Chapter 9
It’s midnight.
Running lights line the length of the bus. Amelia’s room is shut, although even the roaring sound of the ocean from her sound
machine can’t drown out her snoring. I’m lying down on the thin mattress, fingers tangling themselves up, fidgeting with the
sheets. The whole bus is silent (well, except for me). The bunk beds Jack and I lie on are directly adjacent to the small
bathroom. I’m on bottom. Jack’s on top. They’re sailor-ship style, at least as I have imagined, only a couple inches too short
and a couple inches too thin.
And I have been trying to sleep. I have.
But every time I turn over, I find myself on the precipice of falling to the floor.
And then there’s the tiny issue of... it’s been hours.
And nothing from Jack.
Not one tiny little thing.
We’ve spent the afternoon and all evening riding on this bus, side by side as he shot off emails and made phone calls and
gave his pep talks while I drowned out his conversations about “12 percent audio rights” and “fifteen-thousand-copy print
run” to focus on slashing through my novel. I’ve effectively cut the kids out of a quarter of what I’d written. It was painful,
heart-wrenching success today, made only a little bit better by the fact we dined on some shepherd’s pie with the most incredible
bouillabaisse of my life.
So when I hear the tiny swoop of Jack’s email now, here in the dark, I pounce.
Just as I have through every single one of his no doubt normally maddening dings and swoops. (But honestly, what sort of villain keeps his phone on all night long? Who in their right mind doesn’t put their phone on Airplane Mode or, at the very least,
on silent? Workaholic literary agents named Jack, apparently.)
“Is it about the book?”
“Oh my gosh , Bryony, go to bed ,” Jack whispers tersely in the dark.
“Is it?”
“I quit. I’m sorry, I just can’t be your agent anymore. We’re parting due to personality differences. The difference being,
you are annoying and I am not.”
“So it’s a yes? Who was it? Did you nudge Florence too? Oh! Did you tell her you were reaching out to others—that’s what pushed
her, isn’t it? She felt the pressure.”
“Do you realize you are the most annoying author in the world? None of my other authors badger me like you do.”
“None of your other authors share sailor beds.” I kick above me. “So tell me. Who was it? Was it a yes or a no? Or a maybe?
But could you push it along? Did you send the whole manuscript? Honestly, should I just take over? Hand me your phone.”
I reach up like a gremlin for his exposed elbow and grab it, scrambling down his arm toward his wrist.
“ Bryony, stop it! ” he cries out, fighting to pull his body back. He wriggles away and suddenly he’s gone, no doubt cramming himself up against
the wall. “You little creeper,” he hisses. “You’re going to give me nightmares.”
“ The Things Desperate Authors Do When Left with Their Agents ,” I hiss back. “Thriller. Coming next March.”
Somebody in the distance gives a loud stop-it-you-are-waking-us-all-up-and-we-can-all-hear-you-except-for-Amelia-in-her-bloody-castle cough.
“Is that a yes?” I whisper.
“Does it sound like it’s a yes?” he whispers back. “Do you think we editors and agents like to stay up after midnight just chatting about books? We have lives . It could be about anything.” Five seconds pass. “Huh.”
I push up on my elbows, alert. “What’s the ‘huh’ about? What’s happening? It was about my book, wasn’t it?”
There’s a long silence.
Long enough I kick at the ceiling of my bunk.
“This is Amelia’s bus ,” he hisses below.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what? Yes, that was about my book?”
“Yes.”
I purse my lips. Push myself as close as I can get to sitting. “And?”
“It’s not the answer I wanted.”
Someone passed.
My head drops back onto the pillow. It’s the phrase they all give. Every last one of them.
A generic “I’m sorry, but unfortunately, we’re going to have to pass ” statement. And I ask, who? And why exactly do they have to? Why don’t you just sneak this one through the doors, huh? Let it become a raving success and you can say, “See? No harm,
no foul.”
Several minutes go by and I stare at the top bunk, eyes peeled open.
My own phone has dinged over a dozen times today, students missing me in class, Gloria asking for updates. Like the rumor
mill at The Bridge, word has picked up that I’ll be out for a couple weeks and has morphed itself into a widespread rumor
that I’m deeply ill. With pneumonia and strep simultaneously no less.
