M9B Friday Reveal: Chapter Reveal - Super Freak by Vanessa Barger with Giveaway #M9BFridayReveals

 

Welcome to this week’s M9B Friday Reveal!

 

This week, we are revealing CHAPTER ONE of

Super Freak by Vanessa Barger

an MG title presented by Tantrum Books!

 

Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

 

 

Thirteen-year-old Caroline is a freak. Her parents have uprooted her to a town full of Supernaturals. You'd think she'd be thrilled. But, with someone without a magical bone in her body, this daughter of tree sprites feels like even more of an outcast than she has ever before.

 

To make matters worse, her new home is cursed. But when Caroline takes to investigating the mysterious and strange happenings of Harridan House, her BFF goes missing. Seems someone doesn't want Caroline sticking her non-magical nose where it most certainly does not belong. Determined to prove herself, Caroline uncovers a plot to destroy her new hometown.

 

Undeterred, Caroline can't give up. But what's a human without magical powers to do? Caroline better figure it out fast, before she loses everything she has ever loved and the whispers she's heard all her life prove true: Caroline is a useless superfreak.

 

 

Super Freak by Vanessa Barger Publication Date: October 13, 2015 Publisher: Tantrum Books Genre: MG, Fantasy

 

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Chapter One Twenty-five feet into town. That’s as far as we got before the first disaster happened. Dad turned onto Main Street, and just as we pulled up next to Greywolfe’s Spells and Supplies, a huge puff of smoke and flame burst from the front doors. Shattered glass and a large, hairy man shot into the path of our over-packed SUV. Dad slammed his foot down on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left, throwing us around the inside of the car. In the back, I covered my head, expecting the piles of wedged boxes to topple over, burying me in an avalanche of dishes and teddy bears. “Caroline! Are you all right?” Mom reached into the back seat, her horn-rimmed glasses dangling from one ear. “I’m good. Did we hit him?” I craned my neck, looking to see out the front window. Dad unbuckled and leapt from the car to help the man who had flown in the road to his feet. “I think he’s fine. You’d think he’d at least have the decency to let out a warning before coming out like that. He could have been killed! We could have been hurt! Dishes might have fallen on you and broken!” I rolled my eyes. The dishes would be a high priority. Mom shook her head, letting loose a shower of tiny green leaves. It always happened when she was stressed. Dryads weren’t really known for their calm temperaments. You’d think, being tree spirits, they’d have that stoic thing going for them. Maybe it was because Mom was a weeping willow, but calm wasn’t really part of her vocabulary. Dad on the other hand, was solid as an oak. Because he was an oak. After unhooking my seatbelt, I slid from the car. Mom followed suit. Her lips compressed into a tight line and she shed another couple handfuls of leaves, but for the moment, she contained herself. Dad stood, tall and wiry, one arm hooked around a large, barrel-chested man with more facial hair than I’d seen in my life. Had to be a werewolf. He pulled away from my dad and brushed at the gravel and purple residue covering his gray suit. “Thank you, Mr. …” The stranger held out one hand to my dad. “George Bennings,” Dad said, shaking the stranger’s hand. “And this is my wife, Grace, and our daughter, Caroline. We just moved here from Lost Creek.” “My name is William Grouseman. I’m thrilled you’ve come to town, but glad you didn’t pull in a few moments sooner.” I wanted to warn him that sarcasm was lost on my parents, but he seemed to get the message when they didn’t share in his chuckle. They exchanged a confused glance and smiled blankly at him. He offered his hand to me and I shook it. “Nice to meet you, sir.” He frowned, looking between my parents and then back at me. Mom’s arm curved around my shoulder, nudging me forward. She sniffed. “She’s just a late bloomer. We’ve got great hopes for her future.” I sighed. She meant well, but it never failed. Supernatural people could sense the paranormal on each other. But when they got to me there was nothing. A void. A great, empty space where everyone expected some sort of natural magic. The supernatural had been the normal since 1978 when an explorer by the name of Albert Merriweather stumbled into a cave in Greece and found Pandora’s Box, and then opened it. Apparently the myths about the box were off a little. Instead of holding all the evils of the world, it held all the magic that had been pulled out of it. Releasing magic out into the world, well, now every person was a little bit paranormal. It didn’t mean everyone could cast a spell or levitate. But everyone had something. Kids were tested in elementary