My Writing: Forging Starlight

Query:

Seventeen-year-old Olivia Ryan has worked her butt off to graduate early and get accepted into her dream art school. All she needs is her mom’s support. Something her mom refuses to give. Olivia’s sure she can wear her down, but those plans are derailed when her mom is killed in an accident that leaves Olivia in a nightmare-filled coma. She wakes to find her mom gone and the boy she’s only known in her dreams—plus the boy from her nightmares—walking around in the waking world.

The boy she’s been kissing in her dreams is a welcome distraction from her grief until she finds out he was driving the truck that killed her mom. His claim that, like him, she’s a member of a powerful alien race only seals her desire to push him away.

The boy from her nightmares believes Olivia’s the key to accessing one of the greatest powers in the universe. He plans to turn her into his puppet and use that power to defeat the creator. 

She’s sure they both have the wrong girl, but when nightmare boy almost traps Olivia in a dream, denial is no longer an option. To save her soul and eliminate the risk of destroying the universe with her own hands, she must forego her art school dreams and embrace her true lineage and potential. But accepting her alien ancestry means trusting the boy who killed her mom, and that might be beyond the capabilities of even her advanced alien heart.

Complete at 96,000 words, FORGING STARLIGHT is a work of YA Contemporary Fantasy. 

1 THE END

My art teacher says the eyes are the window to the soul. Apparently, I have no soul.

I studied the self-portrait lying on my worktable. Dull, lifeless eyes stared back. Yup, definitely soulless. I crumpled the stiff paper and pressed it into a tight ball. Why can I draw anyone, anything else, but I can’t draw myself?

Mr. Unrealistic-Expectations—aka my art teacher—stopped two tables away, making his daily rounds to check everyone’s progress. So what if it was the fourth time I’d started over? The assignment was impossible for me to complete, and on Friday, when I’d told him as much, he’d said, “Olivia, you’ll never survive art school with that attitude.”

Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t care. Maybe I was tired of “living up to my potential.” I groaned inwardly and wished that were true, that I could be okay with coasting through. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so exhausted all the time.

He reached my table as the bell rang and poked the wadded-up drawing with his pencil. “You destroyed another one?”

I shoved all my papers into my portfolio and winced as one thick sheet sliced through the tip of my finger. Without thinking, I stuck my finger in my mouth and tasted blood, but when I pulled it out to assess the damage, there was no cut that I could see. I ran my thumbnail over my fingertip. No pain and no cut.

I definitely needed more sleep. And maybe fewer of the dreams about a gorgeous boy with golden curls. A boy I’d never seen, much less met, in the real world. Okay, so the dreams were the best part about being asleep. It was the need to draw his face afterward that kept me up.

“Olivia?” Mr. Harper interrupted my thoughts. “Are you okay?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Fine.” I checked my finger again. Still no cut. Weird. I snatched my crumpled drawing and hopped off my stool. “I’ll work on a new self-portrait tonight,” I lied. Working on that stupid project was the last thing I intended to do. Birthdays are supposed to be fun.

Before he could offer his assistance, I tossed the drawing in the trash, shouldered the door open, and headed out to the crowded outdoor locker area. I smiled at the heavy clouds overhead, breathing in the damp smell that always accompanied a rainy day in Mesa, Arizona. At least something good was happening.

I pulled out my phone. No new calls or texts. Camryn should’ve called by now.

Three rings and my best friend’s voicemail picked up. Crap. It’s probably the middle of the night there. “Hey, Cam. I hope you’re enjoying your adventure down under on my birthday. I can’t believe you bailed on me. Sorry. I’m not mad. Just feeling off. It’s been the weirdest day.

“Give your brother a hug and tell him I said congrats—even though his wedding ruined my birthday. I’m kidding. Don’t freak. I hope you’re having fun. Really. Call me when you get a sec. Love you.”

I clicked through to my texts and reread the text I’d sent to my mom after she’d dropped me off that morning.

If you come get me after second hour, I’ll love you forever. Just a friendly reminder that this might be my last birthday at home for a while since I’ll probably be leaving for college soon.

