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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text © Kimberly McCreight 2017
Cover illustration ©
Kimberly McCreight asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008115081
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008115098
Version: 2017-06-24
For every girl who’s been told she’s too sensitive.
For every woman who’s taught herself not to be.
Life is a dream. ’Tis waking that kills us.
—Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Contents
This is a work of fiction. The things that you read here did not happen. At least, not yet.
I STAND IN THE DARK, barefoot and cold on the edge of the sharp rocks, staring out over the long stretch of black water in front of me. And I wonder if I really can make it all the way to that small light on the dock in the distance. It seems so impossibly far away, the water so frighteningly still like it’s just waiting for someone fool enough to try.
I am not a very strong swimmer, or not nearly strong enough. I’ve never made it that kind of distance. Not fully clothed, not in the darkness. Across unfamiliar water, with all the tricks a pinprick of light on the horizon can play, who