Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Tuck nodded and then took another swig from his bottle.
I tilted my head. I remembered the picking. I remembered following along behind Tuck. But I didn’t remember humming. It was because my mind had been free to roam, I imagined, like it was now, my body moving from tree to tree, reaching and plucking, reaching and plucking. Daydreaming as I worked. I wondered if that was when I’d first started composing “Find You in the Dark”—the melody, if not the lyrics—which became the single that had catapulted my career into the stratosphere. Because the thing was, when I wrote that song, and the others on the album too, they’d all felt so effortless, like they’d lived inside me all my life, and had just been waiting to be set free.
They could have picked up any pretty girl off the street and created Nova. They didn’t need talent. They needed compliance.
I sucked in a breath, once again shoving aside the words Tuck had volleyed at me on the plane. He’d said them out of resentment at being exposed. The problem was…they hit hard because it was a vulnerability. He must have known that and that’s why he’d said it. To hurt me back.
I hadn’t written anything nearly as inspired since “Find You in the Dark.” My deepest fear, the one I didn’t like to think about, was that that was all I had. The well had run dry. I was a one-hit wonder and nothing more.
Maybe it was why I pushed myself so hard to milk every drop I could from all the recent opportunities I’d been given. Because there wouldn’t be more after this. The Louis Vuitton I’d tossed aside really was the last luxury item I’d ever own, the final sign of my once shooting star that had fizzled to the ground. A part of me wanted to run back and snatch that suitcase from whatever animal was now burrowed inside of it.
A void opened inside me as words attached to the fear that had been skating at the edge of my brain for years, the one I’d refused to really think about. The one Tuck had clearly seen and thrown at me.
I massaged my temples and looked at Tuck. He was watching me, a look of curiosity on his face as though he was mesmerized by the shifting nature of my thoughts. He’d noticed I was humming too, and I hadn’t even realized until Tuck had mentioned it. A cascade of emotions tumbled through me: bitterness, fear, happiness, uncertainty, hope. I couldn’t grasp any of them, because they were all fleeting, and I didn’t know what to attach them to.
I cleared my throat and looked away briefly. There was no need to think about any of this now, during this harrowing, yet temporary circumstance. “What do you think it’s going to be like when we get to civilization?” I asked.
He paused for a moment. “No idea. It’ll depend on how far the outage stretched and whether their infrastructure is back up. But they’ll at least have some information about what’s going on and how long before things are expected to be working again.”
Before I could respond, Charlie came stomping noisily out of the woods and breaking me from my worried thoughts. “Goddammit,” he said. “I think I fell in some poison oak.” He was wiping his hands off, his jacket covered in dirt and pieces of brush.
“I’m sure it wasn’t poison oak.” Charlie had never communed with nature—he probably had no idea what poison oak even looked like. He’d grown up in Bel Air. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Let’s go.” I plucked a piece of leaf out of his hair before we both turned back to the road.
Tuck was already walking. We fell in line behind him just as we had before, continuing down the dirt road.
Eventually the dirt road turned into a stretch of gravel, which seemed like a good sign even if the only thing surrounding us were derelict fields. But as day turned to evening, Tuck slowed, and then came to a stop. I shielded my eyes from the bright horizon, squinting as something up ahead caught my eye and I saw why he’d halted. “Holy shit, it’s a gas station,” I said. My heart lurched toward that beautiful beacon of hope. And of people. And even one of those gas station sandwiches that I would have never touched with a ten-foot pole a week ago. But now…now, I was going to devour every bite of it and lick the wrapper. I’d kiss it before I put it in my mouth. I’d say a prayer of gratitude. Then I’d buy a bottle of cold water and drink every drop. They might have shoes there. Those canvas ones that hang on a rack near the ball caps and playing cards. Neosporin!