Beautiful Malice: A Novel - Couverture rigide

James, Rebecca

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0553808052 ISBN 13 : 9780553808056

Editeur : Bantam Dell Pub Group, 2010

Synopsis

Book by James Rebecca

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Chapter One
“Do you want to come?” 

Alice Parrie is looking down, smiling. It’s lunchtime and I’m sitting beneath a tree, alone, absorbed in a book.

 “Sorry.” I shade my eyes and look up. “Come where?” 

Alice hands me a piece of paper. 

I take it and read. It’s a brightly colored photocopy of an invitation to Alice’s eighteenth birthday party. Come one and come all!! Bring your friends!! it reads. Free champagne! Free food! Only someone as popular and as self- assured as Alice would issue such an invitation; anyone more ordinary would feel as if she was begging for guests. Why me? I wonder. I know of Alice, everyone knows of Alice, but I’ve never spoken to her before. She is one of those girls— beautiful, popular, impossible to miss. 

I fold the invitation in half and nod. “I’ll try. It sounds like fun,” I lie. 

Alice looks at me for a few seconds. Then she sighs and plonks herself down next to me, so close that one of her knees rests heavily against mine. 

“You will not.” She grins. 

I feel my cheeks begin to color. Even though my entire life can sometimes feel like a façade, a wall of secrets, I’m not good at lying. I look down at my lap. “Probably not.” 

“But I want you to come, Katherine,” she says. “It’d really mean a lot to me.” 

I’m surprised that Alice even knows my name, but it’s even more surprising—in fact, quite unbelievable—that she wants me to come to her party. I’m practically unknown at Drummond High and have no close friends. I come and go quietly, alone, and get on with my studies. I try to avoid bringing attention to myself. I do well enough, but my grades aren’t exceptional. I play no sport, have joined no clubs. And though I know I can’t do this forever—live my entire life as a shadow—for now it’s okay. I’m hiding, I know that, I’m being a coward, but right now I need to be invisible, to be the kind of person who arouses no curiosity in others. That way they never need to know who I really am, or what has happened. 

I close my book and start to pack away my lunch things. 

“Wait.” Alice puts her hand on my knee. I look at her as coldly as I can, and she withdraws it. “I’m serious. I really do want you to come. And I think what you said to Dan last week was fantastic. I really wish I could think of things like that to say, but I never can. I’m just not quick enough. You know, I never would have thought about that woman’s feelings like that. Not until I heard you tell Dan off. I mean, you were great, what you said was just so right, and you really showed him up to be the moron that he is.” 

I know immediately what Alice is referring to—the one and only time I’d let my guard down, momentarily forgotten myself. I don’t often confront people anymore. In fact, it’s something I try very hard to avoid. But the way Dan Johnson and his friends had behaved two weeks ago had disgusted me so much that I couldn’t help myself. We had a guest speaker talking about career planning and college admissions. Sure, the speech was boring, we’d heard it all a billion times before, and the speaker was nervous and stuttered and hesitated and talked in confusing circles, only becoming worse as the crowd became noisier, more restless. Dan Johnson and his group of creepy friends had spotted their opportunity. They were so cruel and deliberately disruptive that the woman ended up leaving in humiliated tears. When it was all over, I stood behind Dan in the hallway and tapped him on the shoulder. 

Dan turned around with a smug, self- satisfied look on his face, clearly anticipating some kind of approbation for his behavior. 

“Did it ever occur to you,” I started, my voice surprisingly strong, fueled by anger, “how much you’ve hurt that woman? This is her life, Daniel, her career, her professional reputation. Your pathetic cry for attention means a whole lot of humiliation for her. I feel sorry for you, Daniel. You must be very sad and small inside to need to hurt someone like that, someone you don’t even know.” 

“You were amazing,” Alice continues. “And to be honest, I was totally surprised. I mean, I think everyone was. No one speaks to Dan like that.” She shakes her head. “No one.” 

Well, I do, I think. At least the real me does. 

“It was admirable. Courageous.” 

And it’s that word that does it: courageous. I so want to be courageous. I so want the coward in me to be obliterated and smashed and destroyed that I can no longer resist Alice. 

I stand up and hook my bag over my shoulder. “Okay,” I say, surprising myself. “Okay, I’ll come.” 

