Page 57 of Again with Feeling

(The wordunsatisfiedcomes to mind.)

And then, of course, I pretty much immediately passed out.

When I woke up, Bobby was gone, which made me suspect he might be part ninja. The quality of the light filtering in around the curtains made me think it was still early, and the sound of the waves was steady. I lay there awhile. I mean, the house wasn’t on fire, and there was no reason to jump out ofbed. Especially if the alternative was to stay snuggled up in bed, remembering how a certain deputy-slash-ninja felt when he was pressed up against you. (Did you know if a guy has muscles, like,realmuscles, he is surprisinglynotsquishy. I mean, not that I mind.)

I was still in that state where my brain hadn’t fully woken up yet, and my thoughts had a lucidity that was relaxed and somehow not quite logical, when Hugo popped into my head. (Let me tell you: if your ex flashing through your brain doesn’t put any and all romantical thoughts on ice, nothing will.) Even worse was when I remembered I was supposed to write with him today. I wassupposedto have finished my scene ofThe Next Night. That ugly, cowardly little episode when Dexter Drake hid in the bushes and waited for the police to finish arresting his lover. As he had before, of course, so many times. And as he would again. Because for Dexter Drake, the next night would be the same as all the ones that had come before: dark, long, and lonely.

(That was pretty good, and I was definitely going to tell Hugo.)

But I also needed to tell him that I didn’t like the story we were writing. Maybe it was too late to change it. Maybe not. But I needed to tell him because, once again, I hadn’t been honest with him, and I was starting to suspect that there was more of Dexter Drake in me (or was it the other way around?) than I wanted to admit.

The problem, of course, was that Hugo knew what he was doing. Hugo had an artistic vision. Hugo was a published author. A successful author. And he was doing me a favor—a huge one, actually—by bringing me on as his co-author. What was I going to suggest instead of the story we’d been working on? One of the million different versions of Will Gower? Will Gower the lion tamer? (He solved mysteries with a traveling circus in the1930s.) Will Gower the professional water slide tester? (Hear me out:lotsof people die at water parks.) Will Gower the spy on the run? (Hedefinitelydidn’t have a squishy body.)

And it wasn’t only the fact that I couldn’t decide on a version of Will Gower—although, in my defense, I’d been making progress, and I had an actual manuscript with an actual story. Kind of. The bigger issue was that the more I experienced the world, the more I found myself (against my better judgment, trust me) caught up in real-life mysteries and crimes and murders, the more I realized that the mysteries I’d been writing were too…small. Maybe that wasn’t exactly the word (I mean, it’s not like words were my job or anything), but it came close. The mysteries I’d been writing seemed so limited in scope, in complexity, in humanity. No matter how convoluted the puzzle, no matter how richly drawn the characters, in the end, the story only lived for ninety thousand words or so. In real life, tragedy didn’t end. It just kept unspooling across lives. And generations.

And what about stories like Richard’s and Jane’s and Neil’s and, yes, Vivienne’s? And even Arlen’s and Candy’s? The promise of a crime novel was that the truth would be uncovered and justice would be served. But was that justice, what I’d done for Richard? Vivienne would know the truth, and that was something. But that same truth had broken an old man’s heart, shattered his vision of himself and his son. Maybe Arlen got what he deserved, but if that was justice, it tasted like ashes. I thought of the strange conversation I’d had with Jane when I’d first visited her. How brash I’d been, insisting that the justice I offered was worth any price, and the way her silence had swallowed my words. I should have suspected, then. But, of course, I hadn’t.

The thought, though, made something stir at the back of my head. A hint of an idea. I tried to chase it down. Maybe I’d been spending too much time with Bobby, because an earnest,serious voice inside my head told me that I was thinking about it all wrong. Yes, one aspect of justice was that wrongdoers were punished. And that was an important part of it. But justice was more than that. Had to be more than that. Because punishment didn’t undo the wrong that was done. Punishment couldn’t bring back a dead son, a dead lover, a dead brother. Sometimes, there was no one to punish. Because, in other words, in the end, punishment didn’t change anything.

