Opening to a YA novel

Nice Demons Finish Last
A Novel by Peter Padraic O'Sullivan

"Let's just be friends -- okay?" are cruel knives of coldfire steel that first numb and cauterize as they slide effortlessly into buttery flesh, and then flare when they twist. I bear the scars of many such cruelties, and yet with the accumulation of remembered pain, I still find myself opening up for such attacks.

The latest is from Tamara Honeycutt, first French Horn in the Thomas Stearns High School Marching Band, five-foot nothing, and a curvy ball of spastic energy in geek chic glasses. We hung out at lunch times and after school for the last three weeks, and a couple times I came close to telling her my little secret, but she's not having any of it, no matter how many times I carry her French Horn home after school.

What's that, you say? My secret? I'll never tell.

Okay, that's a lie. I hate it when people tell a story and hold back some necessary detail for the sake of mystery; it's like revealing the murderer is some character introduced in the last three pages of the book.

Okay. Here it is. I'm a demon.

No, I don't mean that I've got low self-esteem and am unlovable and smell like sulfur because I don't bathe. I mean that I am an honest to goodness, born in hellfire, raised from the pit, possessing a human body because I can and it's fun demon. You might say that I'm demonstrably demon. I bear all the telltales. I can raise welts on the host body and twist its head all the way round. I can climb walls and levitate. Holy water burns something fierce. I really do combust when I cross the threshold into a church, so thank goodness for atheist parents!

I am a demon.

About sixteen years ago I found a vacant body. This kid hadn't survived birth. He was six weeks premature, and the stress was too much for his heart. At the moment of passing I slipped in, gave the body a jump and have been steering ever since. Thrilled the parents no end, let me tell you. You'd think such a Miracle would be enough to ignite faith into even the doubtingest of Thomases, but my folks are both engineers, people of science, of rationality, of WYSIWYG explanations for the Universe. In a word: morons.

Of course there's a God, Yaweh, Jehovah, Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, Odin, Nam-tak, and Santa Claus. You don't get intelligent life without an ordering influence. And you don't get order without chaos to counterbalance.

Call me Chaos.

Okay, I'm not really Chaos with the capital C. I'm merely one of its many minions sowing disorder where I can.

I sometimes wonder, though, if I've been living in this body too long. Lately I've been getting these, these impulses. Like with Tammy here. For some reason, the taste of her lips has become an obsession of mine. I simply must know. I suspect they taste of cherry lip balm.

Of course, now I'll never know. She takes her French Horn from me and walks the rest of the way home, her horn swinging to the beat of her shifting hips, taunting me in its rhythm.

Another rhythm taps at my shoulder. I turn to see the gaunt, pale face, blackened lips and blacker hair, sunken melancholy eyes, and pinched nose of Hannah Montgomery, who I guess, you could say, is my best friend.

I'm playing a part here. Have to keep up appearances, you know.

"She gave you the friend speech," Hannah says. It isn't a question.

I nod.

"Forget her," Hannah says. "She wouldn't put out anyway. She's a JW." She finishes this by nodding sagely. "They're crazy. Don't even celebrate birthdays."

"You don't celebrate birthdays," I counter.

"I don't celebrate my birthday. Yours is another matter. Or don't I have pictures of you covered in chocolate cake ten years ago?"

"How ever will I run for office?"

Hannah snorts. "I'd need much more compromising pictures for that. You, me, my camera, and the Evans's dog next Saturday, and I'll ruin any chance you have at politics."

I slug her lightly on the shoulder. "You say the sweetest things. What'cha up to?"

"About five foot two. Don't think I'm gonna get any taller."

"Smart ass," says I.

"And a mighty fine one at that," Hannah says. "Come on. Let's go to your house. I want to kick your ass at Wii bowling."

We turn down Harvard Street to schlep the three blocks to my house. Before we leave, I say a silent curse that causes the cork of Tammy's spit valve to rot away.