An Agent's Inbox #6

Dear Agent,

The Sunday morning after her boyfriend rapes her, sixteen-year-old Audrey Harper is evacuated from her home because of a wildfire she believes they set. 

As the October flames threaten Orange County’s prized gated community, Audrey attempts to make sense of their relationship’s descent in pyromania and abuse by recalling her early summer weeks with Brooks--a charming but reclusive eighteen-year-old volunteer firefighter, scarred by his older brother’s alleged suicide, now facing the blaze. To understand his biggest lie, Audrey must return to his first.

The fire and assault aren’t all that’s demanding Audrey’s attention. Her thirteen-year-old sister fainted during her morning’s ballet audition--an audition Audrey walked out on three years ago--and their mom refuses to accept the blame Audrey thinks she deserves. Audrey must not only reconcile Brooks’s facades, but also her own. Like how she hasn’t allowed herself to dream since her rash departure from ballet and refuses to vocalize her grief.

Confession: Brooks isn’t the only liar in the relationship.

It only complicates matters that Hayden--her sappy AP psychology partner and the dude she unfaithfully kissed last week--is stuck with Audrey for a hike to the flames. In the glowing foothills, Audrey must shatter Brooks’s fictions, as well as her own, and acknowledge the truth of what’s happened--last night, last Thursday, and when Brooks was only eight--regardless of the waiting red and blue flashing lights.

SPARKLERS is an approximately 70,000 YA novel told in a single day in the vein of Gayle Forman’s IF I STAY and Jay Asher’s THIRTEEN REASONS WHY. Though I’m a southern California native with far more firsthand experience with wildfires than I’d prefer, I recently graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Literature and Creative Writing.

I’m thrilled to share SPARKLERS with you!

Thank you for your time and consideration,

H.M.E.

SPARKLERS

The morning after I lose my virginity, I wake to knocking. My mom and dad’s alarm clock reads 5:22 am. It’s Sunday. More pounding from downstairs and I wonder if it’s Brooks. No. He’s probably still at the party, passed out on a couch, or maybe even nursing his final beer.

This thought enables me to move.

I jump from the bed, Mom’s caramel afghan around my shoulders. The room tilts. My hips ache, and there’s a raw throbbing between my legs. I might still be drunk. I might only be hung over. I need to shower. Need to go back to bed.

I pull aside the curtains. It’s still dark, but porch lights and streetlights and brake lights and red and blue lights illuminate the dense smoke that hazes the street. Our pepper tree whips in the October wind, spraying leaves on the police car idling at my mailbox. A man shouts. The lashing gale takes his words. The doorbell rings—once, twice, three times.

Move. I need to move.

I drop the afghan, run downstairs, and yank the front door open to smoke and two cops. One is talking. My dad’s old In-N-Out shirt sticks to my back. I’m not wearing a bra and rum laces the spit beneath my tongue.

“Mandatory evacuation,” the older cop says. “The fire is approaching the bank’s ridge.”  

The younger cop lowers his chin. If he were a friend, I’d think he’s about to hug me, but instead he coughs and says, “Miss—”

“Brooks said it isn't that bad,” I say.