First published in the United States of America by Balzer + Bray in 2019
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Published simultaneously in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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Text copyright © Sarah Dessen 2019
Jacket art © 2019 by Jenny Carrow
Typography by Jenna Stempel-Lobell
All rights reserved.
Sarah Dessen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780008334390
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008334406
Version: 2019-04-19
For Leigh Feldman.
Even when words fail me, you never do.
Thank you.
Contents
There weren’t a lot of memories, especially good ones. But there was this.
“Tell me a story,” I’d say when it was bedtime but I wasn’t at all sleepy.
“Oh, honey,” my mom would reply. “I’m tired.”
She was always tired: that I did remember. Especially in the evenings, after that first or second glass of wine, which most often led to a bottle, once I was asleep. Usually my dad cleaned up before he went to bed, but when he wasn’t around, the evidence remained there in the light of day when I came down for breakfast.
“Not a fairy tale,” I’d say, because she always said no at first. “A lake story.”
At this, she’d smile. “A lake story? Well. That’s different.”
That was when I knew I could lean back into my pillows, grabbing my stuffed giraffe, George, and settle in.
“Once upon a time,” she’d begin, locking a leg around mine or draping an arm over my stomach, because snuggling was part of the telling, “there was a little girl who lived by a big lake that seemed like it went on forever. The trees around the edges had moss, and the water was cold and clear.”
This was when I would start to picture it. Seeing the details.
“The