I’d figured the guilt—either about it possibly being my last birthday at home or the fact that she’d been resisting letting me leave for college a year early—would be enough to get her to call out of work and come get me. But second hour had just ended, and she hadn’t responded.

I stopped in front of my locker and absently spun the dial to unlock it as I ran through my other options for getting out of third hour. Presentations were supposed to start that day, and though my project was close to being done, I wasn’t prepared.

Trevor came up behind me and hooked his arm around my neck. “How’s my favorite redhead on this lovely December morning?”

“Lovely December morning? What are you, forty?” The lock clicked. I lifted the latch and opened the door.

“Not cool, Liv. You make me promise to be nice and when I am, all I get is crap from you?”

“Yeah, nice, not retired.” I shoved my art supplies into my locker and grabbed my history textbook before swinging the door shut and turning to the boy who’d been one of my closest friends since first grade. “I love you just the way you are.” Those words came out more from habit than anything else, but I regretted them as soon as they left my lips.

“Heh. That was way easier than I thought it would be.” His hand curled around my upper arm, and he let out a high-pitched whistle that made me wish I didn’t have ears. About a million heads swung toward us.

If only I could melt into the concrete on demand.

“Today is Livy Ryan’s birthday,” he shouted.

I tried to yank free. He wouldn’t budge. “Trevor, you promised you wouldn’t this year.”

“You don’t want me to be something I’m not,” he said, his face too serious to be sincere. “You said so yourself.”

I should’ve known he’d fabricate some loophole to wriggle out of his promise. This scene had been an inescapable part of my birthday since I turned eight. Sweet, innocent, nine-year-old Trevor had found me crying on the playground. Something had reminded me of my father, who’d died six months earlier, but Trevor had assumed my tears had something to do with my birthday. So he’d rounded everyone up to sing to me. Since then, he’d made sure to repeat the process in some shape or form on an annual basis. He’d been my knight in shining armor when I was eight.

Now I just wanted to choke him.

People stared, some of them snickering.

“You know I hate you, right?” I made another lame escape attempt.

He laughed and raised his voice again. “Today is Livy’s birthday. And what do we do when someone has a birthday?”

A mousy girl blushed, fluttering her eyelashes. “Sing?”

What does she see that I don’t? Sure, he was tall—almost six feet—and cute in a Trevor sort of way. His black hair curled up around the bottom of his cap, and he always had a twinkle in his dark eyes like he was up to something. Seriously, though, one time a girl actually sighed as he walked by. Totally ridiculous.

Trevor pointed to Mousy Girl and winked, flashing his most obnoxious grin. She giggled and—along with, like, fifty other people—joined him in singing the world’s longest version of Happy Birthday. I pulled my hood up to hide my face.

He finally released me, and I shoved him away. “Your word is worthless, Trevor.”

“Aw, c’mon.” He held his hands wide in a penitent gesture as the first drops of rain plinked against the metal roof. “It’s tradition.”

“I don’t care what you call it. You promised.”

He stuck his bottom lip out and made his eyes go wide.

 “No way.” I poked him in the chest, suppressing a smile. “You know that pouty face doesn’t work on me.”

“Yes, it does.” His arm found its way back around my neck. “You love me.” He draped his jacket over our heads and dragged me out into the downpour.

I looked to our left as we stepped out from under the overhang and froze, forcing Trevor to stop, too. Across the courtyard, a dark figure stood in the rain, unmoving. A fine black mist seemed to swirl around him, apparently unaffected by the buckets of water falling from the sky.

And I could’ve sworn he was staring at me. A shiver rattled through me.

“Do you see that?” I asked, glancing at Trevor as I gestured toward the guy, but when I turned back, he was gone. There was just the mass of students rushing through the torrent to get to class, like he’d never even been there.

“See what?” He nudged me forward. “C’mon. I don’t want to be sitting in wet jeans for the next three hours.”

I let him pull me along, but I couldn’t help looking back to where I thought the guy had been. Am I just seeing things?

We entered the building as a voice came over the loudspeaker. “Olivia Ryan, please report to the front office.”

