Author/Uploaded by Ripley Jones
Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Epigraph Episode I. The Beginning Episode II. The Mothers Episode III. The Friends Episode IV. The Lovers Episode V. The Regrets Episode VI. The Betrayers Episode VII. The Apologies Episode VIII. The Final Girls Acknowledgments About the Author Newsletter Sign-up&#...
Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Epigraph Episode I. The Beginning Episode II. The Mothers Episode III. The Friends Episode IV. The Lovers Episode V. The Regrets Episode VI. The Betrayers Episode VII. The Apologies Episode VIII. The Final Girls Acknowledgments About the Author Newsletter Sign-up Copyright Guide Cover Title Page Dedication EPISODE I. THE BEGINNING Acknowledgments Contents Copyright Pagebreaks of the print version Cover Page iii v vii ix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 iv Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this St. Martin’s Publishing Group ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. for Sara G., with love The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. —Edgar Allan Poe IMAGINE this: A fairy-tale summer, blue and wild. Skinny-dipping in the Salish Sea with a trail of phosphorescence in your wake, sunburnt shoulders, salt-sticky hair drying in the twilight as the stars come out. The kind of summer you hold in your heart for the rest of your life: the last best summer, a summer summoned in vivid Technicolor decades later with a flash of a song that soundtracked your late-night drives, the briny smell of the ocean wafting through hot concrete streets on your way to a job you never imagined yourself having, your own daughters slinking home after curfew with their weed-reddened eyes and wine-cooler breath. That summer for us in Oreville was the summer of 1999. Thorny branches so heavy with blackberries they brushed the ground. The air so warm the Sound was balmy enough to swim. Old-timers worried the heat wave heralded the end of the world. The rest of us greased our bodies with Coppertone and lay out on our lawns to bronze. Our summer was the most epic party summer of anyone who ever lived. We knew no other summer would ever match. We felt sorry for everyone who came after us, who would never know our glory. The football players driving their pickup trucks shirtless to the woods out behind town at sunset, their cabs stuffed with cases of Rainier and their truck beds with cheerleaders. The grunge kids in their dads’ flannel shirts, the theater kids belting lines from Oklahoma!, the valedictorian looking over her shoulder as if her college acceptance letters would catch her with a jury-rigged bong built out of empty five-gallon milk containers. The stoners showing up late as always, their pockets bulging with plastic baggies. That summer, our summer. The last free summer before adulthood closed in. And then Clarissa Campbell disappeared. Oreville’s a small town. Everybody knew Clarissa. We all knew Brad Bennett too. The head cheerleader and the captain of the football team: a story you already know. Clarissa was gorgeous, a limber executor of flawless pikes. Brad had a strong arm and a chiseled face. They moved through the world together in a cloud of their own beauty. We expected great things of them. Reality television, maybe. A career in Hollywood. Brad would go on to play for a team. Which team? We didn’t think about it too hard. We didn’t think about much of anything that summer, except how to find the next party. Until the night Clarissa vanished from the forest. After that, all we thought about was Clarissa. The whole country thought about Clarissa. You remember the headlines. A COMMUNITY MOURNS IN MYSTERY. UNEXPLAINED DISAPPEARANCE OF SMALL-TOWN GIRL CAPTURES THE HEART OF A NATION. CHEERLEADER’S BOYFRIEND QUESTIONED IN WASHINGTON STATE DISAPPEARANCE. STILL NO ANSWERS FOR BEAUTY QUEEN’S FAMILY. WHERE IS CLARISSA CAMPBELL? Clarissa’s perfect face plastered across newspapers from Washington to West Virginia. Clarissa on the evening news. Clarissa’s white teeth and blue eyes. Clarissa’s long blond hair. Endless speculations on Clarissa’s lost future, what she might have become. (All of them futures none of us could remember