Daphne
Contents (13)
- Contents
- Kit Lamb’s Jolly Journal—The Day Before the Big Game
- Kit Lamb’s “Jolly Journal”—The Day We Went to the Creek
- Kit Lamb’s Journal—Tammy Jones Is Dead
- Kit Lamb’s Journal—We Were Questioned by Police Today
- Kit Lamb’s Journal—I’m Shrinking
- Kit Lamb’s Journal—Don’t Think About a
- Kit Lamb’s Journal—That Time
- Kit Lamb’s Journal—The Spirit of Samhattan
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- BY JOSH MALERMAN
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next on your reading list?
Daphne is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Josh Malerman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Del Rey and the circle colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Malerman, Josh, author.
Title: Daphne / Josh Malerman.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Del Rey Books, [2022]
Identifiers: LCCN 2022001564 (print) | LCCN 2022001565 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593157015 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593157022 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3613.A43535 D37 2022 (print) | LCC PS3613.A43535 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001564
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001565
Ebook ISBN 9780593157022
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook
Basketball hoop frontispiece: Adobe Stock/alswart
Cover design: Caroline Johnson
Cover images: plainpicture/brabanski (woman), golubovy/Getty Images (hair), Filippo Bacci/Getty Images (jean jacket)
ep_prh_6.0_140874742_c0_r1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Daphne
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Josh Malerman
About the Author
A tie game with summer-league rivals, friends and family in the bleachers, the ball in your hand at the free-throw line, is no time to ask the rim a question. Yet that’s what Kit Lamb does. Even as she lifts the ball, elbow in, left hand supporting, even as it seems like nothing could chop her focus, and nothing has yet, not in this game, not even when she made the and-one that led to this moment. A question for the rim:
Will Daphne kill me?
Kit almost laughs as she releases the ball. There’s a hitch in the shot to be sure. She’s embarrassed of her own question, even if nobody else could’ve heard.
The ball leaves her fingertips, the gym is haunted-house quiet. But the question remains suspended in her head. And with it, the image of the woman Daphne, Kit’s own idea of her, the horrid centerpiece of Natasha Manska’s Samhattan myth; Daphne in denim, Daphne with patches, Daphne the madwoman who smells of smoke and whiskey.
The ball goes through the net.
So, that’s a yes. An answer Kit doesn’t have time to think about right now.
Chaps inbounds quick from the baseline, but one second is not enough for their star forward to get off a full-court shot.
Samhattan wins.
By one.
Kit is mobbed by her teammates. So many howling voices, so much love. None louder than Dana, who is as sweaty as Kit; Dana, who shot a meager one for eleven but got the steal that led to Kit’s game-winning three-point play.
“Legend!” Dana yells. “Legend!”
Kit can’t stop smiling. As they lift her up, as friends and schoolmates rush the floor. As music explodes through the gymnasium PA.