Sample Excerpt from “48 Hours”

16 Chapter Novel. For 3-8 graders.
Illustrated by Ryan Lanigan.

Lights. Camera. Action. Two seventh-graders are helping their parents make a movie in 48 hours as part of a national competition. But things don’t always follow the script.

48 Hours: Chapter One

It was a dark and stormy night. Really, it was. I’m not kidding. Just listen.

Crack! Boom! BAM!

Hear that thunder? Told you so.

Our neighbors across the street had lost their power half an hour ago. One minute the houses were lit up like Christmas trees. Th e next minute they were swallowed by the darkness.

“It’s like the inside of Mammoth Cave over there,” I said, staring out our bay window.

“Yeah, everything just disappeared,” my sister, Isabelle, agreed. “Poof!”

She snapped her fingers close to my nose.

“More like ‘Crash!’” I said, slapping my hands together.

It was a good imitation of lightning striking the power lines if I do say so myself.

We were watching for Dad’s car to pull into the driveway any second now. He’d entered us in a national contest called the 48 Hour Film Project. We’re one of thirty-two teams competing to write, shoot, edit, and produce a short movie in only two days.

We’re not professionals, just amateurs doing it for fun. But we can’t get started until Dad tells us what he learned at the project meeting tonight in Cincinnati. So six members of our team were killing time until he got home.

Everyone was getting antsy because minutes matter when you only have 2,880 of them.

“I wouldn’t want to be caught on the interstate in this storm,” Dr. Bob said, pushing his blue-tinted glasses higher on his nose.

He reached down to pat Bagel, his beagle. Th e hefty hound goes everywhere with Dr. Bob, even to classes at Northern Kentucky University where he and Dad teach.

“A car could easily skid off the wet pavement,” Dr. Bob, a.k.a. Dr. Gloom and Doom, added in case we weren’t worried enough.

“Thanks for that comforting thought, Bob,” Mom said, dialing Dad’s cell phone, again.

But Dad still didn’t pick up. And the phone wouldn’t kick over to voicemail. The summer storm must be screwing with the satellite system.

“Michael’s probably sipping hot coffee inside a cozy restaurant, waiting for the storm to pass,” said Ellen Zhang, one of Dad’s former journalism students.

Ellen’s in her mid-twenties, ethnically Chinese, and stands out in a crowd with her short, spiky, orange hair. It’s not her natural color.

“I hope so,” Mom said, twirling her brown ponytail nervously as the rain continued to beat against the window.

The commute from Cincinnati to our home in Northern Kentucky usually takes twenty minutes, depending on traffic—and weather. Dad should have left an hour ago.

Our house lights flickered twice, but we didn’t lose power. Still, it made Mom uneasy.

“Marlowe, why don’t you and Isabelle round up some flashlights, just in case,” Mom suggested.

“Bet I can find more than you,” Isabelle challenged me.

“Loser takes out the trash for a month,” I said, upping the ante.

Isabelle is 13, like me, although we’re not twins. She’s got darker features—hair, eyes, and complexion, while I’m in the “fair” category.

That’s not surprising since we were born in diff erent countries and to different parents. Mom and Dad had finished all the adoption paperwork with the Guatemalan government when they learned Mom was pregnant with me.

Such sensational news didn’t change their plans. They flew to Guatemala City and brought Isabelle home when she was three months old. I was born six months later.

We’re close, but very competitive. I quickly hunted down three flashlights. Isabelle found four.

“Girls rule!” she shouted.

But only two of Isabelle’s flashlights had batteries that worked, and there were no spares in the junk drawer. So I won.

“Good-bye garbage,” I gloated.

I basked alone in my glory. The grown-ups had other concerns on their minds.

“How long can the laptops operate on batteries if the electricity gets zapped?” Mom asked.

“A couple hours—max,” Manny said.

Manny, our camera guy, is seriously into electronics. He’s usually plugged into an iPod, iPhone, or iSomething.

“I could pump some juice into them from a generator if I had to,” Manny added. “Might fry ’em, though.”

“Why so worried about the laptops? Can’t you live without your YouTube?” I kidded Mom.

“I’m so used to composing stories at the keyboard,” Mom said, “that it would be hard to write this movie script by hand.”

Our mom, Julie Adams, is a freelance writer for some major magazines. She and Ellen, a feature reporter for The Kentucky Gazette, will be our screenwriters. They can make subjects you don’t even care about sound exciting. Like bass fishing.

“It’s too bad we can’t map out a few scenes while we’re waiting,” Ellen said.

You can’t cheat and get a head start on writing because you don’t know—until the Friday night meeting Dad went to—what type of fi lm you’ll be making. Th at’s determined by the slip of paper you pull out of a hat, pillowcase, or cauldron for all I know.

“I hope we don’t get stuck with Romance or Western. Yuk!” Isabelle said, sticking her finger down her throat.

“I vote for Fantasy or Thriller,” I said.

As if on cue for a scary movie preview, lightning lit up the sky as thunder rumbled outside like distant gunfire.

Isabelle, who can’t sit still for more than two minutes, tops, started turning cartwheels down the hallway. Moments later she yelled, “Come here. Quick!”

We hustled to the hallway. Judging by Isabelle’s tone, I expected some catastrophe.

“Did lightning strike the house? Is it on fire?” I asked, searching for smoke, flames, or smelly scorch marks.

I figured we’d at least sprung a leak in the ceiling and water was gushing down the walls. But no fire, no flood. Just a message on the answering machine that was winking and blinking.

How did we miss a call? The storm must have drowned out the ringing.

“Sorry, everyone,” Dad said when Isabelle pushed the play button. “I couldn’t see the taillights of the car in front of me, so I pulled over for a while until the storm lets up.”

The phone line had a lot of static on it, so it was hard to hear everything clearly.

“Go ahead and get started without me,” Dad continued. “The movie genre we drew is . . .”

That’s all we heard because the connection went kaput. End of message except for an ear-splitting “beep, beep, beep.” The noise lasted just a few seconds because our lights flickered again. Only this time they went out, and stayed out.

The electric clocks stopped, too, but our precious minutes continued ticking away.

And we were still in the dark about what type of movie we were supposed to make in the next forty-eight hours.