Until Alison - Hardcover

Russo, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593850688 ISBN 13: 9780593850688

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

The night Alison was murdered, Rachel could have stopped it.

When Rachel Nardelli finds out Alison Petrucci—her childhood rival—is found dead in Pleasant Pond, the same place the two girls had first said goodbye to each other back in eighth grade, the town of Waterbury is outraged by the fear of losing one of their own—the heir to Maine’s largest construction company. But it’s a little more complicated for Rachel. She saw Alison the night she died. Callous, she said something she shouldn’t have. She stirred up the past. The next morning, Alison was gone.   

Plagued by the complicated memories around Alison, Rachel joins her journalism crew to investigate the murder. But as she revisits their fraught relationship, she falls into a web of cruelties that threaten to undo everything she understood about her past. An explosive literary thriller from the acclaimed Kate Russo, Until Alison is a brilliantly incisive and resonant novel that is at once about class, gender, and the arbitrary nature of violence.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kate Russo is the author of Super Host and Until Alison. She grew up in Maine but now divides her time between there and the United Kingdom. Also an artist, she exhibits in both the US and UK.

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1.

Nobody deserves anything. I can promise you that. Maybe you think you earned what you've got, but I can guarantee you someone else has worked just as hard for the same thing and they don't have it. They probably think they deserve better. And then there are those who've been served a real shit sandwich, wondering to themselves What the fuck have I done to deserve this? They don't deserve that either. Nobody gets get what they deserve, because nobody deserves anything. Nothing happens for a reason. Good shit, bad shit, it all just happens. Justification is nothing more than counting sheep, a way to get to sleep at night.

Alison didn't deserve to die.

I don't deserve to be sitting here typing this sentence. And yet.

The night Alison was murdered, I could have stopped it. But retrospect is as useless as justification. That night, there wasn't a tab in my brain that suddenly opened up to inform me that in one hour someone will drive Alison to a remote pond and hit her head on a rock. Would you like to stop what you're doing right now and save her? For the record, I would have. If I had known someone was going to kill her, I would have saved her. I mention that because, at some points while you're reading this, it'll probably seem like the opposite is true.

AQ: Is this how she's actually killed? This is never explained. Seems like it would be "hit her on the head with a rock"?

On the night in question, in the fall of 2016, I saw her leaving a campus party. It was a Saturday night and there were dozens of people around, so why do I feel like I was the only one who watched her leave? But it was always this way. She was always in the corner of my eye, like one of those fucking floaters, trapped in my vision. I couldn't help it, whenever she was around, it was like I didn't know who I was anymore. I'd only ever known myself in relation to Alison.

The party was hosted by my boyfriend, Cam. Alison wasn't supposed to be there. As far as I knew, the two of them had never met. Most of the girls at Cam's parties were either the girlfriends of his friends or freshman girls who didn't know any better; they hadn't yet been invited to more exclusive parties or learned to be wary of Cam's antics. Alison didn't fit into either of these categories, plus she lived in the chem-free dorm, but there she was, nonetheless, drinking a hard seltzer and talking with some guy with heavily shellacked helmet hair that I didn't recognize. But I never knew who anyone was. The two of them were leaning into each other because "American Girl" was blaring, even though I'd told Cam a thousand times that Tom Petty wasn't party music. Perched alone on a windowsill, I wasn't talking to anyone, so I watched Alison and the guy flirt. What was she doing in my world? Why had she infiltrated it? I spitefully pondered these very questions while swigging Bacardí Limón from the bottle.

