Thanks to Penguin/Putnam, I have not only the synopsis of the book, the cover reveal, but an excerpt (it's Tuesday, so it works for a bit of a Teaser Tuesday, no?) aaaannd a galley giveaway!
The giveaway is open internationally, too.
About White Lines:
A gritty, atmospheric coming-of-age tale set in New York’s Lower East Side
Seventeen-year-old Cat is living every teenager’s dream—she has her own apartment on New York’s Lower East Side and at night she’s club kid royalty, guarding the velvet rope at some of the hottest clubs in the city. The night with its crazy, frenetic, high-inducing energy—the pulsing beat of the music, the radiant, joyful people and those seductive white lines that can ease all pain—is when Cat truly lives. But her daytime, when her real life occurs, is more nightmare than dream.add to Goodreads/pre-order on Amazon
The sounds of the city grate against Cat’s nerves, she shrinks away from human touch, and can barely think the words “I love you” even when she feels them. Having spent years suffering her mother’s emotional and physical abuse, and abandoned by her father who’s found happiness in another woman, Cat is terrified and alone—unable to connect to anyone or anything. But then someone comes along who makes her want to stop escaping her life and actually live it, only she’ll need to summon the courage to confront her demons and take control of a life already spinning dangerously out of control. Both poignant and raw, White Lines is a gripping tale and the reader won’t want to look away.
/get notified when it's added to TBDExcerpt:
THREE
I’M SITTING ON THE
STONE STEPS at school, pretending to
enjoy an apple that I bought from an Asian grocery a few blocks over, when all
I’m really thinking about is how long I have left until I can go home and start
getting ready for the club, every stroke of makeup on my skin sliding me
further from daylight. I tongue the white flesh and sink my teeth in, wishing
the ripe fruit was the tanned blond head of one of the salad girls.
Since Manhattan Prep is housed in a
brownstone and has a population of only one hundred students or fewer in the
entire school, we don’t have a cafeteria. Or a prom. Or dances. Or phys ed.
Instead, the Park Avenue girls buy salads at a cafeteria next door and sit in
the glass atrium picking at their wilted greens, retouching their lip gloss
with sticky pink wands. Even though we are all essentially weird in some way—
after all, this is a school for kids who have gotten into some kind of
trouble—it’s not enough to banish cliques completely. We still have the same
bullshit categories as any other school: the jocks, the popular girls, the
nerds. And the untouchables.
Like me. It goes without saying that nobody
wants to have lunch with the weirdo who goes to clubs all the way downtown
every night, so I sit on the steps and try to pretend that it doesn’t matter,
when really, I’d do just about anything to have a friend here. This silent
admission makes my cheeks flush with shame. How can I be so weak? Even at
Nightingale, I only ever really had Sara, her blond curls hanging over my
shoulder, elaborately folded notes tossed at my feet during study hall.
Somehow, it was almost enough. But here, with no one to talk to day after day,
the loneliness creeps in like an old friend I no longer want to know. Worse
yet, it wants to make small talk. Oh, it’s you again? How’ve you been?
Across the street, Julian, the new kid, sits
on the curb in front of Ray’s Pizza, a slice dangling from one hand. As he
brings the pizza to his lips, the cheese falls off in one giant greasy slide to
his lap. Julian has long dark hair that hangs to his shoulders and looks as if
it hasn’t made friends with soap or water in days. His skin is the color of
café au lait, and there’s something about the tilt of his eyes that makes me
think he’s vaguely Asian. He wears jeans so tight that I’m sure years from now
he’ll be sitting in some clinic with his frosty blond wife, stammering that he
has no idea WHY they’ve had such a difficult time starting a family. All I know
about Julian is that (a) he sits right across the aisle from me in history
class, and (b) he transferred from Dalton last week after some kind of scandal
involving his ex-girlfriend, and (c) he’s totally into the Ramones. He doesn’t
talk to anyone, and never raises his hand in class, just stares down at his
binder and scribbles what looks like pictures of Transformers on the cover
with a black pen.
Julian finishes scraping melted cheese off
his jeans and looks up, an irritated expression clouding his face. When his
eyes meet mine, I feel a rough shock of recognition between us and raise my
apple core in a kind of demented greeting, the air suddenly as thick as
pudding. Julian tosses me a curt nod and promptly goes back to stuffing the
rest of the slice into his mouth, gnawing hungrily at the edges of the crust,
watching me all the while. Even though I love staring, and I think that
generally other people’s lives are way more interesting than TV, I feel uneasy
as Julian’s eyes lock on to mine. My face burns as he chews the last bite and
brushes his hands against his black jeans before walking toward me. I turn the
apple core over and over between my palms, my heart careening in my chest as
he approaches, glad that my hands have something to do even if the core is
damp, sticky, and turning browner by the minute. As Julian moves closer, I
can’t help but notice how he shakes the hair from his eyes with one expert,
jagged motion, how his hazel eyes change from green to brown in the light His
skin is smooth and slightly bronzed, as if he’s just returned from some exotic
locale. He tilts his chin in my direction defiantly, his eyes flicking coolly
over my body, taking me in.
“See something you like?” He raises one dark
eyebrow, and I feel like I’m going to spontaneously combust, which is what
always happens when someone potentially interesting talks to me in the real
world—especially if that person happens to be a guy. And up close, Julian is
definitely interesting—though it makes my stomach churn spasmodically to even
think the word to myself. People are dangerous, unpredictable. I know this
implicitly, and every time I come into contact with them, I become a caged
animal, a panther pacing back and forth behind steel bars, wary and agitated.
“Yeah,” I stammer, turning redder by the
second and wishing that a manhole would just open up and swallow me whole. I
look down at my black boots and scramble for something to say, my brain a
jumble of images, none that entirely make sense. “Your pizza—I was just . . .
hungry.”
The minute the words leave my lips, I know
they are the truth. My stomach begins to growl loudly as if in agreement, and I
look up into Julian’s amused face and laugh, my voice echoing in the street,
too loud, even with the noise of a passing bus belching a thick cloud of black
smoke. As the sound vibrates through me, jolting me into the present, I realize
that it’s been forever since I’ve laughed at something legitimately funny or
awkward without being prompted by the ingestion of some mind-altering
substance. Still, I can’t quite turn off that ever-present voice inside my
head, the one that holds up an invisible hand to stop me from going further,
from moving closer.
People are dangerous . . .
“Well,” Julian says, laughing along with me
and holding out a hand, “that’s remedied easily enough. C’mon.”
I stare at his hand, the
long fingers, and look into his eyes, which I can now see are flecked with
gold. I toss my apple core to the concrete and take hold of him, ignoring the
voice that begins, even now, to protest more loudly, whispering like a flock of
ruffled birds, Don’t touch, don’t trust. I draw a deep breath and follow
him blindly across the street, unsure of where I’m being taken.
Giveaway:
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