“Where’s the mind-altering space drug when you need it, right?”
Dex smiled. “Do you believe the agents? About the X10-88 being all gone?”
I thought about it, then shook my head. “I honestly don’t know. It’d make a really great story . . . but it doesn’t seem likely I’ll get my hands on any real evidence.”
Dex scrunched up his nose. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said with a sigh. “It’ll make a perfect story for Strange World.”
“Is Ike really going to write it up?”
“Of course. It’s not like Strange World has ever needed anything like proof before,” I said, half laughing. “He’s going to head out to the meteorite site tomorrow to take some pictures, and he asked me to come. He said he’d give me a byline in the story if I helped him.”
Dex raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to?”
“Yeah, I think I am,” I said. “I’ve got another angle for the Northwestern article. It’s still in its early stages, but I have a few months to work it out.”
Dex nodded. “That’s cool.”
I shook my head, sighing. “I can’t believe I’ll get my first actual byline in a national publication and it’ll be Strange World. But all I ever wanted to do was find the truth and tell it. And what we’ll write will at least be true, even if no one will believe it.”
“Kind of ironic,” Dex said.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s nice, though, that you’ll get to work on the story with Ike.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. Dex was talking about the Strange World story, but my thoughts went to the other one, the more personal one. “I think so, too.”
Dex’s eyes drifted down, and I wondered if he was thinking about his own dad. The one who wasn’t coming back. I wondered if he would find him someday, and if he’d learn for himself all of the reasons why his dad had kept so much a secret. Because now I knew those reasons always existed, if we would just allow ourselves to see them. Dex might never totally forgive his dad, but maybe understanding him could help.
Maybe.
It was strange to not just know, but to really get how someone could be more than one thing at the same time. Not right or wrong, not good or bad. But a messy soup of all those things. Julie Harper, Reese, the sheriff. Micah.
Even Dex had more to him than I’d let myself admit. It had been easier to still think of him as the little boy next door. In some ways, that would always be a little bit true. But as I looked across the small tree house at him, his shoulders broad and solid against the wooden planks, his long legs crossing each other so his knees were inches from mine, his hair falling across his forehead in a way that had always seemed unruly but now sent a shiver up my spine . . . there was more there. He could annoy me, infuriate me, make me laugh. He stayed in my head when he wasn’t around. And there was so much more than that, even. More than I’d been ready to see before.
Dex caught me looking at him. “What is it?” he asked, his low voice cracking a bit.
I swallowed past the sudden dryness in my throat. “I just, um . . . I wanted to apologize, for what happened last time we were up here together.”
Color flared up on Dex’s cheeks, and he looked away. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do. I just . . . it freaked me out, what almost . . . what we almost . . .”
“Yeah, I sort of got that.”
“No, but . . . you don’t know why.”
Dex looked up at me, a glimmer of hope in his expression.
“I’ve known you for so long, Dex. And this summer I’ve gotten to know you all over again,” I started. “And you became—you always were—important to me. And I think I was afraid of messing all that up.”
“Messing it up how?”
I thought about all the mistakes I’d made, all the ways I’d gotten things wrong. “I think I started to realize that I’m more like my dad than I ever thought. That I have it in me to hurt someone I . . . care about.”
“But we all have that in us, Penny. I don’t think you can get around it—accidentally hurting people. It’s a part of, well, knowing people. I mean, look at my mom. She’s always looking out for people, and her keeping a secret from me, even for the best reasons—it still hurt.”
“I know. But I don’t want to hurt you.”
Dex’s eyes glimmered as he smiled. He moved closer to me, his knees pressing more firmly against mine.
“What if I told you I’m willing to risk it?”
Bubbles expanded in my chest. A smile stretched across my face. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
And then everything in my body was leaning forward, seemingly beyond my control. My arms, shoulders, back, neck—everything angled toward Dex, moved across the darkened space between us to be nearer to him.
He was doing the same thing, coming closer in the soft light. There were a few inches between us, and then there was nothing. The instant my mouth met his, I knew everything would change. And I was ready for it. Dex, the boy next door, and Dex, something more—he was everything wrapped into one.
Dex smiled even as he kissed me, and then he put one hand up to the side of my face and pulled me in closer. It felt right, that move. So did the next one, and the next. It all felt so right. All my worries and thoughts flew out the window as the shadows we cast moved across the tree house walls.
Dex was willing to risk it.
And so was I.
Because I couldn’t be sure that things would work out, that we’d never accidentally hurt each other, that things wouldn’t end badly. Just like I couldn’t be sure that Reese and I would ever be friends again, or that Bone Lake would ever thrive again, or that my dad and I would ever really understand each other and be always honest with each other, even if the truth was complicated and messy and sometimes painful.
I couldn’t know any of this would happen. I couldn’t prove it.
But I could believe it.
Acknowledgments
Thank you so much to Reiko Davis, who has always been the most supportive, encouraging agent a girl could ask for. And many thank-yous to Jessica MacLeish, my incredible editor. When I wanted to swing from portal fantasies to a book about a creature in the woods, you were both on board without any hesitation, and that meant so much.
Thank you also to everyone at HarperTeen for the work you put into making this book a reality. Special thanks to Erin Fitzsimmons, who designed the incredible cover, and Marie Bergeron, who created the amazing illustration. It exceeded all my hopes. And thank you to Tiffany Morris for your valued input and suggestions, and to Sarah Ratner for telling me the beginning of the book needed to be creepier—you were right!
The core of this book would not exist had my dad not spent a good part of my childhood terrifying me for fun; so thanks, Dad, for convincing me that lake monsters, yetis, and headless horsemen could be real, even if just for a little while. And thanks, Mom, for subsequently allowing me to sleep with a night-light for way longer than was probably appropriate.
Thank you to all my family and friends, old and new, for your support and encouragement—I’d be lost in the woods without you. I also want to thank the YA community in general, for lending support, being awesome, and helping me to learn and grow as both a writer and a human. I’m so glad this space exists, and I feel lucky to be a part of it.
And thanks to Phil, as always, for everything.
About the Author
Photo by Phil Ranta
LINDSEY KLINGELE, author of The Marked Girl and its sequel, The Broken World, was raised in Michigan and now lives in Los Angeles. She has worked in the writers’ rooms of television shows in addition to writing YA novels. You can visit her online at www.lindseyklingele.com.
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Books by Lindsey Klingele
The Marked Girl
The Broken World
The Truth Lies Here
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE TRUTH LIES HERE. Copyright © 2018 by Lindsey Klingele. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art by MARIE BERGERON
Cover design by ERIN FITZSIMMONS
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Klingele, Lindsey, author.
The truth lies here / Lindsey Klingele. —First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Arriving for summer in her Michigan hometown, aspiring journalist Penny learns that her father, a tabloid journalist, is missing and charred dead bodies are being found in the woods.
Digital Edition AUGUST 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-238041-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-238039-5
[1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Murder—Fiction. 3. Journalism—Fiction. 4. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 5. Supernatural—Fiction.] I. Mystery and detective stories.
PZ7.1.K655 Tru 2018
2017034539
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
* * *
1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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The Truth Lies Here Page 29
