The Classix

(OLD) Chapter 3

Note: This edit is actually one of, like, twelve edits of this photograph. So many people told me on Instagram and Twitter that they thought this picture screamed Famoux, so naturally I was like, The more edits, the merrier! I appreciate any person who takes the time to make edits because a picture reminded them of my story. Honestly, it is just so beautiful and overwhelming to know that this isn't simply something in my head anymore. We're at book two and I'm still not over it.

This chapter is late, I know. I'm kind of having one of those extreme doubt days. I kept reading through the sequels of popular books and going, "They just feel like better writers than you. Everything you're doing is wrong. Stop it." Sequels are difficult to manage. Self doubt, even more so.

That being said, I acknowledge that this is moving at a fast pace, but I really don't want this book to be a drag. I'm mostly talking to myself here, because for some reason I'm in this funk where anything exciting needs at least one hundred pages of nothingness before it can be unveiled. The Famoux is over 700 pages long because of that. I'm getting anxious about it. Don't mind me.

PREVIOUSLY ON THE CLASSIX: Cartney and Emeray visited the coffee shop because I don't know how to write a book and can't come up with anything better. You know that line from The City by the 1975, Get in the shower if it all goes wrong? I'd probably edit that lyric to be, Make Emeray get coffee if it all goes wrong.

emeray

Sometimes I find myself forgetting that I've been Emeray Essence, a Famoux member, for such a small frame of time. Although the world seems to have lifted and shattered a hundred times over, it's only really been around five months since Norax first picked me up out of my little town Red. Not even half of a year. But it's all too easy to get caught up in the whirl of how fast-paced my world has gotten.

Emilee's world used to move like molasses: The same sadness every morning, the same torment at school, the same damn tunnel with no light at the end. There were no new people to meet. There were no new chances to take. There was nothing new or old at all, really––just the present, as present as it was, unchanging and unyielding.

Life in the Famoux dwarfs my past life in every aspect. The sadness around me is cogent and contagious. The torment is infinitely more intense. The tunnel has so many flashing lights along the way, I can't tell if there's an end to it at all. The sheer amount of stress and dismay and glittering grandeur I've encountered since becoming Emeray seems to be more than enough to encompass a century, if not more.

But for every groundbreaking, centurial instance in my life, there are a thousand little things I forget I've never experienced. For one, it's my first time getting through one of Colburn's famously volatile winters, not to mention my first time ever seeing a winter where it snows. My part of Eldae had been more in the south, so snow was something we spoke of, much like how a child speaks of exotic animals. We were always a little skeptical as to whether or not it actually existed.

By now, at the beginning of March, I have no doubts of snow's existence. I would've assumed the forecast would be much lighter and sunnier, like it used to be around this time in Red, but Colburn has yet to show any signs of slowing down. While Cartney and I dazzled the crowds in Wes Tegg's with our young love and vanilla lattes, Angad was busy calling in for a car to drive us home after noticing the blizzard that had erupted outside.

"Erupted?" I echoed.

"It's chilled, all right," he said, "but distinctly volcanic."

There was a very small turnout of paparazzi waiting out by the car for us, only the ones most dedicated to their craft. The others who weren't waiting to get us walking out were busy getting their incomes instead. They work at a near frightening pace––by the time our car turned the street, they'd already sent off most of their pictures from my little afternoon walk to a dozen tabloid sites.