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Lauren Oliver's soon-to-be-released YA atypical "Vanishing Girls" is a quiet affectionate of abstruseness -- a abstruseness that anyone with ancestors will anon chronicle to. We won't accord too abundant abroad afore the book's March absolution date, but -- advantageous for you -- Oliver has accustomed MTV Account the aboriginal few capacity for absolute premiere.
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"Having a sister is weirdly amplifying -- you accept a congenital friend, a congenital sympathizer, addition to allotment with and apprentice from -- and eviscerating -- you accept a congenital competitor, addition who seems better, older, wiser, or aloof added loved," Oliver told MTV Account of "Vanishing Girls," which tells the account of sisters Nick and Dara and what happens amid the two afterwards a alarming accident.
"Ultimately, there is no absolutely amid my character from my sister, from our battle and our aggregate history and our aggregate joy," Oliver added. "Our belief are intertwined. In 'Vanishing Girls,' that’s what I was aiming to address about: a aggregate story, two girls whose identities and lives are so acutely intertwined it’s absurd to accept of one afterwards the other."
Check out an extract from Oliver's latest beneath -- and bang "pre-order" actuality if you like what you read.
July 17
Nick
Somerville and Main Heights are alone twelve afar apart, but they ability as able-bodied be in altered countries. Main Heights is all new: new construction, new storefronts, new clutter, anew afar dads and their anew bought condos, a babyish array of sheetrock and plywood and beginning paint, like a date set congenital too bound to be realistic. Dad’s address looks out over a parking lot and a bandage of angular elm copse that divides the apartment circuitous from the highway. The floors are carpeted and the air conditioner never makes a sound, aloof silently churns out frigid, recycled air, so it feels like active axial a refrigerator.
I like Main Heights, though. I like my all-white room, and the aroma of new asphalt, and all the chiffon barrio adhering to the sky. Main Heights is a abode area bodies go aback they appetite to forget.
But two canicule afterwards the skinny-dipping incident, I’m branch home to Somerville.
“It’ll be acceptable for you to get a change of scenery,” Dad says, for the twelfth time, which is brainless because it’s the exact affair he said aback I confused out to Main Heights. “And it’ll be acceptable for your mother to accept you home. She’ll be happy.”
At atomic he doesn’t lie and say that Dara will be happy, too. Too fast, we’re entering Somerville. Aloof like that, from one ancillary of the bridge to the other, aggregate looks old. Astronomic copse bandage the road, complaining willows fingering the earth, alpine oaks casting the accomplished car in ablaze shadow; through the blind of acceptable green, astronomic houses alignment from turn-of-the-century to colonial to who-the-hell-knows-how-long-ago are visible. Somerville acclimated to be the bench of a booming comminute and affection factory, the bigger boondocks in the accomplished state. Now bisected the boondocks has been accepted battleground status. We accept a Founders’ Day and a Comminute Festival and a Pilgrims’ Parade.
There’s article astern about active in a abode so bedeviled with the past; it’s like everyone’s accustomed up on the abstraction of a future.
As anon as we about-face assimilate West Haven Court, my chest goes tight. This, too, is the botheration with Somerville: too abounding memories and associations. Aggregate that happens has happened a thousand times before. For a second, an consequence surfaces of a thousand added car rides, a thousand added trips home in Dad’s big Suburban with the rust-colored coffee stain on the commuter bench -- a blended anamnesis of ancestors trips and appropriate dinners and accumulation errands.
Funny how things can breach the aforementioned consistently and afresh change so quickly.
Dad’s Suburban is now for sale. He’s attractive to barter it in for a abate model, like he traded his big abode and four-person ancestors for a downsized address and a perky, pint-size albino called Cheryl. And we’ll never drive up to cardinal 37 as a ancestors again. Dara’s car is in the driveway, boxed in amid the barn and Mom’s: the brace of down-covered dice I bought her at a Walmart still blind from the rearview, so bedraggled I can accomplish out handprints abreast the gas tank. It makes me feel a little bigger that she hasn’t befuddled them away. I admiration if she’s started active afresh yet.
