Young Writers Society

It was raining, dark, damp, cold and raining. I know, happy memories are meant to take place in the sun. People are supposed to be climbing up a hill for a picnic, they’re meant to lean against a tree and the man should softly rub his wife/girlfriends arm just below her shoulder as she turns and curls up close to his body. Then they should smile. Well fuck that, in my happy memory it’s raining, the sun is hidden behind dark clouds and we’re both wrapped up warm in thick jumpers and raincoats. Oh, and she punches me in the chest. Yeah, this is my happy memory. What of it?

I smile as I hand over my card, the shop assistant, doesn’t smile back and I seethe a little inside. I know it shouldn’t, but impoliteness just really gets my back up. I get my card back and leave the shop, coming out onto a quiet high street in the middle of the day.
“Derek,” I turn, see her and pretend I haven’t, walking quickly on towards the tram stop.

She punches me in the chest and I make some strange, gruff noise and fall back a little.
“Come on you pansy,” she laughs. A drop of rain falls from the top of her hood and onto her nose. She doesn’t notice.
I get up and lift my hands as if we were about to box. She jumps up and down, her heavy bag clanging from the pots and pans she was carrying to make our meal that night. Then she slips, her foot flying straight into the air.
She lands on her bum and sits there, arms folded like a spoilt child told she could have no more sweets. While I'm lifting her up I notice that her arse is covered in mud.
“You look like you’ve shat yourself.” I say.
“You’re a sexist pig.” She retorts, running forward and talking to the girls walking in front, the rain still falling.

“Derek” It was louder this time, more forceful. I don’t turn. A hand on my shoulder, it’s over, I have to talk. I have no choice.
A coffee shop is the chosen destination, it seems that that’s is where our generation have all our serious conversations. Too much watching repeats of friends straight from school I think. Anyway, we both hate coffee so I buy two hot chocolates and put them down at the table near the window.
“It’s good to see you Derek, I haven’t seen you since…” The silence is almost ridiculous in it’s appropriate placement. She always loved drama; she always knew she wasn’t going to finish her sentence. God she pisses me off.

So that was the happy memory, it is closely followed by unhappy memories, but I felt I should let you know that it was good for a while. In brief, we got together around the fire that night. Sounds like a good memory I guess, making out by a campfire, I suppose it was, but it acts like a bumper. Things quickly got sour. We decided to go into her tent and have some privacy but her friend Helen came in just as we were about to… well anyway I suggested my tent and, because he was a decent human being, my friend stayed out of our way. I always hated Helen.
It wasn’t great if I’m honest. It was too cold to take of our clothes, I tried to feel her breasts, but her walking coat and what must have been about three thick jumpers made that close to impossible. It is a testament to my teenage horniness that I was able to, as it were, rise to the occasion. Anyway with us both of us having as many clothes on as you can in that situation, it was far from a sexy occasion and I somehow managed to have sex with someone with out even seeing her boobs. I left the tent with a smile on my face all the same.

Helen smiled at me at me and grabbed my hand. “How are you doing Derek?” She said it in that very sincere totally insincere way. Her eyes were wide and, oh so very honest.
“Fine” I mumbled. I sipped my hot chocolate it was too hot and I burned my tongue. I was starting to get annoyed.
“It wasn’t your fault.” She said squeezing my hand
“I know.” I just about stopped myself saying 'it was yours.'

The next morning, she gives me her pans to carry.
“You’re my boyfriend, now. You’ve got to carry them, it’s your job.” I was her boyfriend I thought to myself and smiled.
“Course it is” I say, kissing her. The sun is shining. We walk a little apart from our group, talking all day. I can hardly stop smiling.
We reach the top of the hill we’d been climbing, standing with the rest of the group talking. I reach round her hip and softly grabbed her bum. She gives a little jump up and giggles. Helen turns looking at us sharply

“Look, I know you’ve never believed me, but she wasn’t a nice person Derek”
“Whatever, it doesn’t really matter now does it?. “

“Why don’t you smile for once Helen?” I ask. Now I can only imagine how smug I looked.
“Fuck off.” She storms off

“I tried to stop them."
“Look I’ve got to go Helen.”

Helen turns around and storms back towards us, "for god’s sake you’ve got a fucking…” the pause for the dramatic effect was ridiculous, she was ridiculous.

