See All the Stars - Hardcover

Frick, Kit

 
9781534404373: See All the Stars
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1534404376 ISBN 13: 9781534404373
Verlag: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

“A gripping and atmospheric contemporary thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Complex, captivating, and gorgeously written.” —Karen M. McManus, New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying

We Were Liars meets Goodbye Days in this thrilling debut novel that sweeps readers away as they try to solve the mystery of what happened then to make Ellory so broken now.

It’s hard to find the truth beneath the lies you tell yourself.

Then: They were four—Bex, Jenni, Ellory, Ret. (Venus. Earth. Moon. Sun.) Electric, headstrong young women; Ellory’s whole solar system.

Now: Ellory is alone, her once inseparable group of friends torn apart by secrets, deception, and a shocking incident that changed their lives forever.

Then: Lazy summer days. A party. A beautiful boy. Ellory met Matthias and fell into the beginning of a spectacular, bright love.

Now: Ellory returns to Pine Brook to navigate senior year after a two-month suspension and summer away—no boyfriend, no friends. No going back. Tormented by some and sought out by others, troubled by a mysterious note-writer who won’t let Ellory forget, and consumed by guilt over her not entirely innocent role in everything and everyone she’s lost, Ellory finds that even in the present, the past is everywhere.

The path forward isn’t a straight line. And moving on will mean sorting the truth from the lies—the lies Ellory has been telling herself.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kit Frick is a MacDowell Fellow and an International Thriller Writers Award finalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. She is the author of the adult suspense novels The Split and Friends and Liars, the young adult thrillers Before We Were Sorry (originally published as See All the Stars), All Eyes on Us, I Killed Zoe Spanos, Very Bad People, and The Reunion, and the poetry collection A Small Rising Up in the Lungs. Her books have been optioned for film and television and translated into nine languages. Kit loves a good mystery but has only ever killed her characters. Honest. Visit Kit online at KitFrick.com and on Instagram @KitFrick.

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Chapter 1 1
JUNE, SOPHOMORE SUMMER

(THEN)

We went to the party because Ret insisted. I was perfectly happy right where we were: lying on our backs in Jenni’s sprawling front yard, building our best-ever summer playlist, telling time by the dandelion clocks until the sky was a white haze of down. We were idle and airy. We had perfected the summer loaf.

But Ret was bored with our listless and lovely string of afternoons. Always the four of us—Ret, Jenni, Bex, and me. Always at Jenni’s big and typically parentless house. Always the same.

I liked it that way.

Ret was there. I was there. Did the setting really matter?

Jenni ran back and forth between the lawn and kitchen, bringing us a container of oil-cured olives, then a loaf of carrot bread to try while I scoured Spotify, the iPad raised above my head like a sunshade. The Ramones (“Rockaway Beach”), The Smiths (“Ask”), and Katy Perry (“California Gurls”), just to see if anyone was paying attention. Ret lounged back next to me, half watching Bex rehearse the newest dance team combination on the porch. I pressed play and put the iPad down in the grass. Five slender fingers threaded their way through my own. Ret squeezed. You are mine.

I wanted only this, the four of us together, but Ret said nothing ever happened, and Ret Johnston was the sun. Hot, bright, at the center of our universe. That we revolved around her was simply a fact. Ret said the whole sophomore class would be at Dave Franklin’s party, which was exactly why I didn’t want to go. But Ret was sitting up, latching and relatching the buckles on her tall black boots, and I was the one with a car.

“Who cares about some boring party?” Jenni plopped down next to us and plucked a fuzzy globe from the grass, puffing out her cheeks. Jenni Randall was the Earth, the gravitational force anchoring us to her yard, to her house, tempting us to stay. She was also Ret’s oldest friend, a fact she made sure I’d never forget. “What does Dave Franklin have that we don’t?” she asked.

“A bathtub full of coke,” Ret answered. She swiveled around until she was kneeling behind us, then gathered Jenni’s thick red hair between her fingers and began to braid.

“You know that’s crap.” Bex squinted at the three of us across the porch railing, which she’d been using as a ballet barre. Her torso and arms formed one long arc, all smooth lines and taut muscle. “Are you seriously considering crashing Dave’s?”

