TITLE: The Sign of the Cross
GENRE: Young Adult Historical
Pierre had a fire in his belly, a fire hotter than his father's furnace. Marta sat beside him, her faced bathed in warm spring sunlight, her eyes closed. She looked content, but Pierre knew her thoughts were as disturbed as his own. He took her hand.
Without opening her eyes, she said, "If you love me you will not go." When he made no reply, she glared at him. "You don't love me."
"If God calls me, Marta, must I not obey?"
She pouted. "You hear Him, do you?"
"I know He wills it, and what cause could be nobler?"
"I am afraid," she whispered.
He shrugged. "Should I fear unknown perils? Would you have me hide at home while every able Christian battles to regain holy Jerusalem from the heathens?"
"I care not a fig for holy Jerusalem, and nor do you!" There were tears in her eyes.
Damp, rotting wood and sharp pine - the sweet perfume of his childhood - filled his nostrils, and doubt washed over him. Could he leave Fourelle?
Apart from the rattle of a lone woodpecker, nothing stirred, in a scene that had changed little in a thousand years. All was calm and serene - like a painting - but the tale it told was a lie. Peace and tranquillity were of the past. Three months earlier - in November 1095 - Pope Urban had made a speech that lit a spark throughout Christendom, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Miss Snark's First Victim
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
#4 January Secret Agent
TITLE: The Whip-Slip
GENRE: YA Fantasy
I was running from vampires.
No. Werewolves.
Maybe robots. Or aliens. Rabid monkeys? Perhaps genetically modified tomatoes? Any of these pursuers would be better than running from the Waltham High School Cornhuskers - worst field hockey team in Codde County, New York.
In their defense, they weren't after me because of an insult to their athletic abilities. I had, in fact, given their captain hives and a nosebleed.
In my defense, it wasn't my fault. It was Hers. Left-Hander, as I called Her. My significant Other. The squatter in my brain that liked to hurt people.
Some people deserve it. No one but me could hear Her, of course. The rate you're going, everyone deserves it, I answered. /I should not be running from bullies at sixteen!
I hurried along my usual path to and from school. I normally ran to school; combination of a testy secondhand alarm clock and the added tick-tocks of cooking frozen breakfast burritos on an outdoor grill (also secondhand, courtesy of our neighbors.) My guardian, "uncle" Trenton, wouldn't spring for a microwave. Or stove repair.
Across the street from school, I cut through the backyard of the first house in a suburban set. I avoided the mutt standing guard behind the second house and leapt the fence to the third.
"Come for tea, Thea?" Mrs. Grisham asked me from her lawn chair. She was my oldest and only friend, ever since we admired the same hippo vest at the local thrift.
GENRE: YA Fantasy
I was running from vampires.
No. Werewolves.
Maybe robots. Or aliens. Rabid monkeys? Perhaps genetically modified tomatoes? Any of these pursuers would be better than running from the Waltham High School Cornhuskers - worst field hockey team in Codde County, New York.
In their defense, they weren't after me because of an insult to their athletic abilities. I had, in fact, given their captain hives and a nosebleed.
In my defense, it wasn't my fault. It was Hers. Left-Hander, as I called Her. My significant Other. The squatter in my brain that liked to hurt people.
Some people deserve it. No one but me could hear Her, of course. The rate you're going, everyone deserves it, I answered. /I should not be running from bullies at sixteen!
I hurried along my usual path to and from school. I normally ran to school; combination of a testy secondhand alarm clock and the added tick-tocks of cooking frozen breakfast burritos on an outdoor grill (also secondhand, courtesy of our neighbors.) My guardian, "uncle" Trenton, wouldn't spring for a microwave. Or stove repair.
Across the street from school, I cut through the backyard of the first house in a suburban set. I avoided the mutt standing guard behind the second house and leapt the fence to the third.
"Come for tea, Thea?" Mrs. Grisham asked me from her lawn chair. She was my oldest and only friend, ever since we admired the same hippo vest at the local thrift.
#3 January Secret Agent
TITLE: BENEATH THE SURFACE
GENRE: YA REALISTIC
It's debatable whether or not a person weighs less on an airplane. My honors physics teacher gave us the question as an extra credit assignment last year, one of those last ditch efforts to raise our grades at the end of the semester. As expected, my friend Noah jumped into the assignment. The rest of us didn't bother. What was the point of competing against the smartest kid in the class?
Noah concluded that mass remains the same, even if actual weight may differ by a decimal or two. Nothing extreme. Yet, as I descended toward the Logan Airport in downtown Boston, I felt a difference.
But it had nothing to do with being in an airplane.
When I left to visit my dad in southern Utah at the beginning of June, I'd packed my suitcase full of size fourteen jeans. Now, along with thin layer of red dust from my hiking shoes, my bags carried only size eights.
As the plane touched down on the tarmac, I skimmed my fingers lightly over my upper left arm, still surprised each time by its thinness. I used to hate wearing short-sleeved shirts, displaying my arms that jiggled like Jell-O with the slightest twitch. But today I proudly wore a pale pink tank top with lace edging, one my dad's girlfriend helped me pick out. I almost didn't try it on at the clothing boutique, but the soft fabric was too irresistible. She'd been right; it looked great on me.
GENRE: YA REALISTIC
It's debatable whether or not a person weighs less on an airplane. My honors physics teacher gave us the question as an extra credit assignment last year, one of those last ditch efforts to raise our grades at the end of the semester. As expected, my friend Noah jumped into the assignment. The rest of us didn't bother. What was the point of competing against the smartest kid in the class?
Noah concluded that mass remains the same, even if actual weight may differ by a decimal or two. Nothing extreme. Yet, as I descended toward the Logan Airport in downtown Boston, I felt a difference.
