Continuing with my YA coming-of-age mystery, Shades of Blue. (You can catch up on the earlier excerpts here.) Kudos to everyone who picked up on the early foreshadowing in last week's snippet. I don't think there will be any doubt after this week that things are about to get dark. This scene picks up right after JoJo agrees to walk home from school with Chip Wiley because Sam makes her mad.
Chip was nice enough for the two blocks from the school to the Minit Mart, but when we got to the beginning of the trail through the woods that Sam and I always took, I felt the first twinges of unease tickling my spine. Something told me I shouldn’t go into the woods with Chip, but when he said he’d race me to where the path split leading to the creek, I was still too much of a tomboy to resist his challenge, so I ignored the warning voice in my head and took off running.
I barely beat him to the split, and it wasn’t really fair since he was carrying two backpacks. He dropped our bags and bent over with his hands on his knees.
“Not bad for a girl,” he said between breaths, “even if you did have to cheat back there at the big log.”
“That wasn’t cheating, it was an accident, and you’re the one who bought me the ICEE, so it’s your fault it sloshed on you.”
“Yeah, yeah." He crumpled his ICEE cup and threw it at me. "Hey, you wanna see something cool? I know where there's a treehouse that fell out of the tree."
Alas, I don't think she'll listen to us. Tune in next week to see how big of a mistake JoJo makes. Or you could always go buy your own copy of Shades of Blue here. ;-) And please check out the other WWW and SS bloggers. Something for everyone among these talented writers!
~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!
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