Page 62 of Not Made to Last

“Holy shit!” I laugh out, covering her hands. “Web shooters donotgoPew! Pew!”

She laughs, too, the uncontrollable kind that forces her eyes shut, her teeth showing with her smile. She tries to take back her hands, but I refuse to let them go. If the girl’s going to walk aroundpew pewing web shooters, she needs to be stopped. Immediately. “How would you describe it, then?”

“It’s a well-known fact that it goesThwip! Thwip!”

“Thwip?” she repeats, her voice so loud it echoes off the floorboards. “You lie!”

“I spit nothing but facts, Cheeks.”

She shakes her head but accepts defeat. “Okay, so Miles and His Miracles… not about a superhero?”

“Correct,” I answer. “It’s about Miles, this boy around Max’s age, and he lives in this giant mansion surrounded by all these servants and… adults, basically. He’s home-schooled by a tutor, so he rarely leaves the house. And he doesn’t really have any friends, so he’s alone most of the time.” Alone andlonely. “But he has the Internet, so he sees the world through that. Anyway, he has this obsession with miracles.” I stop. Inhale a huge breath.

“Go on,” Olivia says, and I chuckle, wondering if I sound like Max and if this is her way of showing she’s listening.

“So, Miles goes online and starts looking up miracles, but he doesn’t quite understand what they mean, and so he finds people online who swear they’ve experienced one, and he talks to themand eventually convinces them to meet him at his home to tell him all about it.”

“Are the books about stranger danger?—”

“No,” I cut in, shaking my head. “The first book is basically about his life, and the second is about the people he meets and the miracles they’ve experienced. It never really explains why Miles is so captivated by the idea of miracles, but then in the third book…” I trail off and chew my lip, recalling how I’d spent the past couple of weeks immersed in these books and how deep they got to me. A lonely boy living in a giant mansion, searching the world for something else? Somethingmore? Yeah, it hit a little too close to home… until the third book. “You know what? You should read them. I think you’d like them.”

Her eyes search mine, but she says nothing in response, and the longer she stares, the deeper I fall. Silence stretches between us until, finally, she asks, “Does Miles ever find what he’s looking for?”

In a way, yes. But in the end, what he was searching for wasn’t there to be found. Not in the way the author made us believe. “You should just read them.”

“I will,” she states, “and it’s really sweet that you would read them so you could talk about it with him. I didn’t know…” she trails off, and I wish she’d end the sentence.

She didn’t know what? That Max had told me about them? Or that I felt such an intense connection with him that I wanted to do this one simple thing just to make him happy? Or maybe she didn’t know that walking away from me meant taking him away, too, and that was a different type of heartache all on its own.

“It’s no big deal.” I shrug, hiding my true emotions. “You know I enjoy reading.”

She watches me a beat, her eyes shifting between mine, and I wish I knew what she was thinking. “Have you always liked it?”

I hesitate to answer, unsure of what to say. Some people enjoy reading because it takes them to another world without them ever leaving their couch. I feel the same way… only my couch was a bed made of concrete and a mattress so thin it may as well have been cardboard. The walls of the room were cinderblocks, and the only door in and out was made of steel and glass so thick it was unbreakable.

Sometimes people would enter.

But I would always remain.

Just me and my books.

So…have I always enjoyed reading?

“Not really,” I answer.

But reading saved my life.

In more ways than one.

33

Rhys

I’ve hit play on the short, thirty-second video so many times I’ve lost count. Still, I could watch it a thousand times over and I’d never get sick of it. The clip starts just as Olivia pushes open the door to what I assume is Max’s bedroom. He’s in his pajamas, sitting at his desk beneath a loft bed, inspecting what looks to be a circuit board. “I have something for you,” Olivia says, holding out the books between them. She’d wrapped them at some point between leaving my house last night and giving them to him this morning, so he takes the gift-wrap covered box from her and puts it on his lap, then looks up at her. “You know it’s not my birthday, right?”

“I know,” Liv says, and I can imagine her rolling her eyes. “And anyway, it’s not from me.”

He hasn’t even started to unwrap the gift, too busy trying to uncover the mystery first, and I get it. I’d do the same. “Then who’s it from?”

---