Notes On Darkly Devoted

Dark Academia

Decided to post a sample of my demon middle-grade book. If there is any interest I will continue it. 

TERA WAS FOURTEEN-YEARS-OLD, AND SHE KNEW THAT SHE WAS GOING TO DIE. In light of this knowledge, she saw no point in taking part in the make-believe prom in the hospital cafeteria.

It was only a few days before the Christmas break, and the hospital staff had decided to celebrate it with a full-fledged prom for the younger patients. A medical student had made Tera a ring of white paper flowers for her red hair.

Her hair was naturally, but Tera dyed it red about six months ago, back when she was still well enough to do stupid things like that. It was a terrible incident involving a clogged sink and a box of drug store dye. Now, her hair was half neon red. Her nursing assistant dressed Tera in her best hospital gown before wheeling her down to join the other patients. Tera saw her reflection in the windowpane.

She didn't look like a bride. In her reflection in the elevator doors, Tera saw a ghostly girl sitting hunched over in a wheelchair. The white dress was made out of paper hospital gowns. Her face was too skinny, her cheekbones too prominent. Most all her, her eyes were sad and weary.

At the party, Tera balanced a crinkled paper cup filled with lukewarm punch—the extent of her involvement in the prom.

The other patients, even those in wheelchairs, were trying to have fun, but Tera had come only because her grandmother had insisted. She said Tera leave her hospital room occasionally, especially during the holidays. Sitting there, Tera noticed her feet were still in the blue medical booties. What was a prom without real shoes?

From where she sat by the window, Tera saw clouds that the weatherman had predicted would turn into three inches of snow that night. Potts High School, also known by the students as Middle School 89, was just a few blocks away, and Tera would be attending it this fall if she got better.

She tried to imagine what one of those spiky-haired, tattooed, baggy-pants- wearing punks would see in a little pipsqueak like her. Maybe if Tera flipped her hair and smiled cutely, some gang leader would take her on as his sidekick. She could become his lookout when he and his friends went spraying graffiti on a train station platform. Her parents would hate him, and then one day, she would break up with the gang leader tearfully so that she could live the uptown life with a safe but boring boy.

Yeah, right, Tera thought, only in her dreams would a boy, any boy, want to be with her.

"Hey there, you have a date yet?"

Tera snapped out of her daydreaming by a doctor trying to balance a cup of punch and a sandwich in the same hand.

"I'm fine," she told him. "I'm drinking my punch and having a good time."

"I'm Dr. Davis. May I have this dance?" He began pushing her wheelchair to the center of the dance floor.

"Stop it!" Tera exclaimed. "I was happy by the window."

"Come on! Sam is working hard at his DJ thing. We can at least go for a few rounds on the dance floor."

"Sam is a medical student," Tera snapped back. "This isn't a real prom."

"It's nicer than the real one I went to in high school," Dr. Davis said. "So much nicer without the streakers and the awful gym-teacher chaperones."

Tera decided there was no reasoning with this guy, so she let her feet fall to the ground and dragged them while Dr. Davis pushed. When that didn't work, she tossed her punch over her wheelchair's side, and it landed with a loud splat on the cafeteria floor.