Page 3 of Wish You Were Her
Natalie blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just know work’s had you a bit… isolated.”
“I’m emailing anewfriend.”
Natalie gave her a look of approval and held her hands up, as if to assure Allegra that she would let the actress draft these emails on her own and would not pry or spy.
And she did.
RE: Summer Book Festival
Dear Mysterious Reader,
I feel you’re less mysterious now, though I obviously don’t know who you are. A book lover, I hope!
No scolding intended, I assure you. I don’t think you live in Lake Pristine, or you wouldn’t have emailed. People who live here don’t believe in polite contact—they just come and bang loudly on the front door if they want something or have a question. Most of our festival patrons receive a posted program, and descend on the town when the festival starts. I sometimes forget people might look for us on social media. I avoid it all now, too divisive. Or I’ll get caught in a rabbit hole of some weirdly specific drama, usually not related to anyone or anything that I know, and then my evening has gone and I’m cold with shame.
Love,
Ashamed ex-Twitter addict
Allegra blurted out a laugh. Someone at the next table threw her a look of suspicion and her mask slipped back on without a moment’s hesitation. She sighed. Being perceived took away the precious things and made them feel cheap.
“What’s wrong?” Natalie asked, looking up from her own phone. Perhaps she so rarely heard Allegra laugh, she had mistaken it for a noise of distress while focusing on her own alarming inbox. The publicist’s emails replaced themselves like a shark’s teeth. There were always more waiting.
“I know what I’m doing over the summer,” Allegra said decidedly. “I’m spending it with my dad.”
“Your dad? At the bookshop? The whole summer?”
“Yep.”
“Which is where again?”
Allegra slipped her dark glasses on and smiled. “Lake Pristine.”
Chapter Two
“Aha! Got it. These wretched customers will NOT defy me!”
Jonah Thorne shouted the words from atop his ladder in Brooks Books. He had deduced that a customer had been moving some of the books around earlier that morning and his suspicions had just been confirmed by a classic that was covering up a stack of self-help manuals. He stared down at the copy ofHeart of Darknessby Joseph Conrad. It was one of those rare books, where he actually preferred the movie version:Apocalypse Now.
“Lake Pristine,” he said under his breath, and only to himself. His best impression of Martin Sheen. “I’m still only in Lake Pristine.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Found it!”
“Why do they do that?” asked Simon, his fellow bookseller, from the bottom of the ladder.
“Might be an author?” Jonah replied. “Around festival time, they show up and start moving things around. Putting their books out front and center, and their enemies in the back.”
“That’s cracked.”
Jonah leaped down onto the shopfloor and sneezed. “ThoughJoseph Conrad has been dead for some time now so perhaps not. It’s dusty as well, man. We need to get up there with a dry cloth.”
“Well, if you weren’t always lurking around the computer, you could do it.”
