Haunted by an embarrassing moment from the seventh grade, Blaire Sunderland is about to embark on her senior year at Honeybrook High. Though she has already confronted her issues with depression, anxiety, and body image, she's still known as "Blush"...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
~ Luca ~
The streets here were smoother. Nothing like Los Angeles. As Luca coasted past the suburban homes, he found himself already longing for LA with its concrete beaches and crowded boulevards. The overpopulated air gave him a steady background to lock onto. Here, it was too quiet. Too many gaps in his vision.
He used his foot to propel himself faster. His skateboard sent out a gravelly roar and for a moment, his sight cleared.
Luca had every intention of obeying his parents that morning. He was supposed to be on his way to the high school, but they never said he wasn't allowed to take the long way there. Who knew how many secret doorways this sleepy neighborhood was hiding?
But after skating around for about an hour, the only lights he could see were predictable and nothing new. Stuffing his hands in his denim shorts, he coasted down a hill.
He was going pretty fast. Enough to feel a wind tunnel throw back his thick, pink curls. His skateboard threatened to catch too much air. Someone on the sidewalk shouted at him to slow down.
Luca yawned out of boredom.
That was when beads of technicolor began to abruptly sparkle in his periphery. It was enough to make him bend his knees and turn down the street that curled around the new source of the light.
Luca came to a stop and scrutinized the area. A heady aromatic cocktail of caffeine, condensed milk and warm dough emanated from it. From what he could tell, there weren't a lot of people in the building. So what was up with all of the offworld activity?
Luca hitched his skateboard off the ground and went to investigate the shop.
It turned out to be a gold mine.
He had never seen anything like this before. An actual menagerie....
Was that the word for it? But really, who cared? There were just a lot of damn animals.
A giraffe, miniature and green, drifted past his shoulder. Luca watched it stride across the air as if it wandered an invisible, vast serengeti.
He couldn't help but laugh. Who else knew? The owner had to. The few customers present were completely ignorant of what was going on right under their noses.
Luca had so many questions and no clue where to start.
How about you buy a drink first. Duh.
Luca came face to face with the barista, who he suspected was annoyed with him for taking so long. He was going to ask if they had any recommendations, but stopped short when he saw their light.
"Whoa."
It was knotted, swollen and buried deep, as if they had swallowed a fallen star. The subtle smell of lip balm layered over maple syrup made him assume that the star catcher was a girl. He waited for her to say something to confirm his suspicions, but she didn't say a single word. Her light, however, rotated faster and faster, generating a circuitry of lights throughout the rest of her.
