Hi there,
I know, I've been quiet lately. That's because I've been working on something new. Entirely new. Definitely different.
This is a teen read, something that I hope has a little artistry, but, since my female main character is a hockey player, I'll warn you in advance, there is a bit of mature language. This was necessary to give the character the appropriate voice. Hope you find it interesting. The following is a potential blurb and the first chapter, unedited, as yet.
MOSAIC
It wasn’t until Carlos
helped me put the pieces back together that I realized how many were missing.
Shattered. Tormented. Brain on disconnect.
A car accident leaves Erin Rocheford, a seventeen-year-old
hockey player, fractured, disfigured, near death. Not only is her future career
in the NHL erased, but when she’s finally released from the hospital she can
barely walk, her thoughts stumble into each other, and people grimace when they
notice the scars crisscrossing her face.
Erin's parents consider a vacation in Florida, on an island
of palm trees and pirate lore, is just what she needs to recover. But in her
post-traumatic state, Erin is vulnerable to attack, to a ghostly invasion, to a
further fragmenting of her troubled grey matter. A pirate tale of an odd English
pirate and his feisty captive, a story of defiance and decapitation, will weave
itself into her mind and threaten her very soul. She will need to dig up every
reserve in her hockey-toned body to keep from falling apart all together, to
fight back and to protect her star player—the one boy who can see beyond the
scars.
1.
At the end a hush
falls over the arena as the crowds are absorbed into the night. At the end the
flashing red light on the ambulance fades like a distant star. At the end the
scoreboards are wiped and every hard-fought point is forgotten. You do one last
skate over the slush and cracks in the ice, feeling the cracks zigzag and
widen, extend desperate fingers to avoid the collapse. You stop at the hole,
the entry point, the garish splotch of blood. The lights dim until nothing is
visible but the silver streaks of a broken mirror. A tiny voice whispers, Game
Over.
2.
Erin
Some days, you shouldn't get out of bed.
“Madre de Dios. Who are you? And what
happened to your fa— I mean, what are you doing here?”
His words pinned me to the ground, like I was
a specimen in a glass case, a bug in the Montreal Insectarium.
My
normal response would be: “Well, who the hell are you?” and, “I didn’t see a
sign that said ‘Private Beach,’ so I have as much right to park myself here as
anyone else.”
But
I wasn’t exactly parked, more like concealed behind a palm tree and sneaking forward
through the grass to, you know, listen in, and it was the other half of his
question, the broken one, that really hurt.
Why
would I need to hide and sneak, you might wonder? Who really does that, eh?
Someone
who doesn’t want to be that specimen.
So there I was,
exposed and displayed for all to see. I needed to rip out the pins and bolt or
vanish. Frantic, I looked in ten different directions at once.
I
made an attempt, scrambled halfway up, but before I could escape the headlights
of his eyes I froze again. Struck.
Blindsided. Breathless. A weird epiphany needled into my brain. It whispered “death
isn’t stalking you anymore.”
I
could have sighed. After all, a part of me still wanted to live.
Not
like this, of course. Not like this limping, cowering piece of shit. There were
many moments over the past six months when I didn’t want to live. When I’d
drift away to the sounds of cheers and the flood of Gatorade over my head and
wake up to stabbing pain, blurred vision, casts and pins and coat hangers stuck
through me (or at least they looked that way). My face felt like a dartboard
and I thought, God, you hit a bullseye,
didn’t you? It was for getting so cocky, wasn’t it? For thinking I could
actually challenge the guys, compete in a man’s world, make it to the NHL. Ha!
Joke’s on you, Erin, he’s laughing.
I
would have laughed too, but it hurt too much to laugh, or smile, or move.
But
this was my chance to recover. This tropical island with the palm trees and the
glittering postcard horizon. Nobody knew me. No one would look at me.
Who
was I kidding?
So
what do you do when you’d like to dissolve into a puddle and drain into the
dirt? You slink away. But I wasn’t capable of slinking yet. Inelegant hobbling.
That was about it. And he’d already seen me, so what was the point?
The
point was to escape, not this moment exactly—although it was bad enough—but the
ones that would inevitably follow, the moments when I wouldn’t want to live
again. The ones that would make me feel cowardly.