I shrugged and popped an olive in my mouth, then waved the container toward Jenni. If Ret was set on going, I guess you’d call my consideration serious. “The coke stuff’s just a rumor,” I said, but really, who knew.

“No, it’s true,” Ret insisted, her fingers deftly pulling lock after lock into place. Jenni sat still and let her hair be tamed. “I heard you can get a contact high from licking the walls in Dave Franklin’s bedroom, and I plan to find out. Anyway, we’re not crashing. Dave invited me.”

Invited Ret, not me. But if Dave asked Ret, the rest of us were part of the package. Dave knew that. Everyone knew.

“Just watch out, okay?” Bex hopped off the porch and settled down next to Jenni, grabbing the olives. “Something’s up with that guy. I said ‘hey’ in the Starbucks lot last week, and he literally jumped. I swear he was hiding a dead body in his trunk.”

“Finally, something newsworthy on the West Shore. What are we waiting for?” Ret released Jenni’s hair, letting the half-finished braid fall heavy against her back, and motioned toward my car with her chin.

“Yeah, no thanks,” Bex said. “Rich people’s houses freak me out. Besides, our playlist needs some serious work.” Her eyes flickered across the abandoned iPad, the three songs I’d managed to add in the past hour. She was a transplant from Montreal and the newest addition to our solar system. French on her dad’s side and Moroccan on her mom’s, Bex was our Venus: headstrong and free willed, rotating opposite the rest of the planets. Opposite Ret.

“Suit yourself, but don’t blame me if you die an old maid.” Bex didn’t flinch, and Ret turned to Jenni and me. Her eyes were a liquid, lapis lazuli kind of blue. You could fall down those eyes like a well. No return. “Ladies?” she asked.

“Pass.” Jenni threw us a look that said she had feelings about the afternoon’s development. The only parties Jenni liked were the ones she hosted herself, and she wasn’t happy about me taking Ret away. Which was clearly how she saw things, even though this plan was all Ret’s. Her back stiffened as she reached around to tuck a stray strand of hair into her braid.

I groaned and pushed myself up off the grass. “Let’s order Rosa’s for dinner?” I asked, angling to keep the peace. “Just the four of us.”

Jenni’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Taco night,” she agreed. “Get your asses back by seven if you expect chips and queso.”

Bex glanced up from the iPad. “Have fun, dears.”

Ret ignored her and ran toward my car, leaving me to follow in her wake. Then we climbed inside my dad’s old Subaru and left the others behind.

I could have said no. I could have let the sweetness of carrot bread melting on my tongue and the lull of the breeze on my face keep me anchored to the grass. I could have let the trill of the iPad drown Ret out. Everything that came next might have been different.

No Matthias. No lies. No hot, bright surge of rage that flung us all apart, lodging galaxies between us by senior year until we were planets orbiting no one. Ret, Jenni, Bex, and me.

But that day I was the moon, dark and cold without the sun’s light. Ellory Holland—constant satellite. So I went. Ret went, and I followed.

It was about a mile and a half between Jenni’s and Dave’s. We all lived on the West Shore of the Susquehanna River, home to Panera and Starbucks and the Crestview Mall. Like everywhere else along the Rust Belt, the capital took a nosedive after the factories shut down, and my parents were part of the wave of people who moved across the river, to the suburbs. And there we stayed. Most of us West Shore kids had the same story to tell.

On the other side of the river, across the Market Street Bridge, the East Shore was the compressed gleam of our tiny downtown, the government buildings, and then not a whole lot beyond them. Downtown quickly faded into auto lots and the crappy mall and little houses hemmed in by chain-link fences. You went to the East Shore to paw through the same tired selection at the same two record shops and go thrifting at Salvation Army. You got dinner with your parents on the three blocks of Second Street we called “restaurant row” because it was the only strip of restaurants in town. It was hardly a thrilling departure from the West Shore, but anything beat the mall. Or parties at Dave’s.

I glanced over at Ret next to me in the passenger’s seat. I wondered how long it would take her to notice if I turned the car around, headed toward the bridge. She had the window all the way down, her ear pressed against the headrest, her face turned into the wind. Ret was never happier than...

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Verlag
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1534404376
ISBN 13 
9781534404373
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande