{"product_id":"the-keep-isbn-9781400079742","title":"The Keep","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER • \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Part horror tale, part mystery, part romance ... utterly fantastic.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eO, The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cb\u003e•\u003c\/b\u003e T\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003ehe bestselling, award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eA Visit from the Goon Squad\u003c\/i\u003e brilliantly conjures a world from which escape  is impossible and where the keep—the tower, the last stand\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003eis both everything worth  protecting and the very thing that must be surrendered in order to survive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eTwo  cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to  renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In an environment of extreme paranoia,  cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youth,  with even more catastrophic results. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd as the full horror of their predicament  unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story  that seamlessly brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Dazzling. . . . Prodigiously entertaining and profoundly moving.” —Madison Smartt Bell, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“Daring. . . . Irresistibly suspenseful.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Los Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“The events that transpire are so surprising and provocative, the humor so wry, the sheer pleasure of reading \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e so great, one instantly feels impelled to read it again. . . . Satirically sublime.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“Roiling and captivating. . . . As you finish this novel, part horror tale, part mystery, part romance, the mind lingers over it, amazed by how vivid Egan has made it, how witty, how disturbing, how credible, and yet how utterly fantastic.” —\u003ci\u003eO, The Oprah Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“This neo-gothic tale conjures a wicked form of therapy for BlackBerry-addicted urbanites. . . . Egan’s clever scenario presents Danny’s mental liberation as both thrilling and dangerous—imagination is the ultimate drug, she suggests—and the novel luxuriates in Wilkie Collins–style atmospherics.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“Egan is an exceptionally intelligent writer whose joy at appropriating and subverting genres and clichés—from prison memoir to Gothic ghost story—is evident on every dizzyingly inventive page.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“[A] remarkable piece of work. . . . Egan effectively echoes the works of Gothic writers such as Ann Radcliffe (\u003ci\u003eThe Mysteries of Udolpho\u003c\/i\u003e) and Horace Walpole (\u003ci\u003eCastle of Otranto\u003c\/i\u003e), fusing a seemingly moribund genre with elements borrowed from the metafictions of John Barth, Italo Calvino and others. It's tricky; but it’s a trick only a terrifically talented writer could pull off.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“If Kafka's Joseph K. and Lewis Carroll’s Alice had a son, he would have to be Jennifer Egan’s Danny. . . . No matter how many symbols and zany subplots she juggles . . . the novelist keeps the action moving and the irony biting.” —\u003ci\u003eBoston Sunday Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“Intelligent, intense and remarkably intuitive. . . . Jennifer Egan gives us the satisfying thunk of a fully understood if unexpected, kind of sense.” —Nan Goldberg, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Observer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“It’s precisely Egan’s talent for tapping into the American subconscious—with deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology–driven, image–saturated culture—that has established the author and journalist as a prescient literary voice.” —\u003ci\u003eVogue\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“Jennifer Egan spins a haunting tale. . . . Egan’s brilliance is in balancing the deliciously creepy elements of gothic–castle novels with the dead–on realism of a prisoner’s life, to create a book worth keeping.” —Elissa Schappell, \u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Egan’s third novel . . . is a strange, clever, and always compelling meditation on the relationship between the imagination and the captivities (psychological, metaphysical, and even physical) of modern life.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“Visionary . . . at once hyperrealistic and darkly dreamed. . . . With Egan’s powers of invention running at full tilt, \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e reads like a twenty-first-century mash-up of Kafka, Calvino, and Poe, in which the absurd meets the surreal meet the unspeakable—to edgy, entertaining effect.” —Lisa Shea, \u003ci\u003eElle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is an example of literature responding to current events not with a mirror but an artful mindfuck.” —David Bahr, \u003ci\u003eTime Out New York\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “With \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e, Egan breaks the mold from page one. Her muscular, lively prose achieves a haunting effect. . . . [The book] maintains a frightening, vertiginous velocity. . . . And the immersion in these high-stakes psychological tightrope acts gives \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e a page-turning horror. . . . Outstanding.