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Anya Parrish was born in Louisiana, grew up in Arkansas, went to college in New York, and found herself in California. She lives in Sonoma County, California with her family. DAMAGE is her first novel. Look for it in the fall of 2011 from Flux books.

Advance praise for DAMAGE:

"Part sci-fi, part romance, part crime thriller, these different elements weave together into a heart-pounding chase story that vibrates with danger. Rachel, especially, comes across as a unique creation that could stand alongside a monster from Stephen King." -Kirkus Reviews

"This novel moves at lightning speed, with more shocks and surprises around every corner. No neatly wrapped-up ending here; the book finishes with as much of a bang as it started with." VOYA Reviews.

"Thrilling, terrifying, and sexy as hell, DAMAGE left me begging for more!" Jessica Verday, New York Times bestselling author of THE HOLLOW

"A breakneck, heart-stopping thrill ride, DAMAGE will leave you breathless." Caitlin Kittredge, author of NIGHT LIFE

DAMAGE by Anya Parrish

September 2011. Flux Books


There was a time when I prayed for Rachel to be real. Until the night I learned she'd always planned to kill me.

When Dani was eight, she fell from a building. No one believed her claim that she was pushed by Rachel . . . her imaginary friend. It took years of therapy to convince Dani that Rachel wasn't real.

Now fifteen, Dani wants to make it as a dancer. But a deadly freak accident sends Dani a terrifying message: Rachel is back, she's real, and she'll stop at nothing to kill Dani. Complicating matters is Jesse, the school bad boy who's being stalked by his own invisible childhood nemesis.

Dani and Jesse join forces to learn why their astral tormenters are back. Their investigation leads to a horrifying discovery--and the terrible experiment that binds them to each other.

DAMAGE. Excerpt c. Anya Parrish

The newspaper called it a miracle. My mother called it attempted suicide. My father called it a horrible side effect of an overdose of experimental medication. My doctors altered my treatment, my mother brought in a shrink, and I learned to say that Rachel was a product of my own imagination that didn’t come around anymore.

I lied.

For days, weeks—a second eternity of lying awake in my bed praying I wouldn’t hear her shoes tapping down the hallway—I lied. But she always came.

At first with friendly, dancing blue eyes, trying to lure me in as she’d done before, then with knives she’d stolen from the cafeteria and syringes of fluid she tried to slip into my IV. She devoted her imaginary existence to my death and with each attempt she got closer and closer to killing me. I lived in fear that, sooner or later, she would catch me unaware and our terrifying game would be done.

Then one day, she was just…gone.

By the time Rachel stopped coming to visit, I weighed less than the five year old girl down the hall. I looked like a monster, a haunted thing that prowled the terminal children’s floor of the hospital with sunken eyes and fingers that worried at the scabs on my skin until they bled.

It took months for me to trust that Rachel was really gone, years to convince myself I’d just been a sick, crazy kid with an overactive imagination. But I finally did it. I pulled it together, I got well, I got out of the hospital and I never looked back.

On the day before the crash I was a determinedly average kid. I got A’s and B’s and the occasional C, I was obsessed with becoming a professional dancer, I wrote angry things about my stepmother in my journal, and dreamed of the day I’d free to be all the things I was going to be.

I didn’t dream of death, but it seemed death had been dreaming of me.

One girl, one boy, two killer imaginations. DAMAGE Fall 2011.

Why Killer Imaginary Friends?

Because an imagination is a scary thing to underestimate...

 


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