Blind Speed Dating #30 (A)

Title: NOWHERE

Genre: Adult Magical Realism

Word Count: 88,000

Query:

Twenty-six year old Olive McCallie can make wishes come true just by thinking about them. She’s pretty sure that’s how she accidentally erased her little brother from existence ten years ago. That, or she’s bat-shit crazy. Olive can’t tell which.

When she moves to Nowhere, North Carolina and starts seeing a teenager who looks like a grown-up version of her brother, she’s convinced she’s losing it—again. Even worse, wishes pop out of thin air on slips of paper any time someone near her makes a wish. She collects them, unread, which only makes them more determined to get her attention. Then there’s the elderly woman who bakes the town's secrets into pies to keep them from getting out as if believing in magical abilities is perfectly sane.

But the most distracting of all is Ashe Reilly, her on-the-rebound backyard neighbor. There’s something about his Southern manners and sad eyes that makes her want to give into the crazy. Olive must learn to trust herself—and her ability—if she wants to know what’s real and what’s not.

First 250:

Birthday parties made her nervous. Itchy. She didn’t mind the screaming kids, puddles of melted ice cream or even the clowns who twisted dogs out of skinny, colored balloons. It was the birthday candles and subsequent wishes that did it.

Wishes tended to complicate life for Olive McCallie.

Too bad that excuse didn’t fly with four year olds. So there she sat, sideways in a plastic booth next to a pile of discarded plates and crumpled, pizza-sauced napkins. Lip prints and finger smears coated a barrage of disposable cups. One lay on its side leaking orange soda from the straw hole. It crept across the table toward her, millimeter by millimeter. She couldn’t find a clean napkin to mop it up with so she let it continue its slow attack.

The party room smelled of pepperoni and dirty diapers. She could just make out the melody of some teeny-bopper song over the clanging, whooping, and beeping of the games from the arcade on the other side of the door.

“Ol-lee!” her best friend’s daughter yelled from across the room. “Cake! Cake! Cake!” Violet waved her twiggy arm in a circle, beckoning Olive over.

Olive scooted out of the booth but stayed a safe distance from the birthday girl and her unicorn-shaped cake with four candles protruding from its back. The ice cream cone horn was slathered in white icing and silver sprinkles. “I’m not hungry,” she called. She avoided looking at her best friend, Maybe Foster, who was no doubt rolling her eyes at Olive’s wariness.