Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Eye Sore
    Eye Sore
    Eye Sore
    Ebook112 pages56 minutes

    Eye Sore

    By Melanie Jackson

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The last thing Chaz wants is to spend his summer working on his father’s Eye, a Ferris wheel with glass-bottomed gondolas set up to view scenic North Vancouver. For one thing, Chaz would prefer to pursue his own passion: dance in the style of the late, great Gene Kelly. More important, Chaz suffers from vertigo, and even the thought of the Eye makes him want to lose his lunch. But when a crowd of angry protestors and a mysterious vandal threaten his father’s dream, and the family’s livelihood, Chaz is forced to overcome his own fears to help out.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOrca Book Publishers
    Release dateMay 1, 2015
    ISBN9781459807747
    Eye Sore
    Author

    Melanie Jackson

    Melanie Jackson lives in Littleton, NH with her husband, Corey Jackson. She works full time as a licensed nursing assistant. Melanie was born with a rare medical condition called FFU (Femur, Fibula, Ulna Dyspepsia); and dyslexia. She is the second oldest of seven children, was raised by a single mom and was homeschooled. Reading and writing has never come easily to Melanie but she was inspired by her favorite authors to keep trying. With hard work and dedication she began writing and found worlds and stories existed within her she had never known. The journey to publication was filled with countless struggles but she learned every step of the way. Melanie hopes to give someone the same joy and inspiration she was given.

    Read more from Melanie Jackson

    Related to Eye Sore

    Related ebooks

    Children's Mysteries & Detective Stories For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Powder Nexus

      Aug 19, 2016

      Powder Nexus
      10 min read

    • Article

      Sam Owbridge

      Dec 14, 2022

      Sam Owbridge
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Road, His Dominion

      Jul 9, 2023

      The Road, His Dominion
      8 min read

    • Article

      Nadia Owusu, Nonfiction

      Mar 20, 2019

      Nadia Owusu, Nonfiction
      2 min read

    • Article

      Liv In NYC

      Sep 21, 2022

      Liv Lovelace picks up the phone sounding cheery and carefree. She's at Curl Curl Skatepark in Sydney's Northern Beaches, “having a nice, cruisy day”. Read on as we casually chat about her recent New York trip to film for a short doco that coincides w

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ponderation

      Mar 1, 2020

      THE WORLD slides away in great chunks. Literally, the ground beneath your feet—gone. There are four sinkholes in and around Wink, Texas, the most famous being the Wink Sink. No one knows how deep it goes, but in 2002, a lone diver tried to figure it

      9 min read

    • Article

      Richard Moore In The USA

      Sep 21, 2022

      Richard Moore is wearing dark sunnies and a baggy fleece jumper, chatting to me on FaceTime while his cat Teddy purrs in the background. You might remember Richard from the article published about him in the previous issue – he's an Adelaide-based sk

      7 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ineffectual Tribute to Len

      Mar 15, 2019

      After graduate school I hung around another year and drove a cab for Iowa City Yellow Cab. The cab was a boat, a Chevrolet Caprice wagon. I could have put a mattress in the back and lived in it. I didn’t hate the job. I’d sit in the Kroger parking lo

      24 min read

    • Article

      Shaun Paul

      Sep 20, 2023

      Shaun Paul
      12 min read

    • Article

      Emerald Walls With Wade

      Feb 28, 2020

      Emerald Walls With Wade
      7 min read

    • Article

      Diary of Remorse

      Sep 6, 2022

      I was plagued by remorse, but my remorse seemed inspired by insignificant dumb things—things not really worthy of bona fide remorse. That didn’t make it any less painful or plague-worthy, as I was still riddled with disgrace on a minute-by-minute bas

      20 min read

    • Article

      “Really?”

      Jun 2, 2022

      “Really?”
      6 min read

    • Article

      Endurance

      Nov 17, 2020

      Endurance
      7 min read

    • Article

      Kai Shimakage

      Sep 20, 2023

      Kai Shimakage
      4 min read

    • Article

      Jenkins

      Feb 4, 2021

      Jenkins
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cliffhanger

      Sep 1, 2019

      Cliffhanger
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ready, Set, Let go!