school. The ones with lots of magic were usually the popular crowd. The rest of the population lived with it, picking up what they could, where they could. You could ask to be retested anytime. Sometimes people really did make progress. Except me. I hadn’t just tested low, I’d flunked. So badly they brought in national analysts to make sure there wasn’t someone tampering with the tests. It was a relief really. I mean, my parents were powerful. Who wants to try and beat that? My lack of powers drove my parents batty. Most people figured I was adopted. Two dryads–tree spirits who could change shape, manipulate the natural world, and talk to trees–produced a normal child? Impossible. My parents were convinced I would show signs as I matured. I didn’t have the heart to tell them differently, but I really didn’t think it would ever happen. And that was fine by me. Magic was great–when it worked. Maybe when I turned forty my parents would figure it out. Until then, I’d smile and nod when they gave me their speech about reaching my potential and discovering hidden talents. I met Mr. Grouseman’s chocolate eyes and gave him a weak smile before he turned to my parents. “Ah, well, it happens sometimes. If anyone can draw out her gift, it’s our teaching staff at the school. I’m the principal at Stein Middle School.” His eyes moved from them to me. I wished I were small and hidden under a rock. “You look like you’re about middle-school age. What grade will you be in?” I swallowed. This was not how I planned to meet the school principal. “I’m supposed to start eighth this year.” “I thought so. You’ll love the school. Excellent courses and teachers, and the students are some of the best.” Just like every other school I’d been to. They always said that. It must be in a rulebook principals get when they start their jobs. Luckily, that was the end of his conversation with me. He told my parents where the school was, and what the summer office hours were, then waved at us as he headed back into the shop. Mom raised a tentative finger and cleared her throat. “Are you certain it’s safe to go back in?” Mr. Grouseman loosed a deep peal of laughter. “Of course! My nephew runs the store. What you saw was an accident when a new display tipped over. Have a great day!” I didn’t buy his story, and I didn’t think Mom and Dad did either. But clearly he wasn’t going to share family quarrels with the new people in town. With a shrug, I climbed back into the car, put my cryptogram book away, and watched the town unfold outside my windows. The buildings wound around a central park with huge old-growth trees and the county buildings were the same as they’d been when the town was founded in the seventeenth century. My Dad gave me tidbits about the history of Hecate Bay for the last two weeks, trying to pump up my anticipation. History was one passion Dad and I shared. Spell suppliers, voodoo parlors, psychic readers, and magical bookstores rubbed elbows with Food Lion, florists, and churches. The human and the paranormal had merged and become just like the country–an inseparable mix. We headed for our new house. As we turned away from town, the library caught my attention. A huge stone building that, based on the size, I knew held thousands of books. I started to drool at the prospect. As I watched the people wandering down the street, and we passed another spell shop and magical supply store, my excitement began to fade. I thought about what I’d seen so far, the encounter with my new principal, and the new school year approaching, and my stomach churned with dread. I knew that no matter what, Hecate Bay wasn’t the restful small town my parents told me about. I’d hoped for one of those rare towns populated with only a few magical creatures and big magical talents. This place, well, I could practically taste the magic in the air. I was doomed.

 

 

 

Vanessa Barger was born in West Virginia, and through several moves ended up spending the majority of her life in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She is a graduate of George Mason University and Old Dominion University, and has degrees in Graphic Design, a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, and a Masters in Technology Education. She has had articles published in Altered Arts Magazine, has had some artwork displayed in galleries in Ohio and online, and currently teaches engineering, practical physics, drafting and other technological things to high school students in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. She is a member of the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), the Virginia Writer's Club, and the Hampton Roads Writers. When not writing or teaching, she’s a bookaholic, movie fanatic, and loves to travel. She is married to a fabulous man, and has one cat, who believes Vanessa lives only to open cat food cans, and can often be found baking when she should be editing.

