All Chapters of TOOK MY BREATH AWAY : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

In 1974, Beaufort, one of the oldest town in North Carolina, was a place like many other small southern towns. It was a kind of place where people wave from their cars whenever they see someone on the street whether they know him or not. It was a kind of place where humidity rises so high that walking out to get a mail made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to the Carolinas. Only three channels came in on the television, though  television was never important to those of us who grew up there. Instead our lives were centered around the churches, of which there were eighteen within the town limits alone. They went with the names like Fellowship Hall, Christian church, and the church of forgiven people, and ofcourse, there were Baptist churches. When I was growing up, it was far and away the most popular denomination

The homecoming dance was tomorrow, and I wasn't sure if I need a date or not. Like it's not really important I guess, actually I don't know. Going alone there, so far what I have heard "you'd end up being the guy scooping punch all night long or mopping up the braf in the bathroom", that's the last thing I would ever wanted to do. So, that's people without dates usually do.When I was in junior high, I clicked with a girl named Emma Locklear. She was my first real girlfriend, though it lasted only some months. Just before summer breaks I got dumped by her for someone else, he was already 18 at that time and had a car. His father had a garage, no big deal! not at all. He was kind of guy who would flirt with every girl he see, his name is Charles. His primary attributes so far I could tell was only that he had a real nice car. He would mainly wear light coloured T-shirts, which suits his face- not so handsome kind of well. He would lean on his car and say while moving his finger

In the two weeks following the homecoming dance, my life pretty much returned to normal. My father was back from his business trip, which made things a lot more fun around my house, primarily because I could sneak out the window again and head to graveyard for my late night potato chips party. I don't know what it was about the graveyard that attracted us, maybe the tombstones themselves, because as far as tombstones went they are fairly comfortable to sit on.We usually sat in a small plot where the great family of Hemingson was buried some eighty or hundred years ago. There were six tombstones there, all arranged in a circle, making it easy to pass the chips back and forth between us. One day, me and my friends went to library to find something about Hemingson family. I mean, if you are going to sit on someone's tombstone, you might know something about them, right? It turns out that there wasn't much about the family in historical records, though we find one interesting inf

Amelia seemed quite shocked as I asked the question. Am I missing something?"you really didn't know I was the lead?""nope!""weren't you paying attention in the class?"I seem to remember something, the bell ring in my head. It was the day when Amelia smiled at me, miss chole was discussing about this play. Okay so, I wasn't paying attention since I was busy analyzing other things."oh..I seem to remember it. So, why isn't Eddie brown suitable for this role? so far I think miss chole said afterwards that Eddie will be Harry Preston"Eddie brown was a type of boy who have a squeaky voice, people would just avoid talking to. He was skinny, with pimples all over his face and he usually talked to you with his eyes all squinched up. He had a nervous tic, and he couldn't help but squinch his eyes whenever he got nervous, which was practically all the time. He'd probably end up spouting all his lines like a psychotic blind man if you put him in front of the crowd. To

  --1 month later-- The rehearsals began at three o'clock, and Amelia knew all her lines the first day there, which wasn't really surprising. What was surprising was that she knew all my lines, too, as well as everyone else's. We'd be going over a scene, she'd be doing it without the script, and I'd be looking down at a stack of pages, trying to figure out what my next line should be, and whenever I looked up she had this real shiny look about her, as if waiting for a burning bush or something. The only lines I knew were the mute bum's, at least on that first day, and all of a sudden I was actually envious of Eddie, at least in that regard. This was going to be a lot of work, not exactly what I'd expected when I'd signed up for the class.My noble feelings about doing the play had worn off by the second day of rehearsals. Even though I knew I was doing the "right thing," my friends didn't understand it at all, and they'd been riding