whispered did extra homework for “fun” and who they saw mowing the lawn three times a week.
I’d tried to rebel. I told them “no” plenty of times, back when I was younger. When I did, their giggles about the three H’s would stop. They’d look at me with their black eyes, somehow even darker than mine. No matter where we were, even on the porch in the backyard in the middle of summer, the air would chill twenty degrees. My dad’s pointed moustache and goatee would turn sharp as blades, my mothers long and slim finger would wriggle like spider legs. If that wasn’t enough for me to take back what I’d said, them taking away the few precious freedoms I had left was plenty. No reading before bed. No half hour of TV. No computer time, period. I was little more than their obedient zombie slave, and there was nothing I could do about it.
The bus pulled to a stop. Gustaphon cranked out the stop sign and opened the door. He gave me a pitiful smile as I heaved myself out of the seat, ready to go back to my prison I called home.
“Hey,” he said, stopping me at the top of the stairs. “You know what, Yumi? I’ve been wanting to tell you something.”
I turned to face him. “What?”
He rocked his head, as if unsure of what to say, but then half-grinned and spat it out. “Your parents are weird. Try to have some fun this summer. Maybe try something they don’t know about. You can’t get in trouble if they don’t know, am I right?”
I smiled back at him. It was nice of him to say, but he didn’t know the half of it.
“Here,” he said, reaching forward to his dashboard. He picked up his winter hat, the one with the shimmering snowflake pattern, and handed it to me. “Take this. I know it’s your favorite. And now you can remember our little talk.”
He winked and pressed the hat against me. I took it in my hands. It was mine. It was just a hat, but it was the only piece of clothing I had that my parents hadn’t bought for me. In fact, it was the only thing I had that they hadn’t bought for me at all. And Gustaphon was right; the winter one was my favorite. It matched my skin tone nicely.
“Thanks,” I managed to say. Gustaphon just waved me down the steps.
“Don’t worry about it. Now get moving, I’ve got a buildup of cars behind me and about five seconds before they start honking.”
I meekly nodded in thanks and stepped off the bus. Gustaphon closed the doors behind me and drove the bus away. I just stood there, staring at the white hat I was still clutching in my hands. It almost gave off a soothing cool to the tips of my fingers, refreshing in the blazing sun. But it also gave off something else. The feeling that, maybe, this summer would be different.
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Hope to see you next time, friend!
