The Fever: A Novel
Megan Abbott
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0316231045
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"THE FEVER holds true to its title: It's dark, disturbing, strangely beautiful and utterly unshakeable" -- Gillian Flynn.
In this impossible-to-put-down "panic attack of a novel,"* a small-town high school becomes the breeding ground for a mysterious illness.
Deenie Nash is a diligent student with a close-knit family; her brother Eli is a hockey star and her father is a popular teacher. But when Deenie's best friend is struck by a terrifying, unexplained seizure in class, the Nashes' seeming stability dissolves into chaos. As rumors of a hazardous outbreak spread through school, and hysteria and contagion swell, a series of tightly held secrets emerges, threatening to unravel friendships, families, and the town's fragile sense of security.
A chilling story about guilt, family secrets, and the lethal power of desire, THE FEVER is "a potboiler in the truest, best sense" and "a great novel, full stop."**
*Jodi Picoult
**Slate
feathers, eggshells, pine needles, bones of little animals.” Kim’s fingers touched her lips, eyes wide. “She was eating animals?” “No,” Skye said, shaking her head. “And she wasn’t just throwing up things from her stomach. Because everything was always dry. The doctor could blow the feathers in his hand.” Kim gasped. “Well, the Internet never lies,” Deenie said, but then Skye loaded up the page on her phone. She showed them a picture, a girl with big haunted eyes, her mouth open. You couldn’t
more likely a cause than the vaccine, or at least not much more, but even he could feel the hysteria. All the things Georgia used to say. About this town, this rotting place. “The school passed all prior air- and water-quality inspections,” Sue Brennan said, her face looking slicker now under the lights. “Isn’t it true that the school is heated by those natural-gas wells just a few hundred feet away?” Mary said, shouting even louder now, voice gaining confidence. “And that those tanks have
all under the mounted lights, everything rotating, snapping, and flicking. From a distance, it looked like one moving thing, like when you peer into a microscope. Like when her dad used to show her gliding bacteria, swaying filaments like ribbons. It made her stomach squirm but it was also oddly beautiful. Exiting the bus with all the night-shift nurses and orderlies, Deenie had no plan, but something about the way no one spoke, their hands wrapped tightly around their travel mugs, told her no
been protecting Lise from? He couldn’t imagine why anyone in the world would want to hurt that sweet girl. And now he was bounding through the front doors, not stopping to think where he could find Deenie, just knowing he would. His phone started ringing just as he reached his car. “Hello?” he answered, not even looking. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe and I…” And it was Deenie’s voice, one he hadn’t heard in a thousand years, and she was saying things, frantically, breathlessly, but with
hospital, a building smaller than their school, which it seemed to be trying to contain right now, its walls swelling and straining. The doors are always open in hospitals, which seemed funny to him, but he was glad. Because there she was. Lise Daniels. * * * It felt like she’d been alone in the waiting room a long time, her thoughts scattering everywhere, jumping to her feet whenever either set of doors opened. But then Deenie’s phone rang, and time seemed to stop entirely. Gabby, the