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This Story Is a Lie - Softcover

Pollock, Tom

 
9781641290326: This Story Is a Lie
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1641290323 ISBN 13: 9781641290326
Verlag: SOHO PR INC, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

A YA thriller described as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time meets John le Carré, about a teen math prodigy with an extreme anxiety disorder who finds himself caught in a web of lies and conspiracies after an assassination attempt on his mother.

Seventeen-year-old Peter Blankman is a math genius. He also suffers from devastating panic attacks. Pete gets through each day with the help of his mother—a famous scientist—and his beloved twin sister, Bel.

But when his mom is nearly assassinated in front of his eyes and Bel disappears, Pete finds himself on the run. Dragged into a world where state and family secrets intertwine, Pete must use his extraordinary analytical skills to find his missing sister and track down the people who attacked his mother. But his greatest battle will be with the enemy inside: the constant terror that threatens to overwhelm him.

Weaving between Pete’s past and present, This Story Is a Lie is a testimony from a  protagonist who is brilliant, broken and trying to be brave.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tom Pollock, described as “a powerful new imagination” by The Guardian, is the author of four novels and an ambassador for Talklife—the peer support network for youth mental health where he blogs about his experiences with depression, anxiety and bulimia (blog.talklife.co). Inspired by those experiences, This Story Is a Lie is his first thriller for young adults. He lives and works in London, and can be found on Twitter @tomhpollock.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Mum finds me in the larder. I crouch in the corner, flinching from the sudden light in the doorway. My mouth is full of blood and shards of porcelain.
      I want to spit, but that’ll show her the mess the splinters of the saltshaker have made of my gums. Jags of it are still digging in under my tongue and stabbing into my soft palate, but I can’t swallow in case they stick in my throat. The salt rages in the cuts on my tongue. I try to smile at Mum while moving as few of the muscles in my face as possible. A drop of spit seeps through my lips and streaks red down my chin.
      Mum exhales once, gathering herself, then bustles in through the doorway. She slaps a handful of paper towels over my mouth.
      “Spit,” she orders. I do. We look at the wadding in her palm. It’s like a tiny battlefield, blood and bits of china bone—as if I’ve choked up the remnants of the fight that just took place in my head.
      She pokes at the stuff with a finger. “What happened to counting?” she asks. I shrug. She tuts and sighs.
      “Open,” she tells me. I hesitate, then tilt my head back and gape.
      “Aaaah. Oo I eed illings?”
      She laughs, and I relax a little at the sound. Her hands, warm and confident, move my jaw to catch the light. Her laughter fades. “Oh, Petey,” she murmurs. “Look what you did to yourself.”
      “Zit baa?”
      “I’ve seen worse. You won’t be heading to hospital, but still . . .”
      She reaches into the pocket of her dressing gown for a pair of flimsy surgical gloves and pulls them on. Surgical gloves, I think queasily, in her dressing gown. At four in the morning. Wow, am I predictable.
       She reaches into my mouth.
      “Ready?”
       I give her hand a squeeze.
      “Three, two, one, and here we go.” With a series of wince-inducing tugs, she pulls the remaining bits of china from my gums and drops them tinkling onto the larder floor. The base of the saltshaker is still gripped in my right hand. Its broken top rises in white crenelated jags above my fingers, a mirror to the teeth that crushed it.
      I can still feel it giving way. The panic like a ratchet in my jaw, making it clench tighter and tighter around the porcelain, until the instant where I knew I’d pushed it too far and shrapnel exploded in my mouth.
      When she’s done, Mum pulls the gloves off, balls them, and sticks them on one of the empty shelves. She pulls a small pen and a black notebook from her other dressing gown pocket. I eye the thing resentfully, even though I know it’s only her way—she’s a scientist.
      “Okay,” she says. “Tell me.”
      “Tell you what?”
      She gives me Look No. 4. If you have parents, then you’ll know No. 4, the one that says, At present, Sunshine, the shit you’re in is only at ankle level, but push me any further, and you’re going to need scuba gear.
      “This stuff may be inside your head, Peter William Blankman, but I’m going to have it out in the open,” she says, palming the pen and picking up a tin opener from a shelf. “Even if I have to come and get it with this.”
      I snort and the shadow of the attack recedes a little further.
      “I had an attack,” I admit.
      “I gathered. We talked about counting as a way to get you through it.”
      “I tried that.”
      “And?”
      I look at the mess in my hand. “I was unsuccessful.”
     Another Look, longer and sterner, edging into No. 5, Ve have vays of making you talk, Herr Blankman, but all she says is, “Unsuccessful how?”
      I probe the raw places under my lips with my tongue and wince.
      “I ran out of numbers,” I say.
      Look No. 5 is replaced by outright disbelief.
      “You ran out of numbers.”
      “I did.”
      “Peter, you’re one of the best mathematicians your age in London, maybe the country.”
      “I don’t know about the country.” I do know about the country. If you don’t think I check the rankings, you’re out of your mind. “But—”
      “You of all people ought to know that you can’t run out of numbers. Just keep adding one, and presto! Another number appears. Like magic.”
      “I know, but—”
      “Only, it’s not magic,” she says acidly. “Only maths.”
      She folds her arms. “If you managed to exhaust the limitless resource of positive integers, Peter, just think what you’re doing to my patience.”
      Silence. I glance at the larder door and consider making a run for it.
      “Petey,” Mum says, and all the humour’s gone from her voice. The shadows under her eyes are deep, and all of a sudden, I’m sharply aware of how big a deal today’s going to be for her, and how every second we do this gnaws away a little more of her sleep.
      “Why are you eating crockery? Talk to me.”
      I blow out my cheeks. “Okay . . .”
 
 
It was a tactical error, really, a screwup. I saw the attack coming a mile off; I should have been more prepared.
      It was 3:29 in the morning and I was still awake. My eyes felt like pebbles in my skull, and the ceiling seemed to flex and warp before them like a cream-painted ocean.
      Big day coming up, I thought. A big day that was due to start in three hours and thirty-one minutes, so it would’ve been a spectacular idea to close my eyes and get some sleep. Except, I couldn’t, because I knew I had to get up in three hours and thirty-one minutes, and that fact was freaking me out.
      Big day coming up, Petey. Huge, massive day, and so very, very public. One false move will ruin it, not just for you, but for the whole family, so you really, really ought to get some shut-eye.
      I stared at the ceiling. I stared at the clock. Three hours and twenty-nine minutes. Conditions were perfect.
      Peter, this is mission control. We are at DEFCON One. All green lights. You are go, repeat go, to have a screaming shit-fit.
      It started the way it always does: the hollow ache in my stomach that I used to mistake for hunger, but that no food would ever satisfy.
      Three hours...

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Verlag
SOHO PR INC
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1641290323
ISBN 13 
9781641290326
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
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