 

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M9B Friday Reveal: Chapter One of Strange Country Day by Charles Curtis with Giveaway #M9BFridayReveals

 

Welcome to this week’s M9B Friday Reveal!

 

This week, we are revealing THE FIRST CHAPTER of

Strange Country Day by Charles Curtis

presented by Tantrum Books!

 

Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

 

Alexander Graham Ptuiac, the son of an inventor, wants to play for the school’s football team. During tryouts, and under the watchful eye of the team’s coach, he suddenly manifests mysterious superhuman powers. Alexander makes the team, but not before the some ill-intended adults take notice, putting his life in danger.

 

Alex struggles to suppress and control his strange new abilities, worried about exposing his secret and being kicked off the football team. Then he befriends Dex, a diminutive classmate who can somehow jump as high as ten feet in the air. Seems Alex isn’t the only one at school with a secret.

 

As the school year unfolds, Alex will find himself the target of bullies, holding hands with his first crush and discovering the shocking truth about himself and his parents.

 

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CHAPTER ONE

You always hope your first day of school is uneventful. You lay low, you blend into the background, and you make it through without doing something that’ll get you tormented for an entire year.
That didn’t happen in my first few hours at Strange Country Day.
Here’s what did happen: just as I was about to be demolished by an elephant-sized bully named Flab, some superhuman power possessed me and I bloodied his nose. Another new kid named Dex escaped an ancient initiation ceremony by clambering up a bookcase like a mountain goat. That night, I played catch with a football-hurling robot.
That was Day One. A week later, I started crushing on the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.
Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning:
I stood at the front gates to Vance M. Strange Country Day School, staring up at the name of my new school, the letters set high above a set of iron bars that looked as if they had been there for centuries. The curlicues and script looked just as ancient.
It was Orientation Day, so I wouldn’t have to sit through any classes until tomorrow. After a tour given by an upperclassman, my new prep school brought the seventh graders to our state-of-the-art auditorium, where we listened to the headmaster lecture all 110 of us about Strange Country Day’s policies. It’s exactly what you’d expect—no gum in class, no graffiti, no lateness. But there were also some weird ones, like the ten-page booklet on “uniform violations.”
Oh, the uniforms. I couldn’t believe my parents made me go to a school with a strict dress code. I looked down at what I was wearing and winced: a button-down white shirt with a yellow tie—not a clipon, so we had to learn to tie a Double Windsor knot, whatever that was—that felt like it was choking me. I also sported tight khakis and brown, shiny loafers. The whole thing wouldn’t be complete without the navy blazer with the school emblem, a griffin—the mythological lion with wings—and words displayed below “Vance M. Strange Country Day School, est. 1904” above the front gate: In Via Incipit Hic.
I used my phone to look up the meaning: “The Road Starts Here” in Latin. My new school was some rich kids’ academy past presidents had attended, where future Wall Street barons first learned the quadratic equation and where I’d now start myself on the supposed road to greatness.
That road was real—it weaved through the gigantic campus. The school consisted of a dozen ivy-covered buildings spread out over a campus that spanned what looked like miles. Walking from the art building to where I was supposed to take history would take at least ten minutes, or so our tour guide warned us. I could see different trees planted everywhere with plaques describing them and what seemed like acres of neatly trimmed grass. My old school back home had been one small, cramped brick building with a slab of concrete out back that we played on during recess.
With the half-day orientation over, we headed for the front gate, where the buses would pick us up. I looked at the other kids in their uniforms and saw them joking around and greeting each other with complex handshakes, as if they were a basketball team after a playoff win. I heard nearly everyone entering seventh grade had graduated from Strange Lower School, so they all knew each other already. I wanted to introduce myself to someone, just so I wouldn’t feel awkward, but they passed me as if I were invisible. I turned back around to confront those iron gates, realizing that they were a jail from which I couldn’t escape.