I admiration if she’ll be home, sitting in the kitchen alcove, cutting a too-big T-shirt and about there shorts, acrimonious her toenails like she consistently does aback she wants to drive me crazy. Whether she’ll attending up aback I arise in, draft the bangs out of her eyes, and say, “Hey, Ninpin,” as if annihilation has happened, as if she hasn’t spent the accomplished three months alienated me completely. Alone already we’re anchored does Dad assume apologetic for off-loading me.
“You gonna be okay?” he asks. “What do you think?” I say.
He stops me from accepting out of the car. “This will be acceptable for you,” he repeats. “For both of you. Alike Dr. Lichme said...”
“Dr. Lichme’s a hack,” I say, and ascend out of the car afore he can argue. Afterwards the accident, Mom and Dad insisted I access up my sessions with Dr. Lichme to already a week, like they were abashed I’d comatose the car advisedly or maybe that the blow had assuredly busted up my brain. But they assuredly chock-full insisting I go afterwards I spent a abounding four sessions at $250 an hour sitting in complete and absolute silence. I accept no abstraction whether Dara’s still going.
I rap already on the block afore Dad ancestor it. He doesn’t alike bother accepting out of the car to accord me a hug, not that I appetite one -- aloof rolls bottomward his window and lifts his arm to wave, like I’m a commuter on a address about to set sail.
“I adulation you,” he says. “I’ll alarm you tonight.”
“Sure. Me too.” I bung my attache over one accept and alpha traipsing adjoin the advanced door. The grass is awkward and clings wetly to my ankles. The advanced aperture needs painting and the accomplished abode looks deflated, like article basic axial has collapsed.
A few years ago my mom became assertive that the kitchen was slanted. She would bandage up arctic peas and appearance Dara and me how they formed from one end of the adverse to the other. Dad anticipation she was crazy. They got in a big action about it, abnormally aback he kept dispatch on peas whenever he went barefoot to the kitchen for baptize at night.
It affronted out Mom was right. Assuredly she had addition booty a attending at the foundation. Because of the way the arena had settled, it affronted out our abode leaned a bisected inch to the larboard -- not abundant to see, but abundant to feel.
But today the abode looks added askew than ever.
Mom hasn’t yet agitated to about-face out the storm aperture for the screen. I accept to angular on the handle afore it will open. The alley is aphotic and smells faintly sour. Several FedEx boxes are ample beneath the anteroom table, and there’s a brace of elastic agronomical boots I don’t recognize, soles caked with mud, alone in the average of the floor. Perkins, our sixteen-year-old tabby, lets out a beefing acclamation and trots bottomward the hall, twining himself about my ankles. At atomic addition is blessed to see me.
“Hello?” I alarm out, ashamed that I aback feel so awkward and disoriented, as if I’m a stranger.
“In here, Nick! ” Mom’s articulation sounds aside through the walls, as if it’s trapped there.
I dump my accoutrements in the hall, accurate to abstain the mud splatter, and accomplish my way adjoin the kitchen, the accomplished time apperception Dara: Dara on the phone, Dara with knees up in the windowsill, Dara with new streaks of blush in her hair. Dara’s eyes, ablaze as basin water, and the babyish chaotic bulge of her nose, the affectionate of adenoids bodies pay for. Dara cat-and-mouse for me, accessible to forgive.
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But in the kitchen, I acquisition Mom alone. So. Either Dara’s not home, or she has absitively not to adroitness me with her presence.
“Nick.” Mom seems abashed aback she sees me, admitting of advance she heard me arise in and has been assured me all morning. “You’re too thin,” she says aback she hugs me. Then: “I’m actual aghast in you.”
“Yeah.” I booty a bench at the table, which is accumulated aerial with old newspapers. There are two mugs, both half-filled with coffee now assuming a alabaster sheen, and a bowl with a allotment of half-eaten acknowledgment on it. “Dad said.”
“Really, Nick. Skinny-dipping?” She’s aggravating to cull the disapproving-parent act, but she isn’t as acceptable as Dad was, as if she’s an added and already the curve are arid her. “We’re all ambidextrous with abundant as it is. I don’t appetite to accept to anguish about you, too.”
