Copyright © 2016.
Each author holds the copyrights for their individual stories. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author(s) except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2016
An Alliance of Young Adult Authors
http://www.YAalliance.com
Contents
INTRODUCTION
PARANORMAL & URBAN FANTASY
Inconvenient Curiosity, A.M. Lalonde
Melissa, Kaitlin Bevis
Reflection, Katlyn Duncan
Push, Leia Stone
The Wrath of the Fury, Michelle Madow
Sanctuary, Melle Amade
The Volunteer, Melissa A. Craven
Wishful, Katy Haye
SCIENCE FICTION
Avlyn, Jenetta Penner
Zoo Girl, Jennifer Bardsley
The Guardians, SL Morgan
When I Find You, Norma Hinkens
Humanity’s Protector, David R. Bernstein
The Wrong Time for Fate, Ingrid Seymour
DYSTOPIAN & POST-APOCALYPTIC
Drift Away, Rob. L. Slater
The End, Melissa Algood
Sand and Starships, Heather Lee Dyer
Provisions, Kira Lerner
Misery, Patti Larsen
Translucents, Kelly St. Clare
Taste, Derek Murphy
FANTASY
The Confectioner’s Guild, Claire Luana
Unicorn Magic, Roz Marshall
Another World, Rachel Morgan
Running Toward Illumia, Angel Leya
Jarra, Shaun L Griffiths
Arrows & Angels, Kristin D. Van Risseghem
The Birth of the Immortal Queen, Katherine Bogle
Emerald Eye, S. McPherson
The Dry Season, Cassidy Taylor
The Archbishop’s Amulet, Watson Davis
THRILLER & HORROR
The Waiting, Laurie Treacy
Desperate, Stacy Claflin
More Than a Crush, Kat Stiles
Second Chances, Jackson Dean Chase
AND MORE (SPECULATIVE FICTION)
Fox Red, Amy Laurens
Silk and Service, David Kudler
Learning to Fly, Laura Diamond
Underbelly Circus, Hilary Thompson
Glimpses, Avril Sabine
Doormaker, Jamie Thornton
The C in Summer, Jaime Munn
THANKS
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever reached a moment in your life when everything changed? A crossroads of sorts… a point of no return. An event or realization so enormous you knew it would impact you forever in ways you couldn’t begin to understand? Discoveries so momentous they changed everything you thought you knew about the world, and yourself?
That Moment When is filled with exactly these kinds of moments. We’ve gathered a handful of fascinating stories from all of your favorite genres and put them together into an epic anthology of young adult fiction.
Some of them are just the beginning of a unique adventure, while others are short stories that will spark your imagination. Some of us are just starting out, while others are celebrated NYT or USA Today Bestselling authors. We teamed up to make it easier for you to find your new favorite books. If you read the stories in this anthology, I guarantee you’ll find at least a few that thrill and excite you. With over 200,000 words (about three full-length novels) That Moment When will provide weeks of reading pleasure, and some of the stories may even help you discover your own moment when…
PARANORMAL & URBAN FANTASY
INCONVENIENT CURIOSITY
A.M. Lalonde
Nothing soothed a broken heart better than high fructose corn syrup. A sweet, sugar-filled balm to cover the damage months of therapy couldn’t fix. It was a stretch to believe a Radioactive Raspberry slushy could do anything more than turn her tongue blue. Liv Reyes had nothing left in the world to lose except maybe brain freeze and early onset diabetes. With the way her life was going, death by sugar didn’t sound so bad.
The slushy machine hummed, churning the thick blue drink. Liv stood transfixed, watching it turn under the glare of the fluorescent lights. One hand clutched a plastic cup; the other a straw. She hadn’t managed to get any further than that.
The waterworks started the instant she’d stepped into the convenient store. A rush of anxiety forced her to take cover in the chip aisle. She heaved panicked breaths as her throat closed. It was like sucking air through a straw. The room swayed as darkness edged in. She held onto the chip rack, fighting to stay upright. Vision blurred by tears. She spotted the slushy machine and stumbled down the aisle toward it.
Focus your mind on something else.
Her first shrink said distraction was the best way to fight the panic.
“Hey kid, you gonna buy somethin’?”
The voice broke through her thoughts. A pimple-faced clerk eyed her from behind the counter. Skin gleaming like an oil slick beneath the convenient store lights. Nike clad feet propped next to the register. He leaned back in his chair, eyed her with feigned interest as he tongued the mouth of his soda can. A crooked nametag hung from his blue uniform shirt. It looked like it once said ‘Rick,’ but someone used whiteout to erase the R and draw a D in its place.
With her back to the front of the store, she directed little energy into making her drink. Any more time spent loitering would have drawn unwanted attention and she had a lifetime of that in the last five months. The last thing she needed was some minimum wage mouth-breather up in her business.
Liv stuffed the lid onto her drink, careful not to spill it. Her reflection wavered in the glass of the machine. Smeared mascara under her eyes, cheeks red and puffy. The girl staring back was someone she no longer recognized. A wraith of the person she’d been before the accident; before her world had been turned inside out.
