Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
The text was from Greta: can’t say i’ve gone there (lezbian) but lemme know?
Confused, Truman looked at the message above it. He’d apparently sent it at 11:12 p.m. and had no memory of doing so.
To his utter, stomach-churning horror, it read, Is ash a good kiss? Lookslike he would be bc of his mouth right>?@!
“Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god.”
He squeezed his eyes shut tight and sent up a prayer to that same, unbelieved-in god: please let that have been the only text.
He opened his eyes just enough to see the screen and saw that it was definitely not the only text.
“Oh, kill me.”
11:02: hi greta! We’re gona save thorn! For ash
Greta had replied, that’s great!
He’d responded with a GIF of a little girl crushing a soda can in her hand. Then he’d written, Ash is so nice but mean.
Greta had sent a question mark and said, elaborate pls.
He had written Exactly.
Clearly realizing he was intoxicated, she’d just sent a laughing emoji and apparently put her phone aside before she had seen his final message. About kissing. Ash.
“Kill. My. Soul.”
Truman collapsed onto the couch and quickly replied, LOL a drunken imp stole my phone and texted totally unrelated-to-life things apparently pls ignore everything.
Then he pulled the blanket over his head. Only it wasn’t a blanket; it was Ash’s sweater.
Feeling extremely fail, he added, The plants are doing great btw!
generally i find when drunken imps steal yr phone they tell the truth, Greta replied, devastating any remaining shred of Truman’s dignity. yay plants! the flora here is outrageous and dreamy, ps. horse is also great—i’ll send pics later :)
Truman walked into the carnivorous plants room and saw another one had turned brownish gray. He prayed that it was one of the ones that went dormant in winter.
“Either that or I ruin everything I touch, sooo.”
He went through the routine for the rest of the plants and, satisfied he didn’t seem to have killed any of the others, checked them off on the spreadsheet.
He dragged himself through a few hours of work, but his mind was ticking away in the background. He’d come to Owl Island to get away from New Orleans and the shame and heartbreak he’d experienced there. His feelings about Ash weren’t really about Ash, right? They were about Guy. Guy, who had been dazzling and intimidating and hot and unattainable and, finally, a bad guy.
But it hadn’t just been to get away from Guy and memories of him. Or to avoid the people who might have witnessed his mortification. Was it? Truman liked New Orleans. But he’d just kind of…stayed there after college.
No, the little voice in his head that sounded half like Ramona and half like Charlotte said. You stayed there because Anthony was staying and he told you it’d be fun if you were there. Then you had two job offers, one that was on-site and would’ve netted you colleagues and contacts, and one that was work from home, and you chose the one that was work from home. You chose the one that might as well have been anywhere and left you the freedom to pursue your own interests or chat with your friends about TDoZ during work hours.
Then you and Anthony broke up and you met Javon, and so on and so forth.
“Ugh. Me.”
Truman updated the spreadsheet he’d been working in, uploaded it to the client portal, and decided he needed to do something just for himself.
What did people do just for themselves?
Uh. Run? Yeah. People ran to, like, feel alive and feel their blood pumping, and…probably feel secure that they could outrun a murderer. Truman should run! He should use his time on this beautiful island to become a runner—it was perfect.
He changed his clothes and popped in his headphones and chose a playlist that someone on Spotify had named “MURDER YR HEART RATE,” so that sounded promising. Then he set off down the front path at a dead run.
The plan was to run to the beach. It would be such a great endpoint for his very first run. He’d take a picture of the waves lapping the rocky shore and caption it First run of what I’m sure will be many more. #Runninglife.
Since the way he’d reached the beach before was from Main Street, that was the direction he headed.
Running felt amazing. Running felt like flying!
By the third block, running no longer felt amazing. Running felt like dying.
He rounded the corner to Main Street gasping for air, then crossed the street.
One moment, he was upright, wondering Can lungs become shredded bags of air from gasping for breath? The next moment, his sole hit a patch of slush and he was pitching forward, airborne, into the street.
He landed with a splat that knocked the tiny amount of air still in his shredded lungs out of him and tried to scramble out of the street to avoid being run over by a car or trampled by a mule-drawn carriage, then remembered he wasn’t in New Orleans. He was on Owl Island, and there was no traffic and (probably) no mules.