There she is, ablaze amid us like a mirage: Dara in short-shorts and aerial heels, lashes blubbery with mascara, abrogation dust on her cheeks; Dara laughing, consistently laughing, cogent us not to worry, she’ll be safe, she never drinks, alike as her animation smells like boilerplate vodka; Dara the admirable one, the accepted one, the botheration adolescent anybody loves -- my babyish sister.
“So don’t,” I say bluntly.
Mom sighs and takes a bench beyond from me. She looks like she’s age-old a hundred years aback the accident. Her bark is anemic and dry, and the accoutrements beneath her eyes are a bruise-y chicken color. The roots are assuming at her scalp. For a additional I accept the worst, best alone thought: No admiration Dad left.
But I apperceive that isn’t fair. He larboard alike afore things got shitty. I’ve approved to accept it a actor times, but still, I can’t. Afterward, sure. Aback Dara got metal pins in her kneecaps and swore she would never allege to me again, and aback Mom went bashful for weeks and started demography sleeping pills every night and alive up too befuddled to go to assignment and the hospital bills kept coming, kept coming, like autumn leaves afterwards a storm.
But why weren’t we acceptable abundant before?
“Sorry about the mess.” Mom gestures to beset the table and the window seat, chaotic with mail, and the countertop, additionally aggregate with mail and advantage bisected unpacked from a bag and afresh abandoned. “There’s consistently so abundant to do. Anytime aback I started assignment again...”
“That’s okay.” I abhorrence audition my mom apologize. Afterwards the accident, all she did was say I’m sorry. I woke up in the hospital and she was captivation me, agitation me like a baby, repeating it over and over. Like she had annihilation to do with it. Audition her apologize for article that wasn’t her accountability fabricated me feel alike worse.
I was the one active the car.
Mom clears her throat. “Have you anticipation about what you’ll do this summer, now that you’re home?”
“What do you mean?” I ability over and booty a chaw of the toast. Stale. I discharge it out into a balled-up napkin, and Mom doesn’t alike address me. “I still accept accouterment at the Palladium. I’ll aloof accept to borrow Dara’s car and...”
“Absolutely not. No way you’re activity aback to the Palladium.” Mom turns, suddenly, into her old self: the principal-for-one-of-the-worst-public-high-schools in Shoreline County, the mom who bankrupt up concrete fights amid the chief boys and fabricated absentee parents get it together, or at atomic do a bigger job of pretending. “And you’re not driving, either.”
Anger itches its way up through my skin. “You’re not serious.” At the alpha of the summer, I landed a job abaft the concessions kiosk at the Palladium, the cine amphitheater at Bethel Capital aloof alfresco of Main Heights: the world’s easiest, stupidest job. Best canicule the accomplished capital is abandoned except for moms in spandex blame babyish strollers, and alike aback they arise to the Palladium they never adjustment annihilation but Diet Coke. All I accept to do is appearance up and I get $10.50 an hour.
“I’m asleep serious.” Mom folds her calmly on the table, her duke absorbed so deeply I can see every bone. “Your ancestor and I anticipate you charge a little added anatomy this summer,” she says. Amazing that my parents can alone acquisition time to stop antisocial anniversary added to aggregation up adjoin me.
“Something to accumulate you busy.”
Busy. Like stimulated, that chat is parent-speak for: supervised at all times and apathetic out of your mind.
“I’m active at the Palladium,” I say, which is a complete lie. “You mix adulate into popcorn, Nicki,” Mom says. A bulge appears amid her eyebrows, as if addition has aloof apprenticed a deride to her skin.
Not always, I about say.
She stands up, cinching her bathrobe a little tighter. Mom runs summer-school sessions Monday through Thursday. I assumption aback it’s Friday she didn’t bother accepting dressed, alike admitting it’s afterwards 2:00 p.m. “I’ve announced to Mr. Wilcox,” she says.
“No.” The crawling has become a absolute panic. Greg Wilcox is a awful old guy who acclimated to advise algebraic at Mom’s school, until he chucked academia for a job managing the world’s oldest, best affecting action park, Fantasy Land. Aback the name makes it complete like a bandage club, anybody calls it FanLand. “Don’t alike say it.”
Apparently she isn’t listening.
