fiction Archives - Page 608 of 707

Hello There, Do You Still Know Me?
by Laurie B. Arnold (Author)

Booktalk: It’s summertime and Madison McGee’s best friends, Violet and Noah, join her in Costa Rica, where she’s staying with Rosalie Claire. Their dreams of lazy sunny beach days come to a screeching halt when Madison’s grandmother, Florida Brown, unexpectedly shows up on their doorstep. Dangerously ill with a mysterious ailment, Florida needs help. But the magic in Rosalie Claire’s fanny pack has stopped working. Only one person knows how to revive it – Grandma Daisy. The only problem? She’s been dead for five years.

Enter the MegaPix 6000. Together, Madison and her friends have to figure out a way to turn the magic TV into a time machine so they can visit Grandma Daisy and save Florida.

Snippet: We’d just slapped down a round of Crazy Eights when Mike unbuckled his seat belt.

“Bathroom break. Don’t worry, the plane’s on autopilot.” He made his way back to the restroom.

Rosalie Claire had just won the first hand with an eight of hearts when a robot voice blared from the cockpit’s computer.

“System overload. System overload.”

We heard Mike’s muffled yells through the closed bathroom door. “What’d it say?”

“System overload,” Rosalie Claire shouted back. “That can’t be good.”

The computer boomed out its warning again. System overload. System overload.

We heard the toilet flush, followed by a sharp rattle. The bathroom door was shaking.

“It’s locked!” Mike banged on the handle.

Rosalie Claire was about to unclip her seatbelt to go help him when the cards flew across the table and fell to the ceiling. Chocolates and gummy worms sailed through the air.

The plane had spun upside down.

Beneath Wandering Stars
by Ashlee Cowles (Author)

Booktalk: After her soldier brother is horribly wounded in Afghanistan, Gabriela must honor the vow she made: If anything ever happened to him, she would walk the Camino de Santiago through Spain, making a pilgrimage in his name. The worst part is that the promise stipulates that she must travel with her brother’s best friend–a boy she has despised all her life. Her brother Lucas is in a coma, and Gabi feels that she has no time to waste, but she is unsure. Will she hesitate too long, or risk her own happiness to keep a promise?

Snippet: “I’m fine. Just tired.” I roll over, struggling to get comfortable. A brigade of chirping insects fills the fields surrounding us, and their lullaby brings me back to that murky place where memories blur into dreams.

Cicadas. Big Red soda. Chlorine.

I’m in the sixth grade and Lucas is in seventh–our ages the first time Dad was stationed in Texas. We lived off-post and had to go to a nonmilitary school for the first time. We hated it. All of the other kids had known each other since kindergarten, so they ignored us. There was also this weird division between the white kids and the Latino kids, which we’d never experienced before. Military brats are used to hanging out with everyone, no matter if you’re black, brown, or blue.

September. Asphalt hot enough to fry an egg. All the grass in our subdivision is brown. Lucas is wearing his favorite San Antonio Spurs hat.

On our walk home from school. Lucas got into a fight with another Latino boy who teased me for “acting too white.” I had no idea what that even meant. All I knew was that I didn’t fit in anywhere or have a single friend, which meant I spent most of the lunch period hiding out in a bathroom stall. Not my finest hour, in addition to being totally disgusting.