YA Contemporary: THE ORDER OF EMENDS

Author's Name: Stella Nadene

Category: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Stage of Completion: Mostly polished and looking to query

Preferred Critique Style: Straight to the point

Cat Person or Dog Person: Both

Tea or Coffee: Coffee

Short Pitch

After Lyla Matthews is beat up by the school bully, she's recruited to join a secret society whose goal is to eliminate  bullying. The organization does exciting and extraordinary work, but Lyla must decide if helping this noble goal is worth losing her best friend, and her former life.

Writing Sample

             Through the heavy blackness I somehow find peace for the two seconds it takes before the next burst of white light and pain. I vaguely hear the spiraling, echoing jeers of the crowd of kids shifting around us, vying for the best view. My arms are infinitely heavy as I raise them to protect the meat on my skull just as another blow, white light and pain, smacks me across my face. The sound of it reverberates in the bones of my face. I keep my eyes closed, not only because the only thing to see is another fist coming at my face, but also because I can feel the warmth and stickiness of my own blood and don’t want it to burn my eyes.

Time slows down in between the smacks, speeds up when they land. The blows against my arms make them go numb and no one is helping me. No one is pulling this girl off of me. I can’t decipher the shouts of our classmates, tightly packed around the spot on the cold floor in our dirty junior high hallway where she’s beating the crap out of me. But if any of them are shouting for her to stop, she’s not listening.

She gets bored with trying to find my face through my arms and lands a solid strike in my ribs, right before the weight of her is suddenly gone.