But
there is no escape once you’re trapped in the case. The only way out is to
change the past. Start over. Reverse the film. Splice it, trim it, use other
camera angles. Try another replay, with the mike off or different lines dubbed
in. If I were really smart I’d figure out how to erase the last six months of
my life. But the best I can do is mess with the last few hours.
Here
you have it. My first attempt at film editing.
We crossed the
causeway and what I saw was absurdly beautiful. Palms trees, flowers, glossy
leaves.
“Dorothy,
we’re not in Canada anymore,” I whispered. But it was more than just Florida,
too. The island shimmered, like an oasis with a surrounding wilderness of sea
instead of desert. I can breathe here.
Spanish moss dangled like emerald webs from tall trees. People strolled by in
pink tank tops and butt-hugging shorts. The air was sharp and fragrant. And it
was dirty.
Not
garbage-filth-layered dirty. Fresh with dirt, sand, mud, smiling plants. Not a
hint of sterile surfaces or pine-scented disinfectant. Nor was there the smell
of sweat-drenched uniforms and stale indoor ice.
This is perfect,
I thought. The perfect place to die,
that other voice said. I hated that other voice.
Mom
gave my arm a fluttering touch and Amy sat up to get a better view. (Dad cast
me a look, a smile that was sort of droopy-sad. Why did he have to do that? It
was like he could read my mind and knew I was comparing everything to . . .
before. I think he was comparing, too.)
First thing, let’s
get rid of Dad’s smile. Snipped. Erased. No more reminders.
“The hotel’s on
the next island,” said Dad.
“Are
we taking a boat?” I asked.
“No.
Just a bridge. Sanibel’s incredible, isn’t it?” His hand swept over the quaint
souvenir shops to our right, nestled between massive, twisted trees and then,
the taxi shuttled us past a bald white sign that said, “Ding Darling Refuge.”
I
looked at the entrance, at the thick fringe of vines and creepy mangroves with
their exposed roots. These weird long-necked birds—something like snakes with
wings—flew over a swamp in the distance. It seemed so odd in the middle of
tourist-town. But then again, I was odd now, too. I didn’t blend in with the
perfect crowd anymore, not that I ever did, but now I was a weed in the garden
just like this refuge. Mine was the face that could stop conversations, or make
even Reverend Alden stumble over his words.
“E-Erin,
dear. You’re looking . . . well.”
Do
I really look well, jackass?
“We’re
here,” said Dad.
Thank
God. If I’d thought about that idiotic reverend one more time, I might have had
to punch someone. And Dad didn’t like it when I punched Amy. Mom either. But
Mom couldn’t make me back off with just a look.
So.
This was it. The island of captives. Captiva, they called it. The hotel
resembled a manor from ancient times with Roman pillars and bulging white
balconies that overlooked the ocean. And the ocean dangled at its doorstep,
just metres away, waves curling in and sweeping towards me. I opened the taxi
door. Salt tingled the tip of my tongue. I walked forward. Sleek sport fishing
boats cruised up and down the coastline and the specks of green islands hovered
in the distance. The waves trickled in from the Gulf of Mexico, sighing as they
splashed down on the beach. You could dive in that ocean, you could swim, you
could drown.
This is the
perfect moment to get back into the taxi and tell the driver to shuttle me back
to the airport, now! or to drown.
Make note for new script at this point.
Amy clambered
out of the car. “Isn’t it awesome?” she said, her voice all squeaky, her eyes
all shiny.
I
looked down at my feet, my thick runners sinking into the sand. “It’s a beach,”
I said.
“But
the sand is like pure white. And look at all the shells.” She pointed at heaps
of sun-baked clam shells with the odd starfish thrown in. “The water is that
incredible blue colour.”
“Turquoise?”
I asked.
“Yeah.
Like your eyes.”
“My
eyes aren’t turquoise.”
“Yes,
they are.”
“Whatever.”
I
was still looking down when I noticed something poking out of the sand. An
ivory comb with a crust of shells adhered to the teeth and jewels embedded in
the spine. Sapphires, maybe? I don’t know what the attraction was. I never wore
these kinds of things; I wasn’t a glittery type of gal. Still I bent down and grasped
it in my hand. I hardly felt the jolt of pain from bending my legs, but as I
slipped the comb from the sand a small vibration travelled through my fingers,
and then a shock.
I
dropped it, the pain excruciating in my newly-healing bones. Had I snapped one
again? What the hell! For a minute I blanked out from the pain. And heard a
voice: Sleeping, sleeping for nigh eternity. But not now. I feel her. Nearby.
