PW #362: Young Adult Contemporary: (NOT QUITE) THE SAME OLD SONG

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor(s) Name: RuthAnne Snow

Mentee Name: Lindsey Ouimet

Title: (NOT QUITE) THE SAME OLD SONG

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary

Word Count: 75,000

Pitch:

Darcy’s life is all sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Except she’s just had to pawn her guitar, the drugs are her brother’s problem, and she’s afraid the boy she’s dating—the pawnshop owner’s son—is embarrassed to be seen with a fat girl. But when an opportunity to win money for her brother’s rehab arises, she can’t let those things sway her confidence.

Excerpt:

I was going to kill my brother.

Yep. Kill, as in maim brutally until he succumbed to death’s cold, dark embrace. Because a slow death by itself wouldn’t do. No, he deserved to suffer. I didn’t know much about Chinese water torture, but I could learn. And the leaky faucet in the bathroom, the one he’d promised to fix months ago, would do the trick. A couple of hours of that would surely drive him insane. His brain might even start to liquefy. Maybe dribble out of his ears a bit.

I wondered if that would be painful enough. Or painful at all, considering he’d killed most of his brain cells already, taking hit after hit of whatever his crackhead friends put in front of him.

I hoped wherever he was at that moment, whatever he was smoking was laced with some bad shit. I didn’t even feel bad thinking it. This always happened. He’d disappear, lifting cash from mom’s purse and leaving her sick with worry instead of anger. One day turned into two, three, eight at the most. He’d stumble in eventually, visibly worse for the wear, but with a sheepish “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry, Darcy. I promise I’ll be better from now on” smile plastered on his face. And then he’d do it all over again a couple of months later.

Getting clean was part of Quinn’s regimen. Staying clean was a different story.