In the span of the day, my phone has become littered with messages from students recommending everything from rubbing my feet with onions and wrapping them in warm cloths (made of linen, not cotton) to cold showers and ice baths to reduce inflammation, to hot showers and hot tea to open the airways and release the phlegm. I have with grateful heart turned away offers of two homemade tinc tures made from Icelandic and lemme sea moss, three actually very delicious-sounding soups, two loaves of rosemary bread, and a little homemade essential oil mixture of wild bark, frankincense, and myrrh.
Even Phuong offered to bring me a fresh meal. Phuong, whose apartment I wandered into once when I gave her a lift home and
discovered she currently had no electricity.
All these extremely thoughtful well-wishes for my recovery today fill me up more than usual with a heavy, achy heart. Painful
reminders of the world that is so big and so unbalanced.
I stare at the ceiling, thinking of them. Of Gran, who’s back on the road despite her dire warning to me, quietly revealing
how hopeful she’ll be to the end. She put up a big talk about giving up, and yet not twenty-four hours later, Gloria told
me Gran—at the age of seventy-six—was driving through the night to scout an opportunity in DC.
Thoughts stir like a pot of soup inside me, piping hot and unable to settle to a simmer. I can’t sleep. I feel like I downed
two shots of espresso, and now everything is whirring within me, my internal body humming with the humming of the bus as it
drifts along the interstate. And yet, I have to. We have three events I’ll be tugged along to like a rag doll during this
forced “luxury vacation.”
I’ll be up in less than six hours. And if I’m lucky, on this thin mattress, I’ll get four.
I force my eyes shut.
Take in a steadying breath.
Face the wall.
Wait as five minutes pass in quiet.
Ten.
And there’s a small part of my mind that has started to wander. My thoughts are starting to swirl a little. Realism detaching
from itself and starting to waltz into a space where dreams take hold. Gran, for starters, is wearing pajamas. While she stands
on a box outside the Washington Monument, shouting for attention about The Bridge.
But then a voice speaks in my periphery that draws me out—a voice I admit lingers in my dreams probably more than it should—and my eyes flutter open.
When I see Jack, seated in the booth we spent the day in, adrenaline knocks the dream right out of me. I close my eyes quickly.
“Yes, but things have changed. I just feel we’re at a point where it would be unfair to—”
Jack’s voice is blocked out by the hum of a passing truck. I crane my ears to catch more words but hear only, “Yes, but Bryony
doesn’t care about that—”
Slowly, painfully slowly, I inch my neck toward him.
What is he talking about?
Who is he talking to? About me . At this time of night?
For the man who claims he’s not a workaholic, it’s half past midnight and here he is, whispering. Is it the editor he emailed
with before?
It has to be.
But of course it has to be.
And yet? I lift open one tiny sliver of my left eyelid to see him again. He’s facing me. More than that, his eyes are directly
on me. Obviously thinking ahead as always. Making sure I’m asleep.
Jack’s arms are pressed tightly over his chest. He looks so stiff his biceps are bulging, which, to be quite honest, isn’t
the natural look for bookish Jack who is more prone to picking up organic sheep cheese to pair with some wine from the nearby
French market than any kind of actual weight. A permanent frown rests on his face as he stares down in the general direction
of the table.
It gives me an uneasy feeling.
Everything about this moment does.
“I know it’s late. But I’m on this forsaken bus—no, I know Amelia didn’t want me to come. I came for Bryony—”
My sake?
He didn’t have to come?
The liar.
“No, it’s not like that — Well, she’s going to try to eat her alive. Don’t you think somebody should be here to protect her? I get that, but Bryony deserves her own— No, of course she’s grateful—” He drops his voice even further as he leans forward, resting his elbow on the table and dipping his head
down to protect his voice even more.
There’s no way to catch whatever he’s saying now. All I can go off is the tone of his voice before he dropped his head. Meek.
Pleading. Desperate, even, knowing he’s not getting his way.
And what exactly is his way?
I crane my ears for ten more fruitless minutes until he eventually clicks off the phone. He stays in the same position for
some time, head facing the laminate tabletop of the booth, hand rubbing his temple. His shoulders are hunched. And I have
a momentary temptation to get up with a smile, put my hands on my hips, and say, “Okay, buddy , what the heck is going on?”
