Resurrecting Sunshine - Softcover

Koosis, Lisa A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807569445 ISBN 13: 9780807569443

Verlag: ALBERT WHITMAN & CO, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

At seventeen, Adam Rhodes is famous, living on his own, and in a downward spiral since he lost the girl he loved. Marybeth—stage name Sunshine—was his best friend from the days they were foster kids; then she was his girlfriend and his band mate. But since her accidental death, he's been drinking to deal with the memories. Until one day, an unexpected visitor, Dr. Elloran, presents Adam with a proposition that just might save him from himself. Using breakthrough cloning and memory-implantation techniques, Dr. Elloran and the scientists at Project Orpheus want to resurrect Marybeth, and they need Adam to "donate" intimate memories of his life with her. The memory retrieval process forces Adam to relive his life with Marybeth and the devastating path that brought them both to fame. Along the way, he must confront not only the circumstances of her death but also his growing relationship with the mysterious Genevieve, daughter of Project Orpheus's founder. As the process sweeps Adam and Marybeth ever closer to reliving the tragedy that destroyed them, Adam must decide how far he'll go to save her.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lisa A. Koosis graduated from Long Island University with a degree in writing. A prize-winning short story writer, her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Resurrecting Sunshine is her debut novel. Lisa lives in New York.

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Resurrecting Sunshine

By Lisa A. Koosis

Albert Whitman and Company

Copyright © 2016 Lisa A. Koosis
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8075-6944-3

CHAPTER 1

This is the memory that visits my dreams.

We're walking through a concrete underpass that smells like piss and stale beer and rotting fish. Marybeth is framed by the rectangle of light at the tunnel's end, her dark hair in ponytails, her eyes hidden behind huge plastic sunglasses — probably stolen from her foster mom's dresser — that should make her look stupid but instead make her look incredibly hot. Her sneakers slap on the concrete, and her knapsack, slung carelessly over one shoulder, bounces at her side.

We step out onto the beach. Dark, flat-bottomed clouds hang low over us, and fat raindrops crater the sand. There's no one here but us and the gulls, which tip their heads back and screech, cries that sound like laughter.

The wind yanks strands of Marybeth's hair free from her ponytails and turns her cheeks pink. She kicks off her sneakers, abandoning them.

We walk along the water's edge. The ocean is all whitecaps. Salty spray wets my face.

Near the jetty, Marybeth plops down onto the sand. She pushes the sunglasses on top of her head and digs in her knapsack, pulling out a plastic boat, red with a yellow sail, the kind every cheapo toy store sells.

"I never had one of these," she says. She smiles at me, one of her weird smiles that I can never decipher as happy or sad or maybe a little of both.

She takes a black marker from her bag and, on the side of the boat, in block letters, writes: ADAM.

Then: [love]

And below that: MARYBETH.

She stands, wiping sand from her jeans, and carries the boat to the water.

The ocean rushes up around her ankles, soaking her jeans. A sign on the jetty warns: No Swimming. Hazardous Currents. I want to tell her to be careful, but I don't dare, so I stand beside her instead.

She squats down and drops the ADAM [love] MARYBETH boat into the water. It immediately rides out on a trail of foam.

I think, It's going to sink. I want to make her turn away before she can see it happen. But I don't, and it doesn't sink. Instead, we watch the little boat ride the current out until it's no more than a red-and-yellow speck.

I close my eyes, and when I open them again I'm looking back at Marybeth. She's standing on shore, waving, which makes no sense, except suddenly I feel the motion of waves beneath me, the rise and fall of a boat on rough water.

What ...?

I wrap my hands around the boat's rail, which shouldn't flex beneath my fingers. But it does, because it's not metal. It's plastic and red. Only now it's life-size.

I lean over the side. Sure enough, there are the words Marybeth wrote.

Except the MARYBETH is scratched out, and now it reads: ADAM [love] MARYBETH SUNSHINE.

"Marybeth?" I call to her. But the wind swallows my words.

