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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
368 Seiten
Englisch
Faber & Fabererschienen am01.04.2014Main
Faded Gatsby glamour and thrilling gothic horror meet in this gorgeously told, terrifying and dreamy YA romance. You stop fearing the devil when you're holding his hand...Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White's sleepy, seaside town ...until River West comes along. River rents the guesthouse behind Violet's crumbling estate, and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard. Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Violet's grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who likes coffee and who kisses you in a cemetery...Violet's already so knee-deep in love, she can't see straight. And that's just how River likes it.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
TaschenbuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR12,00
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR7,99

Produkt

KlappentextFaded Gatsby glamour and thrilling gothic horror meet in this gorgeously told, terrifying and dreamy YA romance. You stop fearing the devil when you're holding his hand...Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White's sleepy, seaside town ...until River West comes along. River rents the guesthouse behind Violet's crumbling estate, and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard. Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Violet's grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who likes coffee and who kisses you in a cemetery...Violet's already so knee-deep in love, she can't see straight. And that's just how River likes it.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780571307913
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2014
Erscheinungsdatum01.04.2014
AuflageMain
Seiten368 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse951 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.1386667
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe




2


I lived with my twin brother, Luke. And that´s it. We were only seventeen, and it was illegal to be living alone, but no one did anything about it.

Our parents were artists. John and Joelie Iris White. Painters. They loved us, but they loved art more. They´d gone to Europe last autumn, looking for muses in cafés and castles . . . and blowing through the last bit of the family wealth. I hoped they would come home soon, if for no other reason than I wanted there to be enough money left for me to go to a good university. Someplace pretty, with green lawns, and white columns, and cavernous libraries, and professors with elbow patches.

But I wasn´t counting on it.

My great-grandparents had been East Coast industrialists, and they made loads of cash when they were really damn young. They invested in railroads and manufacturing - things that everyone was excited about back then. And they handed down all the money to a grandpa I never got to meet.

Freddie and my grandfather had been about the richest people in Echo in their day, as much as being the est´ of anything in Echo mattered. Freddie told me the Glenships had been wealthier, but rich was rich, in my mind. Grandpa built a big house right on the edge of a cliff above the crashing waves. He married my wild grandmother, and brought her to live with him and have his babies on the edge of the Atlantic.

Our home was dignified and elegant and great and beautiful.

And also wind-bitten and salt-stained and overgrown and neglected - like an ageing ballerina who looked young and supple from far away, but up close had grey at her temples and lines by her eyes and a scar on one cheek.

Freddie called our house Citizen Kane, after the old film with its perfectly framed shots and Orson Welles strutting around and talking in a deep voice. But I thought it was a depressing movie, mostly. Hopeless. Besides, the house was built in 1929, and Citizen Kane didn´t come out until 1941, which meant that Freddie took years to think of a name. Maybe she saw the movie and it meant something to her. I don´t know. No one really knew why Freddie did anything, most of the time. Not even me.

Freddie and my grandfather lived in the Citizen until they died. And after our parents went to Europe, I moved into Freddie´s old bedroom on the second floor. I left everything the way it was. I didn´t even take her dresses out of the walk-in closet.

I loved my bedroom . . . the dressing table with the warped mirror, the squat chairs without armrests, the elaborate, oriental dressing screen. I loved curving my body into the velvet sofa, books piled at my feet, the dusty, floor-length curtains pushed back from the windows so I could see the sky. At night the purple-fringed lampshades turned the light a hue somewhere between lilac and dusky plum.

Luke´s bedroom was on the third floor. And I think we both liked having the space between us.

That summer, Luke and I finally ran out of the money our parents had given us when they´d left for Europe all those months ago. Citizen Kane needed a new roof because the ocean wind beat the hell out it, and Luke and I needed food. So I had the brilliant idea to rent out the guesthouse. Yes, the Citizen had a guesthouse, left over from the days when Freddie sponsored starving artists. They would move in for a few months, paint her, and then move on to the next town, the next wealthy person, the next gin bottle.

I put up posters in Echo, advertising a guesthouse for rent, and thought nothing would come of it.

But something did.

It was an early June day with a balmy breeze that felt like summer slapping spring. The salt from the sea was thick in the air. I sat on the fat front steps, facing the road that ran along the great big blue. Two stone columns framed the large front door, and the steps spilled down between them. From where I sat, our tangled, forgotten lawn sprawled out to the unpaved road. Beyond it was a sheer drop, ending in pounding waves.

So I was sitting there, taking turns reading Nathaniel Hawthorne´s short stories and watching the sky blurring into the far-off waves, when a new-old car turned up my road, went past Sunshine´s house, and pulled into my circular driveway. I say old, because it was from the 1950s, all big and pretty and looking like really bad gas mileage, but it was fixed up as if it was fresh-off-the-block new, and shiny as a kid´s face at Christmas.

