Young Adult, 286 pages
Cover art by Trisha FitzGerald
Sometimes a person walks into your life and changes it forever.
That is exactly what happened to fourteen-year-old Mayah Lewis.
Depressed, she hides from the world, until she meets new girl, beautiful bald-headed Celeste Daniels. Her love of life, inspires Mayah to live again.
Everything begins looking up, until one day, Celeste disappears.
Excerpt:
“Oh, what’s the point?”
Fourteen-year-old Mayah Lewis threw the tube of lipstick at the mirror. It bounced off the glass, hit the wall and rolled under a stall.
She didn’t care.
She was the only one there, having sneaked out of boring Biology class when the teacher was writing their homework on the board. Mostly hating the way she looked, she didn’t like doing her makeup when anyone was around and she wanted to look good—or at least relatively okay—cuz Joey Marshall was in her next class and she had a huge crush on him. This way she had the girls’ bathroom to herself, for at least a few minutes, since no one was supposed to be in there during instruction time, unless it was a dire emergency.
She stared at her face—ugly freckles creating swirls of uneven patterns across her nose and cheeks that no amount of foundation cream seemed to cover, beady blue eyes, two zits on her chin big enough to ski down and long, wiry red hair that curled as if having a life of its own. Blue eyes were usually an asset, except hers were a dull pale blue. Not attractive in the least. Sigh.
She dumped the rest of her make-up in her backpack, flipped her mirror image the bird, shouting out, “Forget it. It’s hopeless.”
“No, it’s not.”
What the…?
She turned to watch beautiful, blond Kitty Richards come swinging around the corner, her golden curls flying behind her.
Mayah was stunned.
She’d looked when she came in and hadn’t seen anyone, but she’d forgotten about the wheelchair accessible stall way at the back, basically because no one ever went there. Or at least that was what she’d thought, since no one was in a wheelchair in the whole school. Obviously, that was where Kitty was, which was kinda weird. She was not handicapped in the least—or at least not physically. Now, personality-wise, maybe a bit, or at least she always came across stuck-up as anything.
Crap.
Mayah had no luck whatsoever.
And why, oh why, had she picked up Isobel’s habit of talking out loud when alone? It was bad enough to agonize about her face, but to have a witness was horrifying. And especially Kitty, the most gorgeous girl in grade nine, if not the whole school. Yep, she was stereotypically tall and thin with one of those perfect complexions. No way would pimples ever take up residence there—she was a masterpiece. And to think she was smiling, looking real friendly-like.
Yeah, right.
Kitty’d never spoken to her before. She only associated with the ‘cool’ crowd, not paying any attention to the rest of the so-called losers. Today must be just a pity call, like mock the ugly girl by building her up, then ripping her down later—probably in front of a crowd of students all laughing at her.
Embarrassed, wanting to die, Mayah ignored her and tore out of the room, down the hall to a door at the back of the auditorium. She pulled out her key, inserted it, tugged it open and ran up the stairs to the projection room. This was her hideaway, for no one ever came here during the day and it was only used when there were assemblies or plays.
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