Rocks Fall Everyone Dies - Hardcover

Ribar, Lindsay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525428682 ISBN 13: 9780525428688

Verlag: Kathy Dawson Books, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Twin Peaks meets Stars Hollow in this paranormal suspense novel about a boy who can reach inside people and steal their innermost things—fears, memories, scars, even love—and his family's secret ritual that for centuries has kept the cliff above their small town from collapsing.

Aspen Quick has never really worried about how he's affecting people when he steals from them. But this summer he'll discover just how strong the Quick family magic is—and how far they'll go to keep their secrets safe.

With a smart, arrogant protagonist, a sinister family tradition, and an ending you won't see coming, this is a fast-paced, twisty story about power, addiction, and deciding what kind of person you want to be, in a family that has the ability to control everything you are.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lindsay Ribar lives in New York City, where she works in book publishing by day and writes YA novels by night. She is the author of The Art of Wishing, The Fourth Wish, and Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies, as well as The Pros of Cons (co-written with Alison Cherry and Michelle Schusterman). Lindsay attends far too many concerts, watches far too much nerdy TV, and consumes fanfiction like it's made out of chocolate. She is fond of wine, cheese, and really cool accents. Ask her about her Harry Potter tattoo.

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CHAPTER ONE

Brandy and Theo were about to break up. They just didn’t know it yet.
    They were fighting about this movie they’d seen last week, and Theo was going, “What’s the point? The whole plot was just an excuse for explosions!”
    Brandy responded with, “The explosions are the point,” which I mentally added to the long list of reasons she was basically the hottest girl on the planet.
    Me? I dipped yet another French fry in ketchup, shoved it into my mouth, and watched the action unfold.
    Theo—poor, clueless Theo—just went, “Well, it was stupid,” and took another giant bite of his burger. I’d already finished mine.
    “You always think stuff I like is stupid,” said Brandy. You could practically see the exact moment when she reached the end of her rope. “Always. God. You don’t even try to like my stuff.”
    “I do so try,” replied Theo. “I saw the movie with you, didn’t I?”
    “Yeah, because you wanted to grope me when the lights went down.” Brandy tossed her hair, and I shoved a handful of fries in my mouth to keep myself from grinning.
    Oh yes. Here it came.
    “I swear, I don’t know why I was ever into you.”
    “Wha . . . what?” Theo was so totally perplexed by now, I almost felt sorry for him. “You were plenty into me yesterday. Hell, you were into me five minutes ago.”
    It was four minutes ago. I’d been keeping track. But I didn’t say anything, obviously. Just chewed my food in silence, trying not to let on how much I was enjoying this.
    Unfortunately, Brandy’s reply was interrupted by the sudden sound of a Black Keys song blasting into the quiet diner. My cell phone. Aunt Holly’s ringtone.
    “Hello?” I said. Beside me, Theo called Brandy a very rude name.
    “Ma says there’s a fault in the stone,” said Aunt Holly in her usual curt voice. “How soon can you be home?”
    Normally I would have pointed out that the house she shared with Grandma wasn’t technically home for me—but there was no point in arguing semantics with people as easily provoked as her. So I just said, “Fifteen minutes if you make me walk. Five if you pick me up.”
    “God, you’re lazy.” She sighed. “All right, just meet us at the May Day field. Ten minutes.” The line went dead.
    “Guys, I have to go,” I said, grabbing my jacket and easing out of the booth. “The relatives require my presence.”
    “See? That’s another thing,” said Brandy, without even missing a beat. “Look at the relationship Aspen has with his family. They call, he comes running. And vice versa, probably. That’s how it should be! But all I ever hear from you is how much you hate your parents.”
    Brandy, on the other hand, called her father every single night after dinner. She pretended like it was her idea, as opposed to a product of her dad’s all-encompassing paranoia about basically everything, but you could tell it was a pain in her ass.
    Theo sputtered pathetic half words as he sank lower and lower into his seat. I couldn’t blame him. Brandy always looked like a vengeful goddess when she got angry, and this was probably the angriest I’d ever seen her. I was kind of sorry I had to leave.
     But up here, a call from Aunt Holly trumped everything—even something as potentially life-changing as this fight. I slipped a ten onto the table to cover my meal and headed for the door just as the waiter came over, probably to ask Brandy and Theo to lower their voices.
     It was a gorgeous summer upstate New York night, the likes of which you never get down in the city. Instead of air conditioners spitting dirty water onto overheated sidewalks, Three Peaks was all cool mountain air tinged with the remnants of a hot day. Cool enough that I was comfortable in my long-sleeved thermal, warm enough that I didn’t need another layer over it.
     I made a left out of the diner and started walking down Main. Past the Bean Barn coffee shop, past the cutesy boutique clothing stores—closed for the night by this point—and past the single grocery store, which marked the point where the commercial section of town ended and the residential one began. A few minutes later, even the houses grew sparser, until there were only woods. To my left, at least.
     To my right, lawns and well-groomed trees gave way to a wide, flat expanse of grass, so well-maintained that it could’ve been a soccer field, if not for the giant oak tree that stood right in the middle.
     The May Day tree. This was where all the citizens of Three Peaks left little presents once a year, as some kind of . . . tribute? Payment? Something like that. I’d never been here for an actual May Day party, so I didn’t know what all the gifts were supposed to mean. But I did know that they stayed under the tree until the Quick family—my family—came to get them.
     I’d visited the tree several times over the past few years, always as a precursor to my family’s triad ritual, but this was my first visit of the summer. Anticipation coursed through me.
     When I reached the tree, I ducked under its branches and surveyed the trunk. Or rather, the giant pile of stuff surrounding the trunk. It looked more or less the same as it did every year: a collection of weird little odds and ends left by people who maybe were superstitious, or maybe liked tradition a little too much, or maybe both.
     The first time I saw it, back when I was just a little kid,  I thought it looked like a pile of magic.
     Tonight, there was better magic happening at the diner I’d just left. I checked my phone, just to see if either of my friends had texted me—if the breakup had happened already, or if there was still fighting left to be done.
     Nothing yet, though. Well, nothing except a text from Mom. Her second of the day; her tenth of the week. I deleted it without reading it, like I’d been doing for months.
     Footsteps swished in the grass, steadily approaching. I looked up, and there was Aunt Holly coming my way, tall and straight-backed and dressed in what looked like a business suit. Her hair, the same dirty blond as Dad’s, was pulled severely back from her face. I wondered if she’d come right from her office.
     A few strides behind her was Grandma, a little bit shorter and rounder than Aunt Holly, her iron-gray curls making a halo around her smiling face. Hands in the pockets of her slacks, she ambled across the May Day field with the ease of someone forty years younger.
     “Beat you here,” I said as they approached.
     “So you did,” Grandma said, her voice as warm as always. “How was the lake?”
     Theo and Brandy and I had spent every afternoon this past week at the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Kathy Dawson Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0525428682
• ISBN 13: 9780525428688
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: NOSOLI72; 33155536069; SCLIENT@chapitre.com; ; rue bellevue; le plessis; Lamnay; france; 72320; Frankreich