Revised Entry 11 Susan Oloier

Title: OUTCAST
Genre: YA Contemporary
Contact: susanoloier(at)gmail(dot)com
Post #: 11

PITCH:
Always the compliant, Catholic school girl, Noelle grows tired of people’s hypocrisy. Her pious mother criticizes her; the popular group bullies her. With the help of her black-sheep aunt and a defiant, new classmate, Noelle seeks revenge. But vengeance comes with a price: Noelle risks friendship, first love, and self to get back at those who have wronged her.

2ND LINE OF 1ST PARAGRAPH:
I felt it in the desert breeze, heard it in the sounds of broad tailed hummingbirds and mourning doves, and stared at it in the bathroom mirror.

1ST 250 WORDS OF 2ND CHAPTER:
The ocotillos writhed and twisted out of the sandy, desert floor as dust devils curled and raced one another. The monsoon season proved a fraud, leaving the last of the autumn months dry and arid.

It was Sunday. Another Sunday of wiggling my way out of church. It became a ritual, a ceremony, and a game. I crept down the stairs with predatory stealth, slipping out the back door before my mother even realized I was awake. I escaped the house early enough to avoid 8:00 a.m. mass. My Reeboks beat a rhythm on the asphalt of Civic Center Boulevard. Sweat dampened my sports bra, pooled between my breasts.

As I ran, the September sun bled carmine and tangerine from its place in the eastern sky. The Arizona fever scorched the alien, oxide green of the golf courses to a raw sienna. Cumulous clouds, tethered to the air, taunted us. In the Midwest, people call this heat Indian summer. To us, it was a cool-down from the daunting summer temperatures of 120 degrees.

The beat of The Black Eyed Peas greeted me as I labored through the door, and I knew Becca had evaded church, too. She took advantage of every moment, every second, of our parents’ absence. She paraded around the living room, phone pressed to her ear. She spotted me and made a curt one-eighty.

“Oh my God! Tell me he did not say that.”

Her chats always revolved around some guy. The new one: Carl.