Entry #17: COWARDS AND CAPES

COWARDS AND CAPES
60,000 words
YA Sci-Fi

Pitch:

It's been twenty years since the last superheroes died and the power went out in Chicago. The hard line between darkness and light is the only world fifteen-year-old Glenn has ever known. A broken mother and a battered best friend are both his greatest loves and his biggest burdens. With his late father's revolver and a heavy, cynical heart, Glenn provides for them as best he can until the day the mysterious old man at the end of his delivery route tells him a secret: he knows how to bring electricity back. What is more, he'll need Glenn to resurrect the superheroes in order to do it. Spanning five decades, moving back and forth in time and vividly exploring love, loss and hope, this story combines the depth and beauty of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY with the humor and adventure of GOONIES.

First Page: 

CHAPTER ONE
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1984


Glenn poked Charlie's body with the toe of his shoe. He was unconscious, shattered glass and milk strewn all around him on the pavement. There was blood, too, escaping from some unseen head wound and stretching its crimson fingers inside the white liquid.

Glenn bent down and shook his burly friend. "Charlie."

The sun had just broke, the weeds and gnarled growth in the field behind the crooked house glistening with frost. The structure looked as though it could be pushed over. Glenn had often thought of doing it himself, of putting the two-story home out of its misery. What little paint remained was no longer colored and the wood beneath it had given way to rot and ominous noises whenever the wind picked up. It was assumed that it had been abandoned and looted, the same as every house on that street, but the boys went by every morning regardless.

Because Charlie had begged and Glenn had relented. Someone at Training had said they'd seen lights on inside the house. Not candlelight, either. Light light. Electric light. It was the stuff of legend, buried with the last superheroes in '64.

It had been relatively easy for Glenn to work the lifeless street into their delivery route, to swing by the house in the dead of morning and let Charlie check for the alleged lights. How quickly that simple choice had become a poor one.