Some sort of
feedback? Really should clip this, but even the memory of it is making my hands
shake.
It’s
okay. It’s all right. Remember the time you got hit in the face with the puck.
Broke a cheekbone. Nearly cracked your jaw. You said, ‘I’m tough, man. I’m
going to play the next game.’ Erin, you can do this. You can come back to us.
You can play the next game.
It
was Dad’s voice in the hospital. He brought me back. He always brought me back.
“Erin?”
Louder this time.
I
opened my eyes. “Dad?”
He
was there, bending over me, tucking his arm behind my back. “Slow movements.
Remember what the physiotherapist said.”
“Are
you okay, sweetheart?” asked Mom, almost touching my arm, but not quite.
I’m not going to break,
I felt like saying, although I had, so that wouldn’t cut it anymore.
I
nodded, and straightened, and took a deep breath. I looked down and the comb
was still clutched in my hand. I shook it free. It plopped to the sand and
stuck there, oddly out-of-place like a . . . girl in an NHL uniform.
“Let’s
unpack,” Dad said, giving my shoulder a squeeze.
“Can
we go for a swim afterwards?” asked Amy. “I can’t wait to get in that water.”
And get into her bikini,
I thought.
Dad
was starting to nod and I nearly panicked. “Amy can swim. I don’t want to swim.”
“Maybe
swimming so soon isn’t a good—” said
Mom.
“How
about biking?” I interrupted. “Joanne said I could bike, right? To try to get
some strength back into my legs.”
“I don’t—” said Mom.
Now this is
where I should insert a new line, “Okay, Mom. No biking. You’re probably right.”
But I just can’t seem to do it. Mom is
never right.
“Sure,” said
Dad. “We can even check out the refuge on Sanibel with the bikes. There’s all
those different trees I told you about—Banyan, Gumbo limbo—and mangrove swamps.
They say it’s amazing—full of alligators and birds, too.”
Creepy
refuge. Right. But in a way it seemed a matching destination. That refuge was
as wild and tangled and strange as I was now.
I
watched Mom’s face grow paler. “Do we really want to see alligators while we’re
on bikes?” she asked.
I
couldn’t suppress a smirk. “They’re not going to eat us.”
“It’s
happened before,” she said.
“Seriously,
Mom?”
“Seriously,
Erin.”
“Stop
being so nervous. I’m fine. I’m not going to let anyone eat me.”
Dad
leaned over and added with a wink, “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Steve,
you’re not helping. We’re talking about alligators. You can’t just fend off
alligators with a . . . with a . . .”
“Water
bottle,” smiled Dad.
“Oh,
I give up.”
I
grinned, even though it hurt. At least with small battles I could still win.
But it wasn’t about winning anymore. I had to get away. And I needed to feel
that power again, the adrenaline pumping through my legs and buzzing in my
brain. I wanted to feel . . . better.
“How
about,” I said, “we go for a quick swim this morning and you let me bike by
myself this afternoon?”
“By
yourself?” Mom looked at me like I
was asking to climb Mount Everest. “Erin, you’re still having trouble walking.”
“I
can bike better than I can walk.”
“But
what if you fall off and hurt yourself, and no one’s around. And there are
supposed to be some poisonous snakes on the island. Darling, I just—”
“Why
don’t we go for that swim,” said Dad. “We’ll
work our way up to biking.”
“But
what if there are sharks in the water?” I mimicked. I couldn’t help it.
Dad
slid me a sideways look that said, Cut it out.
I
cut it out and we went swimming . . .
Speaking of
cutting, let’s cut the entire beach scene. But maybe I could splice it with a
scene from Jaws and we’d be racing
off the island, or I’d get eaten. Either way, the case would be empty. Need to rip
out the next scene, too.
. . . biking
down the path, and not feeling better. As I pumped the pedals, teeth of pain
chomped at my legs—wicked, biting, chewing, grinding teeth—but I focused on the
trail and kept pedaling. Green palm fronds waved me on. Blushing, cascading
bougainvilleas pulled me deeper down the path. Banking, squawking gulls
beckoned me towards the ocean. Laughing, chattering voices . . . stopped me.
Why is this not
working? I was never an expert at Media Studies in school, but I thought I’d
cut this. Okay, one more shot. Shift camera angle, speed up film. Keep bike
moving.
