Informationen zum Autor Ella Berman Klappentext REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK! A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home. . . . Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline's death. But that didn't stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures. While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn't risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked. . . . Except now Joni needs a favor, and when she turns up at her old friend's doorstep asking for an alibi, Bess has no choice but to say yes. She still owes her. But as the two friends try desperately to shake off their past, they have to face reality. Can you ever be an innocent woman when everyone wants you to be guilty? Leseprobe One 2018 I know it's her from the moment I hear the knock at my door. After ten years, with no warning, somehow, I still know. Over the years, I've begun to think of Joni only in photographs-reassuringly flat shots of her golden arm slung over my shoulders, eyes knowing, grin wolfish, face tanned and inscrutable, maybe careless in the wrong light. Now that she is inches away, I remember the full animality of our friendship. The clamminess of her skin as we slept side by side, matching leg hairs dusting our thighs, the keloid scar just above her left temple, the viscous blood that would trickle from her nose often and without any warning, although usually when she was being her worst self, as if her body wanted so badly to remind us that she was human. Joni's short hair is wet, slicked back, and her lips are swollen in the flickering porch light. I remember that she used to chew her bottom lip when she was feeling vulnerable, and I never mentioned it because it felt like a waste of this rare insight I'd been given. Now I can see that her mouth looks painful, red raw where she's torn at it. Joni doesn't attempt to hide her shock at my own appearance in return, and I stand rigidly as she takes me in-hair hanging limply to my waist, faded T-shirt thrown over flannel pajama shorts, pale skin that has seen less sun in five years than it used to in one summer. From afar, I've kept abreast of Joni's transformation from scrappy, magnetic teenager to overgroomed media rent-a-personality, but this is the first time she's seen me outside of my teenage state, probably seared as indelibly into her mind as it is my own (hip popped, pink tongue sticking out of lips coated in MAC's Rapturous). "Jesus, Bess," she says finally. "You're a little fucking young to retire to the desert, aren't you?" As Joni's openers go, it could have been a lot worse, but I still feel my perspective shift. I wonder if she can already sense the stifling flatness of life next to the Salton Sea-a wasteland or a kingdom, depending on how you ended up here. "I need your help," Joni says next. I think of the ghost between us. The three of us sticky with sweat, sunburned bodies loose from cheap beer as we danced to our favorite song underneath a palm leaf canopy, or lying on our stomachs on a hotel bed, dirty soles of our feet in the air, as Joni and I competed over who could shock Evangeline into laughing first. Then, inevitably-the unnatural angle of Ev's neck under the skinniest moon I've ever seen. Ten summers that have felt like ten seconds and ten lifetimes all at once. When Joni takes a step toward me, I move away and she pretends not to notice, just like how I pretend not to notice that her hand is shaking as she plays with the button of her white linen shirt. I think about the ...

Autorentext

Ella Berman

Klappentext

**REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK!

A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home. . . .**
 
Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline’s death. But that didn’t stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures.
 
While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn’t risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked. . . .
 
Except now Joni needs a favor, and when she turns up at her old friend's doorstep asking for an alibi, Bess has no choice but to say yes. She still owes her. But as the two friends try desperately to shake off their past, they have to face reality.

Can you ever be an innocent woman when everyone wants you to be guilty?