To celebrate the first year anniversary of Evernight Teen, which has worked so hard to get my best friend's book published, I am hosting a spotlight on her book and helping spread the word about this publishing company.
This is an excerpt from The Tearings by V.C Repetto, published by Evernight Teen:
1
The
guy sitting at the next table coughed. It was an ugly, wet sound that made me
look up from the exam sheet in front of me.
Fabulous.
Last thing I needed was to get sick before the swim match.
He
sniffed and wiped his nose with his stiff, already less-than-fresh sleeve, then
lowered his hand back to his pencil and paper. Too bad for the person who’d
have to pick that particular test sheet up.
Okay,
back to the nonsense that would decide if I passed sophomore year or if I had
to have “loser” tattooed to my forehead.
Sighing,
I looked at the word problem. It was a geometry question, one of those that
made no real sense except in the wonky world of math and I’d already read it
through at least three times. It still sounded like gibberish.
I
glanced up at the rest of the sophomores, all bent over their own papers. Even
Lisa, a row ahead of me, looked like she was trying to disarm an atomic bomb.
Standardized
tests on a Friday morning, when all anyone could think of was being free to
drool on our pillows until Saturday afternoon, at the earliest, was an
interesting form of torture.
I
glanced down my Scantron. I hadn’t bubbled in a B for a while.
Ms.
Cadiz’s voice rang in my head, admonishing about the horrors of guessing, about
the complicated fractions of point subtractions. Whatever. If I left it blank,
I might forget and bubble everything wrong.
Without
another thought, I shadowed in B and moved on to the next wordy nightmare.
“How
was it?”
I
grabbed my gym bag from my locker. “Evil. That’s how it was.”
“Yeah,
there were some questions I left blank,” Lisa said.
“I
just hope I passed. My mom will have a stroke if I don’t.” Slinging the bag
over my shoulder, I leaned against the cool locker door, feeling the aluminum
like a sheet of ice against my back.
“Well,
she did try to get you that tutor.”
“I
don’t think anything would have prepared me for some of those questions. I’m
pretty sure I got the test that was in Russian or something.”
She
smiled. “You can tell your mom that. I’m sure she’ll believe it.”
“No,
but I really was distracted. There was a guy coughing up a hairball next to
me.”
“Ew!”
“It’s
probably whatever is going around the school, the flu, or something, but I
don’t want to even think of getting sick.” I grabbed Lisa’s arm and started to
lead the two of us to the gym. There was a large crowd of students still
exiting the cafeteria where we’d had the exam, each one with varying levels of
fear sketched on their faces.
“You
can still swim if you’re sick.”
“Not
at a state championship. Mr. Grason will never let me even get on the bus.”
“It
was just a kid coughing, will you stop worrying? You’ll be fine.”
I
arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re a fortune teller now?”
“No,
I just know you have paranoid tendencies.”
I
laughed and pulled the gym door open. “I hope you’re right. Otherwise I’m coughing
all over your lunch tray.”
“You’re
so gross,” she muttered, following me into the sweet and tangy smell of the
school gym.
“If
I can’t go to the match, you can’t, either.”
Mom
was waiting at the kitchen table when I finally made it home enveloped in a
chlorinated cloud. It was so much the norm for me that I barely smelled it
anymore, but I knew it could curl unprepared noses.
There
were so many questions on her face and she was pulling on her shirt like she
did when she was about to leap out of her skin.
“It
was fine,” I said, before she exploded with anxiety.
“Do
you think you passed? No, I don’t know if I want to know. If you’re held up a
year, then you’ll have trouble getting scholarships and−”
“Mom,
chill. Geez, I love the faith you have in me.”
“Maya,
you and I both know math is not your forte.”
“Okay,
but it’s not like, kryptonite or something.”
Mom
sighed and stood. “I know I’m exaggerating, but I want you to do well.”
I
smiled. I really should have been used to this by now. After all, it’ll always
been just the two of us, a household of semi-insane females.