Above me, a sail flaps, the sound sharp and clear. I look up at it, searching for a way to lower it, because it's pulling me away from shore, from Marybeth. But when I look, it's not a sail at all. It's nothing but a yellow dress, catching the wind.

And when I look back to shore, Marybeth is gone.

CHAPTER 2

When I roll over, my traitorous body still expects to find her beside me, sleepy and warm. But the only curves my hands find belong to my buddy Jose Cuervo, the bottle mostly empty, and a reeking mound of blankets. My little freaking pearl of a world.

Out in the hall, the intercom for the security gate buzzes.

I shove Jose out of the bed. "Oh for fuck's sake!"

Who is it now? NBC? MTV? StarStreamz? I thought I was done with this. But no, here they are again, probably revving up for the one-year anniversary of her death. Like if just the right amount of time passes, a death is something to celebrate, with balloons and ice cream and stupid paper streamers. Yellow, of course.

My brain races ahead. To five years, ten years, the possibility that they'll never stop. That they'll still demand that I stand in front of their cameras and microphones and keep some piece of her alive.

Here's your news flash, assholes. She's gone. Dead. Not coming back for some ten o'clock special report.

The buzz of the intercom continues — bzzzz, pause, bzzzz, pause, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz — like Morse code for hornets.

I yank off the sheets and get up, finding last night's jeans on the floor and pulling them on. From the bedroom window, I can see the high wrought iron fence that surrounds our — I mean my — home. But no satellite-dish-topped news vans wait at the curb, no online reporters waving streaming holocams. Not even some hopeful fangirls, thumbs ready to tweet: "I saw him. I saw Adam!" Only a single dark blue SUV stands outside the gate.

I open the window and lean out. "Get off my property."

The intercom buzzes again and this time doesn't stop. Why didn't I disable that damn thing months ago?

"We're really going to do this, huh?" I slam the window shut and head down the hall. In the intercom's monitor, I can see a blond woman waiting. As best I can tell, there's no camera crew, no microphones, just her.

I stab the talk button. "In thirty seconds I call the cops."

She jumps, which gives me a second of satisfaction. "Mr. Rhodes?"

"You heard me. No interviews. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight ..."

"I'm not ..." She shakes her head and her ponytail wags. "Mr. Rhodes — Adam — I'm not here for an interview."

"Then what do you want?" I mean for it to come out angry, rough, the voice of someone in charge. Instead, it sounds small and sad.

Her image warps as she leans in toward the camera. "My name is Dr. Trixie Elloran. I'm the scientific director of a very special research project, and I'm here with a proposition I know you'll want to hear. If you'd please let me have five minutes — five minutes, Adam — I promise you'll find it worth your time."

As if my time is worth anything.

As if she can possibly say something that matters.

Way down in the pit of my belly, something churns. And maybe it's boredom or curiosity or just being tired of the silence in this damn house, but before I can stop myself I hit the release for the gate.

The woman gets into the SUV and drives through the gate. By the time I reach the front door, she's knocking.

She isn't dressed like a reporter. No voice-of-authority, five- o'clock-news clothes, but also not the I'm-thirty-but-trying-to- look-twenty-hipster/interviewer look that you see on most of the net streams. And with her white blouse and faded jeans, the messenger bag slung over her shoulder, she isn't dressed like a doctor either.

When she extends her hand to shake mine, I turn away.

"Five minutes." I step aside to let her in, making a point of looking at my wrist only to realize I'm not wearing a watch.

She heads immediately into the living room and sits in one of the armchairs without waiting for an invitation, as if she knows one won't be coming. She puts her bag on the floor.

"Why don't you sit?" she says, like this is her house instead of mine ... instead of Sunshine's.

My heart pounds. "No thanks."

It's been ages since anyone besides me sat in this living room, and for a second I see the room as she must: thick dust on everything, pizza boxes — some still hiding petrified slices — on the floor, the stained couch, sweaty T-shirts caught in the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ALBERT WHITMAN & CO
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0807569445
• ISBN 13: 9780807569443
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar