Author Celise Downs » Blog Archive » Miss Snitch Mondays: Chapter One cont’d

June 30, 2008 | Book One, Book Stuff, DA Series, Draven Atreides

From now until the April 17, 2009 release date of A Royale Pain: A Draven Atreides, Teenage FBI novel , I will post the unedited version of this book. Every month will be a different chapter, but since the chapters are so long–and unedited–I will post a few pages every week. Keep in mind that what you’ll be reading is the first draft of Book One, pre-editor and pre-spell check. It’s extremely raw, so there will be spelling errors. Comments and opinions are appreciated and may be taken into consideration during the current revision process. If you would like to order this book at a discount, be sure to get on the DA Book One Pre-Order Notification List at the end of this post.

“Yeah. Pretty neat. I’ll probably buy them the next time I work,” I say, unzipping the skirt and stepping out of it.

“Hey, I saw a tan pair of sweats with that same apple patch on the left leg. You should get those to go with the hoodie. You’d look cute,” Poe suggests, her voice somewhat muffled.

I snort as I unzip the hoodie. “I’ll look like a dork. The Orange Crush sweats will at least look trendy.”

“Oh yeahhh,” Poe drawls in a high-pitched tone. “Either way, you’ll look good. You have the perfect figure for those sweats.”

I glance in the mirror as I pull on my jeans. I pause, one leg in, one leg out, and study my reflection. Vian Chevalier had been all about having the perfect figure. It was the reason I had been placed with The Foster Couple From Hell (The FCFH) three years ago. Vian was half Italian and looked it.

My lighter than olive skin tone had been “perfect”, I had been the “perfect” age, and voila: instant, “perfect” family. On the surface, anyway.

Poe’s “chance of a lifetime” had been a weekly outing for me back then. A weekly outing I had grown to hate within a month. Vian had seen it as a time to bond with her new daughter. Of course, it was hard to bond with your new daughter when you were in separate rooms. Or gossiping with your friends in the waiting area.

Maybe this time it’ll be different. It’s a different time, different state, different person, different spa. Maybe the whole experience will be different with Poe. It’ll be like my first time, but better. For three years, I had been someone I couldn’t relate to, “people like them”. Now, I’m back to being one of the group, “people like us”.

I’ve kept the same mantra in my head since I was a little girl: I am me, a beautiful African Queen. Me. Draven Atreides. Pronounced Dray-ven Uh-tray-deez, I consider this to be a symbol of my individuality every time I hear my name. No one in the world has the same name as me, even though it’s not the one I’d been given at birth.

“Dray?” Poe’s voice startles me with a jerk. “Dray? Are you still there? You didn’t leave me, did you?”

Shaking away thoughts I would rather keep blocked out, I continue to get dressed. “Yeah, no, I, uh, I didn’t leave you. I’m still here.”

“Good, because I think I’m going to get this outfit.”

I barely get my shirt over my head before the curtain is dramatically ripped aside and Poe enters, striking a pose. “This outfit” turns out to be brown suede crochet boots, jeans that look like she patched them up herself, a striped wine-colored dress shirt with a low-waist tie belt, and an olive green corduroy Army uniform cap.

“Very hippie-chick,” I observe. “The boots are definitely you.”

“I agree. Let’s beat a hasty go-go. I’m starving,” says Poe, turning on her heel to head back to her dressing room.

I laugh, stuffing my feet into my sneakers.

“Let’s.”