But therewasanother aspect to justice. More to it, I guess, although maybe even that wasn’t the right way to say it. Justice wasn’t only about punishing people who broke the law. Justice was…a promise. Maybe the fundamental promise, the one we made each other when humans first agreed to share their fire as a shield against the night. The promise to care for each other. To protect each other. The promise that if evil came for you, you would not be alone.

And in that half-waking lucidity, my brain drew a line from justice to stories. Because wasn’t that the fundamental promise of a story, as well? For the storyteller, it was the promise that the storyteller wasn’t speaking into the void—that there were other people out there, people with the same dreams and hopes and hurts, and they would hear and understand? And that promise worked the other way as well. Because the real magic of a story—as anyone who loves books can tell you—happened when you read something on the page that you thought only you had ever known and felt, and in that instant, you were connected to someone who might have lived thousands of miles away, who might have died hundreds of years ago, but who was, nevertheless, like you. That was the promise of a story. The promise of knowing and being known, mind to mind, heart to heart.

The story came to me the way my best ideas always had: a series of lightning strikes, and then everything cohering into something that felt bigger than me, electric, alive.

I bolted out of my room, down the stairs, and as I spun toward the den, I almost crashed into Indira and Fox.

“Dashiell—” Indira said, but then she caught a look at me, and her tone hardened into something serious. “What happened?” And then, in an evenunhappiertone, she demanded, “You didn’t cock it up, did you?”

“I just had—” I stopped. “What is happening with everyone’s language?”

Fox was studying me with an interest bordering on the scientific. “Did you honestly use an extremely ambiguous quote from a mystery novel to tell Bobby you loved him?”

“How could you possibly know—I don’t have to answer that.” I drew myself up with as much dignity as I could muster, considering (I realized at that moment) I was wearing nothing more than a white tank and black trunks with a rainbow-colored Xbox controller in, um, a certain spot. “I don’t have time for this. I just invented cozy noir.”

“What is that?” Indira asked.

“Well, I don’t know entirely. I invented it, like, two minutes ago.” The idea had started to lose some of its charge, although I thought some of that might have been because I was standing around in my skivvies. “Also, I have no idea if it’s even possible.”

“Anything’s possible if you’re willing to make enough mistakes along the way,” Fox said, and to my surprise, they turned me toward the den and gave me a shove. “So if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

“Uh, thank you?”

But they just kept pushing me into the den, and they shut the door behind me.

Since I was now a prisoner in my own house, I decided I’d better get to work. I found a hoodie that I’d forgotten in the den at some point and zipped it up. I got settled in my favorite chair with my favorite blanket. I grabbed my laptop. When I touched the track pad, though, I hesitated.

I mean, would it be the worst thing in the world if I took a quick—like,superquick—peek atCrime Cats?Ideas needed time to…percolate. And I definitely didn’t want to rush into anything—

My phone buzzed with a text message from Hugo.You up?

All of a sudden, I knew how today was going to go. I was going to make excuses. I was going to find a way to weasel out of all the decisions I’d made in that warm, sleepy safety of my bed. I wouldn’t tell Hugo about the book. The idea of Will Gower in some sort of cozy noir story would fade farther and farther away. I might not have been in exactly this position before, but I knew myself, and I could feel it happening.

A rap at the door made me burst out, “Oh thank God,” in a way that sounded marginally unhinged.

Bobby stuck his head in, his expression quizzical, before coming the rest of the way into the den. “I don’t want to interrupt—”

“No, God, you’re not interrupting.” I was scrambling to my feet before I remembered my current state of dress, and I barely caught the blanket before it fell. But then, Bobby had slept next to me in these clothes, so it wasn’t exactly new to him. He, of course, looked perfect: a crewneck pullover, jeans, and an absolutely hideous pair of retro Air Jordans that he had paid an ungodly sum for and, I kid you not, treasured. My indecision about the blanket warped into another, even more intense uncertainty. Was I supposed to kiss him? Or hug him? Or shake his hand like I was president of the Chamber of Commerce? A nervous giggle tried to escape me.

---