“There’s
eggplant lasagna in the oven; it’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“Yum.
It’s completely vegetarian?”
“Yes,
Maya. I was really tempted to get the beef one, though, and pass it off as
meat-free.”
“Mom!”
“I
didn’t. This one is the nice, boring vegetable variety.”
Putting
my back-pack and gym bag down, I grabbed two placemats and dropped them on the
kitchen table, a rickety, ancient thing that was small enough for us to have to
squeeze our glasses in between our plates. We’d tried eating at the dining
room, but it felt strange in there, with so much space around us we actually
lost the salt shaker once. Actually lost it in the tablecloth dunes.
Okay,
mom wasn’t the only one who had a penchant for exaggeration.
“How
was work?”
“Oh,
it was glorious. Norman was out sick so the office was so quiet! He really
should be sick more often.”
I
snorted. “As a social worker, aren’t you supposed to have, like, compassion for
your fellow human beings? You can’t just walk around wishing people sick.”
“Norman’s
a pain.”
Laughing,
I set the rest of the table.
“Actually,
there’s something going around, I think.” Her face tightened. “Are you taking
your vitamin C tablets? Your Echinacea?”
“Yes,
mom. I’m taking them all. You’ll probably find me one of these days sprawled on
the floor, yellow and dead from a vitamin C overdose.”
“It
keeps you healthy. We also should get your flu shot one of these days before
the season starts.”
I
shook my head. “It’s tested on animals.”
“It
is not.”
“Yeah,
it is. I’m not getting the shot.”
Mom
rolled her eyes at me and plopped a serving of lasagna onto my plate. “You can
be a real pain sometimes.”
“Oh,
like Norman. One of these days you’ll be wishing I get sick so you don’t have
to put up with me anymore.”
“Yup,
that’s exactly right. Seventeen years with you is quite enough.”
I
gasped in mock horror and flung a dinner roll at her, hitting her square on her
forehead. My aim was definitely improving.
Monday
rolled around and with it, the swim match.
The
rain had started the night before and continued, flooding the school parking
lot and making the ten of us, the half-asleep swim team, groan as our uniforms
started to sag.
“I
wasn’t planning on getting wet this early,” Lisa said as we climbed up the bus
steps.
“Yeah,
I already have a cold,” Trevor said with a sniff. “I’ll probably die in the
water. Float right up to the top like a fish.”
“You’re
sick? Does Coach Grason know?”
“Do
you think I’m retarded? Of course he doesn’t know. And you better not tell
him.”
I
lowered my bag onto one of the fake leather seats. “I’m not going to say
anything, but of you throw up in the pool...”
I
grimaced as I sat down, hearing the seat’s wet squelch. Somehow, the rain had
found its way inside.
“At
least this pool’s one of those warm ones.” Rachael, the team captain, extended
her legs along the aisle in a stretch.
“Yeah,
the last one was so cold I thought they’d have to use an ice pick to get me
out.”
“Which
one was the last one?” Lisa asked.
“The
one in Jackson High,” I said.
“Right.
No, but this one is supposed to be one of those super fancy ones. I mean, it
should be, from how annoying their swim team is. You’d think they trained in a
gold-rimmed pool.”
Trevor
laughed. The sound twisted into a hard cough that hurt my throat just from
hearing it. “Do you want an aspirin?”
He
shook his head. “I’ve already had four this morning.” He wiped his nose and
leaned against the seat. Was it just the light, or were his cheeks flushed?
“Maybe
it’s not a great for you to compete today. You’re not looking your best.”
“I’m
fine. I just need, like, the largest cup of coffee on Earth.”
Lisa
shrugged. “You’ll have to wait until we get back for that.”
Trevor
nodded and closed his eyes. I watched him for a few more seconds, then sat back
to wait for the bus to finally get going.
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A jumble of entries, written in different hands, different languages, and different times. They tell of a rumour. A shadow. A killer.
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