The day we boycotted Tegenaria was grey and looming.

A sleep-in Saturday, although we'd risen early through force of habit and it was still dark enough outside that the streetlights were on.

We were in the kitchen of our little apartment when Sarai told me her idea. She was tired, she said, of mouldering in her own hypocrisy.

Tegenaria was bad, everyone knew that. The problem was that no stories of specific wrongdoings ever escaped — just a vague sense of distaste and the tendency to blame unmeasurable problems on it. The air? Tegenaria. The sea? Tegenaria. The growing feeling that maybe an asteroid would be a good thing?

Tegenaria.

But everyone still used it, of course.

We could stop, Sarai said. We could cancel our subscriptions to its nutrition boxes and its holovisions, we could free ourselves from its greasy thumbprint of guilt-ridden ease, we could show it that it could not buy our minds.

She got like this, sometimes, lit from within by a fiery sense of right and wrong that burned bright and fast and would not let her rest until she did something.

Most of the time her ideas were impossible to achieve — when she focused on a problem all limits and boundaries vaporised in her mind. She thought we could single-handedly fix everything. Completely unrealistic, of course, and usually I would do my best to bring her back to reality.

But this.

This was something we could do. This was something I agreed with.

We'd learned of boycotts in history lessons. They seemed fairly simple, a protest composed of negatives. Don't buy from here. Easy enough.

Easy enough until we looked closer.

Sarai wanted to eschew even companies that were subsidiaries of Tegenaria, and that required some research. We would make a list, she said, of places we would not grace with our presence.

But when we turned to our Touchscreens and began to look, a great and gnarled truth became apparent.

All roads led to Tegenaria.

Every business we looked at was connected in some way. Peris and Johna's and Cat's Eye Comics, companies owned by companies owned by Tegenaria. We both worked for Tegenaria, albeit indirectly.

There was no escaping it.

But Sarai had her teeth in this problem now, and knowing her she would bite at it until they all fell out.

Knowing me, I would be there to pick them up again.

CBC Books asked students to give us a glimpse of the great Canadian novel of the year 2172. They wrote the first page of a book set 150 years in the future, with the protagonist facing an issue that's topical today and set the scene for how it's all playing out in a century and a half.

Two winning entries — one from the Grades 7 to 9 category and one from the Grades 10 to 12 category — will be chosen by bestselling author Sarah Raughley.

A writer and lecturer from Southern Ontario, Raughley is the author of the YA Effigies series — which includes Fate of Flames, Siege of Shadows and Legacy of Light — and the fantasy novel The Bones of Ruin for ages 14 and up.

The shortlist was selected by a team of writers across Canada:

The winner will be announced on CBC Books on May 31, 2022.

Both winners will receive a one-year subscription to OwlCrate, which sends fresh boxes of books to young readers across Canada on a monthly basis. In addition, each of the winners' schools will receive 50 free YA books. Special thanks to Penguin Random House, Raincoast Books, Scholastic Canada, Annick Press, KidsCan Press, Groundwood Books, Orca Books and Simon & Schuster for donating books for the prize.