Ever Since - Hardcover

Bruzas, Alena

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593616170 ISBN 13: 9780593616178

Verlag: Rocky Pond Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

An intense, beautiful debut about the power of finding your voice and sharing your story after trauma. Perfect for fans of Nina LaCour and Kathleen Glasgow.

Seventeen-year-old Virginia makes bad choices. In fact, she’s That Kind of Girl, according to the whispers. But as long as she has her tight group of best friends by her side, she’s able to ignore the gossipers. Until she finds herself spending time with Rumi, Poppy’s boyfriend. Breaking with tradition, she doesn’t hook up with Rumi. Worse, she falls in love with him.

While Virginia and Rumi’s relationship grows in secret, she discovers that his little sister, Lyra, is being groomed for abuse. The soon-to-be-abuser is a respected member of the community, and only Virginia knows who he is and what he does. If she stays quiet, Lyra will become a victim. But coming forward feels equally impossible.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Debut author Alena Bruzas grew up in Seattle and currently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. She hopes her writing will find the people who need it most.
 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

Once there were five princesses. No, I mean five witches. Actually, they were goddesses. Anyway, whatever they were, they were friends.

Once there were five friends.

And the story goes like this:

It’s finally summer and we’re road-­tripping out to the coast. Poppy is driving, so of course I’m sitting shotgun. Ramona, Paz, and Thalia take photos of their faces squished together. I say we have to make a pact to keep our phones in the glove box and we’re singing to the radio until it dissolves into static and then we play the license plate game and now we’re playing truth or dare. I tell Ramona to flash the SUV next to us and she gets me back by daring me to hang my butt out the window.

“Ro!” I squeal.

“Virginia!” she squeals back, and throws a scrunchie at me and says I have to do it and so I do and I think I’m going to die when Poppy goes around a corner and I almost fall out the window.
We get to La Push in time for sunset. The floor of the car is covered in garbage and my foot is asleep and our limbs are overlapping and intermingled. Thalia is braiding strands of Poppy’s hair and I’m painting Paz’s toenails and Ro is eating the sandwich that Thalia packed for herself.

We tumble out of the car with our arms around each other, holding hands and bumping hips, and the bond of our friendship seems enduring, like nothing can break it, ever. But as Edison spots us and bellows my name and I feel Thalia’s eyes all over my skin, I’m afraid it won’t be enough.
We’re camping on the beach. No one questions whether or not it’s allowed. We just pitch our tents and lay out our sleeping bags and start drinking. The beach is crowded with bare feet and loose waves and fraying cutoff shorts. I change into my bathing suit but I don’t go swimming. Nobody swims in the ocean here. It’s too cold. Even in summer you don’t go swimming off the coast of Washington.

Ro gets the fire going after Thalia relents and lets us use her Trader Joe’s bags as kindling and the boys wander over all casual to drink our beer and eat our hot dogs. Rumi is putting his arm around Poppy’s shoulders and kissing her neck and squeezing her thigh and she keeps leaning away and shrugging, but he isn’t picking up on her don’t-­touch-­me-­I’m-­going-­to-­puke signals. I can tell she’s drunk because her breath smells sweet like maybe whiskey and her eyes are wide. Poppy always gets extra innocent, like, Who, me?

Rumi probably thinks it’s no big deal because they’re going out, but I can tell Poppy is annoyed and it doesn’t help that she keeps taking shots. It’s funny how a night can change like that. How it can feel so good to sit under the salty sprawling night sky with your toes in the sand that’s still warm and the fire crackling and the sparks drifting and the ocean intoning nearby. Then suddenly you feel like you might puke and also people are probably possibly judging you right now because you’re drunk and sloppy and getting groped.

Poppy covers her mouth and stumbles toward the rocks and Rumi follows her like he probably thinks a good boyfriend should. I follow too because I know what’s coming.

“Just piss off!” Poppy says. I almost laugh because she sounds like a British gangster, but then she bends over and I hear a splatter. Rumi hovers, his hands in his pockets and looking at his feet.

“I’ve got it,” I say to Rumi.

He looks uncertain. Poppy yells piss off again and Rumi blushes and glances at me and then he leaves and I feel sorry for him. Poppy grabs my arm and I stagger and scrape my heel on a rock. She throws up again, so I just grit my teeth and let her hold on to me and keep her hair out of her face.

When she’s done I wrap my arm around her waist and she leans on me all the way back to our tent. I take off the rain flap because the sky is clear and the wind feels good. We lie down side by side, my fake blond mixed with her real black, and she takes my hand and threads her fingers through mine.

She’s quiet for so long that I think she’s asleep. When I start to get up she squeezes my hand tighter. “I love you,” she says with her eyes still closed.

• • •

I find Rumi sitting alone, playing chicken with the tide. His feet are stretched out and wet from the waves. “She’s just drunk,” I say. “It’s not about you. She always gets pissed when she’s sick.” My scraped heel is throbbing. He doesn’t answer, so I examine my foot. It’s still bleeding and there’s sand in the cut.

“What happened?” he asks.

I shrug.

Rumi stands up. “Wait here.” When he comes back he pulls my foot into his lap. It stings when he pours cold water over the scrape. As he applies Neosporin and a Band-­Aid, I realize that I am so absolutely determined not to flirt with him that I have no idea what to say. I pull my leg back and wedge my bandaged foot under my butt.

By the fire Paz starts singing and Thalia is sitting in Edison’s lap and Ro yells something at Edison about punching him in the face, which he probably deserves but I think Ro is joking. The party oozes out away from the fire, small circles of kids here and there, and Paz and Thalia and Ro run down and splash their ankles in the water, lithe and silver in the moonlight. Edison grabs a six-­pack and walks off, leaning to the side like a dilapidated house.

I tell myself every time, this is the last time. Thalia is suspicious but she doesn’t actually know. If I stop now maybe she’ll never find out. But then Edison looks over his shoulder at me. I stand up, straightening my bikini bottom and brushing sand off my butt. I feel Rumi watching as I follow Edison but I don’t look back. There are enough people here now that no one will notice, I don’t think.

The moon is almost full and it shivers across the water and for a minute I feel beautiful in the bending light. So I kiss him and of course we . . . 

(I can’t even say it.)

I can still hear the singing, the cackling laughter, the lewd jokes of the party.

I come home to Poppy like I always come home to her. Whether it’s her house or the lunch table at school or here in the tent. I watch her breathe, in and out, in and out. It seems so easy for her.

Nobody was up when I got back from Edison. The fire was almost dead. Just a few embers glowing in the ash. I watched it for a while and drank from a bottle of red wine that somebody left open and halfway buried in the sand.

Now I lie with the bottle cradled in the crook of my arm and when it’s empty I fall asleep on my wine-­stained pillow and bad dreams lap at my neck but I won’t remember them in the morning.
Before we leave, Ramona says we have to swim. “It’s the summer before senior year. It will never be like this again.”

“We have next summer, Rowie.” Paz crosses her arms and squints away.

“Next summer we won’t be in high school anymore, Paz,” Ro says. “We’ll all be off doing our own things. I’m going to France and Thalia wants to start early at school and your mom wants to visit your family in Brazil.”

Thalia smiles with the sun on her face and leans back in the sand, closing her eyes. Poppy glowers into her coffee and I say, “What about me, Ro? Where will I be?”

Ro gives me a look that is wistful and uncertain....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rocky Pond Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593616170
• ISBN 13: 9780593616178
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland