The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,93
way of explanation. “And then we moved here, after . . .” I hesitated for just a second, then made myself continue. “After my mom,” I said quickly, not letting myself linger on any of the words. “And it just seems so fake. Like the idea of what a picturesque village once looked like.”
Clark glanced over toward the duck pond, which was free from ducks at the moment. “I don’t know. If you ask me, living way out in the middle of nowhere is overrated.”
“How far were you from civilization?” I asked as we followed the curve in the road, and I took a tiny step closer to him—so small that even Clark might not have noticed it.
“An hour to the nearest gas station,” he said. “Two and change to the closest real town.”
“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “That is far.”
Clark laughed. “Tell me about it. I got to see, like, two movie-theater movies a year.”
“Don’t tell my friend Bri that,” I said, smiling at him. “She’d make you get caught up on your film history, decade by decade.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” he said, giving me a shrug. “I’ve got some time on my hands this summer.”
The comment hung in the air between us, and I noticed there was just an edge of bitterness to it.
“So, about your book,” I said after a moment of silence in which I tried not to notice how close together our hands were, both swinging by our sides as we walked. Clark didn’t say anything, and I was about to change the subject, start talking about something easier . . . but then I remembered how patient he’d been, walking next to me, and I bit my lip, forcing myself to keep quiet as I walked next to him. I didn’t know how exactly, but I could tell he was trying to find the right words.
“What I told you last night?” he finally asked, and I nodded. “You’re the only person who knows that. Everyone knows I’m having trouble—there are whole websites devoted to it—but I haven’t told anyone else how bad it is.”
“Your secret is safe,” I said, raising my right hand. “Ex–Girl Scout’s honor.”
“Ex?”
“Long story,” I said, feeling like now was not the time to tell him the story that involved Toby, a cooler of ice cream, and Bri massively failing to be an effective lookout. “Another time. But I’m pretty sure the oath is still good.”
“I appreciate it,” he said. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair and causing the back to stick up funny. “I knew what was implied when my publisher offered me her house. I could stay there for free all summer, but at the end of it, I’d better have a book for them.”
We walked for a moment, not speaking, and I was suddenly aware of how loud the cicadas were all around us. I looked at the fireflies winking on and off in the grass while I tried to figure out how best to ask this. “So . . . what’s the problem?” I finally asked, knowing that Bri or Tom, who seemed to understand and appreciate an artistic temperament, would have found a gentler way to ask this. But I was having trouble getting my head around it. I sometimes didn’t want to study, but I did it anyway. You didn’t wait for the perfect studying mood to strike you.
I heard a buzzing sound and looked up to see the streetlights all flickering to life above us, going on one by one until you could see more clearly what had been fading in the slowly falling darkness—the bench by the edge of the duck pond, the tree branches over our heads, the details of Clark’s face.
“Well,” Clark said, and then stopped. It was like I could practically feel him choosing his words carefully, like he wasn’t used to talking about this. “Lately I’ve been thinking that I might be done.”
“With . . . writing?” I asked, just as a pair of headlights swung around the curve in the road. We stepped over to the side, and when the car was gone and we started walking again, we were a little closer still, now just inches away, even though we could have walked in the middle of the open, empty road, the streetlights casting our shadows on the ground in front of us.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think it’s this book, or the pressure to continue the series. Or .