Pitch Wars ALT: VB-14 - RISE AND FALL OF A HALLWAY SUPERHERO

MENTOR: Joy McCullough-Carranza
ALTERNATE: Davy DeGreeff
TITLE: RISE AND FALL OF A HALLWAY SUPERHERO
CATEGORY/GENRE: MG Adventure
WORD COUNT: 50,000

PITCH: Jack teams with his school's mysterious hallway superhero to uncover a thuggish conspiracy going all the way to the principal’s office. But how can Jack expose the truth when he's framed as the evil mastermind?


EXCERPT:
Puked-up orange soda. That was it, for sure.

I’d spent the whole first week at my new school trying to figure out what the color of the lockers reminded me of. Now, with a girl twisting my arm behind my back and my face pressed right up against them, it finally hit me – the lockers looked like puked-up orange soda.

They also smelled like old socks, but I’d recognized that right away. The whole school smelled like old socks.

“Good morning, Brooklyn,” I said. Half of my mouth was smooshed against the locker door, so my words came out sounding all smooshed, too.

The grip on my arm tightened.

“Watch it!” Brooklyn said. “Don’t forget: in this school, you don’t know me. We’re strangers. You don’t know anything about me.”

I did know her, because she was my cousin, but I understood what she meant.

“If I pretend we’re strangers, will you let me go?”

“You’re going to pretend you don’t know me or I’m going to twist your arm until it falls off. How about that?”

“People are starting to look, Brooklyn. You’d better let go or they might think you’re hugging me…”

She gave my arm one last crank, then let go and spun me around. “Oh, and one more thing – PURPLE NURPLE!” Her hand launched fast as a snake and pinched my chest between her thumb and forefinger.