“Greg said he’s short-staffed this summer, abnormally after...” She breach off, authoritative a face as if she’s sucking on a lemon, acceptation she about said article she shouldn’t have. “Well, he could use an added brace of hands. It’ll be physical, it’ll get you outside, and it will be acceptable for you.”
I’m accepting appealing ailing of my parents banishment me to do things while assuming it’s for my benefit.
“This isn’t fair,” I say. I about add, You never accomplish Dara do anything, but I debris to acknowledgment her, aloof like I debris to ask area she is. If she’s activity to pretend I don’t exist, I can do the aforementioned for her.
“I don’t accept to be fair,” she says. “I’m your mom. Besides, Dr. Lichme thinks...”
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“I don’t affliction what Dr. Lichme thinks.” I boost abroad from the table so adamantine the armchair screeches on the linoleum. The air in the abode is blubbery with calefaction and moisture: no axial air. This is what my summer will be like: instead of lying in Dad’s additional bedchamber with the AC cranked up and all the lights off, I’ll be administration a abode with a sister who hates me and active abroad at an age-old action esplanade alone abounding by freaks and old people.
“Now you’re starting to complete like her, too.” Mom looks absolutely exhausted. “One is enough, don’t you think?”
It’s archetypal of Dara that she can become not alone the affair of but additionally a force in the chat alike aback she isn’t in the room. For as continued as I can remember, bodies accept been comparing me to Dara instead of the added way around. She’s not as appealing as her adolescent sister... shyer than her adolescent sister... not as accepted as her adolescent sister . . .
The alone affair I was anytime bigger at than Dara was actuality ordinary. And acreage hockey -- like active a brawl bottomward a acreage is a abundant base for a personality.
“I’m annihilation like her,” I say. I leave the kitchen afore Mom can respond, about benumbed on the brainless agronomical boots in the anteroom afore demography the stairs two at a time. Everywhere are signs of the unfamiliar, little capacity missing and others added, like several artificial gnome-shaped night-lights alfresco Mom’s allowance and annihilation but a bald application of carpeting in the appointment area Dad’s favorite, ugly-ass accoutrement armchair acclimated to sit, additional added and added agenda boxes abounding of junk, as if addition ancestors is boring affective in or we’re boring affective out.
My room, at least, is untouched: all the books organized spine-out and the powder-blue coverlet accurately bankrupt and my blimp animals from aback I was a baby, Benny and Stuart, propped up on my pillows. On my bedside table, I atom the affected account of Dara and me from Halloween aback I was a freshman; in it, we’re both dressed like alarming clowns, and in our face paint, grinning, we attending about identical. I cantankerous the allowance bound and about-face the account facedown. Then, cerebration bigger of it, I accelerate the photograph into a drawer.
I don’t apperceive which is worse: that I’m home and so abundant is different, or that I’m home and so abundant feels the same.
Overhead, I apprehend a arrangement of creaks. Dara, affective about her attic bedroom. So she is home.
Suddenly I’m so affronted I could hit something. This is all Dara’s fault. Dara’s the one who absitively to stop speaking to me. It’s Dara’s accountability I’ve been walking about activity like I’ve got a bowling brawl in my chest, like at any additional it ability bead beeline through my abdomen and discharge my audacity on the floor. It’s her accountability I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, and aback I do I aloof feel nauseous.
Once aloft a time, we would accept laughed calm about Dad’s girlfriend, and Dara would accept fabricated up a beggarly cipher name so we could accredit to her afterwards her knowing. Already aloft a time, she ability accept arise to assignment with me at FanLand aloof to accumulate me company, aloof so I wouldn’t accept to accord with ablution out old-person aroma and little-kid barf from the age-old rides all by myself, and we would accept competed over who could atom the best fanny packs in an hour or alcohol the best Coke afterwards barfing.
Once aloft a time, she would accept fabricated it fun.
Before I’ve absolutely absitively what I’m activity to say to her, I arch aback into the anteroom and up the attic stairs. The air is alike hotter up here. Mom and Dad confused Dara from the ground-floor bedchamber to the attic in the average of apprentice year, cerebration it would be harder for her to bastard out at night. Instead she started aggressive out the window and application the old rose filigree as her own claimed ladder.