Chapter Two

Alice insists that we get ready for the party together. She picks me up in her car, a battered old Volkswagen, shortly after lunch on the day of the party and takes me to her place. She lives alone, she tells me as she speeds along, weaving in and out of lanes, in a onebedroom apartment in the inner city. I’m surprised by this, astonished really. I’d imagined that someone like Alice would live in a comfortable house in the suburbs with her devoted parents. I’d imagined her being spoiled, pampered, coddled (just as I used to be), and the fact that she lives alone makes her suddenly seem more interesting, more complicated than I’ve given her credit for. It’s clear that Alice and I have more in common than I’d imagined. 

I want to ask her a million questions: Where are her parents? How does she afford her own apartment? Is she ever afraid? Is she lonely? But I keep quiet. I have secrets of my own. I’ve learned that asking questions only puts me at risk of being interrogated myself. It is safer not to be too curious about others, safer not to ask. 

Her apartment is in a square, very ordinary- looking brick building. The stairwell is dark and uninviting, but when we get to her apartment, breathless after jogging up four flights of stairs, she opens the door to a room full of color and warmth. 

The walls are a deep burnt orange and are decorated with large, bright abstract paintings. Two enormous, soft- looking couches are draped with burgundy fabric and strewn with colorful African cushions. Unlit candles cover every horizontal surface. 

“Voilà! My humble abode.” Alice tugs me inside and watches my face expectantly as I look around the room. “What do you think? I did it all myself, you know. You should have seen it when I moved in, so boring and plain. It’s amazing what a bit of color can do to a room, isn’t it? A little creativity and some bright paint is all you really need.” 

“This is so cool,” I say. And I can’t help but feel a little envious. Alice’s space is so funky, so much younger than the modern, minimalist apartment I live in. 

“Really? You really like it?” 

“Yes.” I laugh. “I really do.” 

“I’m so glad. I want you to like it as much as I do because I plan for us to spend a lot of time together. And I can see us spending a lot of time right here, in this room, talking and talking and talking, sharing our precious secrets deep into the night.” 

I’ve heard that charming, powerful people have the knack of making you feel as though you’re the only person in the world, and now I know exactly what that means. I’m not quite sure what she does, or how she does it—another person would have come across as overly eager; obsequious, even—but when Alice gives me her attention like that, I feel golden, warm with the certainty that I’m fully understood. 

For a brief, insane moment, I imagine telling her my secret. I picture it all clearly. Me and Alice in this room—both a little tipsy, both giggly and happy and ever so slightly self- conscious with the feeling you have when you’ve made a new friend, a special friend—I put my hand on her knee so that she is still and quiet, so that she knows I’m about to say something important, and then I tell her. I tell her quickly, without pausing, without meeting her eyes. And when I’ve finished, she is warm and forgiving and understanding, as I hoped she’d be. She hugs me. Everything is all right and I am lighter for having told. I am free. 

But this is all just a dream. A crazy fantasy. I tell her nothing. 

I’m wearing my usual jeans and boots and shirt, and I’ve brought some makeup with me to put on before we go to the party, but Alice insists that I wear a dress. Her closet is bursting with them, in all sorts of colors and lengths and styles. There must be at least a hundred, and some still have tags. I wonder where she gets the money, how she affords so many clothes, and I’m tempted, once again, to ask. 

“I have a bit of a clothing habit.” She grins. 

“Really?” I joke. “I would never have ...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

An international sensation that The Wall Street Journal called a “publishing phenomenon,” this layered, poignant, and chilling novel of psychological suspense is the year’s most stunning American fiction debut. From its wrenching opening to its shocking climax, Beautiful Malice unfolds a haunting story in which people, motives, and circumstances are never what they seem.

Who is Katherine Patterson? It is a question she hopes no one can answer. To erase her past, Katherine has moved to a new city, enrolled in a new school, and even changed her name. She’s done the next best thing to disappearing altogether. Now, wary and alone, she seeks nothing more than anonymity. What she finds instead is the last thing she expected: a friend.

Even more unlikely, Katherine’s new friend is the most popular and magnetic girl in school. Extroverted, gorgeous, flirtatious, and unpredictable, she is everything that Katherine is not and doesn’t want to be: the center of attention. Yet Alice’s enthusiasm is infectious, her candor sometimes unsettling, and Katherine, in spite of her guarded caution, finds herself drawn into Alice’s private circle.

But Alice has secrets, too—darker than anyone can begin to imagine. And when she lets her guard down at last, Katherine discovers the darkest of them all. For there will be no escaping the past for Katherine Patterson—only a descent into a trap far more sinister . . . and infinitely more seductive.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Bantam Dell Pub Group
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0553808052
• ISBN 13: 9780553808056
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 260