She scrubbed away the last of the black smudges with the sleeve of her T-shirt. It didn’t fix her face, but at least she wouldn’t look like a dumpster panda.
She shuffled to the counter, sneakers scuffing the linoleum. The clerk ignored her. He flipped lazily through a copy of Cosmo. Orange stained fingers crammed handfuls of cheese puffs into his waiting mouth.
Liv slammed the slushy beside his feet. It landed with a thump. Dick jolted, kicking over a display of beef jerky from the counter. Metal and plastic crashed to the floor. Packages of Smith’s Teriyaki Jerky spilled over the tiles.
He stood, greasy bangs falling across his eyes. Cheese dusted fingers combed back his hair. He rang up her order with a forced smile. It was all crooked teeth and metal braces.
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” she said, digging out change from her pockets.
He tilted his head to one side, narrowing his eyes.
“Hey, did we go to school together?”
Liv spilled the coins onto the counter. She sent a quick glance to the clerk. He looked six years too old to be in high school.
She shook her head and counted her nickels and dimes out-loud to him. He leaned forward until she could taste the stale Coke on his breath.
“No, I’ve seen you somewh
ere before.”
A lump wedged in her throat. Anxiety crept in, a claw digging into her lungs.
“I don’t think so.”
He banged a fist onto the counter, triumphant. Eyes lit with excitement.
“You’re the girl from the paper!”
He whirled around, snagged a crumpled newspaper off the back counter. Pages tore in his hurry to find the article. He flipped through with shaking fingers.
“I know I saw it... there!”
He shoved the article under her nose. A black-and-white photograph of herself stared back. A reporter snapped it days earlier outside the courthouse. There was a publication ban on her name, but privacy didn’t exist in small towns. It was dumb luck that she’d ended up in the photo.
He tapped the paper. “That’s you all right.”
Liv slapped the newspaper out of his hands. She shoved the change at him.
“Keep all of it,” she said.
“But it’s you, right?”
“It’s not me!”
She snatched her slushy off the counter, turned and stormed toward the exit.
She cleared the automatic doors and stepped into the humid September night. It was unseasonably warm for that time of year. The air clung to her skin, sticky and dense weighted down by the heat.
Sweat broke out across her back as she rushed from the store. She didn’t see the oncoming car until it was almost on top of her. Headlights cut through the darkness. Under the squeal of tires, Liv narrowly avoided the front grill of a Dodge Charger. The wheels spun, burning rubber along the asphalt as the car took a sharp turn into the adjacent parking spot.
Dark smoke swelled from the black tread marks etched across the ground. Liv clutched the slushy to her chest, caught somewhere between shock and wondering if it was sweat or a bit of pee that she now felt.
Please let it be sweat.
Britney Spears screamed from the car’s open windows. The engine shut off, silencing the pop diva. The door groaned as the driver stepped out.
Hair bleached white and cropped short along the sides. He didn’t look any older than twenty. Tall and lanky, and decorated in face piercings. He would have been handsome if he hadn’t almost run her over with his car.
He shouldered past her, heading to the store.
“Drive much!” she yelled.
He paused, turning halfway to face her. Blue eyes raked over her. Liv shifted discomfort under the disparaging gaze. The corners of his mouth tugged into a Cheshire grin. It was all arrogance and perfect teeth.
Liv had the sudden urge to knock a couple of them loose.
“Walk much?” he asked.
With a shake of his head, he dismissed her. He crossed the parking lot, disappearing inside the store. Liv fumed in his wake.
She cursed him out. Eyed her slushy, half tempted to dump the drink through his open car windows.
Not worth it.
She made her way to the parked Honda Odyssey at the end of the lot. It had seen better days. Her brother Gabe nicknamed it The Beast. It was one of the last connections to her old life. The van she’d learned to drive on; the vehicle for late night drives through Arcadia with her and Gabe.
They spent most summers driving around doing nothing. Some nights they parked behind the Quick Stop and lay out on the hood to watch the stars. Sipping slushies and seeing who could tell the dirtiest joke.
Liv braced a hand on the minivan for support, warm steel under her palm. Stray tears made tracks along her cheeks. The levees that kept back her emotions threatened to break. She sniffled, wiping with the back of her hand to where wet snot had settled above her upper lip.
In another week or two they’d have to sell the van. They were just scraping by with her abuela’s disability checks. They couldn’t afford the insurance or the gas, and her abuela wouldn’t get behind a wheel with her declining health and Alzheimer’s.
Liv sat the slushy on the hood and rounded the vehicle to the back passenger side. She tugged open the sliding doors. Eight cardboard boxes were crammed on top of the backseats. Must and mildew clung to the air inside the van. The words ‘junk’ and ‘Gabe’s things’ marked the boxes in black Sharpie.
