The night it happened started out as a perfectly normal August evening in the Henderson household. I was hunkered over my computer scouring Shoptillyoudrop.com for the same pair of boots I had tried on that afternoon at the Green Mountain Mall in the insane hope that I might find them for, say, one fifth the price. I wasn’t having much luck for two reasons: First, the tip jar at the Common Café where I was pumping coffee that summer would have had to be filled with twenty dollar bills every day before I could afford the back-to-school wardrobe I really wanted. Second, my genius older brother was downloading some kind of free software to our home network and I kept losing my connection. I hollered at him. He hollered at me.

        My mom, who was in the living room on a conference call with her fellow social workers from the Families in Crisis Center, hollered at both of us. “Stuart! Anna! Keep it down. I’m dealing with a family in crisis here.”

       “This family is going to be in crisis if I don’t get my connection back soon,” I muttered and poked ‘enter’ again.

       Our house was so small nothing was private. I could hear my dad in the kitchen frying up tofu turkey burgers and talking back to the talking heads on the nightly news. He was a lawyer and had a detailed argument for everything.

       In the middle of all this my little sister Kellie wandered into my room dressed in her long ruffled skirt and sunbonnet. “Anna Banana, want to sleep outside in the backyard with me tonight? We can pretend we’re pioneers.” Kellie was six and deep into Little House on the Prairie. She wanted to live a sod hut when she grew up and herd sheep or goats or whatever it was they had on the prairie.

       “Oh Kellie-Bean, I can’t.” I gave a big, fake sniffle. “I think I have a head cold coming on.” I must have been the only fifteen-year old in the state of Vermont who hated camping. Hated it and all the creepy crawly things that crept and crawled all over you when you were sleeping on the ground. “Ask Mom and Dad. They’d love to.” My parents adored camping. Mention someplace that didn’t have heat, hot water, or electricity and their eyes would light up like kids at the penny candy counter in one of those tourist trap general stores.

       “Okey dokey, cow pokey,” Kellie chirped and turned to leave.

       That’s when it happened.

       My dad started to whoop. “Whooo-whooo! Way to go! Whoo-whoo!"

       A few seconds later, my mom began to shriek. “Ohmygod! Eeeee-eeee! I don’t believe it! Eeee!"

       “Whooo-whooo!”

         “Eeee-eeee!”

       Now my parents were not whoop-y shriek-y people. They were the people who went to bed at eleven on New Year’s Eve so they could get up the next morning and serve breakfast to senior citizens in the basement of the Unitarian Church.

       Kellie and I tiptoed downstairs. Stu emerged from his den.

       We found our parents waltzing around the living room. I caught a lamp right before it hit the floor. As far as I knew, my parents did not waltz. They did not two-step, rumba, cha-cha, or disco. The last time I had seen them dance was at my cousin’s wedding last March. They had gotten up, swayed back and forth for about thirty seconds, then sat back down to discuss the upcoming political primaries with the bride’s new in-laws.

        “Hey kiddo!” My dad, who saw a personal injury suit in every sudden movement, grabbed Kellie and tossed her up to the ceiling.

       My steely-willed mom who could listen dry-eyed to testimony from domestic violence victims that made hardened cops sob, hugged me with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh honey, oh sweetie.” Chalk up another miracle. My parents loved me, but they weren’t the gooey honey-bun, sugar-pie types

       “The numbers…” my mom gasped.

       “The Tri-State.” My dad waved a little piece of paper at us. They both pointed towards kitchen where the TV sat on a narrow counter. “One four oh three nine five.” My dad caught his breath. “When the girl pulled out the last ball and I saw that five light up on the screen I knew.”

       Stu and I examined the scrap of paper. When we realized what it was, we knew too. I began to whoop and shriek. Stu jabbed his fists into the air. We slapped palms. Kellie, who wasn’t sure what was happening, whirled around laughing hysterically. I damn near cart wheeled over the coffee table. We were rich. We were more than rich. We were just-won-the-Mega-Millions-Tri-State-Lottery-Rich. We were millionaires. Billionaires. All my problems were over.

