In Her Skin

by Kim Savage

  I kept the Tiffany charm bracelet. I kept it to remind me I am someone’s daughter. That person was Patrice Chastain. I had a mother once, and she loved me.

  I try not to keep up with you. But in weak moments, I do. The Google Alert I have on your name pings a lot. You graduated, then took a gap year, but that doesn’t mean you’re not doing stuff. You’ve started a charity in my—Vivi’s—name, dedicated to “raising awareness of bolting/eloping behaviors.” It’s a nice touch. I read Fish Construction made a grant of a million dollars to endow it. I still don’t know if you ever would have killed me, and sometimes it’s okay not to know things.

  I have a new dream. You chase me down the Black Falcon pier and the gangway pulls up just as you reach it. I am the only passenger. You stand on the dock, your father’s coat wrapped around your black dress twice, hair whipping around your face. You cup your hands around your mouth and yell, “Vivi!” and your voice is carried off by the wind. Leaning over the churning sea, you mouth something else, three words, but I can’t make them out. If you can’t hear something, three times doesn’t make it so. I turn to walk below deck.

  Again, you call, “Vivi!”

  And I keep on walking, because I remember that my name is Jo.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In In Her Skin, Jolene Chastain believes her destiny in life is to have “that family.” I have that family at FSG/Macmillan, and they must be thanked.

  Janine O’Malley planted the seed for Jolene’s story. All authors should be so lucky to have an editor with a perfect sense of the stories they want—and need—to tell. I’m grateful for the gifts a stellar editor gives, but especially for the space Janine gave me, at the end, that I needed in order to get In Her Skin right.

  My publicist, Morgan Dubin, and the team at Fierce Reads continue to shout about my work (in the most lovely ways) when this introvert shies from doing so. My gratitude cannot be overstated.

  Speaking of family, writing partners become sisters, and I have two. Thanks to Larisa Dodge, for reminding me to make time to shuffle around in my father’s old sweater. It was the best advice a grieving daughter could get. And to Candace Gatti, who believed mightily in Beautiful Broken Girls, and hand-sold it, everywhere. Her generosity on my behalf is breathtaking.

  Thanks, too, to the collective wisdom of Binders Full of Young Adult Writers, who shared how they write through grief with candor and wisdom.

  My dear friend Mary Larkin Quinn lent her considerable expertise on bolting, and another dearest, Kelley Byron St. Coeur, introduced me to the remarkable students of Boston Latin Academy, a group of sophisticated thinkers who sparkle in real ways. The Parkman School is not Latin Academy, but I was inspired by the brilliance of its students.

  My agent, Sara Crowe, has a gift for identifying superfluous characters and story lines. In Her Skin is infinitely better for her earliest guidance. Thanks, too, to the team at Pippin, the most welcoming and supportive literary agency a writer could want.

  Cristy Walsh trained her artistic eye on the renovation of my home so that I could write, and only write.

  Jackson, Charlie, and Lila soothed my soul while I finished this novel. Lila, this is your book. There’s no better you than the you that you are, but you know that. Always know.

  In Her Skin is, in fact, a novel about the danger of forgetting who you are. I have a husband who, in gently reminding me to get back to work, reminds who I am foremost: a writer. Gary, I love you.

  Writers stand on other writers’ shoulders. Jolene is an homage to one of my favorite fictional characters, Shirley Jackson’s Merricat Blackwood. Merricat would say three times makes it so.

  I thank you, I thank you, I thank you.

  ALSO BY KIM SAVAGE

  Beautiful Broken Girls

  After the Woods

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kim Savage is a former reporter who received her master’s degree in Journalism from Northeastern University. Her work includes the critically acclaimed novels After the Woods and Beautiful Broken Girls. Kim grew up in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, and lives north of Boston, not far from the real Middlesex Fells of After the Woods. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  PART I . Vivi

  PART II . Temple

  PART III . Jo

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Kim Savage

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  Text copyright © 2018 Kim Savage

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2018

  eBook edition, March 2018

  fiercereads.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  [Hardcover Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data]

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  eISBN 9780374308018