Sam is a fifteen-year-old drug orphan living with her
custodial grandmother who is stricken with late-stage Alzheimer's. She
struggles to fill the role of caregiver to her grandmother while keeping her
little family a secret from the authorities who would send Gamma to a state
facility and Sam to foster care. Just because her life isn't hard enough, there
are still boys to have crushes on, essays to write for horrible English
teachers, and a squad full of bullies to torment her on a daily basis.
Excerpt:
“SPAM!”
The blaring laughter that followed the processed lunchmeat
outburst could only mean that my usual tormentors were wide-awake and on the
prowl. I turned up the volume to my headphones and dropped my purse and
backpack on the nearest cafeteria table, far from the center table where they
were still sitting together snickering over the name they had baptized me with
way back in third grade. The males in the crowd literally high-fived each other
when they saw me drop my head and turn away from their table, while the females
did that giggle-snort-behind-their-hands thing that girls usually did when they
didn’t want to be caught laughing too loudly.
How original. Spam. Because it rhymes with Sam. The young poet
laureates of Benton, Florida, had put their heads together in this think tank
of a public school wasteland and come up with a real zinger. And it’s been with
me ever since.
I’m sure the fine people at the Discovery Channel could do an
entire documentary on the high school food chain, the survival of the fittest,
the evolution of the various packs that make up the society, the workers,
drones, and queen bee of the hive. All that stuff. Because maybe then their
researchers could explain to the rest of us what exactly sets some students
apart as carnivores and the rest of us as their prey.
I mean, I’m a completely ordinary girl. I wake up, come to this
war zone of a school, and go home. I’m absolutely the most typical looking
person, with plain brown hair, hazelish eyes, a little on the skinny side. I
don’t stand out, I don’t call attention to myself, I don’t try to overthrow
anyone’s Homecoming Queen throne, so how come I’m the total victim? I guess it
still wouldn’t change how some of these mental midgets treat me, but I don’t
bother anybody. So why me?
The “Spam! Spam! Spam!” Spam-chant began at one table towards the
middle of the room, whispered at first, but getting louder, punctuated with
some good rhythmic table-pounding until finally a teacher looks up from her
lunchtime coma and tells them to quiet down.
A few of the tables scattered around the oversized room are filled
with kids who typically ignore the brutal and out-loud teasing, probably
because they’ve been Professional Victims at some point or another in this
inferno. I’m sure they’re feeling super embarrassed for me, so they look out
the windows or at their lunch trays or anywhere else but at me. If they see me
looking at them, they’ll have to acknowledge that they sat silently on the
sidelines and watched the gladiator match of me versus the cool kids without
throwing me a lifeline. Or at least putting me out of my misery.
About the Author:
Lorca Damon is a young adult writer and teacher. Her fiction
focuses on the very real issues that teenagers
Links:
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5 comments:
Thank you so much for hosting my book today! I hope everyone enjoys the post and takes advantage of the give away!
It was our pleasure! Thanks for joining us!
This sounds really good! I love that she's worked with kids in these types of situations. I look forward to reading it! :)
love the sound of this, can't wait to read it!
This book sounds like a good book, can't wait to read it , Thank you!
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