I'm just getting back into writing after about a year and a half to two years off and would like some feedback.
On a related note, I've always had trouble with chaptering. I do well when it feels like a scene runs into another one in a related sense, but I have more trouble with chapters with scenes like the ones in this post because they almost feel disconnected or like they could be chapter in themselves but are too short for me to not feel weird doing them as individual chapters. Any advice on that matter would be appreciated.
Below is what I have for chapter 1(I might include the next scene in this chapter but as detailed above I kind of have trouble with chaptering).
Chapter 1
Seventeen years.
It had been seventeen years since someone had found Ben’s most buried of secrets, and now, he was screwed. He was more than screwed. He was surely and truly fu-
“Mr. Miller! Are you listening?!” Professor Perry bellowed, his voice echoing off the walls of the tiny office where they both now stood.
“Yes… yes. Of course,” Ben shook his head as if to clear the anxious thoughts from his head. He looked up from his lap at his boss’s increasingly reddening face and took a deep breath. Everything would be just fine.
“Do you have any idea what kind of position you’ve put me in?” Professor Perry asked in barely over a whisper.
“There is no law against– “ Ben began.
“You’ve been operating under a false identity!” Perry interjected, a vein in his neck bulging.
Ben resisted the overwhelming urge to bolt, to flee, to abandon all pretense of civility and run. For a moment, he’d thought Professor Perry had been bluffing, but now, there was no doubt in Ben’s mind that his boss had discovered a part of his most bitterly and closely held secret.
“Legally, I’m Benjamin Miller, Perry. There is no reason to insist on–“ Ben started again, but before he could finish, Perry swiveled his desktop monitor around so that Ben could see the page displayed there.
His heart stopped. No. He’d thought…
“The Queen, huh?” Perry asked, his eyebrows raised and his hands resting on the top of his desktop monitors.
On the screen, a webpage was open to a forum post filled with gossip about one Tina Morgans. The open comment was from some wannabe gossip columnist claiming that a rather short man with short wavy brown hair had spent nearly a year living with Tina Morgans nearly a decade ago. But that comment, although true and indeed identifying him, was not the comment that concerned Ben. No, it was the comments further down, near the bottom of the visible page, that twisted his stomach.
I went to high school with him. He went out with that Cowiak girl. You know the one whose mom went to prison.
As though bringing up Samantha’s checkered past wasn’t bad enough. Clenching his fists, rage and dread mingled in his chest as he read the flippant and deeply sickening reply that followed.
Yeah. I know. Some say he’s not even human.
”I-I can explain,” Ben stammered, looking up from the screen.
Perry sighed. “Really, Miller. I think it’s better if you just leave.”
“Leave,” Ben said, though his words seemed hollow and distant in his ears.
“Yes, I can’t risk having you here,” Perry said, a surprising level of compassion in his gaze.
“Can’t risk? What do you mean you can’t risk having me here?” Ben demanded.
“Your papers –“ Perry started.
“My papers? What about my papers?” Ben asked.
Perry closed his eyes a moment before saying, “You are hiding your status from the government, and although it’s none of my business, why. I can’t risk having you as a professor, especially one of Nemari Studies, knowing that if people found out about you working here, we’d get sanctioned or shut down simply for having you among our teaching staff. You must have known that when you applied.”
And he had known. He’d known the moment he’d told Tina that teaching Nemari history was what he wanted to do. Ben sighed.
“Alright. But please, don’t tell anyone about this,” he begged, waving toward the desktop monitor.
“I can do that. Take care of yourself, Miller.”
“You too, Perry.” Ben stuck his hand across the desk and offered it to Perry, who shook it. And with that, Ben strode out of Perry’s office and the university he’d dedicated the past three years of his life to.
An hour later, Ben came to a sudden halt in the dimly lit hallway leading to his apartment. Who was that? A figure stood against the wall to the left of his door, silhouetted against the bright afternoon light streaming through the window at the end of the corridor. Lean, pale, wheat blond hair. It couldn’t be. A rush of anxiety bubbled within him, but he swallowed it down and briskly closed the distance to his door. It was her.
She looked almost no different from the last time Ben had seen her. Her thick, wheat-blond hair, longer than it had been eight years ago, was in a tight braid that hung over her left shoulder. Her pale face sported a few more wrinkles than it had then, and her small, pointed ears bore simple blue studs. Her lean, muscled arms were crossed over her chest as her head rested on the wall.
What was she doing here?
“Don’t you have office hours in five minutes?” Tina asked, her voice cutting through Ben’s swirling thoughts as he approached his door.
“Don’t you have a council meeting to get to?” Ben retorted, straining to keep his irritation leashed as he fumbled with the lock.
“Yes, but – “Tina began as the door to Ben’s apartment swung open. Ben flicked on the lights, illuminating the small interior cluttered with books and old cartons of food, then spun around to face her.
“But what?” Ben challenged, the irritation inside him swelling like a tidal wave. He glared at Tina, his pulse quickening. What right did she have to just show up here, in his home?
Tina primly raised her head, “Ten years go by unencumbered, and suddenly, I have council members ask why I allowed a then twenty-one-year-old, human man to live with me.”
Ben scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Really? I didn’t take your council for gossiping types.”
“This is serious, Ben,” Tina chided, emphasizing his name like the accusation it was.
“Your council can gossip all they want. They won’t find anything,” Ben asserted, though a part of him doubted his own words.
Tina raised one delicate eyebrow; disbelief etched in her expression. “Really? What about a certain eleven-year-old whose ears could suggest- “
Rage and fear surged inside him, burning hot in Ben’s chest. Amelia. No. She was… “They won’t find anything,” Ben interrupted. They couldn’t. If they did, then…
Tina’s voice softened, “I can’t protect you forever.”
“I know,” Ben agreed. “When the day comes for the secrets buried in my blood to come to light, I will tell them what I told you then.” The words spoken only once hung between the old friends unsaid. Though the words still echoed in Ben’s mind, an unwelcome reminder of the promise he’d made all those years ago and of the cost of his life – of his blood – of his cursed, traitorous heritage, he’d been trying, seemingly in vain, to outrun.
“You should leave,” Ben said.
Tina turned to leave. Just before disappearing from the building, she glanced back over her shoulder, a tentative, fond smile playing on her lips. “I’ll tell Tammi you said hi.”