But it had nothing to do with being in an airplane.
When I left to visit my dad in southern Utah at the beginning of June, I'd packed my suitcase full of size fourteen jeans. Now, along with thin layer of red dust from my hiking shoes, my bags carried only size eights.
As the plane touched down on the tarmac, I skimmed my fingers lightly over my upper left arm, still surprised each time by its thinness. I used to hate wearing short-sleeved shirts, displaying my arms that jiggled like Jell-O with the slightest twitch. But today I proudly wore a pale pink tank top with lace edging, one my dad's girlfriend helped me pick out. I almost didn't try it on at the clothing boutique, but the soft fabric was too irresistible. She'd been right; it looked great on me.
#2 January Secret Agent
TITLE: Veiled Iron
GENRE: YA Fantasy
Layla knew she was in luck the moment the woman with the whip started snoring. The sound began as a whistle and deepened by minutes, until Layla felt reasonably certain the night warden wouldn't catch her sneaking out. A heartbeat later, she slipped to a crouch beside her bed.
Ama Devlet shifted on her divan.
Layla froze. Across the rows of sleeping girls, she watched the ama draw her whip-switch closer to her bulk, her snore as calm as the canal running through Rising Sun Academy.
Quickly, Layla mounded her bedding into a decoy. She had to get outside. Physical exercise was essential for an athlete's sleep. Without it, she could lie awake all night, her thoughts circling on when her father might find her a husband. A marriage would secure her future but it would also end her freedom forever.
She rose from her hiding place. A kaftan hung from a nail above her bed. She lifted it down and slipped her arms through the sleeves, whisper silent.
But few things were so quiet in the girl's dormitory that night. As Layla eased across the floorboard joints, a new sound joined the snoring: the rhythmic clopping of iron-shod hooves on the lane outside.
Riders?
Holding her breath, Layla slipped past the night warden. The door closed behind her on noiseless hinges. She exhaled. Who could be riding up to her school at this hour?
The abrupt jingle of tack told her the horses had stopped somewhere in the grass of the boys' courtyard.
GENRE: YA Fantasy
Layla knew she was in luck the moment the woman with the whip started snoring. The sound began as a whistle and deepened by minutes, until Layla felt reasonably certain the night warden wouldn't catch her sneaking out. A heartbeat later, she slipped to a crouch beside her bed.
Ama Devlet shifted on her divan.
Layla froze. Across the rows of sleeping girls, she watched the ama draw her whip-switch closer to her bulk, her snore as calm as the canal running through Rising Sun Academy.
Quickly, Layla mounded her bedding into a decoy. She had to get outside. Physical exercise was essential for an athlete's sleep. Without it, she could lie awake all night, her thoughts circling on when her father might find her a husband. A marriage would secure her future but it would also end her freedom forever.
She rose from her hiding place. A kaftan hung from a nail above her bed. She lifted it down and slipped her arms through the sleeves, whisper silent.
But few things were so quiet in the girl's dormitory that night. As Layla eased across the floorboard joints, a new sound joined the snoring: the rhythmic clopping of iron-shod hooves on the lane outside.
Riders?
Holding her breath, Layla slipped past the night warden. The door closed behind her on noiseless hinges. She exhaled. Who could be riding up to her school at this hour?
The abrupt jingle of tack told her the horses had stopped somewhere in the grass of the boys' courtyard.
#1 January Secret Agent
TITLE: Kinesthesia
GENRE: Young Adult
Meri came up with the Plan after she and Will tried to have sex.
She knew it would appall her grandparents - sex in general, anyway - and Will, who had his own reasons for doing things, said to her one day on the way back from school, "You're a girl."
"Unless you ask the boys in shop class," she said.
"Would you sleep with me? Everyone already thinks we're dating."
Meri considered it for a minute. "All right. My grandparents will be asleep by nine. I'll leave my window unlocked."
Her grandmother had forbidden this; she seemed to think Nazis roamed the Oregon coast, trying to sneak into houses through unlatched windows. Will turned dead white.
"No - I mean -" Then he took a few deep breaths. "Okay."
It didn't work.
They sat side-by-side on top of the covers of Meri's bed, and Meri, who had bothered to find reasonably clean pajamas for the occasion, said "Now what?" "I don't think I can do this," Will said, blushing up to his hairline. Meri thought of a number of responses to this, such as the fact that he'd asked, or that she was the one about to lose her virtue, but since Will seemed about to faint, she just said "Deep breaths." He rolled his eyes.
"That's not the problem."
He unbuttoned his trousers and jammed his hand inside.
GENRE: Young Adult
Meri came up with the Plan after she and Will tried to have sex.
She knew it would appall her grandparents - sex in general, anyway - and Will, who had his own reasons for doing things, said to her one day on the way back from school, "You're a girl."
"Unless you ask the boys in shop class," she said.
"Would you sleep with me? Everyone already thinks we're dating."
Meri considered it for a minute. "All right. My grandparents will be asleep by nine. I'll leave my window unlocked."
Her grandmother had forbidden this; she seemed to think Nazis roamed the Oregon coast, trying to sneak into houses through unlatched windows. Will turned dead white.
"No - I mean -" Then he took a few deep breaths. "Okay."
It didn't work.
They sat side-by-side on top of the covers of Meri's bed, and Meri, who had bothered to find reasonably clean pajamas for the occasion, said "Now what?" "I don't think I can do this," Will said, blushing up to his hairline. Meri thought of a number of responses to this, such as the fact that he'd asked, or that she was the one about to lose her virtue, but since Will seemed about to faint, she just said "Deep breaths." He rolled his eyes.
"That's not the problem."
He unbuttoned his trousers and jammed his hand inside.
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