Blue
L.E. DeLano
Publication date: October 26th 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
When Blue Mancini’s mother picked her name, it ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A year ago, Blue’s brother, Jack, was involved in a car accident that killed the father of her classmate, Maya Rodriguez. Luckily for Jack, he got out of a manslaughter charge and into a plea bargain thanks to the top-notch lawyer hired by Blue’s wealthy parents.
The fallout is now affecting Blue as Maya returns to school determined to carve out a pound of flesh from the only member of the Mancini family she can reach. On top of that, Blue has a demanding mother, a father who’s never around, a drama-addicted best friend, and a secretive new guy who’s determined to make Blue his own personal cheer-up project. It’s a perfect storm of misery.
When Maya’s social media taunts and in-person digs finally push Blue to retaliate, they find themselves in afterschool detention and forced into a project meant to foster cooperation and civility. As the layers of their tangled drama unravel, Blue learns more about Maya’s life—and her own sense of privilege—when secrets are revealed that cast a new perspective on everything in Blue’s world.
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BLUE Excerpt – Jack
In this scene, Blue receives a letter from her brother, Jack, who is
currently serving a six- month sentence in a boot camp style program for his
part in the accident that killed the father of her classmate, Maya. He asks
Blue to come and visit him—something she hasn’t been able to make herself do.
I hold the letter
in my hand for a moment, just staring at his familiar scrawl, not really
reading the words. There’s an ache in my chest as my eyes begin to focus again
and I can hear his voice clearly in my head as I read between the lines.
Eventually, everybody will get tired of
talking about this and life will go back to normal for you. So at least one of
us gets that.
Life will never go
back to normal for any of us. My parents will always be the parents of that kid
who killed a man and got off with a slap on the wrist. Sure, their friends
would never be impolite enough to bring it up, but just like my friends,
they’re all probably thinking it. My parents know that. They carry on like none
of it ever happened, like if nobody talks about it, it’ll just go away. And I
suppose it will to some degree. Eventually something juicier will happen to
somebody else in their circle—an affair maybe, or a business going under. Their
friends will all have something new to gossip about, but it’ll never be totally
forgotten. Not by them and not by us.
A year and a half
from now, I’ll be graduating and going away to college. If I’m lucky, I’ll pick
a college nobody from my school is attending and maybe nobody there will know
or even care that any of this happened to my brother. A logical part of my
brain knows that even here at Audubon, the whole school can’t talk about this
forever. It’s already starting to fade a bit on the edges. Not fast enough for
me of course, but it’s fading all the same.
But life will
never go back to normal for Jack. He might sound like he’s making jokes and
just keeping his head down and getting through this, and that his life would
just continue in forward motion when he goes to college and he’s away from
here. But he lived that night. He lived it firsthand. He felt his car swerve,
heard the squeal of the tires, and watched in horror as the other car tumbled
down the incline. He made the call to 911 on his cell phone, knowing full well
that he might be over the limit when the EMTs and the cops arrived. He still
made the call anyway.
And then he sat
there by the car, watching as they used the Jaws of Life to pry the door apart
and pull Maya’s father from the wreckage. Jack watched as they worked on her
dad right there on the side of the road and continued to work on him as they
loaded him into the ambulance.
I was with my
brother at the hospital when the doctor came in and told us that Maya’s father
had died. I had no idea he was her father at the time—none of us did. We didn’t
even know his name. They told us the dead man had a wife and three kids. I
watched Jack’s face as they told him that. I watched it crumple, watched as his
hands came up, pressing hard into his eyes. Watched his shoulders shake.
Then my dad put a
hand on Jack’s head, telling him softly that it was all going to be okay.
They’d called the lawyer, and it was all going to be okay.
I was sitting on a
chair next to the hospital bed—they were keeping Jack overnight for observation
since he had a concussion. I reached across and put my hand on his leg, just to
let him know I was there. I was there for him. He dropped his hands, closed his
eyes, and then reached down, sliding his fingers over mine.
My mother put her
arms around him and told him the important thing was he wasn’t hurt.
I remember
thinking, No, the important thing is
somebody’s dead. Were just grateful it wasn’t someone we love.
Author Bio:
L.E. DeLano comes equipped with a “useless” Theatre degree that has opened doors for her in numerous ways. Though mostly raised in New Mexico, she now lives in Pennsylvania with two adventurous kids and two ridiculous cats. When she’s not writing (which is almost never), she’s binge-watching Netflix and planning road trips.
Her debut novel, TRAVELER was selected as a Keystone To Reading Secondary Book Award finalist for school year 2018-19 by the Keystone State Reading Association (KSRA) and also voted one of The 20 Most Beautiful Books in the World for 2017 by MTV UK.
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I enjoyed the excerpt. She sure seems have a misery filled life. Hoping things get better and I am looking forward to reading about it
ReplyDeleteNice cover
ReplyDeleteI love the cover. The colors and graphics are amazing.
ReplyDelete