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 lift a brow.
Donovan as a writer is news to me. Growing up, he hated reading, and he loathed English class. He once paid me cash to write his papers for an entire semester. It might have been our one and only partnership, but I was happy to fatten my wallet with his dime.
“What did Don write exactly?” I ask because now I’m curious.
“Prose poetry mostly . . . he wrote a novel,” she says. “He never let me read it, though. He always said he was going to, but I guess he wanted to polish it up first. He wrote it by hand.”
My jaw sets when I remember The Neon Prince.
“My brother hated writing.” My jaw is tense.
The idea of Donovan as a writer is comical.
The idea of Donovan taking credit for my work is infuriating.
“He had this dictionary of beautiful words,” Anneliese continues. “All his favorites are circled in blue ink. I actually still have it by my bed, and I used to flip through it after he died, when I was missing him.”
“Red book with a black spine?” I ask.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“That book belonged to our mother,” I say. “And the circled words were her favorites—not his.”
Anneliese is silent, leaning back in her chair, eyes drifting downward.
“Add it to the list of things he lied about,” she says with a fading voice.
I take a generous swig of the semisweet liquid, finishing off the remnants.
“Our mother was an avid reader,” I say, topping off my cup. “The study was her library. She was a true lover of words. She’d read anything and everything . . . poetry, classics, bargain-bin paperbacks . . . but her favorite thing in the world was coming across a word she’d never seen before. She’d always write it down on the nearest scrap of paper so she could look it up later. Sometimes she’d write it on a Post-it and place it in our lunch boxes . . . in the evenings, we had to use the word in a sentence at least once before we could have dessert. Donovan hated that game, so eventually, it was just her and me.”
“There’s a glass jar in the attic filled with paper scraps of words,” she says.
My chest tightens, and my hand grips the plastic cup until it slightly dents. After she passed, my father tore through the house grabbing anything and everything that reminded him of her and shoved it all in boxes. I never knew what he did with them after that. As a kid, I was afraid to ask. He had a temper. And he was grieving on top of it all. The messed-up thing is that he seemed angry at her for dying—angry at her for leaving him, as if she’d done it on purpose.
“That would have been hers,” I say.
I’m shocked that he kept it.
I’d be curious to see what else is up there.
Anneliese brings her plastic cup to her lips, pausing before she takes a drink. “Did she have a favorite word?”
“She did.” I press my lips firm, scanning years of forgotten memories. “Selcouth.”
“And what does selcouth mean?”
“Unfamiliar, rare, strange, and yet wonderful. At the same time,” I answer. “Like people.”
Anneliese releases a sweet sigh. “That’s beautiful.”
“She always used to say that most people treat strangers like they’re background extras in a movie,” I say. “She thought it was important that we remember that every person we come across has their own deeply complex backstory. Their own hopes and dreams and triumphs and problems.”
She rests her elbow on the table, abandoning the rest of her meal. “I’ve never thought of it that way.”
“Most people don’t. They’re too consumed with their own lives and their own problems. It’s amazing what you can learn when you sit down and talk to a stranger. And it’s easy to forget how good it feels to look someone in the eye and have an actual conversation with them that doesn’t involve a screen. Or gossip.”
“Connecting,” she says. “That’s what it’s all about.”
“I was renting a room on the east side of Chiswick several years ago. The woman living there was a spindly little thing with a hump on her back and a scowl on her face and this long silvery hair that she would comb back into a tight bun on the top of her head. For the first couple weeks, she didn’t say more than a single word to me. I mostly came and went and stayed out of her way. Paid my weekly rent on time, picked up after myself. But that third week, I went out with some friends, got a little smashed, came home. She’d locked me out, and I ended up falling asleep against the door. I woke up several hours later to the snick of the dead bolt and the smell of bacon and eggs frying in a pan. Anyway. She let me back in, sat me down at her kitchen table,” I continue, “and told me that when she was a little girl, her mother would lock her father out of the house when he came home from the bar. He got blackout drunk, belligerent, and would break things and say all sorts of horrible things. She was scared of me that night because I reminded her of her father—and here I thought she was just being spiteful.”