Concept cover
Genre: MG contemporary fantasy | Length: 56,000 words | Status: Fourth draft complete
When twelve year old Arden Wood learns that his father’s burger store is destined to be torn down and replaced with a giant apartment building, he enlists his group of musical-loving friends—the Fans of Phantom—to convince the owner not to sell. But when Arden accidentally steps through a portal in the burger store’s walk-in freezer, he discovers he's the heir to ancestral magic that can reshape the buildings in the city. With his own powers awakening, he must find a way to save the store—and his relationship with his father.
Read an excerpt below ⇩
Chapter One
The worst words in the English language aren’t “we need more help in the kitchen.” They aren’t “you need to stop overcooking your burgers” or “your mom isn’t feeling very well, but she’ll be okay, we promise,” or even “we’re sending you to summer camp.” I mean, summer camp is literally the worst, but no, that still isn’t it.
The worst words in the English language are “doing inventory.”
Because, look. I’m only twelve. I can’t possibly be expected to wake up at 4:30 AM like Dad does, shuffle through the creaky house in my gray Aladdin hoodie and too-loose jeans, and show up at the walk-in freezer in the kitchen of the family burger store with a clipboard and a stubby pencil in my hand.
I mean, who does that?
Why do I have to count metal racks of frozen burgers, boxes and boxes of wings, exactly one point seven cases of ribs my dad bought for Mother’s Day two years ago and never sold? And then there’s the turkey burgers, which were in fashion before I was born in most places, but here in San Francisco they just keep keeping on. I’ve gotta listen while Dad recites the counts, writing it all down dutifully while I try not to freeze to death. I hate it. It’s the worst.
It’s the most time I spend with Dad all week.
I pull the hoodie tighter around my head, already shivering in anticipation of the cold I’ll face for the next hour and a half. It’s my favorite hoodie, soft and warm and pilling from too many cycles through the laundry, a place to hide when I’m not feeling like myself. I’ve got all sorts of memories wrapped up in it, the kinds of things I don’t like to think about too often, but then I kinda do. That trip we took to New York, the last time Mom was alive. We saw Aladdin in the theatre, and the show was incredible, enough for me to ignore the tightness around Dad’s eyes, the ashen tone to Mom’s skin, her bedraggled hair.
She had hated this hoodie. She said it made me all—what’s the word she used?—slovenly. Like a pile of dirt with legs, she told me once.
I brush a tear out of my eyes.
Mom always knew the best words.
She’d wanted a girl, I guess. Dad had wanted a boy.
I guess I landed somewhere in between.