Son of a Pitch Entry: The Glass Sisters

Title: THE GLASS SISTERS

Category and Genre: YA Speculative Thriller

Words: 83,000

Query:

Seventeen-year-old Rebecca Glass doesn’t want to die, but downing a bottle of pills seems the only way to escape her control-freak-mother. Ending it all is the first real decision she’s ever made herself—until the charismatic girl in the mirror appears. The girl entices Rebecca to tap into latent powers she’s spent her whole life repressing, teaching her how to slip through the glass into an alternate reality—one without her mother. And the only thing the girl in the mirror asks in exchange? To live Rebecca’s crappy life.

With nothing to lose, Rebecca accepts the girl in the mirror’s offer to swap places, unwittingly falling victim to a carefully orchestrated plot of revenge. On the other side of the mirror, Rebecca finds herself confined to a mental hospital that has sinister designs for girls with extraordinary abilities. Brutally exploited for her power and at the mercy of the girl in the mirror, Rebecca is desperate to reclaim the life and mother she once threw away.

To overcome her ruthless reflection, Rebecca must master her abilities and her depression. But her mirror-image holds a powerful secret, a tragedy in their past that links the two girls in blood. And if learning the truth of what they really are doesn’t destroy Rebecca, the girl in the mirror will…

First 250:

The Girl in the Mirror

Imprisoned within the silence of the box, the girl sat alone, solitary confinement her natural state of existence. She sat comfortably on the padded floor, her legs criss-crossed, head bowed, a slip of rectangle-glass clutched neatly in the palm of her hand. The intensity of her gaze reflected back at her.

She concentrated.

Her breath a metronome, in and out, the rhythm helping her focus. Pressure squeezed in from her temples, making her eyes water—but it always did right before she made the connection. Then, when the connection went live, sweet release as swift and forgiving as plucking a splinter the size of a railroad spike from the center of her brain.

The glass she held no longer just a glass, but a window. What was displayed there was her face, but it was not her. It was a her that could have been, a her that may yet be.

The girl hated what she saw all the same.

Hated how the other her looked so content, so safe. So smug. She glared into the mirror studiously, trying to replicate the other girl’s half-hearted smile, but it felt crooked on her own face, as out of place as she herself was.

When she could take no more, when the pain in her heart equaled the pain in her head, she severed the connection.

The girl tucked the mirror away in her undergarments beneath her thin gown. It was addicting, peeking in on that other life, but she had to be careful.