By Lenore Butcher
2015 Winner: Young Adult

TORY

The night before she saw the Burning Man for the first time, Tory went on her fourth date with the baddest boy from Karn Avenue and she saw her first ghost. Thinking back on it much later, after she’d gone through everything else, she couldn’t sort out if the two were related or not.

The date was at a local restaurant, a little place calling itself a ‘bistro’ that used to be a dance bar. Before it was a dance bar, it had been an upscale restaurant and before that it had been a heritage landmark, the former dwelling of one of the town’s upper muckity mucks.

It was definitely not the kind of place you’d expect to see the local drug dealer and her biker boyfriend. Tory loved shaking up the straights, going places she knew they didn’t want her. [Read more…]