Today's Thursday Trailer!
The Tearings by VC Repetto
Released by Evernight Teen, November 2013
The guy sitting at the next table coughed. It was an ugly, wet sound that made me look up from the exam sheet in front of me.
Fabulous. The last thing I needed was to get sick before the swim match.
He sniffed and wiped his nose with his stiff, already less-than-fresh sleeve, then lowered his hand back to his pencil and paper. Too bad for the person who'd have to pick that particular sheet up.
With this, Dear Readers, The Tearings begin.
Filled with 1950's black and white imagery that bring to mind the slightly creepy fascination of medical and scientific experimentation of a bygone era, the trailer will keep you bizarrely intrigued right up to that final moment--with a final seizing of your own fascination.
A human arm, sinewy with veins of virus poison jutting out and the entire almost monster-like arm turning red with infection--with plague.
I Am Legend, anybody? The Walking Dead? A new story of a new virus for all you world-going-down-plague-style loving readers and screen enthusiasts.
P.S. Of interest to many of you may be the fact that VC Repetto enjoys submerging her brain in Victorian Gothic novels. The Tearings is only her debut novel, and if she reads dark, Gothic-y material, then you can almost be certain she will emerge with her own work of "moldy lace and gas masks," two things she enjoys in Victorian Gothics.
Summary from Evernight Teen:
From the moment the black vans appear to take the sick away, Maya knows there is something wrong. She seems to be the only one to question the sudden disappearances at school and the masks everyone is forced to wear to keep from catching the new disease spreading through the entire United States.
Even when word of the new “healing centers” reaches the public, no one dares to ask what is happening. But when Maya catches the disease, the one they call The Tearings, and is taken to one of these centers along with her mother, the truth becomes all too clear. She is separated from her family and forced to work, becoming one of the more fortunate ones who is not sent to the testing wings.
Bullied by the guards to the point of death, she meets David Summers, the enigmatic young Captain who appears to loathe his position of power in the camp and who seems as drawn to Maya as she is to him.
When Maya suddenly becomes the disease’s only survivor, she must put her trust on David to find a way to escape the camp and get the truth, and the cure coursing through her veins, out to the world.
14+ for Violence and Adult Situations
Novel Excerpt from Evernight Teen:
My throat was raw, throbbing, and dry.
Panic rose immediately.
I was sick. I’d caught it.
I dug my nails into my hands and tried to get a hold of my galloping fear. Maybe I’d just slept with my mouth open during the night. That could be it, right? It didn’t need to be the worst thing imaginable. Except, I knew it was.
In seconds I was bolting up out of bed and running to the mirror hanging from my closet door. It hurt to open my mouth. Patches of red and fuzzy white had spread across my tongue and palates, making me wince when I touched them.
Sudden tears made my vision waver. Whatever this super-flu was, I had it.
I brushed my tears away with violence. There was no time for that right now. I had to think. My first instinct was to run into Mom’s room and tell her, but I made myself stand still for a few seconds more. Once she knew, she’d call the ambulances; there’d be no stopping her. They’d take us away to the health centers, so this might be the last few minutes I had to face this without needles poking at me.
As much as I tried to convince myself that allowing the ambulances to take me to the centers was a good thing, I couldn’t stop my stomach from clenching at the thought of riding in those black monsters that patrolled the streets. I wanted to stay home.
On impulse, I grabbed my cell off my night table and pressed one of the speed dial buttons.
Derek picked up on the fourth ring. “Maya?”
“Hi.”
“Is everything okay?”
I hesitated. This was it. Once I told someone, there’d be no stopping this. “I woke up with a sore throat.”
