Struck

By Deb Loughead

Claire's life is a mess. She's failing math, her depressed mother won't get off the couch, Eric, the boy of her dreams, is dating her nemesis Lucy. While Claire is wishing her life were better, lightning strikes. Soon afterward, everything changes. With Lucy in the hospital and out of the way, Claire attracts Eric's attention and gets the starring role in the school play. But good fortune has a cost: her newly energized mother reconciles with her deadbeat dad, the dream boy turns out to be a dud and Claire feels terrible guilt about gaining everything Lucy has lost. But how can Claire turn it around when lightning only strikes once?

Also available in French.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
• Release date: Oct 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781554695423

Deb Loughead

Deb Loughead is the author of more than forty books for children and young adults including Wildfire, Payback and Rise of the Zombie Scarecrows in the Orca Currents line. Her books have been translated into seven languages, and her award-winning poetry and adult fiction have appeared in a variety of Canadian publications. Deb has conducted workshops and held readings at schools, festivals and conferences across the country. She lives in Toronto.

Book preview

Struck

Struck

Deb Loughead

Orca currents

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

Copyright © 2009 Deb Loughead

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Loughead, Deb, 1955-

Struck / written by Deb Loughead.

(Orca currents)

ISBN 978-1-55469-212-5 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-55469-211-8 (pbk.)

I. Title. II. Series: Orca currents

PS8573.O8633S87 2009    jC813’.54     C2009-903353-4

Summary: When Claire starts to experience success she’d never dreamed possible, she worries that a magical event is the cause.

First published in the United States, 2009

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009929367

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover design by Teresa Bubela

Cover photography by Getty Images

Author photo by Steve Loughead

Orca Book Publishers

PO Box 5626, Station B

Victoria, BC Canada

V8R 6S4

Orca Book Publishers

PO Box 468

Custer, WA USA

98240-0468

www.orcabook.com

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

12 11 10 09 • 4 3 2 1

For my sister, Joanne Orsini.

Contents

chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

chapter eight

chapter nine

chapter ten

chapter eleven

chapter twelve

chapter thirteen

chapter one

It was one of those days when you don’t even want to step outside—a bleak and windy Sunday in November. And of course my mom asked me to run to the store. She was craving clam chowder. Clam chowder, of all the stupid things! The New England kind. Not the Manhattan kind. And she wanted it, like, right away.

There’s some money in my purse, Claire. It’s in the hallway on the table.

She wasn’t even looking at me. She was flopped on the sofa with the clicker in her hand, flipping through the channels.

"Why can’t you go, Mom? I’m kinda busy right now." Why don’t you get out of the house yourself for a change? You’re getting so fat and lazy! That’s what I really wanted to snap back at her. But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. They’d been hurt enough lately.

My arthritis is acting up again, she said. My feet are killing me. This was her usual excuse. She used to cope with it and just carry on with her day—before Dad left, that is. Ever since then, she’d been housebound. And at fifteen, I didn’t want a stay-at-home mom anymore. She needed to get out and get on with her life. But Dad packed her zest for life into his suitcase and took it with him. I didn’t miss him at all, but she sure did.

Besides, I had better things to do that day than running errands for my mom. I had a math test to study for, and I needed to pull up my lousy marks. I also wanted to memorize a dramatic monologue for an audition at school. Oh, and there was daydreaming about Eric. That was always a priority. He was stuck in my head like a burr on your sleeve. There was nothing I could do to shake him off.

The only problem was, I didn’t stand a chance. Eric was going out with my number one rival, Lucy. She was one of the most popular girls at school—one of those girls that you never feel cool enough to be friends with. Lucy wins at everything by hardly even trying, and she is always surrounded by a flock of friends. I’d secretly wished she would be my friend. But Lucy and I had never been close the way my best friend Seema and I were. Lucy and I talked sometimes, during drama and English class, and said hi in the halls, but that was about it.

Sometimes I had fantasies about putting that girl out of my misery. But that’s all they ever were, crazy, twisted fantasies. Like, what if she walked a little too close to the edge of the stage one day and accidentally fell off and broke her ankle? I’d have to take over her role in a play—and I would totally rock the part. I wished I could control

Reviews for Struck

[jrlibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Claire wishes that some aspects of her life were different; she wished her secret crush, Eric, noticed her, she wished her mom had a job, she wished she could land the lead role in the school play etc. While on a grocery shopping errand for her mom, Claire finds a beautiful, undamaged umbrella in a trash can. When she leaves the store, she uses the umbrella because it's pouring, and gets hit by a brilliant flash of lightning. She survives the lightning strike and hurries home. Immediately the circumstances in her life seem to change and she can't help but attribute it to the lightning strike. The drama star at school hit her head and is in the hospital in a coma, her mom suddenly announces that she's going to try to get a job, and her secret crush takes a sudden intense interest in her. However, the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for" couldn't be less true in this case, and the life Claire is suddenly leading is not as wonderful as she thought it would be.This is an Orca Currents book, so it's not too long, and would be quite enjoyable and manageable for a reluctant reader or an ESL student.