I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I turned around to look up at a big kid wearing a maroon and yellow jacket with a giant version of the griffin on it. I could see a jersey with the number 77 underneath.
“Come with me—with them,” he said, pointing at a group of seventh grade boys.
We were led down a walkway, ushered inside one of the buildings and into a classroom. When the big guy opened the creaky windowless door, I saw most of my other male classmates. They all had the same fear written on their faces. We were surrounded by bigger guys—ninth graders, probably. Some of them were football players. A few more kids were squeezed in, and the “guards” shut the door. In front of the room, standing over us, was another player in a maroon and yellow jacket. He was the biggest guy in the room, hefty, but you could see it wasn’t all fat.
“Welcome to Fresh Meet Friday!” the enormous kid announced. The other ninth graders whooped and hollered. “Boys, since you’re about to join the Strange brotherhood, you can call me what everyone calls me: Flab.” That’s the worst name I’ve ever heard for someone that size.
“This is all about tradition, boys. Strange Country Day is filled with tradition. For starters, you are standing in the oldest building on campus, built in 1904. Three years later, this tradition began right here in the Roger Basil Thayer Room.” Strange alumni donated heaps of cash to have a room, a library desk, a water fountain, anything, named after them.
“Here’s how this works: you will stand in front of the room and pledge allegiance to Strange Country Day. Only then will we tell you the next step.” Flab paused for dramatic effect, and his classmates asked, almost in unison, “And what’s that?”
“ … You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, with a big grin.
We seventh graders exchanged looks but stayed silent. Flab explained the rules of the mysterious tradition: in exchange for our participation, they would agree to stay out of our way the rest of the year. Violations of this pact would result in punishment to the violator(s) and random acts against other classmates throughout the school year. We were not allowed to breathe a word of this to our parents, teachers, advisors, bus drivers, or otherwise at school. “We went through the same thing you’re about to go through, and not one of us retaliated,” he said as the mob nodded approval. One of the other ninth-graders interjected and pointed out that he’d heard of a kid decades ago who rebelled.
“And he had to transfer two months later.”
“Fight back and you’re fighting against Strange’s hundred years of tradition,” Flab finished with a grin. He picked up a book from the nearby desk and opened it. “Let’s start with … ” he trailed his chubby fingers over the pages. My heart nearly leapt through my crisp white shirt. “ … Dex Harrison.”
No one reacted. Flab looked up. “Dex. Get up here. Now,” he said.
The seventh-grader sea parted, and a kid emerged who looked to be about five feet tall. His skin was pale, an almost grayish color, and his pointy ears appeared to be higher up on the sides of his head than usual. His eyes were like slits. I never saw anyone who looked like that. There were some snickers among my classmates as he walked slowly to the front of the room. He stood there, surrounded by four ninth graders.
“Dex, do you swear to uphold the traditions, honor, and virtue that those before you have also sworn to defend?” Flab recited.
A barely audible, high-pitched “Yes” came out of Dex’s mouth. He scrunched up his eyes. “You have now joined the brotherhood of Strange Country Day,” Flab said, as he leaned back to watch the action.
As the quartet of ninth-graders began to move toward him, Dex jumped away. They tried stepping closer, but Dex kept backing away. The entire room, seventh and ninth graders alike, gasped. Some of us started laughing.
“Shut up!” Flab yelled. He slammed his fist down on the desk and marched over to Dex. “Don’t make this harder on yourself. You took the vow; you have to fulfill it.”
Flab and the others reached out to grab him, but Dex somehow eluded their grasps. He backed away as some of the seventh graders began to root him on. The others yelled for Dex to stop, knowing we would all suffer if he messed up the tradition. The noise in the classroom got louder. Dex backed into a bookcase filled with dusty volumes; he looked like he was about to be trapped. Just as Flab was ready to pounce on him, Dex darted up the bookcase with lightning speed. The roar was huge.
