Write This Down by Claudia Mills Page A

author’s names or other identifying information.
    â€œYou can bring Tatiana and Ingvar,” Kylee says. She knows that’s exactly what I’m thinking. “You’ll be discovered! They’ll read your first page and faint! They’ll be like, everyone else go home, we don’t want to read your pages now, we just want to read more from this amazing new author!”
    â€œOh, Kylee, they’re not going to say that,” I say, even though my fantasy is similar to Kylee’s in just about every detail.
    â€œWell, maybe they won’t say those exact words,” Kylee concedes. “It would be rude to send everybody else away. But I bet they’ll say they want to read the rest. Why would they be doing this if they’re not trying to find the next New York Times bestselling author?”
    I study the pictures of the two agents on the flyer. Nannerl Keith has funky glasses and short spiky hair; Marcy Duhota has shoulder-length waves held back with a barrette that makes her look too young to be a literary agent. Maybe the combined eighteen years of experience is seventeen years for Nannerl and one year for Marcy. But they both look smart and bookish, like people who would stay up all night reading the first volume of a trilogy about a princess (Tatiana) who is trying to break the curse put on her people by a wizard (Ingvar).
    What if they did want my novel? I know they’re agents, not editors, so they wouldn’t actually be the ones publishing it; they’d be the ones sending it out to the editors who might want to publish it. I checked out a “how-to-get-published book” once from the library, so that’s how I know. But finding an agent is definitely step one. Of course, the book’s not even written yet; all I have is seven chapters so far and a tiny bit of the eighth. But if they like it, I could write the rest fast so they could rush it off to some big important editor.
    There have been lots of—well, some—mega-popular books that were written and published by kids. S. E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was in high school. Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was fifteen. Fifteen isn’t that much older than twelve. And Christopher Paolini probably didn’t have a horrible older brother and a fabulous boy in his journalism class that he needed to impress, or maybe he would have published his book even sooner.
    â€œYou’re going to go, right?” Kylee presses.
    I nod.
    It’s as if the universe posted this flyer right where I—well, Kylee—had no choice but to see it, just the way the universe put the contest flyer in Ms. Archer’s mailbox the very day our personal essays were due in class. It feels so perfect that I found an announcement of a huge knitting opportunity for my best friend and she found an announcement of a huge writing opportunity for me.
    *   *   *
    Since October 31 falls on a Monday this year, the whole weekend feels like Halloween. On Saturday I spend the morning writing away frantically on Tatiana and Ingvar, now that I have a reason to finish my novel as soon as possible. But then I spend the afternoon working on costumes for Sunday-night trick-or-treating with Kylee, Brianna, and Isabelle. I don’t know who decided that Halloween was going to be “observed” on Sunday this year, but apparently it is.
    We’re over at Isabelle’s house. It’s a rambling Victorian that I used to think was haunted before I became friends with Isabelle. She’s my most scientific, sensible friend, short and a tiny bit squat with big glasses. Brianna is probably the prettiest one of our group, with a halo of golden curls that look fake but are actually real.
    Brianna googles “Halloween costumes to make at home” on her phone, since we don’t have a lot of money. We end up deciding to be different-colored Crayola crayons, but then we have to get