Page 73 of What You Wish For

“Duncan was sure he could fix him,” Jake said.

“He hasn’t managed it yet,” I said.

Jake went on, bending over to shake sand out of his hair. “It’s good for him, though. We tried to get him to move home to Evanston after everything, but he wanted to come here.”

But I’d stopped listening to what he was saying—distracted instead by the way he was saying it. I turned to stare at Jake. “Can you say something else?”

“Like what?”

“Anything. Pledge of Allegiance? Recite a poem?”

“Um. Sure?”

“Because,” I said, “your voice sounds so familiar to me.” Then I said, “The more you talk, the more I keep thinking I recognize it.”

“Oh,” Jake said, stamping sand off his shoes now. “Then you probablywant me to say something like, ‘Hey, friends and neighbors—and welcome to yet another hour of the Everything’s Invisible podcast.’”

Oh, my God.

I felt a thrill of recognition like a flutter. Ididrecognize that voice.

I turned and stared at him. “Shut up!” I shouted, and just as Duncan and Helen and the girls came jogging back, now much slower, I said, “You’re JakeArcher?”

Jake just smiled, so I turned to Duncan, who had collapsed on his knees in the sand nearby, and I pointed at Jake. “Is this Jake Archer from Everything’s Invisible?”

Duncan frowned at me like I was funny. “Yes,” he said.

“Wait—you’refriendswith Jake Archer?”

Duncan gave Helen a little smile. “I can hardly believe it, myself.”

“Hardly friends,” Jake said. “He’s more like an obsessive and troubled fan.”

Duncan kept his eyes on me, but called over to Jake. “Don’t make me hurt you.” Then, to me, he said, “I named that podcast, in fact.”

“You named it?”

Duncan nodded. “Jake over there wanted to call it, ‘What’s Essential Is Invisible to the Eye’—you know, that line fromThe Little Princeabout how ‘it is only with the heart that one can see rightly.’ But that was way too long. So I shortened it.”

I turned to Jake. I was freaking out. I was fangirling.

“IknewI knew that voice! I’ve heard every episode—multiple times. I’m in the library all the time, stamping books and cataloging and restocking and doing inventory. I listen to a ton of podcasts and audiobooks—and yours is in my top three. It’s actually my favorite. Sometimes I get to the end of a show, and just go back and start it again. But I’m not going to say that out loud for fear of sounding like a…”

“An obsessive and troubled fan?” Duncan suggested.

I shrugged. “Too late?”

“Let’s treat that like a rhetorical question,” Jake said, but now he was teasing me, too.

I turned to Duncan, and said, almost like I was giving him some great news: “Your brother-in-law isJake Archer!”

“Does that make you like me better?”

“It doesn’t make me like youless,that’s for sure.”

“This is why you pay me the big bucks,” Jake said to Duncan.

Then I turned back to Jake, and as I did, I remembered an article inVariety,orVanity Fair,orVogue—something with a V—about America’s new favorite podcast host, and how he always insisted he was so good at interviewing people, at reading their voices and asking the perfect questions, because he was blind.

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