45
“You.”
Her reply came within seconds:
“This is my mailing address. Please
send it to me immediately.”
She read the book in one sitting
and two weeks later was on a plane to
Vancouver wanting to move in with me.
I was excited and terrified.
The trouble was, I hadn’t written the
book for her. I also hadn’t written it as
some kind of gesture for her to find.
But now she had discovered it.
I asked her a question just before she
got on the plane:
“Do I have this right that either we’ll
get married or this will be one of the
biggest romantic disasters of your life?”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much middle-
ground on this one.”
“So it can’t be a disappointment if it
goes wrong. It’s gotta be a betrayal?”
“I’ll take the chance.”
An equation I was dreading was
that fantasy realized very often equals
nightmare. Many people who live in
dreams do so because they can’t handle
reality; likewise people who live in
reality often do so because they can’t
handle their dreams. You fall in love with
someone for who they really are or you
If love is blind, stalkers often have an 11-year-old fictional version of myself
fall in love with someone for seeming
eye for detail. Likewise writers. They a first kiss with this girl. It was the best
to fit the coordinates of your ideal. Take
have to - a telescope in one eye and of day of his life. The rest of the story
it from a family lawyer’s kid, the latter
a microscope in the other. From a leading up to this event took place on
cases are the mean ones when they go
distance, these are your tools for picking the worst day of his (and my) life, when
bust. Nobody likes to know that their love
the lock of someone’s life and reality. about fifty kids, including his best
life is paint by numbers.
But instead of trying to steal everything, friend, lured him out to a field in order to
you’re always in danger of wanting to swarm him. First beating, first kiss. The
***
move in. Before too long a girl becomes story was simple on that level: the best
When I first started riding the bus
a note that becomes a melody that and worst day of a kid’s life happening
with her she was thirteen and, from what
becomes a symphony. on the same day.
I could tell, wanted more than anything
I wrote a novel about a girl I used Ten years after we graduated high
to run away, but couldn’t yet. I was the
to ride the bus with in high school for school, the girl I’d written about found
same age and in the same boat. Her face
three years. I never had the guts to talk me on the internet to ask if I’d become a
reminded me of Alice in Wonderland;
to her. I only lived a block away from writer. She had a hunch. She was living
the same straight blond hair framing the
school, so it wasn’t a bus I needed in Scotland.
fuzzy, never-in-focus pale softness of her
to take (in the geographical sense at I stared at that question a long
skin, and the same Bermuda Triangle-
least). But sharing the bus with her on time before I wrote back that I had. She
blue eyes. It was a dark time for me and
her 30 minute commute home was the asked if I had written a book. I said yes.
she was my nightlight. Partly it’s why I
highlight of every day during that time She asked what it was about. With a
couldn’t risk talking to her. I couldn’t lose
in my life. perverse amount of tension I answered
those 30 minutes with her. I desperately
I ended my novel by giving the back with one word:
needed them.
avantoure | anthology of temptation
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72