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Onion\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Egan gets everything right–from the convolutions of the strung-out male mind to the self-deceptions of a drug addict–and her skill will keep you marveling at the pages that you can’t help turning.” —\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Like an old spirit who refuses to go away, this is one fantasy that haunts long after its physical end.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Phoenix\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Egan is both a captivating storyteller and an incisive social observer. . . . The events that transpire are so surprising and provocative, the humor so wry, the sheer pleasure of reading \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e so great, one instantly feels impelled to read it again, an impulse that is grandly rewarded, so masterful is Egan’s foreshadowing, so nuanced and mysterious is the story. Gothic and chthonic, \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is satirically sublime.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Chicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Arresting . . . insightful and often funny, so fluid that you actually have the sensation of sinking into these lives . . . strange and beautifully drawn, a place well worth visiting.” —Susan Kelly, \u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Dazzling . . . a metafictional tour de force . . . it draws us in with its compelling realism as surely as anything by Dickens or Balzac—not to mention Henry James, who understood better than anyone how to turn the screw.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Steeped in Gothic mystery and plugged into our wired, up–to–the–minute cultures, \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is a hypnotic tale of unexpected connections between isolated people, each concealing secrets that ultimately upend how we see them. . . . Though dark with betrayal and violence (both psychological and literal), \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e ultimately reveals itself to be a love letter to the creative impulse.” —\u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel of ideas.” —\u003ci\u003ePoets \u0026amp; Writers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “An engrossing narrative told in prose that’s remarkably fresh and inventive.” —\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Atmospheric and tense, this is a mesmerizing story.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Jennifer Egan is a contemporary American storyteller in the vein of Stephen King or \u003ci\u003eThe Sopranos\u003c\/i\u003e scriptwriters. Her latest novel, a slightly gothic tale of love and the (possibly) supernatural, is a pleasure to read. . . . Egan’s eye and ear for contemporary America places the whole saga too close to home for fantasy.” —Emily Carter Roiphe, Minneapolis \u003ci\u003eStar-Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A dark and fascinating journey. . . . Egan skillfully builds the tension to a tipping point, culminating in an explosion. . . . The complicated plot comes together seamlessly, marvelously. . . . It’s a novel that engages and haunts the reader, a psychological who’s–who, who–dun–what and how–do–they–go–on. \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is a fast an furious read, a perfect summer novel.” —\u003ci\u003eRocky Mountain News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Egan . . . makes it all work. How she weaves the story of these four people together—and the unexpected links between them—is fascinating.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Oregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “The book itself is a stronghold of imaginative story telling, the last stand of the Gothic novel.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Exhilarating . . . Context and borders shift and dissolve, and the reader experiences the precise \u003ci\u003efrisson\u003c\/i\u003e the gloomy genre of Gothic is meant to convey: the wonder, the terror and the trapped chill of fear that resolves in a mind-expanding realization of the dimensions within your own head. In a word: sublime.” —Linda Marotta, \u003ci\u003eFangoria\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Part gothic romance, part ghost story, and peppered with Egan’s startling insights into the role of communication and loneliness in contemporary life, this is one brainy page-turner that will have you leaving the lights on at night.” —\u003ci\u003eiVillage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is a cinematic treat for the inner eye, moving as it does between the musty dungeons of an ancient power to a prison full of angry men and deep into the souls of the walking dead—those riddled with guilt, lust and loneliness.” —\u003ci\u003eSanta Cruz Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is imaginatively plotted and keeps you guessing until its final chapter. Far from seeming in any way contrived or dependent upon props or plot stratagems, Egan’s storytelling reaffirms the quality that defines ‘literary’ suspense.” —\u003ci\u003ePittsburgh Tribune-Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Jennifer Egan’s \u003ci\u003eThe Keep\u003c\/i\u003e is a page–turner.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Austin Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “An addictive, clever story.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Register-Guard\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A psychological drama inside a haunted house tale wrapped in a prison memoir that never fails to stoke the imagination. . . . An original thrill ride of a novel.” —\u003ci\u003eTimes-Leader\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“A chilling tour de force made eerily real.” —\u003ci\u003eBookpage\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e“Egan’s story, like the elusive castle with its unexplored rooms and uncharted underground tunnels, keeps transforming into new realities as she unveils some extraordinary surprises along the way. Jennifer Egan is a very fine writer, whose characters and plot will keep you up late reading and pondering its fascinating turns.