by Sara Faring
“I’ll get it,” I say before standing up. Liese throws her bejeweled hands up in the air.
My feet feel like fizzling lava as I walk to the door. It’s silent outside, and my peephole is dark, as if covered by a hand. I look down at mine, which are quivering still, and I unlock the door, opening the house to the light outside.
I blink, wordless, at the group of about twelve people standing there. A few old white guys—is that Brock Deveraux?—a couple of nerdy younger ones, a pretty black girl, an old white-haired woman, and a tall woman in her late twenties with dead-white skin and thick black hair who looks a lot like Dom. She’s staring at me dead-on, and all of a sudden I become aware of my stained sweatpants.
“Um, can I help you?” I ask.
“You’re Angel,” the leader says, tucking her hair behind her ears with a half smile. There’s a reverence to her voice, a familiar tenderness. Before Mama died, I used to dream she’d passed and wake up to find her peacefully asleep in her hospital bed. I’d say, in the same tone this girl used: Hi, Mama. You’re here.
The white-faced woman reaches for my hand, so warm in hers, and that’s when I know.
You’re Angel.
I’m Mavi.
37
MAVI: CALIFORNIA, JANUARY 2020
When I break through, I blink, clear scum from my eyes. I feel slick with glue. I tug the coating of paste from my face like a wet sock from a foot, and that is when I see.
The room around me glows in colors like nothing I’ve ever seen. Screens of jittering numerals so small they disappear sit before me. I look down at my hands—they are Yesi-size, pearlescent, and swollen. I tug at my hair—long and black as night. Before me there is a notebook, and upon it are written the words: Vaccaro School Game Player Notes—Property of Sharon a.k.a. CHARON. I scrabble for it, desperate for any clarity, and read an entry from the beginning, dated December 2019:
Fun new player addition in the form of you-know-who’s kid. The one who mowed down the brother. The perfect loser to mine for info for my new game about child killers.
Called “Angel.” What a bullshit name??? We chatted today while I was Charon—Angel’s clueless about the nature of the game.
Long story short, yada yada yada, Angel was probably normal enough once, if a little too smart and lonely. But you could just tell that ever since half the family died, Angel’s been screwed up.
Anyway, I considered spilling that Angel’s mother dearest wrote anecdotes from her own childhood sob story into the English teacher’s background story. The guerrilla mom getting taken, living on her own, et cetera et cetera. She never told me; I caught her out when I saw her spending way too much time on build-out, a.k.a. frittering away my dad’s cash.
But why should this kid Angel have that, when the rest of us lose and lose and lose without getting any juicy nibs from the world in return?
Sorry, Angel. The world says fuck you.
Angel, the new player.
Me, the English teacher.
And the creator of the game, our old god of many forms, who went by Charon and the tenth girl: She is Sharon.
I inhale and take stock of my skeleton.
She was Sharon. Now, the boatman across the river Styx is trapped in the underworld for good.
I am lying in a chair of some kind. A congealed meat-and-cheese sandwich sits on a desk nearby. I come to my feet, flex my new toes, painted in ten different colors. I blink at them, greet them. I greet it all. I rise, only to catch sight of the street outside the window before me; a group of children totters behind an older woman wearing a sun-yellow shirt that reads, Teachers Demand Action. Each child clings on to a shared rope, giggling, chattering, in their wildly bright garb. As they bounce along, I feel as if they are growing before my eyes, pulsing with youth.
Wonder. The word bubbles up in me from a place I’ve never felt. Wonder, until the very end.
How beautiful.
I drop to my knees right there, relishing the jolt of pain. There are tears streaming down my face, hot and slick in a way I never could have imagined. Energy courses through me, of a type I didn’t believe existed. Life force, you might call it.
I can’t know where this world ends. I only know that this is where it starts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
… or as I see them, an extended dedication to those who helped bring this book to life.
To Sarah Bedingfield, agent extraordinaire, whose brilliance is clothed in the most incredible kindness.
To Erin Stein, genius editor and master of Easter eggs, whose keen eye, patience, and enthusiasm brought the shine out.
To Natalie C. Sousa, Nicole Otto, Melinda Ackell, and Raymond Ernesto Colón at Imprint and to Shivani Annirood, Molly Ellis, Alexandra Hernandez, Kathryn Little, Kelsey Marrujo, and Katie Quinn on the Macmillan team, whose every moment spent on TTG will always fill me with profound gratitude.
To Michelle Kroes & Michelle Weiner at CAA, whose sharp insight and guidance were and are invaluable.
To EAF, my forever home, who convinces me everything will be all right even when we are picking out coffins three thousand miles apart.
To WOF, inventor of Mister Garcia, who is living proof that the impossible projects are most worth starting. (José, can you see?)
To AJF, my almost twin, who seeps into all my books and whose future I’ll feel so lucky to witness.
Al matriarcado—Teti, Mini, Chimi, Lu, Sil, Feli e Isa—por el amor y apoyo que desde lejos siempre me han brindado.
To CLR, whose joy is my purest, greatest one, and whose life I would want to share every time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Los Angeles, Sara Faring is a multilingual Argentine American fascinated by literary puzzles. After working in investment banking at J.P.Morgan, she worked at Penguin Random House. She holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in International Studies and from the Wharton School in Business. She currently resides in New York City.
Visit her online at sarafaring.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Sara Dorothy Rosenberg.
A part of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
fiercereads.com
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Faring, Sara, author.
Title: The tenth girl / Sara Faring.
Description: First edition. | New York: Imprint, 2019. | Summary: In 1978, to avoid becoming a desaparecido like her mother, eighteen-year-old Mavi takes a teaching job at Vaccaro School, an isolated finishing school in Patagonia, rumored to be haunted.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019002534 | ISBN 9781250304506 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250304513 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Schools—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction. | Missing children—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. | Patagonia (Argentina and Chile)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.F3673 Ten 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002534
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Imprint logo designed by Amanda Spielman
First hardcover edition, 2019
eBook edition, September 2019
eISBN 9781250304513