Old Friends and New
“Okay, guys, we need to get this done as fast as possible.” The author stuck her pencil in her mouth and shuffled through the pile of paper in her hand while waving the two behind her forward with her elbow. “I’m late, and there’s not another Saturday in February to push this to, and I’ve still got tons of camp stuff to get done.”
“Seriously, who drops a bombshell like that on people and then tells them to hurry up?” Jake shook his head dazedly as he followed her out of the office. “Like it’s not bad enough to find out your most embarrassing moments are written out for everyone to see, now I’m supposed to…what are we here for again?”
“To help me with this.” She pulled a few sheets of paper from the pile and pushed them into Jake’s hand. “Read these, please, and then you can go back. I’m sure Mel would be happy to have you.”
“Oh, no, you do not get to use Mel against me! Not when you’re the one—” His words trailed off as the author ducked past Wyatt still standing in the doorway and shut the door behind her, nudging him fully into the hallway.
Jake glared after her for a few seconds, then turned to the still shell-shocked teen.
“Well, it seems like we don’t have much choice. You ready to do this?”
“I…guess?” Wyatt scuffed the toe of his cowboy boot against the floor and stuck his hands in his pockets, and Jake rifled through the papers, then sighed.
“I guess I’m supposed to start. She wants me to tell you about my story, which, I’m not sure how I do that when I didn’t even know I was in a story until a few minutes ago. But—I guess if you’re interested in reading about a complete doofus who couldn’t see a good thing when it was sitting right in front of him, then you might like this one. And apparently it’s free, so the whole world can see what it took to wake me up.”
“Also, she says here that the pile of her short stories has gotten so big that people might not know where to start.” Jake shook his head as he looked around at the line of doors, and his eyes widened a little before he glanced down again. “And it looks like she’s made a quiz you can take to see which one you might be most interested in. So if that’s something you want to check out, I guess you can do that here.”
“Okay, your turn.” Jake crumpled a couple of the papers and handed the remaining two to Wyatt, who reluctantly removed his hand from its pocket to take them, still looking a bit like a deer in headlights.
“Hope I’m not supposed to tell you what my story’s about, because I’m pretty sure it’s just barely started. Although if it has anything to do with following a goofy city kid around the desert on a treasure hunt, I don’t think I want to know.” He ran his eyes over the paper, then sighed. “So, yeah, I guess I’m supposed to tell you that this is her ‘no clue’ story—whatever that means—and if you’re also a Christian girl who writes, you should come to the camp she’s so busy getting ready for right now, where you might be able to read some snippets as she hopefully finishes writing it. And I think the rest of this is just…” He scanned the last paper and shook his head. “More information about the camp, but she’s crossed that out and says she’s just going to link it. So I guess I’m done.”
A door popped open far down the hall, and another in a shadowy nook close to the author’s office. Jake glanced down the hallway toward his own door, then back at Wyatt.
“Well, good luck, I guess. Hope stuff works out for you. I guess for all the roadblocks I put in my own way, things did go okay for us in the end.”
He disappeared, and Wyatt glanced back at the office, blew out a hard breath, then walked back through his own door. After a moment, the final door cracked open, and the author scurried out, frantically scribbling on a checklist, scooped up the crumpled papers, and hurried back the way she had come. After another moment, she appeared again with a sigh, pointed her remote at the screen, then whirled back into her office as the picture went black.
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