search party.”
“Sorry, Kels, I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to text? My, Nowhere, Maryland, must have more breaking news stories than I expected.”
“What do you need?”
“I don’t need anything. I just thought you might like to know I got a part.”
“In a movie?”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, you don’t have to act so surprised. Guess who’s starring in it!”
“Who?”
“Guess!”
“There are literally thousands of actors and actresses. I’m not going to guess.”
He could hear her frown over the phone and then: “Dwayne Johnson!”
Anders paused. “Who?”
“You know, The Rock!”
“The wrestling guy?”
“I mean, that’s how he started, but he’s kind of a huge deal as an actor now.”
Anders thought that sounded familiar—he could vaguely picture movie posters with The Rock at the forefront and large explosions in the background. “That’s really great, Kels.”
“Thanks. I mean, it’s just one line, but I’ll be in the credits! Girl in the Diner, Number Three. And, I’ll be on the same set with Dwayne Johnson.” Anders could hear the pride in her voice. “Now, what have you been doing, besides avoiding us?”
“Working, I told you. I’ve been doing this podcast—”
“Oh, right! Dad said it’s really good,” Kelsey said.
Anders’s eyes widened. “He did? He’s listened to it?”
“Yes,” she said, with a touch of surprise. “Haven’t you seen his comments?”
“Oh, right. Of course.”
“He’s been telling literally everyone he runs into in the course of a day about it. Seriously—he made the gas station attendant yesterday promise he’d listen. Oh, and Celeste! I forgot to tell you we ran into her!”
“You did?” Anders paused, waiting for the requisite hollowing of his stomach or shadow of sadness to creep over him, as Kelsey droned on about spotting his ex across a crowded hibachi restaurant, but nothing happened. And it occurred to him—not unpleasantly—that he hadn’t thought about her in weeks.
“Look, I really do need to go. I’m at work.”
Anders hung up and stared at his phone for a beat, his mind back on his dad—not Leonard, of course, but his real dad, who still clearly had not listened to any of his podcasts. Who he hadn’t even heard from in months. As he was swallowing his disappointment, Jess brushed by him, bringing him back to himself.
“Hey, Jess.” He lifted his head so his voice carried over their cubicle divider. “Can you send me that police report when you get back to your desk?”
He had a podcast to record.
WHAT THE FRICK?
Episode 7
12,892 Subscribers
54 Comments
Hokie4Life: A murder! OK, I’m back in. [Image: Stephen Colbert eating popcorn]
Chapter 17
The Night Before the Storm
Piper stared at her husband as if he had sprouted a third eye. They were squared off against each other, the small kitchen table between them. She shook her head, trying to make sense of it all. “Tom, you can’t do it! Not like this.”
She had thought they’d put this crazy idea to bed months ago, so it was quite the surprise when he sprung it on her this evening, while she was studiously peering through her microscope lens at the venation in the wing of a dead dragonfly she had found on Graver’s Beach that day, trying to determine its exact classification.
“Pipes, I have to, can’t you see that? I can’t live like this anymore. We can’t live like this anymore. Do you know how many crabs I caught yesterday? Do you?”
Piper eyed him, her jaw set.
“Not even two bushels. And less than a dozen peelers.”
“Some days are like that. Some years, even,” Piper said. “You’ve seen worse. And you’ll see better. It’s like BobDan says—crabbing ebbs and flows—”
“Like the tide. Yeah, yeah. He thinks everything ebbs and flows like the tide.”
“Well, it does, really, Tom. That’s life.”
“No! That’s not life, Piper. That’s what I’m saying. That’s an excuse to sit back and do nothing—to just let life happen to you—like everyone on this island has been doing for centuries.”
Piper jerked her head back, narrowed her eyes. In a quiet voice, she said: “That’s not fair.”
Tom gripped the top bar of the ladder-back chair and leaned over, his knuckles turning white from the pressure. He looked up at Piper, his eyes rimmed red, his face more lived-in than most other twenty-four-year-olds’. “Look, don’t you want something . . . I don’t know. More?”
The truth was, Piper didn’t. From the moment she first laid eyes on Tom, she knew he was all she ever wanted. Needed. That if she could just be with him, she’d never want for anything else in life.
“Tom, you’re not hearing me. People aren’t going to just let this happen.”
“I know,” he said.