Trevor slid his jacket back on. “What’s that about?”

“Don’t know.” I hoped it was my mom, coming to pick me up, but I, selfishly, didn’t want Trevor to know that. He’d want to come, and I didn’t feel like sharing her. I attempted a sincere smile and waved as I backed away.

I slipped outside and stayed close to the wall, out of the rain. I half-expected to see Mist Guy again, but the campus was empty, though the feeling of someone watching me still crawled along my scalp. Thunder rumbled across the sky as I reached for the heavy door leading to the front office. I let my fingers rest on the knob for a moment, trying to get a grip on my nerves.

As I swung the door open, Mom turned from the counter and smiled. Within seconds, my insides quieted, and the tension drained from my shoulders and neck. I never understood why, but her presence always had that effect.

She rubbed her hands together, her smile widening. “Ready for your dentist appointment?”

“Dentist?” I forced a blank expression. “Oh, yeah. Forgot about that.” I followed her out and let my jaw drop. “I can’t believe you lied.”

Mom headed toward the visitor parking lot. “I know. I’m a terrible example.” She glanced back at me, a smile curling her lips. “If you’re feeling guilty, you can go back to class.”

 “Yeah, no.” I looked up at the clouds overhead. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the downpour was bound to start again without notice.

Mom stopped under an overhang, digging through her purse. “How was school today?”

“Totally boring. It was a complete waste of time. Oh, and I got treated to the annual Trevor serenade. He’s such a liar.”

She laughed. “Did you really think he’d keep that promise? That’s how he shows you he loves you. Besides, this might be his last—” She clamped her mouth shut, only glancing at me out of the corner of her eye before she went back to digging.

She’s going to let me go? I bounced on my toes, clasping my hands in front of me. “You changed your mind?”

“Changed my mind?” She stared at me for a moment, brow wrinkled, then shook her head. “I just meant Trevor won’t be able to do it next year because he’s graduating.”

“But . . .” That didn’t explain why she was being so weird about it. Sure, Trevor was a year ahead of me, and he’d be graduating in May—whether I graduated early or not—but it wasn’t like he was going away to college. If I was within a five-hundred-mile radius of him, he’d find a way to torture me on my birthday, and she knew that.

She sighed, looking closer to her true age than she had since my father died. “I don’t want to fight with you today. Maybe we can talk about this tomorrow?”

I was pretty sure that once tomorrow came, she’d want to put it off another day. Still, I said, “Okay. Tomorrow.”

“Good.” She swept her long, auburn bangs back, her smile returning along with her deceptive, but familiar, twenty-something appearance. Her keys jingled as she pulled them from her purse and handed them to me. “I was thinking lunch first and then a little fun. You up for the indoor shooting range? I know you’ve been wanting to try out the fifty cal.”

She definitely knew how to get back on my good side.

***

Rain pelted the windshield as we pulled out of the shooting range parking lot. I stared over the steering wheel, taking a deep breath. My adrenaline was still up from shooting the fifty-caliber rifle and I needed calm for this conversation, mature and rational. I had to be convincing.

“I think you should reconsider letting me go away to school next year.” Sure, I’d agreed to wait until the next day, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Mom sighed. “I still think you’re better off taking classes at the community college for your first year. I heard they have a great art program. Maybe after next year—”

“You obviously don’t understand how much I want this.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and focused on the road, grateful for a reason not to look at her. “I’ve worked my butt off to get accepted early, spent the last two summers taking online classes. Why would I do all that and then go to community college?”

She repositioned herself in the passenger seat, so she faced me. “You’re not ready—”

“Yes, I am. Why can’t you see that?” The leather on the steering wheel creaked in my fist. The moment Camryn told me she planned to graduate a year early to go to Harvard, I started looking into what I needed to do to graduate early, too. We had it all planned out. She would be at Harvard, and I would be at Rhode Island School of Design, only about fifty miles apart. It was going to be perfect. Mom had given me a maybe when I’d first talked to her about my plan, so I’d been positive she’d be on board once I reached my goal. “You’re always telling me how responsible I am and how you’re so proud of me for everything I’ve accomplished to make this possible, but apparently that’s not true, is it?” I slouched in the driver’s seat. “None of it is.”

