History and the speculative collide with the modern world when a group of high school girls form a secret society after discovering they can communicate with boys from the past, in this powerful look at female desire, jealousy, and the shifting lines between friendship and rivalry.
Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Chandra Prasad’s Mercury Boys, which releases on August 3rd 2021 from Soho Teen.
After her life is upended by divorce and a cross-country move, 16-year-old Saskia Brown feels like an outsider at her new school—not only is she a transplant, she’s biracial in a population of mostly white students. One day while visiting her only friend at her part-time library job, Saskia encounters a vial of liquid mercury, then touches an old daguerreotype—the precursor of the modern-day photograph—and makes a startling discovery. She is somehow able to visit the man in the portrait: Robert Cornelius, a brilliant young inventor from the nineteenth century. The hitch: she can see him only in her dreams.
Saskia shares her revelation with some classmates, hoping to find connection and friendship among strangers. Under her guidance, the other girls steal portraits of young men from a local college’s daguerreotype collection and try the dangerous experiment for themselves. Soon, they each form a bond with their own “Mercury Boy,” from an injured Union soldier to a charming pickpocket in New York City.
At night, the girls visit the boys in their dreams. During the day, they hold clandestine meetings of their new secret society. At first, the Mercury Boys Club is a thrilling diversion from their troubled everyday lives, but it’s not long before jealousy, violence, and secrets threaten everything the girls hold dear.
“Lila, why don’t you keep time?” Paige suggested, disrupting Saskia’s thoughts. “Adrienne and Saskia should keep their heads underwater for sixty seconds—no more, no less.”
“No way,” Lila replied. “Saskia, Adrienne, let’s get outta here. This has gone too far.”
“If you leave, you can’t be a member of the club again—ever,” Paige said matter-of-factly.
“I don’t care,” Lila scoffed.
“I do,” Saskia said softly.
“What?”
“I did sign the contract,” Saskia reminded Lila. “And I did break a rule.”
“Saskia, don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not being stupid. I’m trying to make good on a promise.” She looked Paige in the eye. “I don’t think you should have gone through my phone, but that doesn’t excuse what I did. The boys deserve better.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” demanded Lila. “You’re . . . brainwashed.”
“And you’re overprotective,” Saskia snapped, surprised by her own harshness. “I can make my own decisions.”
Lila twitched with anger. She opened her mouth to stay something, stopped, and then tried again. “Okay, Miss Self-Sufficient. Since you can take care of yourself, find your own ride home.”
“Come on, Lila, don’t overreact.”
“Overreact?” Lila repeated in disbelief. “Seriously? You think I’m overreacting when you’re about to drown yourself?”
“Lila . . .”
But Lila was already striding furiously across the sisters’ immaculate lawn.
“Well, that makes things easier,” said Sara Beth said flatly.
“Okay, enough already,” said Paige. “Let’s get this over with. Adrienne, you’re up first. Saskia, you keep time. Sara Beth, you and I will do the heavy lifting.”
As if on autopilot, Saskia lifted her hands to catch the stopwatch Paige tossed to her. She had accepted the punishment, but the last thing she wanted to do was keep time. If anything, she wanted to rewind time—to go back to when the girls were jumping around the house without a care. How had things changed so quickly?
Saskia stomach sank as she watched the sisters take each of Adrienne’s arms. They marched her toward the basin. Adrienne went willingly. Saskia heard a sharp splash, and then Adrienne was under. The sisters murmured to themselves, the muscles of their arms and backs visible through their skimpy summer clothes. Four hands gripped Adrienne’s body.
“Start the clock, Saskia,” Paige said.
Her fingers fumbling, Saskia pressed the button on the top of the watch. She counted aloud as the seconds passed.
“Seven, eight, nine . . .”
One eye on the stopwatch, the other on Adrienne, Saskia grew increasingly queasy—and alarmed. At first Adrienne seemed calm. Dead calm, Saskia thought somberly. But at the thirty-second mark, she began to struggle against the sisters’ grasp. The back of her head pushed up, hair afloat like pieces of orange seaweed. Unyielding, Paige and Sara Beth shoved her back down.
“Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three . . .”
Now Adrienne was fully resisting, knuckles white, fingernails clawing at the edge of the rough stone basin, making a sound like sandpaper. Saskia gritted her teeth. Adrienne surfaced, with time only to sputter and rasp before the sisters plunged her head back into the water.
“Stop it!” Saskia screamed.