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Antonio Express-News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJennifer Egan\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of four novels:\u003ci\u003e A Visit from the Goon Squad\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus;\u003c\/i\u003e and the story collection \u003ci\u003eEmerald City.\u003c\/i\u003e Her stories have been published in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003ePloughshares,\u003c\/i\u003e and her nonfiction appears frequently in \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Magazine.\u003c\/i\u003e She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.\u003c\/p\u003eThe castle was falling apart, but at 2 a.m. under a useless moon, Danny  couldn’t see this. What he saw looked solid as hell: two round towers with  an arch between them and across that arch was an iron gate that looked  like it hadn’t moved in three hundred years or maybe ever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He’d never been to a castle before or even this part of the world, but  something about it all was familiar to Danny. He seemed to remember the  place from a long time ago, not like he’d been here exactly but from a  dream or a book. The towers had those square indentations around the top  that little kids put on castles when they draw them. The air was cold with  a smoky bite, like fall had already come even though it was mid-August and  people in New York were barely dressed. The trees were losing their  leaves—Danny felt them landing in his hair and heard them crunching under  his boots when he walked. He was looking for a doorbell, a knocker, a  light: some way into this place or at least a way to find the way in. He  was getting pessimistic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny had waited two hours in a gloomy little valley town for a bus to  this castle that never frigging came before he looked up and saw its black  shape against the sky. Then he’d started to walk, hauling his Samsonite  and satellite dish a couple of miles up this hill, the Samsonite’s puny  wheels catching on boulders and tree roots and rabbit holes. His limp  didn’t help. The whole trip had been like that: one hassle after another  starting with the red eye from Kennedy that got towed into a field after a  bomb threat, surrounded by trucks with blinky red lights and giant nozzles  that were comforting up until you realized their job was to make sure the  fireball only incinerated those poor suckers who were already on the  plane. So Danny had missed his connection to Prague and the train to  wherever the hell he was now, some German-sounding town that didn’t seem  to be in Germany. Or anywhere else—Danny couldn’t even find it online,  although he hadn’t been sure about the spelling. Talking on the phone to  his Cousin Howie, who owned this castle and had paid Danny’s way to help  out with the renovation, he’d tried to nail down some details.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny: I’m still trying to get this straight—is your hotel in Austria,  Germany, or the Czech Republic?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Howie: Tell you the truth, I’m not even clear on that myself. Those  borders are constantly sliding around.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny (thinking): \u003ci\u003eThey are?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Howie: But remember, it’s not a hotel yet. Right now it’s just an old—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The line went dead. When Danny tried calling back, he couldn’t get through.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But his tickets came the next week (blurry postmark)—plane, train, bus—and  seeing how he was newly unemployed and had to get out of New York fast  because of a misunderstanding at the restaurant where he’d worked, getting  paid to go somewhere else—anywhere else, even the fucking moon—was not a  thing Danny could say no to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He was fifteen hours late.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He left his Samsonite and satellite dish by the gate and circled the left  tower (Danny made a point of going left when he had the choice because  most people went right). A wall curved away from the tower into the trees,  and Danny followed that wall until woods closed in around him. He was  moving blind. He heard flapping and scuttling, and as he walked the trees  got closer and closer to the wall until finally he was squeezing in  between them, afraid if he lost contact with the wall he’d get lost. And  then a good thing happened: the trees pushed right through the wall and  split it open and gave Danny a way to climb inside.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This wasn’t easy. The wall was twenty feet high, jagged and crumbly with  tree trunks crushed into the middle, and Danny had a tricky knee from an  injury connected to the misunderstanding at work. Plus his boots were not  exactly made for climbing—they were city boots, hipster boots, somewhere  between square-tipped and pointy—his lucky boots, or so Danny thought a  long time ago, when he bought them. They needed resoling. The boots were  skiddy   even on flat city concrete, so the sight of Danny clawing and scrambling  his way up twenty feet of broken wall was not a thing he would’ve wanted  broadcast. But finally he made it, panting, sweating, dragging his sore  leg, and hoisted himself onto a flat walkway-type thing that ran on top of  the wall. He brushed off his pants and stood up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was one of those views that make you feel like God for a second. The  castle walls looked silver under the moon, stretched out over the hill in  a wobbly oval the size of a football field. There were round towers every  fifty yards or so. Below Danny, inside the walls, it was black—pure, like  a lake or outer space. He felt the curve of big sky over his head, full of  purplish torn-up clouds. The castle itself was back where Danny had  started out: a clump of buildings and towers jumbled together. But the  tallest tower stood off on its own, narrow and square with a red light  shining in a window near the top.