18. RENASCENCE – Young Adult Contemporary

Mentor Name: Dannie Morin

Mentee Name: Heather Truett

Title: RENASCENCE

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary

Word Count: 67,000

Pitch:

Eighteen-year-old Chrissy reapplied her lipstick and shot her teacher in the heart. Priscilla can’t imagine a future where her pacifist best friend is remembered as a school shooter. She must uncover the motive behind the crime or Chrissy will face the death penalty.

Excerpt:

I’m shackled now. Wrists and ankles connected, a chain running between my arms and legs, hooked around my middle. I have to shuffle my feet to walk. The Investigator holds a door for me. I pass into sunlight and squint.

He leads me to a cruiser and opens the door. My left foot catches when I lift it. Too high. I’m not used to these chains. There were cuffs before, silver and sharp on my skin.

Once in the car, I glance back at the jail. There’s no window. The whole building is more than dim. It’s a grave.

“Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely,” Millay wrote.

I don’t have a bed yet. The holding cell is always lit, night and day. I was arrested Wednesday, and I’ve had eggs for two meals, so it must be Friday.

Three days I’ve been inside that cement coffin, but I am neither wise nor lovely.

Mom would say it’s a sign, that I’m like Jesus, lying in a tomb for three days and then emerging into the light.

But I am nothing like Jesus.

“This is your bond hearing. It shouldn’t take long, and we’ll be back in the car.” The investigator says this like it’s comforting.

The leather seat is warm through my thin scrubs. Their red stripes are my mark. They mean I’m violent. I look down at my hands in my lap. I feel like Lady Macbeth. My hands are red. My stripes are red.

I am violent.