CAGI Finalist #33

Title: FOREVER FRIDAY

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Word Count: 85,000

Query:

Friday Anderson’s life is over. She just doesn’t know it yet.

Seventeen-year-old Friday wakes up from a car accident to find her cancer mysteriously cured. Everyone calls it a miracle, but now that her mother is gone and she’s being forced to move to a tiny Montana town, it feels way more like a curse. Her only hope of moving on is earning enough money for college, so when an ad appears in the paper for a job assisting a rock band, Friday jumps at the opportunity.

Hanging out with the gorgeous guitarist certainly beats baling hay, but there’s something odd about the four young musicians, who spend more time bickering than practicing. When Friday overhears them discussing a plan to move to New York -- and take Friday with them -- she finally confronts the band members and learns the truth: they are Athanatos, immortals trapped somewhere between life and death. Not only is Friday one of them, she’s the only immortal who can kill another, making her the one weapon capable of ending the world’s oldest blood feud.

Now Friday has a choice: confront the people hunting her down and risk the lives of the mortals she loves, or run and leave anything resembling a normal life behind. Between magic rings, ancient curses, and the fact that Friday’s going to have to live with the same haircut for the rest of her life, it’s definitely going to take some time getting used to this whole “undead” thing.

Forever should just about do it.

First 250:

Un milagro, they called me. A miracle. I heard the nurses whisper it to each other as they passed my hospital room. I saw it on the news for three days before my story was overshadowed by celebrity gossip and political scandals. And it was the first thing the Chilean doctor said to me when my scan results came back normal.

But I didn’t believe in miracles.

“Good morning, señorita,” the nurse said as she pulled back the curtains. “You are going home today, no?”

           

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure what “home” meant anymore.

“Muy bien. The doctor will be in to release you soon.”

           

It had already been a week since the accident, but I still felt like if I tried hard enough I could wake myself up from this nightmare. Surely the real me was sitting in a café in Paris, the place I’d dreamed of going since I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor over a year ago. But instead of sending Mom and me to France, the wish foundation had called six weeks ago to tell me I’d been granted an all-expenses-paid vacation to Chile. Chile.

My mom said it must have been some kind of computer mix-up, or maybe a trip to Chile had just been more affordable than Paris, and that I shouldn’t complain about a free vacation. But it was literally my dying wish. You’d think they could at least get the country right.