Dex had a weird way of celebrating his victory—he bared a set of sharp teeth and hissed at his pursuers, who grabbed books off the shelves and threw them at him. With incredible dexterity, he dodged every one of them, repeatedly displaying his spiky teeth at the ninth graders. That brought the room to a fever pitch.
The older kids began to shove some of us to stop the cheering. It was the beginning of a riot … and I was stuck in the middle of it. I tried to push my way back to the door.
There was no way that was happening—I felt shoves from behind. Sweat began pouring down my face as I saw Flab turn his attention away from Dex, who looked down at the action with a mix of horror and fascination. “Everyone stop!” Flab shouted. The seventh graders didn’t listen, pushing every kid in a football jersey they could see. I was shoved into Flab’s expansive back and stumbled back. As he turned to look at me, something, well, strange happened at Strange. Something that had never happened to me before today.
My vision got blurry, and my head began to pound. I smelled toasted marshmallows. Then it was like someone poured water through my veins, and it rushed through my arms, down to my feet and into my head, which stopped pounding. I couldn’t hear any of the noise of the chaos around me. Instead, a highpitched whistle took its place.
Squeeeeeeeee
Then it disappeared—the marshmallows, the water in my veins, the blurry vision … everything.
I watched as if detached from my body as my fist flew toward the behemoth standing before me and connected with his nose.
The entire room stopped moving. Silence. Shock. I looked down at my fist and back up at Flab, who stumbled and touched his bleeding nose. He couldn’t believe what I had done and neither could I.
“What the heck is going on in here?” The entire room turned its attention to the door, where a young man wearing a tie and a white shirt stood.
The man glared at us. “Anyone want to take a trip to visit Headmaster Hoyer?” It sounded like he was a teacher.
More than a hundred Strange students shook their heads in unison.
“Good. Then I’ll wait here while you clean up the mess you made, and maybe I’ll forget I saw anything.”
Silently, everyone started picking up books, papers, and uniform jackets. When we finished, the ninth-graders filed out, followed by my classmates.
“Thanks.”
I looked down at Dex. I was surprised to hear him talk. His voice was squeaky, like he’d swallowed a balloon full of helium.
“For what?”
“If you hadn’t hit him, they would have gotten me,”
“Now, it’s your turn to save me when they come to beat me up,” I said. I wasn’t kidding, either.
“Anytime,” he said with an odd grin. Up close, his teeth were even weirder, as if they were a little too big for his mouth.
“You did a pretty good job in there,” I replied. “Alex.” I offered my hand, and he shook it vigorously. His palm felt clammy.
“Dex.”
We figured out that we lived near each other, and that he was new, like me. But there was something else I was itching to know.
“How did you get up the bookcase so quickly? That was amazing!” Dex didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes got wide as he peered around me. I turned around to see Flab and a few other yellow and maroon jerseys headed our way.
Flab looked around to see if anyone was watching and then got close to me. I could see some dried blood near his nose.
With every word out of his mouth, he poked me in the chest. Hard. “You.” POKE. “Got.” POKE. “Lucky.” HARD POKE. He glanced down at his notebook.
“Alexander Ptuiac,” he growled, pronouncing what was supposed to be a silent “P” as he pushed his way past me, as did his fellow football teammates. I turned around to see what they would do to Dex as they brushed by him.
But Dex was gone.

 

Charles Curtis is a writer and journalist based in New York City. He has reported and written for publications including NJ.com (where he is currently the site’s sports buzz reporter), The Daily, ESPN.com, ESPN the Magazine, Bleacher Report, TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly. Charles has covered the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, golf, tennis and NASCAR. He has also written about television, film and pop culture.

 

 In addition, Curtis has also written, produced and was featured in videos for ESPN.com and The Daily. He has made radio appearances on stations including 92.9 The Ticket in Bangor, Maine, WLIE 540 AM in Long Island and on morning shows across Canada via the CBC.
He can be reached on Twitter: @charlescurtis82.

 

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