|CROSSROADS x LEAP YEAR | Eighteen-year-old April Lewis flees her troubled home, desperate to escape her emotionally distant, controlling mom, and seek out her dad. Little does she know a chance encounter with her classmate will take her on a cross-country ride: a journey that will change April's life forever. A venture that will lead her down a path of self-discovery and unexpected love. *** When eighteen-year-old April Lewis' mom walks around like a zombie, evades all attempts to talk and controls her every move, April decides she's had enough. She leaves home one warm summer evening with nothing but a yellow backpack filled with her coveted dad's letters he's been sending her for the past months, and some bare necessities. She's determined to seek him out and go live with him down on the West Coast, where he has a temporary job. The last thing April expects is almost being hit by a car. The owner of the vehicle? Her classmate, Dave Rivera, a troubled boy whom she almost never talked to before, and who can't be more different than her. After making sure April is just a little banged-up, Dave strikes a deal with her: he'll help her get to the West Coast free of charge, as long as she doesn't report him to the cops. The two embark upon a road trip from NY to LA, navigating through stunning landscapes and meeting a colorful cast of characters. While sharing life stories and exchanging experiences, armed with the wisdom from her Dad's letters, April and Dave discover that they are a lot more alike than they originally thought. The journey slowly becomes more important than the destination, and their path takes an unexpected turn when a shocking secret comes to light. © 2024 EvelynHail Exclusively on Wattpad Based on prompt 4! Which is (I shan't leave ye hanging :P): "When life gives you balloons, you fly up into the sky."

Vampires are alluring, powerful, and terrifying. Luke Grant isn't any of those things. Unwilling to embrace the heartless nature of being a vampire, he never amounts to much in the hierarchy. But when he meets a young woman whose sister went missing after a relationship with a vampire, he has to become strong enough to find her and not lose his remnants of humanity. ONC prompt 5

[ONC Longlist 2024 | A Medusa Retelling.] Sydney 2112. Young men are disappearing without a trace. On the other side of town, an up-and-coming sculptor's works eerily resemble the missing men. Can the Inspector solve the riddle before her son joins the collection? *** Keya Sapkota needs to create artworks for her first sculpture exhibition at the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Arts, but a recent date-gone-wrong has left her a mess. She has no memory of what happened, but a feeling that something horrible transpired that left her with broken lips and bruised body. Keya hides in her loft, chipping away at her marble columns on autopilot. The more she chisels the more lifelike her statues become, ones she can't remember carving, but does she care? She needs exhibits for her show and the strange figures may as well be her pieces. The new Stone2Stone sculpture exhibition at the MCA catches the eye of Inspector Reina, who is desperately searching for her son who disappeared from a nightclub on his twenty-first birthday. Reina can't put her finger on it, but the sculptor, Keya, seems strange. Then there's the eerie marble statues that share their likeness with young men who have recently disappeared. Inspector Reina is determined to find answers before her son's sculpture turns up in the artist's collection. --- ONC Prompts: 60. "Look what you made me do." -Tayler Swift 3. Your greatest fear is monsters in the dark. The last thing you expect is to become the Monster in the dark. 95. "I will become as monstrous as I must." Features: - @Fantasy - Urban Fantasy (Oct 2025) - @paranormal - Investigations & Academies (Sept 2024) - @action - Thriller (Aug 2024) - @APIFantasy - API Fantasy & Science-Fiction Entries (March, 2024) Trigger warning: Slight depictions of SA. Please read at your own discretion. [Strictly no copy, translation or adapting of this story in part or whole is permitted without the author's permission.]