H6: YA Contemporary: ALL THE STARS IN THE OCEAN
TITLE: ALL THE STARS IN THE OCEAN
AUTHOR: Jennifer Camiccia
AGE CATEGORY: Young Adult
GENRE: Contemporary
WORD COUNT: 73,000 words
PITCH:
Surviving high school trapped on Kauai? Manageable. Avoiding a dangerous stalker? A little harder. Trusting a football star who shattered your heart to be your bodyguard? Downright impossible. PRIDE & PREJUDICE meets GILMORE GIRLS.
First 250 Words:
It’s a universally known fact that the back of a school bus is for the cooler, edgier kids. I avoid the back of the bus with a carefully crafted plan of perpetual lateness. No one in the back will deny me grabbing the first available seat when the bus is already moving and the potential of becoming a human missile grows exponentially every second. Especially after our bus driver has been smoking weed with aforementioned cool kids behind Mitsui Market.
The front of the bus is a landmine for the opposite reason. Students there are on the bottom of the sliding social-scale. Even sitting with them can knock someone’s rep down a notch or two.
The middle is the coveted neutral zone (Star Trek reference for my fellow closeted nerds). Those in the middle can be anything really. I prefer the ambiguity of the middle. And in the middle I can avoid Junior, the second-year senior (second time’s the charm) taking up a whole seat with his shoulders and ego in equal measure.
“Haole girl,” he bellows, as he does every morning. “Come sit by me.”
I pretend not to hear, as I do every morning, and snag a seat next to Calvin. I’m used to being called haole, the Hawaiian word for white. Technically it means foreigner, but in reality everyone knows it means you’re white as a piece of Love’s bread. The irony is I probably have more Hawaiian blood than most of the kids here.