The Girl Who Kissed a Lie: An Otherworld novella

By Skylar Dorset

"Romantic, suspenseful and witty all at once — ALICE IN WONDERLAND meets NEVERWHERE." – Claudia Gray, New York Times bestselling author of the Evernight series on The Girl Who Never Was

Don't miss this enchanting prequel to the exciting summer debut of The Girl Who Never Was. Before the enchantment breaks, Selkie thinks she's just an average teenage girl...

It's the beginning of summer vacation, and everyone at Selkie Stewart's Boston high school is excited. Except for Selkie, who sees herself standing at the edge of an abyss of Nothing To Do. Selkie doesn't want to spend her summer scouring the kitchen for gnomes with her crazy aunts or mooning over the enigmatic boy on Boston Common. So instead Selkie goes in search of a job. What she finds is a new best friend, a cute boy who might be more than he seems, and even more question about her mother and her past — and a sense that Selkie's adventures are just beginning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: May 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781492603917

Skylar Dorset

SKYLAR DORSET grew up in Rhode Island (where she still lives), graduated from Boston College and Harvard Law School, and has lived in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C. But she actually spends most of her time living with the characters in her head. She hopes that doesn't make her sound too crazy. Visit her at www.skylardorset.com.

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Copyright © 2014 by Skylar Dorset

Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover designed by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover image by Blake Morrow

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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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CONTENTS

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

A Sneak Peek at The Girl Who Never Was

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

About the Author

CHAPTER 1

The gnomes are getting smarter.

At least according to Aunt True and Aunt Virtue, who I find with their heads in the oven on the first day of summer vacation.

I don’t even ask them what they’re doing because this is the kind of thing that happens all the time in our house, and I’ve learned not to ask questions. After sixteen years of responses like The gnomes are getting smarter, you stop asking.

My aunts are convinced that our house is infested with gnomes. I’ve never seen any, but I can’t remember a time in my life when my aunts weren’t engaged in an all-out war with them. They see evidence of them everywhere. They insist the creatures move our furniture around when we’re not looking and then replace it, but always off by an inch or so. They do the same thing with the paintings on the walls. I have never noticed any of this, but I’ve learned to go along with it.

Are they in the oven now? I ask, as I eat my cereal at our kitchen table.

They have learned how to open the oven, Aunt Virtue confirms.

They moved the frying pan that was in the oven two whole inches to the left, Aunt True adds, also backing out of the oven. "They’re getting bold."

There is nothing for it, Aunt Virtue announces. We must scour the kitchen.

Aunt True nods. They exchange looks of grim determination, like spry, elderly aunt generals.

Then Aunt True turns to me. Aren’t you off to school today?

It’s summer vacation, Aunt True, I remind her. This whole school-schedule thing is still new to us. Up until last year, my aunts had homeschooled me, insisting that it was safest. I wasn’t sure what that meant but assumed it had something to do with gnomes, so I didn’t ask questions. Last summer, though, I asked if I could attend school. My aunts fretted about it for several days, and then finally grandly announced that yes, I would be allowed to go to elementary school.

And then I pointed out that I’m in high school.

After all the buildup, it turned out to be a bit anticlimactic. None of my aunts’ mysterious, threatening gnomes showed up, which was really disappointing. (I know that gnomes don’t exist, but I can’t help the little part of me that wishes that they did, just because then I wouldn’t have to feel like my aunts were crazy.) But no gnomes showed up—unless you count weaselly Mr. Brannigan, the biology teacher, and he’s just a weaselly little man, not a gnome (I’m fairly sure)—and the rest of school was just like how I’ve found the rest of life to be: there were bits of it I really liked and bits of it I could have done without. For instance, I liked getting to be around lots of normal people. I didn’t like getting to be around lots of normal people who had all established their friendship cliques years earlier.

And now it is summer vacation, and I am feeling somewhat at loose ends. When I was homeschooled, we didn’t really stop for summer. My aunts don’t pay attention to the passage of time. They always dress exactly the same: all in black. Long-sleeved black blouses, knee-length black skirts, black boots underneath. No concession to humid Boston summers. I’m not even sure that they realize the climate here contains four distinct seasons because they stay in our town house, fighting gnomes and not really acknowledging the world outside. So we didn’t stop for summers when I was a child, and I have never had a summer vacation before. You’d think this would be exciting. Everyone else at school was excited to be standing at the edge of an abyss of Nothing To Do. I seem to be the only one pointing out that, actually, it’s an abyss, and that’s not a good thing.

One thing I know I do not want to do with my summer vacation: scour the kitchen for gnomes. I want to do something utterly, perfectly normal, like all the utterly, perfectly normal people I go to school with.

Summer vacation, Aunt Virtue echoes, frowning thoughtfully, as if trying to figure out what those two words mean together.

Oh, dear, says Aunt True, wringing her hands. Aunt True wrings her hands a lot. My aunts are both nervous by temperament—they worry about gnome attacks, after all—but Aunt True tends to wail about it and Aunt Virtue tends to be snappish about it. Were we supposed to plan something for you to do on summer vacation? I feel terrible about this. We should have planned something for her, Virtue.

Nonsense, clips Aunt Virtue briskly. Selkie can entertain herself. She can read some books. Can’t you, dear?

At least I haven’t been asked to scour the kitchen. But generally my aunts like to keep me out of the skirmishes with gnomes.

Yes, I say with more confidence than I really feel (I hope). Definitely.

***

I really love Boston in the summertime. Unlike my aunts, I am very attuned to all of Boston’s seasons, to all of their good points and bad points. And Boston in the summertime can get hot and humid, but sometimes sunny days pile upon each other until I feel dizzy with the brightness in the very best way. I love the sun. Boston’s other seasons have their own charms, but none of them provide me with as much sunshine as summer does.

Ben loves sunshine too, which means he also enjoys this time of year. Not that we have ever had that conversation in so many words, but Ben hates rain, so the converse must be true.

And so maybe I should explain about Ben. Ben works on the Common, which is the huge park in the center of downtown Boston, still called the Common from the time when it was land shared by all of Boston’s early settlers. Boston is like that: things are frequently still called by the names they had centuries before.

I live right across the street from the Common, so for all intents and purposes, Boston’s sprawling, busy, people-clogged Common is my front yard. I’ve been going to the Common to sprawl in the sunshine for as long as I can remember, and Ben has also been there for as long as I can remember. It’s funny, because my aunts worry so much about everything, but they never seem to worry about my being on the Common. Or on Beacon Hill, even. I have always spent most of my time exploring the nooks and crannies of my home, and I know it and love it. There’s a way in which this little slice of Boston that I live in is really my oldest friend.

Followed by Ben.

Ben, actually, is kind of the only friend I have. It’s not like I made a lot of friends being homeschooled in an ancient town house infested with nonexistent gnomes. And I’ve found making friends in high school to be…difficult, to put it mildly. It’s hard to make friends when you’re different, when you feel like you’re so different that you don’t even recognize the people around you, that they could be an entirely different species. These people have, for the most part, been together since kindergarten. They’ve learned how to count together, and they’ve squabbled over the jungle gym together, and they’ve gone to each other’s birthday parties. I’ve never even had a birthday party. They all have stories that go back for ages, their own sort of oral tradition, and I’m not part of it. I sit in the middle of the inside jokes flying over my head, and I try to smile and join in, but for the most part I fail at it miserably. People are nice to me, generally, but there isn’t a single person I feel like I can talk to in the world.

Except for Ben. And,

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