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Looking down made something go easier in Danny. When he first came to New  York, he and his friends tried to find a name for the relationship they  craved between themselves and the universe. But the English language came  up short: \u003ci\u003eperspective\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003evision\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eknowledge\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ewisdom\u003c\/i\u003e—those words were all too  heavy or too light. So Danny and his friends made up a name: \u003ci\u003ealto\u003c\/i\u003e. True  alto worked two ways: you saw but also you could be \u003ci\u003eseen\u003c\/i\u003e, you knew and  were known. Two-way recognition. Standing on the castle wall, Danny felt  alto—the word was still with him after all these years, even though the  friends were long gone. Grown up, probably.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny wished he’d brought his satellite dish to the top of this wall. He  itched to make some calls—the need felt primal, like an urge to laugh or  sneeze or eat. It got so distracting that he slithered back down off the  wall and backtracked through those same pushy trees, dirt and moss packed  under his longish fingernails. But by the time he got back to the gate his  alto was gone and all Danny felt was tired. He left the satellite dish in  its case and found a flat spot under a tree to lie down. He made a pile  out of leaves. Danny had slept outside a few times when things got rough  in New York, but this was nothing like that. He took off his velvet coat  and turned it inside out and rolled it into a pillow at the foot of the  tree. He lay on the leaves faceup and crossed his arms over his chest.  More leaves were coming down. Danny watched them spinning, turning against  the half-empty branches and purple clouds, and felt his eyes start to roll  back into his head. He was trying to come up with some lines to use on  Howie—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Like: Hey man, your welcome mat could use a little work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Or else: You’re paying me to be here, but I’m figuring you don’t want to  pay your guests.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Or maybe: Trust me, outdoor lighting is gonna rock your world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    —just so he’d have some things to say if there was a silence. Danny was  nervous about seeing his cousin after so long. The Howie he knew as a kid  you couldn’t picture grown up—he’d been wrapped in that pear-shaped girl  fat you see on certain boys, big love handles bubbling out of the back of  his jeans. Sweaty pale skin and a lot of dark hair around his face. At age  seven or eight, Danny and Howie invented a game they’d play whenever they  saw each other at holidays and family picnics. Terminal Zeus it was  called, and there was a hero (Zeus), and there were monsters and missions  and runways and airlifts and bad guys and fireballs and high-speed chases.  They could play anywhere from a garage to an old canoe to underneath a  dining room table, using whatever they found: straws, feathers, paper  plates, candy wrappers, yarn, stamps, candles, staples, you name it. Howie  thought most of it up. He’d shut his eyes like he was watching a movie on  the backs of his eyelids that he wanted Danny to see: Okay, so Zeus shoots  Glow-Bullets at the enemy that make their skin light up so now he can see  them through the trees and then—\u003ci\u003eblam!\u003c\/i\u003e—he lassos them with Electric  Stunner-Ropes!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sometimes he made Danny do the talking—Okay, you tell it: what does the  underwater torture dungeon look like?—and Danny would start making stuff  up: rocks, seaweed, baskets of human eyeballs. He got so deep inside the  game he forgot who he was, and when his folks said Time to go home the  shock of being yanked away made Danny throw himself on the ground in front  of them, begging for another half hour, \u003ci\u003eplease!\u003c\/i\u003e another twenty minutes,  ten, five, please, just one more minute, \u003ci\u003epleasepleaseplease?\u003c\/i\u003e Frantic not  to be ripped away from the world he and Howie had made.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The other cousins thought Howie was weird, a loser, plus he was adopted,  and they kept their distance: Rafe especially, not the oldest cousin but  the one they all listened to. You’re so sweet to play with Howie, Danny’s  mom would say. From what I understand, he doesn’t have many friends. But  Danny wasn’t trying to be nice. He cared what his other cousins thought,  but nothing could match the fun of Terminal Zeus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When they were teenagers, Howie changed—\u003ci\u003eovernight\u003c\/i\u003e was what everyone said.  He had a \u003ci\u003etraumatic experience\u003c\/i\u003e and his sweetness drained away and he turned  moody, anxious, always wiggling a foot and muttering King Crimson lyrics  under his breath. He carried a notebook, even at Thanksgiving it was there  in his lap with a napkin on it to catch the gravy drips. Howie made marks  in that book with a flat sweaty pencil, looking around at different family  members like he was trying to decide when and how they would have to die.  