I would say something about it, but I don't want to change your first impressions and affect your writing. :-)
Have fun!
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My response:
I pulled off my heels as I stepped off the patio and onto the lush lawn separating the mansion from the river. They'd already rubbed my toes raw, and of the girls here, I was one of the last to pull off my strappy, expensive, torture devices. Then again, they did make my legs look nice, which was the honest-to-goodness reason I'd kept them on this long. It was a pride thing. I couldn't get a date to the prom, but I came anyway, and I wanted to look like I could be here with someone. Like I wasn't the fat, awkward geek who had struggled through the last four years of high school.
The strains of the last slow song floated out the open windows behind me as the song of the water rose in front of me. It was both comforting and depressing. Six months ago, I would have laughed at the idea of my going to prom. Then mom signed me up for weight-watchers. After seventeen years of feeding me chocolate chip cookies or brownies when I walked in the door each day after school, I came home to a note on the table. Mom had paid for the meetings and left me a schedule. It was so like her. Non-confrontational to a fault. She didn't like to get her hands dirty. I bet if I'd asked her to her face, she would have denied it. But I'm my mother's daughter. I didn't bring it up. I just showed up for the meetings.
Wouldn't you know, they worked? Six months, and now most of my graduating class didn't recognize me. Three months in, a group of semi-popular girls started talking me to in American History, then invited me to sit with them for lunch. It was like my whole world had changed with the loss of fifty pounds.
"Like" my whole world had changed. "As if." Which, if you want to get all semantic, means it didn't really change. Which was why, as the last song was announced and my new-found friends turned to their dates, and I was left alone, again, like I always had been.
I couldn't stay inside. Everyone was dancing the last dance - no more lingering on the sidelines, no more small crowd to blend into. The only way to hide my alone-ness was to disappear through the wide, glass-paned french doors.
Lights hung from the tree branches, reflecting off the water and making the whole garden look like a fairy paradise.
I should be happy.
Who could be sad in such a beautiful place?
But for me, the beauty only made the loneliness worse.
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