Rd 1 Agent Pitch Contest #15 - THE CREEPY KIDS CLUB

The Creepy Kids Club
MG Contemporary
83,000

Query:

If all the world’s a stage, Melville Middle School is a reality show waiting to happen. Or that’s the impression thirteen-year-old Keaton Harris gets when she transfers one month into the school year. Perplexed by all things social, Keaton feels there’s been some mistake when head cheerleader Samantha Probert recruits her to the popular crowd. That’s not the only disconnect.

The Creepy Kids Club courts her too, a questionable honor, since the group boasts all of the school nerds and five secret members. Despite Samantha’s warnings about social suicide, Keaton is intrigued—mostly by Dodge, the club’s enigmatic president. She’s flattered to be in demand, until the rush wears off and she’s left wondering: why me?

To find out, Keaton prods at the dark underbelly of middle school and stumbles upon an unlikely soul mate in the enemy camp. But it’s when she turns double agent that she discovers there’s a fine line between the roles we choose and those forced upon us. The trick is keeping them straight.

THE CREEPY KIDS CLUB is an upper middle grade book best described as MEAN GIRLS meets OLIVER TWIST. It pins school cliques,spread-eagled, on the lab table for dissection and sends a flare of hope up for those on the fringe. Prepare to rethink everything you know about belonging.

First 150:

I came to Melville Middle School one month into seventh grade. Everyone there had known everyone else pretty much all their lives. No one knew me. But that would soon change, according to the principal striding beside me. His name was Mr. Knightley, and he bragged about how easy it was to get to know “his kids." As I walked along the halls for the first time, I tried in earnest to listen to his sales pitch, yet every step pounded in the reality of what I was—a walking, talking cliché. While Mr. Knightley’s booming voice correctly labeled me as Keaton Harris, I heard it as The New Kid, the Nobody, the person no one will want to bother with—not even Mr. Knightley after today.

Little did I know, not everyone saw it that way. One of those faces out there in the maliciously churning sea of students masked a mind that had kicked into frantic action.