Excerpt from The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The Dark We Know

I've never liked being home. I was always elsewhere, outdoors or being taken in by the Carvers or the Tais. As a kid that made me "social" and "adventurous." Later it started making me an "ungrateful child who treated her parents' house like it was hers to come and go from."

Art students eat up a shitty-parent backstory. You're not even an art student if you don't have some kind of trauma to mine. Here, though, my childhood stops feeling like a party trick. On the left is the bathroom, door the same rusty color Trish taught me to scrub out of my sheets the first time I woke up with blood between my legs. Opposite is Trish's room, then mine, and at the very end is the bedroom I never entered, where my parents slept. The hallway is suffocating, especially because the vinegar smell is thick here, and the air's staler than it should be. I finally let myself think something's wrong. But the smell seems to be coming from everywhere.

With the lock taken off a long time ago, my old door swings wide easily to reveal emptiness. My things are gone, thrown out or burned, maybe. I can imagine Dad taking out his bruised ego on whatever I left behind. I try not to think about whether that included Trish or Mom.

In here, the vinegar draws me to the window. Without thinking I tug the curtains aside to let the remaining daylight in on the sulfur yellow wallpaper, revealing the Carvers' house across the yard. The window that faces mine is open, and behind the fluttering curtains, Wren's room is hollow. I can almost see the indent of her in it, palm lifted, nose scrunched to her eyes so I can make out her dimples even from here.

I wrench myself from that image and finally figure out where the stale smell is coming from. Someone's caulked the window—not just the outside frame but the inside, too, making the pane immovable. What? I scratch at it, wondering if it was a mistake, but by the way the smell is everywhere, all the windows must have been sealed like this.

Trish wouldn't have done this. It's Mom. She's always hated opening windows and curtains, and she won't leave the house unless she has to. Now that she runs the place, she's just gone wild with it. The trapped fumes are starting to make me feel lightheaded. I almost don't realize I'm being watched until my neck prickles, directing me to Mr. Carver staring up at me from his driveway. When our eyes meet, something flickers over his brown face.

He turns sharply away and disappears into the house. I hate my immediate urge to call after him. I didn't go to Wren's funeral. Couldn't. Got the hell out of here instead with an acceptance letter and stolen cash, leave or die. I doubt I'm welcome at the Carver house anymore.

I leave him and the caulked window. No point unpacking completely, but I unzip my bag to grab fresh clothes. I brush the folder at the bottom of the bag and suddenly feel my classmates' stares all over again.

A rat scuttles overhead. They were the original tunnelers around here, until the mines sent them scurrying out. In most places in Slater, humans are the only things that breathe—other living things seem to avoid these mountains. In this house, though, there's always a few hundred heartbeats in the walls. You can't leave any food out here, or the rats will be on it the second you leave. We can't catch them fast enough.

Someone once scrawled plague eater on my locker after one snuck into my backpack and scrambled out in the middle of the cafeteria. There was a big plague decades ago that forced the Vandersteens to close down the quarry, clogging the river with rats—before the town was saved by holy intervention, if you believe how blessed the Vandersteens supposedly are. Maybe they'll think differently now Paige is missing. Bad things only happen to sinners, isn't that right?

Trish enters with a towel and a blanket. "You okay?"

Excerpted from The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee. Copyright © 2024 by Wen-yi Lee. Excerpted by permission of Zando. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.