But no one had ever paid much attention to Howie. And after the change,  the \u003ci\u003etraumatic incident\u003c\/i\u003e, Danny pretended not to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Of course they talked about Howie when he wasn’t there, oh yeah. Howie’s  troubles were a favorite family topic, and behind the shaking heads and \u003ci\u003eoh  it’s so sad\u003c\/i\u003es you could hear the joy pushing right up through because  doesn’t every family like having one person who’s fucked up so  fantastically that everyone else feels like a model citizen next to him?  If Danny closed his eyes and listened hard he could still pick up some of  that long-ago muttering like a radio station you just barely hear: \u003ci\u003eHowie  trouble drugs did you hear he was arrested such an unattractive boy I’m  sorry but can’t May put him on a diet he’s a teenager no it’s more than  that I have teenagers you have teenagers I blame Norm for pushing adoption  you never know what you’re getting it all comes down to genes is what  they’re learning some people are just bad or not bad but you know exactly  not bad but just exactly that’s it: trouble.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny used to get a weird feeling, overhearing this stuff when he came in  the house and his mom was talking on the phone to one of his aunts about  Howie. Dirt on his cleats after winning a game, his girlfriend Shannon  Shank, who had the best tits on the pom squad and maybe the whole school  all set to give him a blow job in his bedroom because she always did that  when he won, and thank God he won a lot.\u003ci\u003e Hiya, Mom\u003c\/i\u003e. That square of purple  blue almost night outside the kitchen window. Shit, it hurt Danny to  remember this stuff, the smell of his mom’s tuna casserole. He’d liked  hearing those things about Howie because it reminded him of who \u003ci\u003ehe\u003c\/i\u003e was,  Danny King, \u003ci\u003esuchagoodboy\u003c\/i\u003e, that’s what everyone said and what they’d always  said but still Danny liked hearing it again, knowing it again. He couldn’t  hear it enough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That was memory number one. Danny sort of drifted into it lying there  under the tree, but pretty soon his whole body was tensed to the point  where he couldn’t lie still. He got up, swiping twigs off his pants and  feeling pissed off because he didn’t like remembering things.\u003ci\u003e Walking  backwards \u003c\/i\u003ewas how Danny thought of that and it was a waste of valuable  resources anywhere, anytime, but in a place he’d spent twenty-four hours  trying to escape to it was fucking ridiculous.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny shook out his coat and pulled it back over his arms and started  walking again, fast. This time he went right. At first there was just  forest around him, but the trees started thinning out and the slant under  his feet got steeper until Danny had to walk with his uphill leg bent,  which sent splinters of pain from his knee to his groin. And then the hill  dropped away like someone had lopped it off with a knife and he was  standing on the edge of a cliff with the castle wall pushed right up  against it, so the wall and the cliff made one vertical line pointing up  at the sky. Danny stopped short and looked over the cliff’s edge. Below, a  long way down: trees, bushy black with a few lights packed deep inside  that must be the town where he’d waited for the bus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Alto: he was in the middle of frigging nowhere. It was extreme, and Danny  liked extremes. They were distracting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e    If I were you, I’d get a cash deposit before I started asking people to  spelunk.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny tilted his head back. Clouds had squeezed out the stars. The wall  seemed higher on this side of the castle. It curved in and then back out  again toward the top, and every few yards there was a narrow gap a few  feet above Danny’s head. He stood back and studied one of these  openings—vertical and horizontal slits meeting in the shape of a cross—and  in the hundreds of years since those slits had been cut, the rain and snow  and what-have-you must have opened up this one a little bit more. Speaking  of rain, a light sprinkling was starting that wasn’t much more than a  mist, but Danny’s hair did a weird thing when it got wet that he couldn’t  fix without his blow dryer and a certain kind of mousse that was packed  away in the Samsonite, and he didn’t want Howie to see that weird thing.  He wanted to get the fuck out of the rain. So Danny took hold of some  broken bits of wall and used his big feet and bony fingers to claw his way  up to the slot. He jammed his head inside to see if it would fit and it  did, with just a little room to spare that was barely enough for his  shoulders, the widest part of him, which he turned and slid through like  he was sticking a key in a lock. The rest of him was easy. Your average  adult male would’ve needed a shrinking pill to get through this hole, but  Danny had a certain kind of body—he was tall but also bendable,  adjustable, you could roll him up like a stick of gum and then unroll him.  Which is what happened now: he unraveled himself in a sweaty heap on a  damp stone floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He was in an ancient basementy place that had no light at all and a smell  Danny didn’t like: the smell of a cave. A low ceiling smacked his forehead  a couple of times and he tried walking with his knees bent, but that hurt  his bad knee too much. He held still and straightened up slowly, listening  to sounds of little creatures scuttling, and felt a twist of fear in his  gut like someone wringing out a rag. Then he remembered: there was a  mini-flashlight on his key chain left over from his club days—shining it  into somebody’s eyes you could tell if they were on E or smack or Special  K. Danny flicked it on and poked the little beam at the dark: stone walls,  slippery stone under his feet. Movement along the walls. Danny’s breath  came quick and shallow, so he tried slowing it down. Fear was dangerous.  