Space Junk - pitch

[The following is a pitch for the completed, unpublished novel Space Junk by JD Fox]

A small solar system of boys strafed with existential debris orbit precocious 14-year-old Derek of the perfectly messed-up black hair and find their trajectories altered.

There's infatuated and insecure 15-year-old Callen, forever wondering what chance he has with Derek and fearing that any such chance has become all the slimmer since the arrival of . . .

Gifted, but emotionally troubled 13-year-old Hugh, youngest and brightest in his class yet cloistered inside a cage of gray from which his nascent friendship with Derek might help him escape if he could only get away from . . .

Mentally slower, physically older, childhood friend Rory, who wants things with Hugh to be like they were before and is willing to do whatever it takes to make it so.

SPACE JUNK's 260,000 words detail childhoods lost and the pasts that misplaced them. A prescient encounter Callen had years earlier and a discarded vow Hugh made to Rory overshadow a planned video game party at Derek's. Callen's inscrutable memory of that experience taints his present relationship with Derek as well as with his own brother, while Hugh's buried promise of deliverance resurfaces, demanding his original oath be fulfilled.

SPACE JUNK would appeal to progressive readers who enjoy character-driven stories where interpretation of events is of greater importance than the events themselves.