       I plucked my phone from my back pocket to call Chloe and Jen. My fingers froze. These were the two best friends with whom I had raked leaves, shoveled snow, walked dogs, baby sat brats, and sold thousands of brownies at bake sales to raise money for band instruments, drama club dues, and class trips to Boston. These were my two co-workers at the Common Café with whom I emptied the tip jar religiously at the end of each day, splitting the take exactly three ways and dropping the extra penny or nickel back in for good luck. Now I was about to tell them, “Hey guys, you can keep the change. I’m rich. Totally, fabulously, awesomely rich.” How would I have felt if one of them said that to me?

DETAILS

In keeping with the details you requested here is a little more about me and my manuscript:

Genre: YA Contemporary 

Word Count: 45,000 

Hook/Synopsis: Anna is a small town fashionista with dreams of a designer wardrobe. When her dad hits the lottery the first thing she wants to do is hit the mall. Her ex-hippie parents, however, have other ideas. They want to quit their jobs, buy a hundred acres of wilderness and pursue their cherished dream of living off the land. The family's going to be home-schooling, growing their own food, chopping their own wood, weaving their own clothes, and digging their own outhouse. "Won't that be fun?" her dad asks. Needless to say Anna's answer is a resounding "No." How can she get out of being dragged off to "Little Hell-Hole on the Prairie," as she puts it? Fortunately (or at least so it seems) Anna encounters the fabulously wealthy and fantastically fun Brye, aka Bryerly Brigham. With her ineffable fashion sense, Brye is not just a kindred spirit, she's a role model, the very kind of rich girl Anna wants to be. Brye and her brother Trent are passing through town on their way to visit friends at Lake Champlain. When they ask Anna to come along she can't resist even though it means telling her mom more than a few half-truths. But Brye and Trent are not quite who they appear to be. Anna wakes up to find that her new BFF's have their own ideas about where she's going and what she's going to be doing next. Suddenly all she wants to do is get back home and that not going to be easy. Somewhere in this mix there's a good-looking guy with a shady past named Nicky, an antique carousel with an inspiring love story behind it, and an honest-to-god hurricane that nearly blows away everything Anna loves most and teaches her the value of what money can and cannot buy.

About me: I am the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction for young readers. My most recent book, a YA biography of the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, will be published by Cavendish Square later this year. I am an active member of the SCBWI and teach writing to adults in Cambridge, MA. You can find out more about my work at my website: www.patricesherman.com

Many thanks for this opportunity to submit to Trident Media via Prose.

CHAPTER 1

“You in on this?’ Nita pleads with me. “Just think, by this time tomorrow we could be in a rock star’s bedroom.“ She starts to giggle. Over the phone she sounds just like our former parakeet Alf the night my cousins fed him marijuana seeds. “Or,” she pauses. “His shower!”

       Even when I hold the phone three feet from my ear, I can still hear her giggling. “Julie? Julie? You there?” she shouts after she finally catches her breath.

       “Where else?” It’s eleven a.m. School’s been out for three days. I’m barefoot on the back porch in my p.j.’s, eating my favorite breakfast: half-sour pickles and cream cheese on a pumpernickel raisin bagel.

       “You’ve just got to promise one thing,” she says. “No one in school ever finds out about this. Understand? As far as the other kids are concerned we’ve spent our summer being…uh…being…”

       “Super heroes,” I say. “We spent the summer saving the galaxy.”

       “Exactly. So you’re in?”

       I think for all of two more seconds. “Yeah. I’m in.”

       “We’ll pick you up at quarter past six tomorrow. That’s a.m. amiga.”

       I groan. Nita knows I am not a morning person. I’m tempted to back out, but she’s my best friend, giggle or no giggle. We’ve stuck together through everything so far. We can do this. “See you then, amiga.”

       “You’re doing what?” My mom stares at me after I mumble my way through an explanation of my new summer job. “You’ve never done that in your life.”

       “I have too done it. I do it all the time. Well, sometimes. Every now and then.”

       “Since when?”

       Before I can say anything more, she takes me by my shoulders, spins me around and marches me to the door of my bedroom. “Now tell me again young lady, what you’ve been hired to do this summer.”

       “Cleaning.” I swallow. “House cleaning.”

       “You? The expert at creating chaos out of order?”

       She’s got a point. My room isn’t exactly an ad for Neatness Counts, Inc. Right now it’s more like the aftermath of two earthquakes and a tornado.

       “Maybe you should practice a little.” She gives me an encouraging push. “That way I can give your new boss a good reference.”