The car came to a stop. A boy got out. He was about the same age as me, but still, I couldn´t really call him a man. So yeah, a boy. A boy got out of the car, and looked straight at me as if I had called out his name.

But I hadn´t. He didn´t know me. And I didn´t know him. He was not tall - less than six feet, maybe - and he was strong, and lean. He had thick, dark brown hair, which was wavy and parted at the side . . . until the sea wind lifted it and blew it across his forehead and tangled it all up. I liked his face on sight. And his tanned, been-in-the-summer-sun-every-day skin. And his brown eyes.

He looked at me, and I looked back.

Are you Violet?´ he asked, and didn´t wait for my answer. Yeah, I think you are. I´m River. River West.´ He swept his hand through the air in front of him. And this must be Citizen Kane.´

He was looking at my house, so I tilted my head and looked at my house too. In my memory, it was gleaming white stone columns and robin´s egg blue trim around the big square windows, and manicured shrubbery and tastefully nude statues in the centre of the front fountain. But the fountain I saw now was mossy and dirty, with one nose, one breast, and three fingers broken and missing from its poor, undressed girls. The bright blue paint had turned grey and was chipping off the frames. The shrubbery was a feral, eight-foot-tall jungle.

I wasn´t embarrassed by the Citizen, because it was still a damn amazing house, but now I wondered if I should have trimmed the bushes down, maybe. Or scrubbed up the naked fountain girls. Or repainted the window frames.

It´s kind of a big place for one blonde-haired, book-reading girl,´ the boy in front of me said, after a long minute of house-looking from the both of us. Are you alone? Or are your parents around here somewhere?´

I shut my book and got to my feet. My parents are in Europe.´ I paused. Where are your parents?´

He smiled. Touché.´

Our town was small enough that I never developed a healthy fear of strangers. To me, they were exciting things, gift-wrapped and full of possibilities, the sweet smell of somewhere else wafting from them like perfume. And so River West, stranger, didn´t stir in me any sort of fear . . . only a rush of excitement, like how I felt right before a really big storm hit, when the air crackled with expectation.

I smiled back. I live here with my twin brother, Luke. He keeps to the third floor, mostly. When I´m lucky.´ I glanced up, but the third-floor windows were blocked by the portico roof. I looked back at the boy. So how did you know my name?´

I saw it on the posters in town, stupid,´ River said, and smiled. Guesthouse for rent. See Violet at Citizen Kane. I asked around and some locals directed me here.´

He didn´t say stupid´ like how Luke said it, blinking at me with narrow eyes and a condescending smile. River said it like it was an . . . endearment. Which threw me, sort of. I slipped the sandal off my right foot and tapped my toes on the stone step, making my yellow skirt swing against my knees. So . . . you want to rent the guesthouse?´

Yep.´ River put an elbow out and leaned on to his shiny car. He wore black linen pants - the kind I thought only stubble-jawed Spanish men wore in European movies set by the sea - and a white button-down shirt. It might have looked strange on someone else. But it suited him all right.

Okay. I need the first month´s rent in cash.´

He nodded and reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a leather wallet and opened it. There was a thick stack of green inside it. So thick that, after he counted out the money he needed, he could barely close the wallet again. River West walked up to me, grabbed my hand, and pressed five hundred dollars into my palm.

Don´t you even want to see the place first?´ I asked, not taking my eyes off the green paper. I let my fingers close down on it, tight.

No.´

I grinned. River grinned back at me, and I noticed that his nose was straight and his mouth was crooked. I liked it. I watched him swagger, yes swagger, with panther hips, over to the boot of his car, where he pulled out a couple of old-fashioned suitcases, the kind with buckles and straps instead of zips. I slipped my sandal back on to my right foot and started down the narrow, overgrown path through the bushes, past all the ivy-covered windows, past the plain wooden garage, to the back of Citizen Kane.

I looked behind me, just once. He was following.

I led him beyond the crumbling tennis court and the old greenhouse. They looked worse every time I saw them. Things had gone to hell since Freddie died, and it wasn´t just about our lack of cash. Freddie had kept things up without money somehow. She´d been tireless, fixing things all on her own, teaching herself rudimentary plumbing and carpentry, dusting, sweeping, cleaning, day in day out. But not us. We did nothing. Nothing but paint. Canvases, that is, not walls or fences or window frames.

Dad said that kind of painting was for Tom Sawyer and other unwashed orphans. I hadn´t been sure if he was kidding. Probably not.

The tennis court...


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