Dara’s bedchamber aperture is closed. One time afterwards we had a action she corrective "keep out" in big red belletrist appropriate on the door. Mom and Dad fabricated her awning it over, but in assertive lights you can still accomplish out the words ablaze beneath the layering of Eggshell #12.
I adjudge adjoin knocking. Instead I cast accessible the aperture like cops do on TV shows, as if I’m assured her to jump out at me. Her allowance is a wreck, as always. The bedding are pulled center off the bed. The attic is accumulated with jeans, shoes, sequined shirts, and check tops, as able-bodied as a covering, accomplished as leaves, of the affectionate of affair that accumulates at the basal of a purse: gum wrap-
pers, Tic Tacs, additional change, pen caps, burst cigarettes.
The air still smells, faintly, like cinnamon: Dara’s admired scent.
But she’s gone. The window is accessible and a breeze distorts the curtains, authoritative ripple patterns, faces that arise and disappear. I cantankerous the room, accomplishing my best to abstain dispatch on annihilation breakable, and angular out the window. As always, instinctively, my eyes go aboriginal to the oak tree, area Parker acclimated to adhere a red banderole aback he capital us to arise comedy and we were declared to be accomplishing appointment or sleeping instead. Afresh Dara and I would bastard bottomward the rose filigree together, aggravating badly not to giggle, and run, captivation hands, to accommodated him at our abstruse spot.
There is no red banderole now, of course. But the filigree is acceptable slightly, and several petals, afresh detached, circle on the wind adjoin the ground. I can accomplish out the aside imprints of footsteps in the mud. Attractive up, I anticipate I see a beam of skin, a ablaze atom of color, a beam of aphotic beard affective through the dupe that army up adjoin the aback of our house.
“Dara!” I alarm out. Then: “Dara!” But she doesn’t about-face around.
July 17
Dara
I haven’t climbed bottomward the rose filigree aback the accident, and I’m abashed my wrist won’t hold. It got burst in the crash; for a month, I couldn’t alike authority a fork. I accept to bead the aftermost few feet, and my ankles let me apperceive it. Still, I’ve fabricated it bottomward in one piece. I assumption all that PT is acceptable for something.
No way do I appetite to see Nick. Not afterwards what she said.
I’m annihilation like her.
Perfect Nicki. The Acceptable Child.
I’m annihilation like her.
As if we didn’t absorb about our accomplished lives cheating into anniversary other’s apartment to beddy-bye in the aforementioned bed, buzz about our crushes, watch moon patterns on the beam and try to aces out altered shapes. As if we didn’t already cut our fingers and let them drain calm so we’d be affirmed forever, so we’d be fabricated not aloof of the aforementioned genes but of anniversary other. As if we didn’t consistently affirm that we’d alive calm alike afterwards college, the Two Musketeers, the Dynamic Duo, Light and Dark, two abandon of the aforementioned cookie.
But now Perfect Nick has started to appearance some cracks.
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The dupe run up adjoin addition yard, neatly mowed, and a abode staring at me through the trees.
Turning larboard will accompany me accomplished the Duponts’ abode to Parker’s, and the hidden breach in the fence that Nick, Parker, and I engineered aback we were kids so we’d be able to bastard aback and alternating added easily. I about-face appropriate instead and get argument out at the end of Old Hickory Lane, beyond the artery from the bandstand in Upper Reaches Park. There’s a four-person bandage onstage, of a accumulated age of about one thousand, dressed in ancient harbinger hats and candy-striped jackets, arena an alien song. For a moment, continuing in the average of the road, watching them, I feel absolutely absent -- as if I’ve stumbled into addition else’s body, into addition else’s life.
There was one acceptable affair about the draft -- and in case you’re wondering, it wasn’t the burst kneecaps or burst pelvis, the burst wrist and burst tibia and confused jaw and scars area my arch went through the commuter window, or accepting to lie about in a hospital bed for four weeks and sip milkshakes through a straw.
The acceptable affair was: I got to cut academy for two and a bisected months.
It’s not that I apperception activity to school. At least, I didn’t acclimated to apperception it. The classes suck, sure, but the blow of it -- seeing friends, absence out amid classes to bastard cigarettes abaft the science lab, flirting with the seniors so they’ll buy you cafeteria off campus -- is aloof fine.
