Bouncer Post #78

 Title: HAUNTED HEIGHTS

Genre: YA Paranormal

Word Count: 69,000

Query:

Fourteen year-old Chris finally has a girlfriend.   He enjoys hanging out with Kathy, like they’re a normal couple, but it’s hard to pretend when she keeps disappearing on him.

Chris expects the most boring summer ever after moving to Brooklyn Heights, away from his friends and old Brooklyn neighborhood.  His parents’ idea of a productive “vacation” is him splitting time between Dad’s law office (ugh) and Mom’s summer school program (only slightly better).  Chris could hang with his older sister (and her hot friends), but he doesn’t want to be the annoying kid brother tagging along all summer. 

Things are looking up for Chris when he meets Kathy, a beautiful redhead living in the downstairs apartment for the summer.  She could have the personality of a slug and he might’ve still gone for her, but Kathy is funny, quirky and slightly mysterious.  She seems to like him too, but won’t even hold his hand. Seeing his hand pass right through hers, Chris finds out why.  He’s falling for a girl no one else can see or hear, a girl who’s a ghost.

Hanging out with Kathy, day and night (under his parents noses), Chris grows increasingly frustrated.   He has a girlfriend, but he can’t even kiss her.  He couldn’t have imagined a worse problem, until he’s nearly strangled by invisible hands and discovers that his new apartment is also haunted by a second, more malevolent ghost.

When Chris gives into temptation and kisses one of his sister’s friends, the other ghost, who loves Kathy in his own twisted way, takes revenge, battering Chris into unconsciousness.   He wakes to find Kathy crying.  They kiss, once, before she becomes incorporeal again.  A dangerous spell may bring Kathy back to the living, if Chris dares to use it.  But, unknown to him, the price of success may be worse than the consequences of failure.

First 250:

Pete hit pause and the quarterback’s arm froze mid-throw on the flat screen. “You’re seriously moving to Brooklyn Heights?”  He grabbed Chris’s shoulder.  “Damn.  The girls there are hot.” 

“And you can introduce us to the girls,” Neil added, also sounding excited.

Chris had been hoping for sympathy, not excitement, when telling Pete, Vinnie and Neil, about his parents’ stupid plan to move all the way across the borough after his junior high school graduation.   Hell, Brooklyn Heights was barely Brooklyn at all.  It was almost Manhattan, especially with all the rich people.  And, according to Pete, hot girls.  If true, that was some compensation, but not enough for giving up his best friends.  The four of them had known each other forever, since communion class at St. Bernard’s.   Except for Neil, who was Jewish and lived around the corner from Pete.

It was a rainy and cold Saturday afternoon, 47 degrees despite being the middle of May.   And as usual for such crappy weather, they were at Pete’s house playing Madden on his father’s huge television.

“Hey, wait.”  Neil frowned. “Why are the girls hotter at Roebling High School?

“You don’t know nothing do you?”  Pete punched Neil in the arm.  “The Brooklyn Heights girls are classy, unlike some of the lowlifes that live in our neighborhood.  They dress real nice and take care of themselves.”

“I bet the girls will be smoking at my school,” Neil replied, rubbing his arm.

Vinnie laughed. “What are you smoking?  You’re going to have the biggest nerds from all five boroughs.”