Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
“I can do that,” I say. “I can write something that rattles them all.”
He nods. “We combine. You drop the episode at six. We ask Devereaux for a conversation at seven. We sit in Club Greed at eight without masks or games. Stonehouse at nine as a backup. We put a net under the night that catches whatever wriggles.”
“Team?” I ask, because the we has to be larger than the us.
“Ozzy runs audio on your post—wires its push notifications through half the city without breaking terms,” he says. “Render will plant himself in Pride’s corner with a jacket over his camera and a halo over his head. Gage keeps the reservation plates spinning and becomes the fire marshal if the building tries to burn down. Knight sits in the car and pretends he’s texting and actually memorizes every person who walks in for later.”
“Detective Huxley?” I ask, because the word we sometimes have to include the people in actual suits.
“I’ll send her a packet at five-thirty that says ‘if you were me, you’d sit near Club Greed tonight,’” he says. “She won’t bring sirens. She’ll bring a coat and a notebook and a partner who thinks I’m annoying.”
He takes a sip of coffee, then reaches for me and pauses, asking without asking. I fold into him because my bones want the word anchor written on them in permanent marker. For a minute, we just breathe like we’re scaling a wall together. His hand makes a warm line up my spine and I think about telling him the truth about my relief—about the cat that keeps stepping on my chest at 3 a.m. whispering there. I don’t. Not yet. The confession claws at my throat and then curls up, purring and mean.
“I keep thinking,” I say into his shirt, which smells like driftwood and good decisions, “that someone wrote a check. For them. For Arby.”
“Yeah,” he says into my hair. “And we’re going to find them.”
“And make them bleed,” I add.
“And that,” he says.
I pull back, wipe under my eyes with the flat of my finger, and try on a smile that doesn’t fit yet but might later. “Help me write the script?”
He sits cross-legged on the floor like a camp counselor and I fold down across from him, our knees almost touching, the coffee table between us a makeshift desk.
We write. My podcast. Ozzy chimes in from a thread with a line about the way certain men do finger guns when they think they’re clever. Gage drops in a sentence shaped like a dagger that is somehow legally neutral. Render suggests I say I see you without saying I see you. We build a ten-minute episode that tastes like thunder and restraint and posts at six with a title that isn’t clickbait but might as well be—“Funerals With Better Lighting”—and a description that has just enough italics to make narcissists think the italics are about them.
I record at my kitchen table, mic propped on a stack of books like a makeshift pulpit. I keep my voice low and even and let my breath do the work. I tell a story about rooms with rules and rooms without them. About masks and no masks; about how predators use the word bright when they mean small. I don’t say Club Greed. I don’t say Stonehouse. I say, “If you nicknamed your jokes checks, consider this me cashing one.” I say, “I’m closer than I sound.” I say, “We are not the ones who should be afraid.”
I hit publish. The little blue progress bar crawls, and my heartbeat does too. Then it’s done. It’s out there, slotted between my episode about cursed VHS tapes and my episode about haunted basements.
“I hate this part,” I say, staring at the analytics that mean nothing and everything. “The waiting.”
“We don’t wait in here,” Arrow says. “We wait in motion.”
He texts Devereaux Huxley:
Arrow: Conversation? Not as cops. As people who respect your house.
Devereaux replies ten seconds later with a time—8:15—and an emoji that looks like a sphinx telling a joke you’re missing. Gage slides Stonehouse 9:00 into the calendar like he’s dealing a good card. Render sends a selfie of the inside of his jacket and I try not to laugh and fail, which is good, because laughing makes the room feel less like it will turn into the worst room of my life again.
At 6:10, my episode catches a little fire. Comments. DMs. An email from someone with a subject line that just says brave and I don’t know if they mean it or they’re trying to get me to open a link. Ozzy filters, like a bouncer for data.
Gage texts: Gray watched. Three minutes. Scrolled. Stopped on the line about ‘checks.’
“Good,” I say, even though my hands are shaking.
At 7:02, I change into a red dress that thinks it’s armor and the boots that make me taller and scarier than I feel. Arrow ties his shoes like he’s about to outrun something. He looks at me like I’m a small city he knows the map to and still wants to get lost in.