      May 15, 2019

      Ready, Set, Let go!
      11 min read

    • Article

      TRAVELLING WITH Sara Wiseman

      Dec 29, 2019

      TRAVELLING WITH Sara Wiseman
      2 min read

    • Article

      I Met Myself Coming Back

      Oct 6, 2022

      I Met Myself Coming Back
      6 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Mer-mazing

      Mar 17, 2022

      Mer-mazing
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Eye Sore

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Eye Sore - Melanie Jackson

      Lynne

      ]>

      Table of Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      ]>

      Chapter One

      Liftoff. The Eye glided backward and up, and I watched the earth drain away. I broke into a sweat. I clutched the edge of my seat.

      Beside me, Dad exclaimed, "The Eye is going to put North Vancouver on the map, Chaz. It’s going to put us on the map."

      He clapped me on the back. Bad idea. My breakfast was hovering around chest level, ready for its own liftoff.

      We swung up into the fir trees. They surrounded us like curtains. I took a deep breath. It wasn’t so bad when I didn’t look down.

      I needed to get through the twenty-minute ride without being sick or passing out. I didn’t want to spoil this important day for Dad.

      Today was the official opening of the Eye, near the base of Grouse Mountain. Dad had poured all of his money into it. He’d borrowed a ton more. Giving North Vancouver its own Eye had been his dream ever since he’d visited the London Eye a few years back.

      I just wished Dad’s dream didn’t involve heights.

      Don’t get me wrong. I understood the appeal. With their steel spokes and glass gondolas, Eyes shone like stars. The city of Nanchang, in China, even called its Eye the Star. There was also the Texas Star in Dallas.

      Dad’s Eye was smaller than those in London and other places. He’d modeled it on the first Ferris wheel, as Eyes used to be called. An engineer, George Ferris Jr., built the original wheel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. George had been trying to outdo the big hit of the world’s fair in Paris, the Eiffel Tower.

      Like George’s wheel, Dad’s was 264 feet high. It had thirty-six gondolas, each the size of a minivan.

      Some Eye owners crammed people in. Not Dad. He wanted his riders to appreciate the beauty of the scenery—not be crushed by other bodies giving off BO. He designed each gondola for only ten people, with cushioned seats around the glass sides.

      Dad would hold the first official ride in an hour, for local VIPs. The press would be on board, too, snapping photos and filming.

      Dad was giving me this private ride as a special treat.

      I couldn’t let on how sick I felt. I couldn’t let him know I suffered from vertigo. I’d hidden it all these years.

      I couldn’t let Dad down today of all days.

      Our gondola swung higher. The fir trees thinned out. The wide hills popular with skiers in winter stretched below.

      I felt my breakfast waving along with them.

      I turned away from Dad. I shut my eyes.

      A dream come true for a boy, huh, Chaz? Dad asked.

      I caught the anxious note in Dad’s voice. He knew I didn’t want to work for him this summer. He knew I wasn’t thrilled about selling Eye tickets day after day.

      What I wanted to do this summer was go to dance camp. I wanted to shuffle my feet. I had already tap-danced through several musicals at school and the community center. I was getting into break dancing too. Forget spinning on an Eye. I could spin on the palm of my hand.

      In a few weeks our community center was holding a talent contest. You could dance, sing, tell jokes or do whatever your talent was. The prize was a trip to New York City. A tour of the Big Apple. And the winner would get to perform for a talent agent.

      Dance camp would have meant whole days of practice. I could have polished my routines and had all sorts of coaching to help me prepare for the talent contest.

      Of course, I’d practice even without the upcoming contest. To me, dance was everything.

      It’s great to have a dream, Son, but if you’re going to have any chance of making a dream come true, you need capital. It took me years to save up for the Eye, but I did it. You need to learn how to buckle down and work for your dreams.

      Dad wanted me to be practical.

      To be like him.

      That’s why I couldn’t let him know I had vertigo. He needed me. I couldn’t fail him.

      So, for the whole summer, I was stuck here.

      We rose to the top of the Eye. Sun filled the gondola. It was too bright to see anything—as long as I didn’t look down.

      Dad was trying out a new phone app called Don’t Look Now, But…

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1