Little Piece...

I thought it might be fun to post a little, teeny piece of the book I'm currently editting, Accidents: Densetsu. This is the first book in the Accidents series, and this scene was added pretty recently to the second chapter of the book. It's just a fun transitional scene, really, but I think it's important because it brings up some themes that might be important in later books and it highlights Art's macabre/playful side. You can read the rest of the chapter on my webook account.

Artemis

I wandered down the south hall, letting my fingers brush along the lockers. The school had decent heating, but the lockers still felt like metal ice. Only one teacher asked where I was going. “Mrs. Lamb wanted me to get another roll of paper towels.” It was a good lie; all the teachers knew that the art teacher was notoriously messy, and that she almost never gave hall passes. The guy straightened his glasses and told me to get a move on. He watched me go, though, so I had to take the wrong hall to the supply closet until he’d walked away. I turned back and skulked to the Biology lab.
No one was using the lab, so I slipped in and went looking for Yorik. That’s what Tabor had named the human skull model that no one ever used. I sat on the edge of a desk, more or less out of view of the windows into the hall, and talked at Yorik, because I was just that desperate. “What’s it like to be dead?” I asked him seriously, running my thumbs over his teeth. “Is it interesting? Or is it nothing?” I worked his jaw for him. Tabor sometimes tried to convince people, usually our Biology teacher, that he talked to her. He’d never talked to me unless I helped him. “I don’t know anyone who believes in Heaven. If it existed, it’d probably suck. I don’t want to just... keep going... forever.” I sighed and let myself flop back on the table, holding Yorik up the way Hamlet did in illustrations. “I’m close enough as it is.”
Yorik chattered reassuringly at me, and I patted his skull plates and put him back on his shelf. The bell rang as I started back to the art room. By the time I got there, all of the students were long gone, leaving the teacher to clean up and put away everyone’s supplies. She didn’t look up. I grabbed my canvas bag and left without saying a word.