I get up and leave, I bump in to some guy as I walk towards the tram.

“…boyfriend” the word rings in my head as I see Helen sitting alone in a coffee shop with two drinks on her table. Some guy hits into me as I look at her sitting alone. I walk on towards the shops, deciding I needed some new happy memories.

Hey,

Your writing is good.
A little crude at times, but that only shocked me because it started off so different. I don't have a problem with it.
The voice or tone of the writing seemed to change after the first couple of sentences.
Right about here, I think:

It was raining, dark, damp, cold and raining. I know, happy memories are meant to take place in the sun. People are supposed to be climbing up a hill for a picnic, they’re meant to lean against a tree and the man should softly rub his wife/girlfriends arm just below her shoulder as she turns and curls up close to his body. Then they should smile. Well fuck that, in my happy memory it’s raining, the sun is hidden behind dark clouds and we’re both wrapped up warm in thick jumpers and raincoats. Oh, and she punches me in the chest. Yeah, this is my happy memory. What of it?

It was kind of surprising, but then it followed through for the rest of the story, so I guess its ok.
Another thing, I'm not the best at grammar myself, but I did spot quite a few mistakes.

We, decided to go into her tent and have some privacy, but her friend Helen came in just as we were about to…

The two commas aren't really needed. Actually, I'm pretty sure they aren't supposed to be there.
Another thing, I felt the story was hard to follow.
Maybe more of it should have been in Italics? All the part from the past, the "Happy memory".
It was hard to distinguish from the present and past, especially at the end.
And one more, I picked out this mistake too:

“I know.” I just about stopped myself it was yours.

It should be: I only just stopped myself from saying 'it was yours'.
But other then those few things, I did like the story.
Hope I help & keep up the good work.

-- Ever.

First thing's first. Proofread. Before you do that, you'll need to brush up on a few rules. Dialogue punctuation and capitalization. Read this over: http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/writ ... uation.htm
Then see how it applies to your writing.

“How are you doing Derek?” She said

“Fine” I mumbled

“It wasn’t your fault.” She said

All of those and more need to be edited.

Some other things that don't quite fall under the rules there.

“Derek,” I turn,

Should be:
"Derek." I turn...
Those are two different sentences. And same with:

“Derek” It was louder this time,

There's also a good number of extraneous commas. Read through and see where you would or would not pause logically in a sentence (and not just for the effect of reading or drama), and edit.

Also, you need a clarification for the reader. You start by talking about a girl. Her, she, etc. Then someone says "Derek" and he turns and sees her. But because the reader knows of no other girls in the story, we automatically assume it's the girl. And then they talk and we're still certain it's the girl. It's not until you say

Helen smiled at me

that we go, "Ohhhh, it's Helen. Not the girl. Well...okay then."

“You look like you’ve shat yourself.” I say.
“You’re a sexist pig.”

Does that statement make him sound sexist? Doesn't really make sense to me.

repeats of friends

"repeats of Friends"

The memory where the girl falls in the mud and the last couple memories and the part where he smiles at the shop assistant are in the present tense. Everything else is in the past tense (including the memory of the tents). Check that.

The story is decent. Short but decent. You begin with this ponderous, melancholy introduction. Then give us the interaction...he slept with her, wanted to be her boyfriend, found out she had one...but I don't really buy the emotion. The narrator doesn't give us the indication throughout the story that he was too affected. Also, it just seems like a "so what? He slept with her, then it was over." There wasn't an emotional connection. We don't know anything about the girl except that she's playful. Helen doesn't strike the reader as a huge jerk just because she wanted to be in a tent when it was raining or damp out or nighttime in the woods or whatever. The narrator doesn't really strike me as likeable...he's just a little ornery without redeeming qualities...we can barely relate to him because we don't know anything about him except that he hates impolite people.

Also, what were you trying to accomplish with the dual time perspective? The later events don't lend much to the story. He runs into Helen, they don't talk, and he leaves. So what?

Double check how it looks on the site. At first I was very confused, then when I went to reply and looked at the past posts and saw your story, more of it was in italics and it made sense then. Just a little bug on the site. You might have to play around with where you place the italics HTML. Trial and error.