Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“Well, that sounds dandy! Who’s the bachelor? Do we know him? Is it your sweet, single dentist?”
“It’s Cole. He’s …” I feel my heart flutter saying his name. Why did my heart flutter? That doesn’t make sense. “He’s my age. Cole and I went to school together.”
“Cole …” My mom goes quiet for a moment, her eyes seeming to teleport to another dimension. “You don’t … You don’t mean … Lauren Harding’s son, do you? Cole Harding?”
Hearing the rather sudden change in her tone concerns me. “Cole Harding, yes. Why?”
Her eyes go astray. She appears deep in her mind suddenly. “Oh. I … I didn’t think …” She shakes her head. “I didn’t think you two were still friends.”
“Friends? What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” Suddenly my mom is happy again, purging all unpleasant thoughts from her brain. “That sounds wonderful, my dear, and I think you’re going to do a terrific job.”
“Cole and I used to be friends?”
Now it’s my mom who’s become the bug caught in a net and trying feebly to break free. “Don’t mind what I said. Yes, when you were kids. It was … why are you looking at me like that? It was a long time ago, sweetie, just forget I said anything.”
“But I’m interviewing him in the morning.”
My mom goes strange again. “You are?”
“Yes. I already told you I am. I’m writing up questions. I have to interview him at his house.” I fidget with my pen in hand. “I’d rather someone else do it, because I … I feel like I’m no good at this whole … talking and questioning stuff. People always look at me strangely and wonder why I stutter so much.”
After managing to wipe away her troubled expression, she comes into my room and takes a seat on the edge of the bed near the desk. “I know, sweetheart, I know, ever since you were little. For some people, it’s easier to come out of their shells. For others, not so much. But you know what? It doesn’t matter which kind of person you are. Just do things your way, alright? Even if your way involves stutterin’ and shyness and speakin’ fluent Gremlish.”
I eye her. “Now you’re just making up words.”
“You’ll be fine.” She puts a hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze before rising from my bed. “Now I’m gonna leave you to it. Try not to stay up too late, alright? Oh, and …” She stops at the door, a finger tapping her chin. “When you go there tomorrow … over to Cole’s … could you maybe tell … um … no, could you maybe say … well …” She shakes her head. “Never mind. Goodnight.”
“Mom?” I try, but she’s already seen herself out with nothing more to say, gently closing the door. I’m left staring at the back of my door, wondering why she got so weird about everything.
Then I try to imagine myself playing with Cole as a kid.
With gorgeous-eyed Cole Harding and his striking smile and perfect teeth, who I had always assumed would have nothing in the world to do with someone like me.
Why can’t I remember it?
I turn back to my desk, dazed, adjust my glasses, and unbury my notebook, revealing the nearly blank sheet of paper in front of me. It waits for me to fill it with bold and interesting questions.
I don’t suspect I’m going to be getting much sleep tonight.
It feels like the morning comes with the blink of an eye, and at once I’m at my destination. Cole Harding’s house, like most places in Spruce, is well within walking distance from my own. I make my way up the front pathway, tug on the strap of my camera (an older one of my dad’s I brought from home, since I haven’t had time to run to the office and grab a replacement for the one that got smashed at the festival), swallow down the bile made from my anxieties, and finally bring my finger to the doorbell.
The second the chime goes off, I hear a dog barking. That’s soon followed by someone calling out to “shut that dang yapper up”, then a harsh bumping noise, and finally glass shattering.
I stare at the door, eyes wide.
Was this a bad time?
The barking goes away. I hear the shuffling of footsteps. Then I stand there for a while longer as I listen to brushing noises and a few muttered words I can’t make out. “I said I’m sorry,” someone rather sharply replies, promptly followed by a soothing hush, then more silence.
I bite my lip, worried.
Is this normal?
Just when I’m about to give up and hightail it in the opposite direction, pretending I never showed up to do this at all, the door swings open and a cheery Cole appears. “Good morning!”