But I don’t.
Some feeling deep down is hushing me. Stilling me.
Telling me to wait. Watch. See what I can learn in this quiet.
Stay within the camouflage of these woods, behind these bushes, before giving up and presenting myself to hear whatever information
he’ll give.
Because Jack does have a secret.
A few, it seems.
And I don’t know anything yet about them.
I just know they are about me.
***
I dream I am back at The Bridge.
People are on the other side of the doors. A mob of angry people rolling impossibly large metal cans, crowding the doors,
standing on one another to get in. Yelling. Screaming. Lighting things on fire.
Jack’s blocking the doors. He’s wearing a gray suit, and yet it’s ripped in multiple places, exposing skin at the wrists, legs. And for all his useless efforts, I stand in the crowd and feel something there, looking at him, that I’ve never quite felt before.
Never allowed myself to feel before.
Never in all my waking hours.
A swell of pride in him, in who he is.
My heart leaping out of my chest at this man who puts up a good front with all his luxury watches and colorful macarons but
in reality is standing in the gap, holding on to the building.
He’s fighting for this, for me, and it’s all useless. The crowds are swelling, the building begins to take hits, bricks begin
to crumble and fall. And still he stands there.
There’s a flash of white as a towering column falls to the ground beside him, and with legs like cement I yank myself desperately
forward. It’s hard, as dreams are, but eventually I reach him. Feel the quick relief of grabbing him by the arms. Pulling
with all my might. “Come on, Jack! We’ve got to go!”
And I tug and I tug, but he won’t move. He’s rooted to the spot, urging people to turn back, to save the building.
I scream and scream and yank and yank, but he’s like a statue, my efforts useless to move him even an inch.
He won’t look at me. He doesn’t even hear me.
Does he even know I’m here?
“Come on, Jack! Leave it, please !”
Another column falls around us. An explosion hits the side of the building and a window crashes in.
And then I do something in a flash. The most illogical urge known to man.
I kiss him.
Press my arms tight around his shoulders, his tattered suit shirt, and kiss him with all my might.
And it’s... time-stopping. The hammering in my chest, my heart slamming with adrenaline as I hold him for dear life while
columns crumble around us.
So earthshaking, so electrifying, that I jolt awake, my eyes bursting open to stare into the darkness above me.
My ears pulse even as I lie motionless, my heart still pounding.
And then I jolt, seeing Jack off his bunk bed and beside me, his hand giving my shoulder a shake. His face hovering beside
me, so close I can see the bristles of his five o’clock shadow on his chin. Jack’s eyes glint with pure concern in the dim
running lights.
I must’ve been making noises in my sleep. Clearly he’s been trying to shake me awake, maybe even causing the earthquake in
my dream.
“You good?” his voice whispers huskily beside me.
“Yeah... Yeah,” I repeat, but the words are slow. Forced from my mouth. I want him to stay, I realize. I want to linger
in this moment. The bus is quiet but for the hum of the tires rolling on into the empty interstate ahead.
He seems to feel the same way, because he doesn’t move.
Stays.
Looking into my eyes.
I swallow. Force a little laugh. “I didn’t say anything out loud, did I?”
And at this a tiny smile twists up one side of his lips. He inches closer, ratcheting up my heart rate. “Why? Any secrets
you trying to keep?”
I say nothing but just look at him, temporarily seized by an inability to think. To be clever. To do anything beyond look
at him with a confusing and overwhelming amount of emotion in this moment. He was in my dream. And while the picture of him is fading, the feelings remain. Intense feelings. For him .
After a few more seconds he blinks and pulls back. Grins and—meaning to or not, I don’t know—drifts his fingers over my hair
as he moves to standing. “Don’t worry, Bryony. You didn’t say anything. At least, nothing I didn’t know already.”
And suddenly he’s gone, pulling himself back up to the top bunk, his bare feet the last thing to slip out of view.
“Sweet dreams,” he whispers in the darkness. “Kick me if you need more saving.”
I wind myself tightly into my blanket and roll over, the haze of this bizarre night lingering all around as thick as the Deep
South’s humidity blowing through the vents. And sleep.