Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I open the door at the end of the hall, greeted with a musty scent. Dust particles float through the air along with the scent of clean cotton.
“I washed the bedding overnight,” she says.
I’m placing my bag by the foot of the bed when a white envelope on the dresser catches my eye. I’m midreach when Anneliese clears her throat.
“Donovan’s death certificate,” she says, her voice low and soft.
For a moment, I feel sorry for her. I can’t imagine any of this is easy. She seems like a decent, trusting person who fell for the kind of guy who ruins everything he touches.
I slide the certificate out of the envelope, scanning the words on the page.
Certificate of Death: State of Vermont
Name: Byrne, Donovan Nolan
Date of death: February 12, 2022
I don’t know the specifics of how he passed, and I only found out when a distant cousin I hadn’t heard from in years texted me with their condolences. My blood ran hot and cold at the same time, and I couldn’t type my brother’s name into Google fast enough. Two seconds later, I was poring over a two-paragraph article about a fatal car crash on I-93 believed to have been caused by deteriorating road conditions during a winter storm.
His obituary came out a couple of days later.
There was no mention of me.
I realize now that Anneliese was likely the one handling the funeral arrangements and subsequently providing information for the obit. If she didn’t know I existed, it all makes sense. Not that I needed to be acknowledged. It’s no skin off my back.
“I’ll let you get settled,” Anneliese says from the doorway. “I have a Zoom call in about ten minutes, so I’ll be in the study. After that, I thought we could work on staining the dining room floors . . .”
I give her a nod, and she leaves, shutting the door behind her.
I take a seat on my bed, which suddenly feels ten times smaller than I remember it. I run my palm along the old bedspread my mother chose for me before she passed. She called it scintilla blue—because the threads had tiny specks of gold gossamer that could only be seen in certain light, and only for a brief moment. Scintilla was one of her favorite words. Along with lucency—a word that meant radiant luminosity. She loved anything that reflected light, and she was never without a gilded barrette in her hair or a polished sterling-silver locket dangling from her neck. Everywhere she went, she lit up the room—figuratively and literally.
As soon as she died, it was like all the lights went out.
It took nearly two years for my father to draw the curtains and let the sunshine back into the house, and even then, it was never the same.
Pushing up from the bed, I head to my old dresser, tugging hard on the top drawer because it always used to stick. It doesn’t want to slide out at first, so I give it another pull. When it finally gives, I’m met with a handful of old T-shirts, a pile of knotted socks, a yearbook, and a stack of old Moleskine notebooks.
I grab the top one off the stack and page through it, perusing my angsty teenage poetry and trying my best not to cringe. When I’m finished with that brief walk down memory lane, I check the middle drawer, shoving aside a stack of sweats and gym clothes in search of my old handwritten manuscript. While it definitely wouldn’t be up to snuff by today’s standards, that thing took me two full years to write, and I’ve thought about it often over the years.
The title was atrocious—The Neon Prince.
And it was about a kid who saw his entire life in bright neon colors, while everyone else saw theirs in black and white. He didn’t fit in. No one saw things the way he did. Eventually—after years of being gaslighted and told he was the crazy one—he learned how to wield his difference to his advantage. He learned how to describe color to people who had never seen it before. Soon people came from miles around to hear his stories and bask in his unique presence. One by one, the people believed him. And one by one, the believers began to see those dazzling neon colors the kid spoke so fondly of. In the end, they called him the Neon Prince because of his bravery and valiance.
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but I loved it at the time.
I shove the clothes around a little more, but the old three-subject notebook containing my original masterpiece is nowhere to be found.
I check the bottom drawer next.
No dice.
Not sure who would’ve taken it or what they would’ve done with it, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.