“Hey, Sadie. Let’s
go for a swim.” (Imagine this on fast forward.)
“Wait
a minute. I’m talking, Carlos. Don’t you guys want to hear?”
A
sigh whistled though the shrubs. A sigh and then chuckles and giggles and a few
hearty “yeahs.”
I
slid off the bike, edged around the palm tree that bordered the path, and
ducked down between the sea grass or oats, whatever it’s called. Ever so
quietly I parted the purple strands of morning glory vines that were threaded
through the oats and shifted to get a better view. A blonde girl with dark
roots, wearing a string bikini, was sitting on the sand. She had a perfect
face, model-perfect, gag-perfect, on second look, fake-perfect considering all
the makeup slathered over her cheekbones and around her eyes. For some reason
she was the magnet. Gathered around her like groupies around a pop star were a
bunch of teens sprawled over colourful beach blankets.
“So,
get this,” said the blonde. “They found her body somewhere on Sanibel, or parts
of it. Washed in from the ocean. They say she probably went swimming and never
came back.”
“Maybe
she was eaten by a shark,” said a petite, snub-nosed girl to her left.
“’Kay.
If that’s what you believe,” said the girl.
“What
d’you believe, then?” asked this bronze-skinned guy to her right. He leaned
forward, his hazel eyes tracking her body. I tracked him—black curly hair and
heavy, interesting brows that arched high on his forehead as if he didn’t
believe a word the girl said. He was bare-chested, decked in blue cotton
shorts, and a thin crust of sand clung to his pecs and thighs. Hot, yes. But
something else held my gaze. Despite his focus on this girl, he seemed
unfocused, distracted, surfing the ocean instead of baking on the sand.
“Well,
duh,” the blonde continued. “What do you
think, Carlos? She was murdered. Her head wasn’t even attached to her body.
Some nutcase came up behind her,” she raised her arms, shoulder-level, like she
was holding a baseball bat, “and snapped off her head.” She let it swing.
“Eww,”
said a skinny cinnamon-haired girl, wrinkling her nose.
“Cool!”
said a male voice in the group, a dude with dyed platinum spikes and wide brown
eyes.
The
guy, Carlos, didn’t say anything, but he kind of flinched. Maybe he wasn’t
turned on by beheadings. His eyes drifted away from the blonde, following the
horizon where blue met blue. Was he picturing the poor murdered girl pitched
out to sea, or was he more likely picturing the blonde, skinny dipping in the
rough tide?
I
shifted as teeth nipped at my leg again. Crap. Stupid position to be in,
hunched under the vines. I reached down, to ease the tension, but then I felt a
cramp. I clenched my jaw. I needed to scream. The muscle was howling, like a
thousand needles were jabbing me, as if I hadn’t been jabbed by a thousand
needles already. I stretched my calf, massaged it gently, but the cramp gripped
even tighter. I groaned and twitched, making the sea oats shiver.
“What
was that?” asked the girl.
“What
was—what?” asked the guy, his deep voice breaking in midsentence as if he were
holding in a laugh.
“Behind
us, in the oats. What if it’s a gator? Didn’t you hear it?”
I
froze, tears pouring from my eyes from the freaking pain.
“Probably
a tortoise or a bird.” I looked up to see him rolling his eyes. “How long have
you lived here, Sadie?”
“Long
enough to know that gators do come to the beach sometimes. Can you check it
out, Carlos?”
Say no, Carlos.
New audio: Emphatic “No!” He’s mouthing something else, though.
He pushed off
the blanket, sprang to his feet, and headed straight for me.
I
instantly slithered backward, trying to shrink behind the palm. But I wasn’t as
quick as a snake might have been, and before I knew it, he was standing right
in front of me, looking down at me, eyes sweeping my long-sleeved cotton blouse
and mid-calf capris and coming to rest on my face.
“Madre de Dios. Who are you? And what
happened to your fa—I mean . . . what are you doing here?”
So much for film
editing.
Copyright © 2013 Deborah Jackson
Not only am I once again reading the works of my old favourite authors, with new installments in the Egypt series—Wilbur Smith—and the Thomas Covenant series —Stephen R. Donaldson—but 2015 is the year I will finish the longest story I've ever written. Now that the first draft is complete, I've quickly realized it's merely a beginning.Yes, perhaps an epic sci-fi fantasy is in the works.