It let in the \u003ci\u003eworm\u003c\/i\u003e: another word Danny and his friends had invented all  those years ago, smoking pot or doing lines of coke and wondering what to  call that thing that happened to people when they lost confidence and got  phony, anxious, weird. Was it \u003ci\u003eparanoia? Low self-esteem? Insecurity?  Panic?\u003c\/i\u003e Those words were all too flat. But the worm, which is the word they  finally picked, the worm was three-dimensional: it crawled inside a person  and started to eat until everything collapsed, their whole lives, and they  ended up getting strung out or going back home to their folks or being  admitted to Bellevue or, in the case of one girl they all knew, jumping  off the Manhattan Bridge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    More walking backward. And it wasn’t helping, it was making things worse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny took out his cell phone and flipped it open. He didn’t have  international service, but the phone lit up, searching, and just seeing it  do that calmed Danny down, like the phone had powers—like it was a  Forcefield Stabilizer left over from Terminal Zeus. True, he wasn’t  connected to anyone right at that second, but in a general way he was so  connected that his connectedness carried him through the dry spells in  subways or certain deep buildings when he couldn’t actually reach anyone.  He had 304 Instant Messaging usernames and a buddy list of 180. Which is  why he’d rented a satellite dish for this trip—a drag to carry, an airport  security nightmare, but guaranteed to provide not just cell phone service  but wireless Internet access anywhere on planet earth. Danny needed this.  His brain refused to stay locked up inside the echo chamber of his head—it  spilled out, it overflowed and poured across the world until it was  touching a thousand people who had nothing to do with him. If his brain  wasn’t allowed to do this, if Danny kept it locked up inside his skull, a  pressure began to build.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He started walking again, holding the phone in one hand, the other hand up  in the air so he’d know when to duck. The place felt like a dungeon,  except somehow Danny remembered that dungeons in old castles were usually  in the tower—maybe that was the tall square thing he’d seen from the wall  with the red light on top: the dungeon. More likely this place had been a  sewer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e    If you ask me, mother earth could use a little mouthwash.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But that wasn’t Danny’s line, that was Howie’s. He was heading into memory  number two, I might as well tell you that straight up, because how I’m  supposed to get him in and out of all these memories in a smooth way so  nobody notices all the coming and going I don’t know. Rafe went first with  the flashlight, then Howie. Danny came last. They were all pretty punchy,  Howie because his cousins had singled him out to sneak away from the  picnic, Danny because there was no bigger thrill in the world than being  Rafe’s partner in crime, and Rafe—well, the beautiful thing about Rafe was  you never knew why he did anything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e    Let’s show Howie the cave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rafe had said this softly, looking sideways at Danny through those long  lashes he had. And Danny went along, knowing there would be more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Howie stumbled in the dark. He had a notebook under one elbow. They hadn’t  played Terminal Zeus in more than a year.   The game ended without talking—one Christmas Eve, Danny just avoided Howie  and went off with his other cousins instead. Howie tried a couple of times  to come near, catch Danny’s eye, but he gave up easily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny: That notebook’s messing up your balance, Howie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Howie: Yeah, but I need it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Need it why?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For when I get an idea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rafe turned around and shined the flashlight straight at Howie’s face. He  shut his eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rafe: What’re you talking about, get an idea?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Howie: For D and D. I’m the dungeon master.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rafe turned the beam away. Who do you play with?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My friends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Danny felt a little stunned, hearing that. Dungeons and Dragons. He had a  kind of body memory of Terminal Zeus, the feel   of dissolving into that game. And it turned out the game hadn’t stopped.  It had gone on without him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rafe: You sure you’ve got any friends, Howie?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Aren’t you my friend, Rafe? And then Howie laughed and they all did. He  was making a joke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rafe: This kid is actually pretty funny.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Which made Danny wonder if this could be enough—them being in the","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301972037861,"sku":"NP9781400079742","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400079742.jpg?v=1767740034","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-keep-isbn-9781400079742","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}