       I stub my toe on a keyboard buried beneath a sweatshirt and yesterday’s jeans. “Very funny mom. You know I don’t need a reference.” I’m beginning to feel a bit defensive here. There’s nothing wrong with a little creative anarchy, as far as I’m concerned. My mom, however, is a professional proofreader who spends her life correcting tiny errors in big reference books. She actually wears a tee shirt that says I Sweat the Small Stuff and doesn’t think it’s a joke. “Tia Louisa hired me and Nita,” I tell her. “She thinks we can do it.”

       “Tia Louisa?” My mom is suitably impressed. “You must have hidden talents. You’re going to be one of the famous Tias this summer.” She’s positively beaming now.

We’re not related to Nita’s aunt Louisa by blood, but everyone calls her Tia Louisa. And everyone knows the story of how Louisa Santiago came to this country thirty years ago at the age of sixteen and founded A-One Cleaning with seven dollars’ worth of soap and ammonia, a rusted out Volkswagen bus, and the ability, she swore, to work twenty-five hours a day. She had decided that if all she knew how to do was clean houses, she was going to make sure she did it better than anyone else in the city of Los Angeles. Within five years she had cleared enough money to bring her nine siblings to the U.S. The youngest was Nita’s father.

       Now Tia Louisa manages an elite corps of fifty highly trained full-time employees, all Spanish-speaking women like herself, plus a handful part-timers when things get busy. Her clients really do include a few celebrities, though she won’t tell Nita exactly who. A couple of years ago Glam/More Weekly, the local life-style rag included A-One on their list of “House Cleaners to the Fab and Famous.” “Those in the know,” the reporter burbled, “call Ms. Santiago and her ladies the Tias.” Suddenly, it was a status symbol if instead of referring to ‘the maid,’ or ‘cleaning service’ you could simply say ‘the Tias are taking care of things,’ like they were some kind of secret society.

       Not that I would ever qualify as a genuine Tia, of course. “Nita and I are just helpers,” I explain to my mom before she can get her hopes too high. “Tia Louisa calls us extras.” For me to become a real Tia just because I could push a mop would be like getting a slot on the Olympic gymnastics squad just for turning a forward somersault or acing AP calculus because I could add on my fingers and toes. In other words, completely impossible.

       “Many are called but few are chosen.” My mom nods wisely. She has lots of wise sayings. I think she proofed Bartlett’s online quotations.

       Still, I start to pick things up around my room. Not so much because I’m into cleaning, but because stumbling over the keyboard reminded me that I had earphones around here somewhere.

       My mom watches me toss clothes on the bed and straighten out the piles of books on the floor. “If at first you don’t succeed, keep at it.” She smiles. “I can see that Tia Louisa is a good influence already.”

       “I’ve got hidden talents, remember?”

After my mom leaves I uncover a sci-fi novel I’ve almost finished, an ancient chess board, a battered Comics Con official guide, three pens, and my trusty sketchbook. I drop everything else and fold the sketchbook open to a clean page. Within ten minutes I’m putting the finishing touches on the purple planet Zircona and trying to forget about what I’ll be doing at this time tomorrow. Another ten minutes and there’s the outline of a winged warrior girl speeding across the page.

Beau Bayou was the finest trumpet player in New Orleans. His real name was something ordinary like Henry Brown, but the girls all called him Beau because as well as being a fine musician he was handsome too. So handsome they said that when he smiled his face lit up like the starry sky over the bayou on a clear summer night.

       Sometimes in the evening after the day’s work was done and everyone had eaten their fill of gumbo or jambalaya or fried catfish or whatever they had to fix up for supper, a little breeze would begin to cool the city. It danced across every front porch and over each back stoop. It even leapt onto the wrought iron balconies up in the fancy French Quarter. The breeze blew for everybody, but mostly it blew for Beau.

       “I can blow high and I can blow low,” it whispered to him. “I can blow fast and I can blow slow. Life is more than just working and eating and going to sleep. Life is for dancing, too.”

       Beau heard and without a word he would pick up his horn and follow that breeze down to the docks. There he would blow a single long note. It echoed up each street and into every open window from the front parlor to the back kitchen.

       All over the city, women would cease gossiping and fanning themselves. Men would stop rolling dice and dealing out cards.

       “Beau is on the bayou.” They’d look at one another with knowing smiles. Any weariness they felt was gone. “Beau is on the bayou tonight.”