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)
he WHAT!?!? no, yr not a chump, he’s a shithead. and his partner doesn’t know about you? what is WRONG w people why are they the total worst?!
A satisfying string of monster and knife emojis followed, and Truman smiled.
The worst part is that I didn’t even do anything. I just left.
want me to go over there and kick his ass?! came Greta’s reply.
Kinda! I just feel like I should’ve told his partner, right? Like, hey, you’re with a cheating jerk, just so you know. Something.
you’re being too hard on yourself. confrontation is HARD!
Yeah. So what happened to make you need to get out of town?
oh nbd, just my mother and sister auctioning me off in the public square of our town.
That brought him up short.
Er. What?
She told him the story of her family and their town holiday festival then, and he commiserated with her plight.
By the time he got home, he felt like Greta needed this just as much as he did.
“Hi, baby,” he said as he unlocked the door and Horse trotted up to him. The Great Dane’s sleek fur was mussed on one side where he’d been snoozing, but his eyes were bright and he nudged Truman’s stomach, eager for their evening walk.
He slid Horse’s leash down over his wrist so he could keep texting with Greta, and they set out into the night.
They discussed the particulars and agreed on where they’d leave keys and instructions, and then there was nothing else to say except:
So we’re really doing this?
yeah, we really are!
Wow. Wow wow wow. I don’t do things like this.
me neither.
Then there was a pause, and they both sent messages at once.
Truman’s said: Maybe that’s the best reason to do it. Greta’s said: maybe if we were the kind of people who did shit like this we wouldn’t be in our current messes.
They both liked each other’s texts, and the deal was struck.
Fourteen hours later, Truman was on a plane, suitcase packed for a month checked to Maine, his journal open in front of him to a new spread, winging his way toward the unknown.
A Message from Ramona
RAMONA to TRUMAN CUTIE and GREAT!A RUSSAKOFF
I know you’ve both been feeling stuck, creatively and personally. Well, carry an umbrella at all times, cuz it’s gonna be raining possibilities and solutions! (Well, snowing them in Maine probably, and shining them down in N.O. ;D)
Chapter 3
Truman
Truman stretched out on the bed, knocking over the wine bottle he’d just emptied. He reached for it, grabbed it by the neck, and then overbalanced and slowly slid to the floor in a drunken slither that he was extremely glad no one was there to witness.
“Yeah,” he said to no one. “Probably no one will ever be here to see me do anything ever again cuz people are bad. Bad, bad. They’re bad.”
He nodded emphatically and regretted it instantly as his head started to spin. Groaning, he let his head fall gently to the floor. He could just sleep here. Half under the bed was basically like being in bed, right? Yup.
Greta’s house was darling. It was small with white clapboard siding and well-worn wood floors. The walls were all white, and there were mirrors and reflective surfaces everywhere that caught the sunlight and threw it around the house.
And every single thing seemed set up for the benefit of plants, not people. There were humidifiers, heaters, grow lights, and a complicated spreadsheet of when each thing should be turned on, turned off, angled, or rotated.
It was a lot, but Truman respected a good spreadsheet.
He’d followed her instructions when he first arrived, then walked into the town square, which was only five blocks away. There he had gathered provisions: three bottles of wine, five kinds of cheese, two kinds of crackers, and four kinds of chocolate, which was all the kinds of wine, cheese, crackers, and chocolate that Muskee’s General Store carried.
In just the time it had taken to walk to the store, Truman had already been freezing. Maine, it turned out, was cold. Truman knew this, naturally, but somehow, in the flurry of packing, hiding a key, writing instructions for Greta, and returning Guy’s Christmas gift, that knowledge hadn’t translated into warm enough clothes.
He’d layered his light autumn jacket atop a button-down shirt and a thin cashmere sweater and looped a woven scarf around his neck, but the wind had blown through it all ten steps down the road, and his shoes were soaked with snow immediately.
By the time he made it home with his groceries, Truman was colder than he could ever remember being. So he’d shucked his clothes, taken the wine, cheese, crackers, and chocolate into bed, pulled the duvet up to his chin, and commenced to spend the evening in a haze of cheese, booze, and the Dead of Zagørjič.
He had read the series so many times over the years that he could open to any page in any of the seven books and know exactly what was going on. Often, he read his favorite bits to cheer himself up.