1st 5 Pages January Workshop- Evenson Rev 2

Name: Emma Evenson
Genre: YA contemporary
Title: Tourist Attractions of the Upper Midwest

Pitch:

Sixteen-year-old Jonah Palmer knows that his best friend is a douchebag. Parker is the kind of guy who openly rates girls’ asses and describes everything he hates as ‘gay.’ And it’s not like Jonah— who actually is gay— is cool with it. But he gives Parker the occasional pass, as his oldest friend and the only person who didn’t treat him like a freak after he lost his leg in a childhood car accident.

When Parker’s girlfriend moves away without explanation, Jonah expects Parker to flip the hell out. But Parker is fine with it—and that’s almost scarier. The rumor mill makes it clear there’s a story there, but the last thing Jonah wants are details. All he wants is to avoid newly-single Parker’s attempts to hit on girls.

But when Parker assaults a girl, Jonah becomes complicit in one of the worst things Parker has ever done. Now Jonah has to choose between his oldest friendship and his desire to do the right thing in a situation where he has no clue what ‘the right thing’ even is.

Week 3 Revisions:

As soon as Parker tells me he likes Jenna’s hair, I know we’re on the brink of a major disaster.

“What?” he asks, feigning innocence. Feigning it pretty ineffectively, since Parker can’t act or lie to save his life. He’s always the person who gets cast as a tree or a rock in school plays, and even then he usually finds a way to fuck things up.

“Do not say something awful--” I start, but it’s already too late.

Jenna Price climbs up the stairs of the bus. She’s oblivious, talking animatedly to my sister, playing with the ends of her now fire-engine-red hair.

I knew this was coming, because the dye job happened at our house, in our bathroom. It looked like they killed a clown in there by the time they were done. Approximately six hundred thousand commemorative selfies were taken in our living room. And the entire time this was going on, I was having flashbacks to everything gross Parker has ever said to me about redheads.

That process took up a good two hours of my life.

So I already know how this is going to end. I consider taking some preventative measure, like covering his mouth with my hand, except there’s a decent chance he’d bite my palm.

He straightens up in the seat we’re sharing, and I slump down accordingly. Pretty much my number one goal in life is to avoid being the center of attention, which is difficult when your best friend has the self-control of a rabid dog.

“Hey Jenna,” he calls out, “I like your hair.”

To a normal person this might sound like a compliment, but Jenna wasn’t born yesterday. She flips him off without so much as looking in our direction.

“Who do you think makes a better redhead, Jenna or Alice?” he asks me, which practically counts as a philosophical question coming from Parker. But I am the single worst person he could be asking.

Guy-redheads, I want to say, but can’t. For fairly obvious reasons.

“They’re both okay,” I shrug.

Parker completely ignores me. “Jenna, definitely. Let me just--”

“Absolutely not,” I say, grabbing his arm.

Unfortunately he’s wearing a sweatshirt, which he sloughs off like a second skin as he shoves past me, and slides into the seat directly behind Evie and Jenna.

I hardcore don’t want to follow him. But as soon as he taps Jenna on the shoulder, my sister’s head pops up over the seat and she gives me the kind of look people give you when your dog shits on their lawn and you don’t pick it up. Which forces me to get up and move, because I prefer it when Evie doesn’t hate me.

“So did you dye all your hair?” he asks loudly. “Everywhere?”

I groan. I was pretty sure that’s where this was going, but you know. A person can hope.

A bunch of the guys sitting behind us laugh. Our bus driver even laughs. It’s completely disgusting on a million different levels and it makes me wish I were a different type of person. A person who would get up and punch Parker and those guys in their faces.

Or at the very least, like, pinch them.

But me? I feel the way I used to feel during our Department of Natural Resources assemblies about preventing forest fires. Some nature-police-type-guy would be up there showing us videos of a bunch of burning forests and explaining how to use sand or willpower or whatever to stop the fire.

And I’d be sitting there thinking, I would definitely just give up if I was confronted with a forest fire.

But it’s not like that’s even a real option, because everyone would be like, ‘screw that guy who let the whole forest burn down.’

In this case, I suspect my sister will have some pretty choice words for me if I don’t do the right thing. My sister is super-Christian, so she’s up on the Clydesdale of all of high horses when it comes to morality.

“Stop being--” I start, but Jenna interrupts.

“Leave. Me. Alone.”

“I’m just curious,” he says. “It seems like that would be complicated—”

I lean forward so my face is pressed against the back of the seat in front of us, which is pockmarked with those weird little shapes that form when you press a lit lighter against the seat. The grimy plastic threats to suffocate me, and I kind of wish it would.

Jenna stands up. “Actually,” she says, grabbing her backpack, “I don’t have to listen to this crap.” She storms to the front of the bus and the bus driver actually pulls over and lets her off, despite the fact that we drop all the farm kids off first and we’re basically in the middle of nowhere.

“Jesus. Overreact much?” Parker says.

I roll my eyes so hard they practically fall out of my head.

“If only Rachel were here to witness this,” Evie says sarcastically, narrowing her eyes at Parker before turning to glare at me in a way that makes me want to crawl under the seat.

It’s not like I didn’t try to stop him.

Mostly.

It actually is kind of a miracle that Parker’s girlfriend is on another bus route, because if she heard a quarter of the things he says they probably would have broken up years ago. At the very least, he usually knows better than to mess with Rachel’s friends.

Rachel is the one person who has the power to make Parker act like a semi-normal person, which makes her tantamount to a wizard in my mind.

So when I say, “You might want to, like, apologize. Because Jenna’s hardcore going to tell Rachel what you said,” Parker looks like he’s actually considering it.

“Okay,” he says finally.

It makes me want to write Rachel a card or something, which my mom is real big on. Our next-door-neighbor gave me a bag of laundry detergent and some deodorant last year for Christmas, and my mother made me write a thank you card for that, even though Mrs. Friedman was clearly mocking my personal hygiene.

Dear Rachel, thank you for having sex with my best friend and for scaring him into occasionally trying to be a better person.

I seriously cannot imagine what Parker would be like if he were single.

It would be the actual end of the world.

“So Jonah.” Evie’s voice floats over the top of the seat, her tone frigid. “Ever considered finding better friends?”

This sounds like an insult, but it’s the kind of thing you get used to hearing when everyone thinks your best friend is a total douchebag.

But it’s not nearly as simple as she makes it sound.