Fade Out

IT’S SUMMER, AND DANI CALLANZANO
has been abandoned by everyone she knows. Her dad moved out, her mom is all preoccupied being brokenhearted, and her closest friend in the world just moved away. Basically, it’s the end of the world.

At least she has the Little Art, her local art-house movie theater. Dani loves all the old black-and-white noir thrillers with their damsels in distress and low camera angles. It also doesn’t hurt that Jackson, the guy who works the projection reel, is super cute and nice and funny. And totally off-limits, of course—he’s Dani’s friend’s boyfriend, and they are completely, utterly perfect together.

But one day Dani stumbles across a shocking secret about Jackson—a secret too terrible for Dani to keep. She finds herself caught in the middle of a love triangle with enough drama to rival the noir-est film noir she’s ever seen on-screen.

novaren.com

Watch videos,
get extras, and read exclusives at
TEEN.SimonandSchuster.com

SIMON PULSE

Simon & Schuster, New York
Cover designed by Jessica Handelman • Cover photograph copyright © 2012 by Getty Images

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
First Simon Pulse paperback edition July 2012
Copyright © 2009 by Nova Ren Suma
Previously published as
Dani Noir
.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the
Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
www.simonspeakers.com
.
Designed by Jessica Handelman
The text of this book was set in Venetian 301 BT.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of
Dani Noir
as follows:
Suma, Nova Ren.
Dani noir / by Nova Ren Suma.
p. cm.
Summary: Imaginative thirteen-year-old Dani feels trapped in her small mountain town with only film noir at the local art theater and her depressed mother for company, but while trying to solve a real mystery she learns much about herself and life.
ISBN 978-1-4169-7564-9 (hc)
[1. Motion pictures—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
3. Divorce—Fiction. 4. Remarriage—Fiction.
5. Conduct of life—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.S95388 Dan 2009 [Fic]—dc22
2009022270
ISBN 978-1-4169-7565-6 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4424-5878-9 (eBook)

FOR MOM
AND FOR ERIK,
ALWAYS

CONTENTS

Chapter 1:
   
What Would Rita Hayworth Do?

Chapter 2:
   
You Didn’t See Me, I’m Not Here

Chapter 3:
   
But Mom’s Not Exactly Ingrid Bergman

Chapter 4:
   
The Femme Fatale, Take One

Chapter 5:
   
A Little White Lie

Chapter 6:
   
What’s in Black-and-White

Chapter 7:
   
The Pie in the Sky

Chapter 8:
   
Some Things You Might Not Know

Chapter 9:
   
Holes in the Wall

Chapter 10:
   
Glue Poisoning

Chapter 11:
   
Sorry, Wrong Number

Chapter 12:
   
Secret at the Seesaws

Chapter 13:
   
The Big Chase

Chapter 14:
   
Blackmailed

Chapter 15:
   
Seeing Spots

Chapter 16:
   
Don’t Trust the Tomato Soup

Chapter 17:
   
Master Detective

Chapter 18:
   
You Call This a Midnight Movie?

Chapter 19:
   
The Femme Fatale, Take Two

Chapter 20:
   
Not You Too, Rita Hayworth

Chapter 21:
   
Why, Hello, Lana Turner

   
Acknowledgments

1
What Would Rita Hayworth Do?

A
slow fade-in on my life:

There’s this little mountain town, smack between two long highways that go nowhere in either direction. There’s the one supermarket, the one movie theater, the one Chinese restaurant. But there are twelve different places to buy junk for your lawn.

It’s summer, so the days are longer than you can stand. If you want air-conditioning, walk to the convenience store on the corner and take your time searching for an ice pop.

There’s this girl. She’s thirteen, but if I say she’s going on fourteen it might sound better. She’s nobody really. You probably wouldn’t notice her if I didn’t point her out. She’s got brown hair to her chin, and bangs that need cutting, and when she reads she has to wear glasses. Today she’s got on a tank top that says
SUPERSTAR,
but that’s a big lie so go ahead and ignore it.

She’s sitting up on the roof of her house, because that’s the only place where she gets cell-phone reception. She checks her phone, finds no messages, not even a text. A truck drives by, doesn’t honk. A mosquito sticks its fang in her knee, she smashes it.

Are you asleep yet?

She’s me, I’m her. And we’re both bored to the gills.

If this were a movie, I would’ve walked out by now.

So let’s cut to black. Roll the credits. Drop the curtain, if this place even has a curtain. Kick the slimy dregs of popcorn under the seat and head home.

Except that would be too soon. Because—just like a movie—there’s about to be some big drama when you least expect it. Mine begins when my mom pops her head out the upstairs bathroom window.