Dark Rooms
A stunning debut coming-of-age novel set in the ambiguous and claustrophobic world of an exclusive New England prep school.The first time I saw my sister after she died was at the Fourth of July party. I felt someone behind me and my flesh started prickling. My skin recognized her before I did, rippling once then tightening on my bones.My sister, Nica.Grace spent her teenage years playing catch-up with her younger but cooler sister, Nica. Chasing and yet never quite catching up. So when Nica is murdered, Grace is cast adrift until it becomes clear to her that she must track down her sister’s killer – and in doing so, uncover the secrets she never knew her sister kept.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Lili Anolik 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photograph © Nilufer Barin / Arcangel Images
Lili Anolik asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007563340
Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007563357
Version 2015-02-04
To my brother, John
“I was terribly, terribly pretty. I looked like an angel but I was a fiend inside.”
–Lee Miller
Table of Contents
The first time I saw Nica after she died was at Jamie Amory’s Fourth of July party. I’d slipped into the study, dark and cool and strictly off-limits, was crossing the carpet to get to the liquor cabinet, when I felt someone behind me. I paused, flesh prickling. Slowly I began to turn. A set of doors, French. On the other side of the glass, a girl. I didn’t run, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, just stood there looking, looking, this girl so familiar: straight black hair, narrow nose, scarlet bloom of mouth, top lip nearly as fat as bottom. My skin recognized her before I did, rippling once then tightening on the bones.
My sister, Nica.
I was surprised to see her. Stunned. Yet a small part of me, the dark, secret, hidden part that didn’t listen to reason, was not. I’d known she was going to be at this party all along, had known without knowing I knew, in a way that had nothing to do with my eyes or ears, with what I could sense with my body. That’s why I’d crashed, wasn’t it? To greet her, take her around, show her to everyone who’d lost faith, given up, bought into the lie that dead means gone? I reached out to touch her as she reached out to touch me, the tips of our fingers meeting on the pane, misting it a little. I began to fill, nearly to bursting. She seemed just as full, mouth open, stretching wide, laughter I could almost hear spilling out.
Almost but not quite.
The doors were old-fashioned: two clear rectangles framed in wrought iron. At the center was a latch, small and black. I seized it. Twisted, rattled, jerked. Unbudging, as if set in cement. I let go, tried again with a different grip. Hand slipping on slick metal, my body lurched forward, right temple smashing into glass.
I staggered back, a hurt in my head that made me throb, a jolt in my blood that shocked me mad, a ringing in my ears that turned me dizzy. I looked around for something to throw. A chair, maybe. But the only chair in the room was overstuffed leather, arms wooden and elaborately carved—too heavy even to lift.
I looked back at Nica, took a step toward her to I don’t know what. Plead, I suppose, beg her to stay. And as I did, she leaned into me. Her eyes were hot, our mouths close, almost touching, our breaths intermingling if not for the pane.
Again I pulled on the latch and again the latch refused to yield. As I continued to pull and pull, hard as I could, so hard it felt like I was wrenching my fingers from their sockets, I watched her expression changing, dimming, her features going limp, listless. I’d lost her, I realized. She’d wander off, leave me alone, this time probably for good. It was already too late. Inside me something crumpled, and I let my head fall against the iron bar running down the door’s middle, my whole weight slumping behind it.
Suddenly, a giving sensation followed by a tumbling one, forward and then over. At first I was frightened, no ground under my feet. But as the stationary objects rushed away—the French doors, the short balcony outside the French doors, the rail, waist-height and rounded and shining—so too did the fear. I felt exhilarated, thrilled, as if I were in one of those dreams where I have the power of flight, am amazed at how easy it is. All it takes is faith. Trust in my heart I can fly and I can fly, nothing to it. Air streaked past me, singing in my ears, whistling through my body, emptying it out, blowing it clean, purifying me, making me perfect. I was soaring, streaking, gliding, hurtling, harder and harder, faster and—