After they’d sold the house, she’d gone and packed some of the family’s belongings, tucking them away in a storage unit. Her mother called from prison, begging her to keep the boxes from the attic safe. It was the only time they talked after the murders. The last promise Liv made to the woman who tried to kill her.
She used funds from her mother’s bank account to pay for the storage shed. Liv told herself she wasn’t doing it for her mom, that it was an excuse to keep Gabe’s stuff somewhere safe. She couldn’t throw his belongings away and she wasn’t ready to live with them.
Five months had passed since then and Liv no longer saw the point of wasting money on it. Not when they were still paying off funeral expenses.
Her pocket vibrated, muffling the voice of LL Cool J. Liv pulled out her cell phone, glanced at the name on the screen: Carter Haynes. She hit the ignore button. All day she’d been dodging Carter’s texts. They started when she didn’t show up for homeroom and continued like clockwork every hour since. She didn’t want Carter to see her upset. The last thing she wanted was more attention. Everyone already acted like her tragedy was somehow contagious; everyone except Carter.
He was the golden boy of Hinton Park High; one part jock and two parts Abercrombie and Fitch model. He plucked her from obscurity when her world collapsed. He filled her with life and renewed her hope. Breaking through the grief, she opened up for the first time in months. She filled her lungs with every part of him. Liv didn’t know if it was love or distraction, and she didn’t care.
She silenced her phone and dropped it back in her pocket.
She grabbed the nearest box and dumped it onto the ground. There were three boxes that belonged to her mother. All were filled with crazy. One box held journals, scribbled half in English and half in a foreign language she couldn’t read; all of it illegible. The other two held empty mason jars with strange marks cut into the glass.
It crossed her mind more than once to just burn it all. After everything, it would have been cathartic to watch her mother’s junk go up in flames.
She destroyed their family in a single night. Madness guided the hand that took her father and brother’s life. That put Liv in a hospital bed for a week. Left her scarred in ways doctors couldn’t fix. It marked her as the girl who survived the Reyes family murders.
She sipped her slushy and plucked a jar from the nearest box. It fit inside her hand, a small reminder of how messed up her life had become.
Angry tears began to fall. She screamed. Hands shaking, she hurled the jar across the parking lot. Shattered glass cut the night. It was a minor comfort. The satisfaction fleeting and Liv realized she wasn’t ready for it to end.
She dug into the box when a sharp cry split the air. For a moment she didn’t react; the sound rooting her to the cement in fear. Another shriek followed the first, and then another. The hand around the jar went slack, the glass clinking as it fell back into the box.
Liv moved toward the passenger side door, eyes trained on the sky. A flock of birds circled overhead, their shrill cries filling the night. With feathers that shone metallic in the moonlight and beaks cut from brass. They were an ominous, dark mass that materialized from nowhere.
Strange and beautiful, they were mesmerizing were it not for the noise they made. A cacophony of shrieks and flapping wings unsettled something inside her. It was like the start to a horror flick, and Liv would be damned if she was going to end up the victim in some Hitchcock nightmare.
The door eased open with a whine. She caught the reflection of a bird in the window. Wings flat against its back, it shot downward from the sky. When she looked back it was nearly on top of her.
Liv tripped backwards. Not fast enough to avoid the scrape of a beak against her cheek. It cut like edged steel across her skin, drawing blood.
With a cry the bird lifted into the air, merging with the rest of the flock. Only a few steps separated her from safety. Liv’s gaze wavered between the van, and the threat that circled above. The birds screeched a warning sensing her hesitation.
Screw it.
She jumped, closing the gap between her and the door, fingers grazing the frame.
“Look out!”
Liv turned toward the voice, but all she saw were the dozen metallic shards cutting a path toward her. She threw herself to the ground, arms scraping the asphalt. The van shook, riddled by small projectiles.
Arms bloodied and raw, she crawled across gravel, pulling in ragged breaths. Beating wings grew louder. Fear forced her to her feet. She broke into a run.
The lights of the convenient store glowed like a beacon; a sanctuary from the chaos. The birds chased her across the lot, their shrieks a warning that they closed in.
A figure leapt from the shadows between two parked cars. There was a blur of white; hot breath against her ear. Callused hands grabbed her by the arm.
“Shut up and move.”
Liv faltered, the bottoms of her Converse scraped the cement as she fought to hold her ground. Her arm twisted, breaking the hand that held her. It was the guy from earlier.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. We don’t have time-”
A dangerous squawk cut him off. Grabbing her by the wrist, he dragged her toward his car. Liv stumbled behind him, trying to keep pace. She didn’t think he’d wait for her if she missed a step and fell.
Liv collapsed across the hood of the Charger, gasping for air while insistent hands shoved her forward.
“Get in the car you idiot!”
The blonde jumped behind the wheel. She followed him, afraid she’d find a beak sticking out from her neck before she could clear the door. Liv slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. The air inside was hot, laced with cheap cologne that scratched the back of her throat. All she cared about was pulling in enough to fill her lungs.
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