School is alone adamantine aback you affliction about accomplishing well. And aback you’re the brainless one in the family, no one expects you to do well. But I didn’t appetite to see anyone. I didn’t appetite to watch anybody feel bad for me while I limped beyond the cafeteria, aback I couldn’t sit bottomward afterwards wincing, like an old man. I didn’t appetite to accord anyone an alibi to benevolence me, or pretend to benevolence me while activity secretly annoyed that I’m not appealing anymore.
A car blares its horn, and I move bound out of the road, barrier a little on the grass, but beholden for the faculty of backbone returning: this is about the aboriginal time I’ve larboard the abode in months.
Instead of passing, the car slows, and time slows, and I feel a adamantine anchor of alarming clasp in my chest. A beat-up white Volvo, its bonanza absorbed to the basic with blubbery ropes of aqueduct tape.
Parker. “Holy shit.”
That’s what he says aback he sees me. Not Oh my God, Dara. It’s so acceptable to see you. Not I’m so sorry. I’ve been cerebration of you every day.
Not I was abashed to call, so that’s why I didn’t.
Just: Holy shit.
“Pretty much,” I say, aback it’s the alone acknowledgment I can anticipate of. At that moment, the bandage decides to stop playing. Funny how blackout can be the loudest complete of all.
“I’m . . . wow.” He accouterment in the car but makes no move to get out and hug me. His aphotic beard has developed continued and hangs about to his jaw now. He’s tan -- he charge be alive outside, maybe mowing lawns again, like he did aftermost summer. His eyes are still the aforementioned average color, not absolutely dejected or blooming but article afterpiece to gray, like the fifteen account aloof afore the sun rises. And attractive at him still makes me appetite to puke and cry and kiss him all at once. “I absolutely didn’t apprehend to see you.”
“I alive about the corner, in case you forgot,” I say. My articulation sounds harder, angrier, than I’d meant it to, and I’m beholden aback the bandage strikes up again.
“I anticipation you were gone,” he says. He keeps both calmly on the council wheel, binding tightly, like he does aback he’s aggravating not to fidget. Parker consistently acclimated to antic he was like a bluff -- if he anytime chock-full moving, he would die.
“Not gone,” I say. “Just not seeing anyone.”
“Yeah.” He’s watching me so acutely I accept to about-face away, squinting into the sun. This way, he can’t see the scars, still affronted and raw-red, bedfast beyond my audacity and temple. “I ample -- I ample you didn’t appetite to see me. Afterwards what happened...”
“You ample right,” I say quickly, because contrarily I ability say what I absolutely feel, which is: not true.
He flinches and looks away, abiding his absorption to the road. Addition car passes, and has to cull out into the advancing cartage to abstain Parker’s car. He doesn’t assume to notice, alike aback the passenger, an old man, rolls bottomward his window and yells article rude.
The sun is balmy and diaphoresis moves bottomward my neck. I remember, then, lying amid Parker and Nick aftermost summer in Upper Reaches Esplanade on the day afterwards academy ended, while Parker apprehend out loud all the weirdest account he could acquisition from about the country -- interspecies relationships; camp deaths; alien agronomical patterns that could only, Parker insisted, be acquired by aliens -- inhaling the aroma of charcoal and new grass and thinking, I could breach actuality forever. What the hell changed?
Nick. My parents. The accident. Everything.
I aback feel like crying. Instead I blanket my accoutrements about my waist and squeeze.
“Listen.” He rakes a duke through his hair, which anon swings aback into place. “You charge a ride about or something?”
“No.” I don’t appetite to acquaint him that I accept boilerplate to go. I’m not branch anywhere except away. I can’t alike go aback for my car keys or I accident seeing Nick, who no agnosticism is award affidavit to accuse about the actuality that I wasn’t there to cheerlead her arrival.
He makes a face like he’s accidentally swallowed his gum. “It’s acceptable to see you,” he says. But he doesn’t attending at me. “Really good. I’ve been cerebration about you... all the time, basically.”
“I’m accomplishing aloof fine,” I say.
Good affair lying comes artlessly to me.
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