Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Six
The book was easy enough to find, displayed prominently in the window of A Long Story, the only bookstore within twenty miles of Frankie’s hometown of Aurora, Nevada.
On the colorful book cover, a man and a woman in vintage party clothes followed the shadow of a hare over a hill.
The title was The March Hare Mystery and the author—no, authors —were Maxine Blake… and Jessa Charming.
Frankie had stopped there on her day off, relieved there were copies left. She snatched one off the New Release table and took it straight to the register.
“I finished this one last night,” the woman behind the counter said, scanning the barcode.
“I don’t need a bag,” Frankie said. “I’ll start it on the bus home.”
She wanted to ask but didn’t want to ask but finally she asked it.
“So…how is it?” Frankie said, nervously. “Does it read like a Book Witch book, or can you tell there’s a new writer?”
“I couldn’t tell,” the bookseller said. “Jessa Charming was a good choice. Better than the alternative, right? No one wanted to see the series end.”
“Definitely,” Frankie said as she took the book, the receipt tucked inside alongside a free bookmark. “I need my Duke and Rainy fix.”
She held out her arm, displaying her black umbrella tattoo to the bookseller.
“Nice,” the bookseller said.
Frankie gave a polite wave as she left the store. While she waited for the bus to arrive, she opened the book to the first page and began reading…
All stories are love stories if you love stories.
She froze. A strange tingling sensation crept up the back of her neck.
Where had she heard that before?
The girl…the girl at Maxine Blake’s funeral had said that, right? Rachel, the girl who looked like Rainy March—not the one on the book covers, but like she’d always imagined Rainy March looked in her head.
For a split second, Frankie wondered if that had been the real Rainy March who’d crossed over into the real world to attend Maxine Blake’s funeral. Of course not. That would never happen. Fictional characters coming to life? That was the stuff of science fiction.
Her bus arrived and Frankie got on, found her seat, and returned to the book. As she read, she time-traveled to the past and became sixteen again. She read a little further and the world around her disappeared, teleporting her onto the silver sidewalks of Fort Meriwether.
When she finally finished the book later that night in her own apartment, she looked up to find herself still in the life she’d always known.
Too bad. For a few hours there, she’d been with Rainy March.
She’d been young again, full of promise and possibility.
Light-years ago, it felt like. A different time and place, before her father had died and she’d had to drop out of college and work at the coffee shop she still worked at to pay the bills.
She’d wanted to be a librarian back then, but grad school was out of the question.
Now…now she’d be happy with a little bookstore all her own, one closer than two towns away.
But she couldn’t do that, could she? Open a bookstore?
Start her own business? It would wipe out all of her savings.
Then again, her town needed a bookstore, desperately.
Bookstores were Frankie’s sanctuary, her happy place.
And every time she stepped into one, she dreamed of owning one of her own.
Maybe she could rent a little storefront?
The sort of place with an apartment on the second floor?
She’d have the best selection of science fiction and fantasy novels in the entire Southwest. What would she call it?
Otherworld Books? The Black Hole Bookstore? The Bookstore at the End of the World??
She smiled at the thought of it. But it would crazy, right? She was almost forty. Wasn’t it too late to change her life like that? Take a risk like that? Go after a dream like that?
Frankie knew Rainy March would tell her to go for it. But Rainy March wasn’t real. If only…
What wouldn’t she give to slip through a crack in this universe to some other, friendlier universe where stories became real and the real world faded like a dream forgotten by breakfast?
There was a knock at her front door.
Frankie checked her watch.
Nearly three in the morning? The witching hour. Who would be knocking on her door this time of night?
From her front window, she could see a woman out front holding a black umbrella open even though it wasn’t raining.
Frankie undid the dead bolt and opened the door enough to peer out at the mysterious figure. It was the woman from the funeral, the woman who looked exactly like the Rainy March in her head.
“Um…hi?” Frankie said. “You were at Maxine Blake’s funeral, right? The Rainy March look-alike. What are you doing here?”
“I’m not a Rainy March look-alike. I am Rainy March. And I’m here to tell you—open the bookstore.”
Frankie didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming, but something told her to take this moment very seriously. “Um…okay?” Frankie said.
“You’ll do it?”
“Yes. If you say so.”
“I do say so,” Rainy said. “Well, that was easy enough. Thanks again for fixing my umbrella for me. Bye now.”
“Wait!” Frankie said. “What’s happening? How can you be here? This is the real world, not a story.”
“You sure about that?” she asked, but before Frankie could answer, Rainy March closed her umbrella with a flick of her finger and vanished.
Our revels now are ended.