I've never participated in Sweet Saturday Samples before. It seems really cool, and I can't wait for it to become a regular part of this blog. Basically, every Saturday-- you get a sample (genius, right?!). Some Saturday's it will be books I'm publishing, some Works-In-Progress, some stories I've just started. So... here we go.
CROSSING THE DEEP~ Young Adult/Inspirational/Christian (OCT. 9th/Astraea Press)
This is from about page 70... spoiler... they are lost in the woods ;)
Asher remained calm all the way past noon. A triumph for him. By two, he was up and pacing. Ever since he was a little boy, he pictured a thin string holding his temper in check. The string was being pulled tightly, threatening to snap. Why hadn’t they heard anything? No yelling. No footsteps. No twigs breaking. Nothing. It seemed like they were the only people left on the entire planet.
“You don’t think the world ended, did you?” he asked, only half joking. “You know, like end-of-days-type stuff.”
He could tell by the expression she gave him that she hadn’t expected that.
“Didn’t think you were into end-of-the-world-type stuff?”
He shrugged. “Thought you were.”
“Don’t joke about things like that.”
“Gotta joke about something,” he said. A nagging thought wouldn’t leave him alone. “If… if… Jesus did come back, and you were still here with me, well, you’d be up a creek, wouldn’t you think?”
“If Jesus did come back, I don’t believe for a second I’d still be here with you.” she said, and it bothered him a little bit. Why, he didn’t know, but it did. What? So, she would, theoretically, be gone to some unimaginable paradise, and he’d be stuck there on the mountain all alone? He didn’t like the sound of that.
“Confident, aren’t you?”
“Very.” The way she sat with her back straight and her eyes unflinching let him know she meant it.
“Wish I was that confident in Sid. I don’t think he’s coming back,” he said, pushing his fists in his pockets to keep from hitting a tree or something equally as stupid.
“He’ll be here,” she answered, sitting where she had for most of the day with her foot propped on her backpack.
“Maybe Sid got lost…”
“He didn’t get lost. He told them where we are.”
“We don’t even know where we are!” he said louder than he meant. This day wasn’t going the way he’d planned it. A search party finding them around one — or sooner if they were lucky — had been his ideal day. Not this.
As the afternoon dragged on, his faith in his friend dwindled. He did not want to spend another night out in the woods, even if the company wasn’t half bad.
“We can’t be as lost as we think,” Rachel said. “There had to be a cutoff or something we just didn’t see.”
“What does it matter? Huh?” Without a doubt, his patience was hanging on by a thread. “Lost is lost, Rachel. “
“Yelling at me isn’t going to help.”
“I’m not yelling.” Okay, maybe he was a little. He’d always promised himself that no matter how mad he got or how frustrated he became, he’d never yell at a girl. That had been his one and only rule. Taking a deep breath, he sat in front of Rachel and tried to form coherent words that got his point across the way he wanted. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I didn’t realize I was.” Another lie. When was he going to stop lying? “Okay, yeah, I realized I was. I’m just — it’s just…”
“Yeah, me too,” she said. Her comforting emerald eyes, the same shade as her coat, let him know that she accepted his attempt at an apology. “And I’m sorry too.”
“You? For what?”
“You know what. For getting us in this mess to start with.”
“You still holding on to that?” Asher shook his head, amazed. Girls and their guilt. “It’s not like you did this on purpose. No, I’m not happy about it, but it does no good to dwell on it. We have bigger problems.”
“We’ll see if you still feel that way when we're still stuck out here a week from now.”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,” he said, not wanting to imagine being out there that long with a few bags of chips and no shelter.
Rachel sighed, looking around the trail and stretching her tense muscles. “I don’t see anyone coming.”
“Don’t get pessimistic on me now, girl. Remember you are the positive one.”
“Well, I’m positive I don’t see anyone coming.”
“That’s the spirit.” He laughed despite himself. Rachel had something about her, some spark that made him want to be around her, which was good since he seemed to be stuck with her.