Shatter Teaser

After winning the YA manuscript contest, a portion of my first chapter was featured on a Winning Submissions handout after the awards ceremony. Because of that, I feel comfortable posting the opening few pages of the novel on my blog as well.

Shatter

Chapter One

Allstars 3000 Tennis Camp. Medford, Oregon. Sophomore Year.

“You need to get out there more. Talk. Kiss a guy,” my sister, Carrie, told me over the phone that April morning.

I chewed my lip, trying to picture it. Kissing a guy.

Carrie laughed at my silence. The sound must have rung through our whole house, spilling out of the windows to the California air beyond. “Salem, girl, you can’t get rid of those virgin lips if you never talk.”

“Yes, I can.” I smiled, resting my head against the bench I was stretched out on. All around me, rackets were slamming into tennis balls which skidded across painted courts.

“Oh, yeah?” she asked. “Yeah, you’re just going to grab a guy and plant one on him? So have you picked the lucky f—?”

Those were the last words I ever heard my sister say. Was she about to say fellow? Fall guy? Was she going to cuss? Do you know how many hours you can lie awake wondering?

* * * * *

Verona High School. Verona, California. Junior Year.

“Conspiracy theories!” Mr. White thunders. “Conspiracy theo-ries. As much as we might mock them, psychologically, we need them.”

I don’t look up from the graffiti tagged onto the right hand corner of my desk as my high school teacher speaks. The lettering is etched into the veneer, probably with a knife. Black ink has been driven deep into the cutting, making the XIII look like a scar.

None of the juniors or seniors here defaced the desk. Not the honors political science kids already gearing up on the first day of school for Mr. White’s trademark mock trial.

This year’s defendant is unusual.

“The belief that Kennedy, JFK, President of the United States of America, could be killed on his own soil? It had to be . . . a con-spir-acy!” Mr. White has a high-pitched, precisely-articulated voice. Class-action lawyers have nothing on him, on his love to hear himself speak.

I finger the black lines on the desk. The graffiti seems so anonymous and detached. Like it etched itself.

“Nothing,” he continues. “Nothing is more impossible to accept than random events with large consequences. So. People talk. Witnesses come forward. And soon . . . John F. Kennedy wasn’t shot by a lone gunner from behind a book repository window—no! No, the mobs are involved, the USSR deeply implicated, a conspiracy is born and that—”

Mr. White slaps something against the chalkboard, probably a ruler. I can’t tell without looking up from the graffiti. Which I don’t.

“—that is what we are putting on trial. A notion. Yes, a conspiracy. Is it true, beyond a reasonable doubt? Or will it be found guilty, false, and fallacious!”

A fly lands on my elbow. Fat, lazy. A summer fly escaping the oppressive California heat outside. I watch it crawl, depressing the hairs on my arm. Its black body blocks my view of the lower half of the graffiti on the desk. The letters are harsh, thin. Nothing like the sprawling XIII Carrie found all over her car when she woke up that April morning. Black spray paint, soft rounded edges over buckled metal. A tire iron had been involved, the police decided.

Do some things just happen? Or is there always a reason? A hand holding the knife.

“Oh, yeah?” Carrie’s voice plays in my head, a cross between a laugh and dare. “Yeah, you’re just going to grab a guy and plant one on him? So have you picked the lucky f—?”

I heard it. The explosion. Right before the line went dead, I heard it.