“I am proud of you. So proud. I couldn’t ask for a better, more responsible daughter. But Rhode Island is so far away, and you’re barely seventeen. You’ve got your whole life to be a grown-up. Be a kid a while longer.”

“But I’m not a kid.” Why did I ever think I could change her mind? “Please, Mom. You have to. Camryn won’t be here next year, and Trevor said he’s planning to go on the road with his band as soon as he graduates.” He’d also said he would only be gone about a month, but she didn’t need to know that. “I can’t be here for a whole year with no friends.”

“Trevor didn’t tell me—”

“Ugh. Mom.” I hated how whiny I sounded but I couldn’t stop myself. “Don’t change the subject.”

 “I’m sorry, baby girl. I really think it’s best if you wait.” She pushed my hair back over my shoulder.

I shrugged her off. So much for mature and rational. “Yeah. So you won’t have to be alone. All you care about—” A red blur drew my gaze to her face.

Time slowed to a crawl. Every second passed with acute detail as a pickup truck plowed into us. My throat tightened around a scream. The passenger side groaned and caved in under the force of the impact, flinging Mom toward me. Tiny cubes of glass burst from behind her, showering me in a jingling rain, stinging my skin wherever they struck.

The seatbelt jerked her back, slammed her head into the grill of the truck. Pain blossomed at the base of my skull, and it seemed in the next instant we were upside down and everything was quiet except for the crunch of gravel beneath the car roof as it settled into place. I peered through the mangled windshield at the inverted horizon and the drizzling rain.

A mixture of asphalt and gasoline fumes burned my nose, and the smell of something sharp and metallic flowed in and out with each breath. Pain stabbed through my back and chest. My head felt as if it’d been tightened in a vise, the pressure building, slow but steady. I tried to lift it, but something heavy held it down.

“Mom?” Is that shrill voice mine?

She didn’t answer. I couldn’t turn my head to see her, but her upturned hand lay in front of me amid a mass of auburn hair—mine or hers, I couldn’t tell. Blood oozed into the gaps, pooling around her hand. I brushed my trembling fingers across her palm and recoiled.

How could she feel so empty? The image of her face after her head struck flashed in my mind—her eyes, so blue and vacant.

A whimpering rose within me. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. I clawed at the steering wheel, trying to free myself from this nightmare. My head remained pinned in place, facing the broken windshield, and my legs refused to cooperate. Every movement brought more pain, shooting through my torso and radiating out to my arms and my neck.

Clouds crowded my vision, dark shadows creeping into the corners. Sound came in spurts. Sirens, soft in the distance.

Silence.

They blared closer.

Silence.

An invisible weight pressed down on my chest.

Something warm brushed my arm, pulling my eyes open. My breath caught.

The boy I’d never met but had been dreaming about for two years—the boy I’d come to call my angel—now crouched before me. The jagged edges of the windshield created a halo around his golden curls.

“Olivia,” he said, his deep voice soft and comforting.

The chaos around us faded away as if only the two of us existed. My eyes slid closed, and for a moment, I hovered beside him, examining the wreckage. I saw myself, my head pinned between the seat and the roof of the car, blood trickling a grisly mask over my face, my body bent in places it wasn’t meant to bend. Mom hung next to me, held upside down by her seatbelt. She was clean, no blood except for the puddle around her hand. Her head rested against the roof, twisted at an unnatural angle, her eyes open, staring. Empty.

Pain shot through my chest, yanking me back to my body as a scream—my scream—shredded my eardrums. Piercing agony worked its way into every cell, throbbing with each beat of my heart. The clouds thickened, blanketing my vision. I hovered somewhere between the light and the dark. The thread holding me there, the one I clung to so desperately, slipped in my grasp.

“Olivia,” my angel whispered. Warmth flowed into me from his fingertips against my cheek. “Come back to me.”

He pulled away, and the world turned black.