Once again, I'd allowed myself to get far too drunk. Not pacing myself was becoming a pattern. Back then, I was one of those people who drank to feel more sociable, but I'd gotten into a routine of drinking past sociability and straight back into introversion. Cam wasn't paying attention to me; he was holding court behind his makeshift bar, pouring marshmallow Smirnoff directly into the mouths of freshman girls. I didn't really know anyone else besides Alison, though we didn't make a habit of talking to each other. I suppose I could have known more people if I'd made any effort at all, but it was senior year and I'd long since told myself it was too late. There were three girls, my colleagues on the newspaper staff, whom I considered friends. I think they considered me a friend, too, but it's no secret they all had closer friends than me. Lindsay and Brie had said they might come to the party, but they'd let me down. I knew they had been secretly hooking up since last semester. And Jen wouldn't be caught dead at one of Cam's parties. She was probably already in her pajamas, reading Audre Lorde.

Alison, at one point, was also my friend. Ages six to twelve. I think she would have considered me her best friend back then, but at Cam's party, she pretended not to see me, even though we could not have been more than ten feet apart. Instead, she laughed performatively, a little drunk, to the musings of this random guy, who'd spilled beer down the bottom of his blue shirt. I barely noticed him, only scoffed when his eyes stayed glued to her tits, large milky mounds, still a little tan from her summer in Rome, peering over the soft cotton of her flowery dress. When she started talking about life after college, I squinted, hoping that impairing my vision would improve my hearing. Harvard, I heard. And Fulbright. She'd have her pick. Her life was charmed like that. The short, flowery dress swayed as her head bobbed in explanation. I watched it caress the tops of her thighs, remembering how she used to dress when we were girls: wide denim shorts and oversized Disney-themed T-shirts to hide her big boobs from the ridicule of all the boys in our class. Just then, the guy leaned in and whispered something in her ear. She laughed again, both timid and flirtatious.

The intimacy of this scene was so grotesque I dropped my gaze down to the dark gray carpet tiles, but then the tiles started spinning, so I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the room started to tip and tilt like a fun house. I closed them again and rested my head on the windowsill, instructing myself to breathe. A few deep breaths and I'd probably, just about, be able to get myself back to Cam's room and into his bed. I inhaled, counted to four, then exhaled and counted to eight, just like the school therapist taught me to do.

My eyes opened when the song ended and I heard the front door unlatch. Alison and her guy were leaving. Suddenly I was up from the windowsill and feigning sobriety. Several people stopped what they were doing to witness my sudden movement. As straight as I could, I walked past Cam's bar, where now the freshman girls were pouring the Smirnoff into Cam's mouth, to the front door. I didn't think Cam had seen me until I heard him shout out, "Babe, where are you going?"

I ignored him. I flung open the door of his suite and let it slam behind me. Down the end of the hallway, Alison and the guy spun around.

"Woo-hoo, Alison!" I shouted, waiting for her to engage. She turned away from me, just shook her head.

When the guy put his arm around her waist, they continued walking away.

"Be nice to her!" I shouted even louder, addressing him, but determined it was she who should acknowledge me. "Don't be like Brad Hutchins!"

She didn't turn around, but I swear I could detect a chill emanating from her body. That's when Alison's stranger glanced over his shoulder and grinned at me. Did he wink, too? Or was I just making that up? He pulled her down the hall and they disappeared around the corner.

When they were out of sight, I let my back hit the corridor wall and I slumped down to the floor. I closed my eyes and let all the colorful dots spin. The suite door opened again, and Cam came out. "Nardelli, you're fuckin' hammered." He laughed. "Get in here."

2.

I found out Alison was dead when Brie came running into my dorm room on Monday afternoon. I'd just returned from Physics for Poets-the study of the physical world for the metaphysically minded-the last of my two required science credits needed to graduate. But who was I kidding? I didn't understand poetry either, so I was barely passing. I hadn't even set my books down, when Brie came barging in. "Did you know Alison Petrucci's roommate reported her missing?"

I wasn't sure I heard her right. It was one of those moments where my brain couldn't compute the question. But my body understood immediately. I froze, dropped my notebook and my copy of Galileo's Sidereus...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593850688
• ISBN 13: 9780593850688
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 289
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: G.P. Putnam's Sons; https://www.penguin.com/putnam/; ; 1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander; NEW YORK; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar