The Unexpected Everything

by Morgan Matson

  After making Toby promise to check in with us in an hour either way, my dad relented, and Toby got off the bus, crossing in the crosswalk and walking toward the coffee shop. The light changed and Walt drove forward, and in the glass behind Toby, I saw the bus slogan reflected as she slowly pulled open the door, her head down and her shoulders hunched. TOWARD THE FUTURE.

  • • •

  “Girls?” my dad called, a little fearfully, toward the back of the bus.

  “Just a second,” Palmer and I yelled in unison from where we were sitting on either side of Bri, who had collapsed into the middle of the back row and was crying into a wad of toilet paper she’d taken from the bathroom.

  “I can’t believe it,” Bri said, wiping her arm across her face. “I didn’t think—I mean, she just left.”

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I said, patting Bri’s arm, unable to shake the completely illogical thought that it was Toby who would know how to handle this situation best.

  “Toby doesn’t even like Starbucks,” she sobbed.

  “It’ll be okay,” Palmer said, adding quickly, “eventually. I promise.”

  “Why don’t we head back home,” I said gently, realizing that if my world had collapsed around me, the last place I would want to be was stuck on a campaign bus in New Jersey. “We’ll get ice cream on the way, how does that sound?”

  “Really?” Palmer asked quietly, and I met her eye above Bri’s head and nodded. After all, this had mostly been a romantic gesture. Clark was going to be back in Stanwich tonight—I’d just talk to him then.

  “No,” Bri said, looking up at me, her face stricken. “Andie . . . You have to go talk to Clark.”

  “I’ll talk to him later,” I said. “It’s not important. So . . .”

  “It is important,” Bri said, looking right at me, her eyes puffy from crying. “That’s why we’re here, right? And you love him?”

  I nodded. “I do.”

  “Then,” Bri said, sitting up straighter and crumpling up the toilet paper in her hand, “you’re going to tell him that.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  She nodded. “You know how you’re always saying that real life isn’t like those movies, and it doesn’t actually happen that way?” I nodded, and she gave me a trembly smile. “Go prove yourself wrong.”

  • • •

  In all the movies Toby had made us watch, it was always somewhere very romantic. On top of the Empire State Building, on a rain-streaked airport runway, at a New Year’s Eve party. This moment did not, in any of the movies I could recall, take place in a bookstore in New Jersey packed with fantasy-novel readers, many of whom were in costume.

  And yet there we were, fighting our way through the crowd that seemed to be taking over most of the downstairs of Clymer Books. A podium was set up at the other end of the store and there was a table next to it with both of Clark’s books on it. Chairs were lined up in rows, an aisle between them, but it looked like every single chair was taken, and a large crowd was filling in the rest of the space—it appeared that Clark’s event was standing-room only.

  It probably didn’t help that there were so many of us suddenly trying to crowd in—me, Palmer, Bri, my dad, and Walt. It turned out that Walt was a big fan of the movies and so was happy to tag along with us after he found a lot to park the bus in.

  Now, a guy who was dressed in a very detailed Elder costume glared at me as I tried to take a step forward, craning my neck to see if I could spot Clark.

  “Andie?” I turned and did a double take when I saw Tom, looking as shocked to see me as I was to see him. “What are you doing here?

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, just as Palmer spotted her boyfriend and ran over to him.

  Tom broke away from kissing Palmer to answer me. “I’m here to support Clark, as a friend and as a reader.”

  “Thomas,” my dad said, holding out his hand, causing Tom to turn bright red.

  “Congressman,” he said, shaking my dad’s hand. “I mean, hi. How are you doing?” He looked behind my dad. “And Bri, too. And . . .” He frowned when he saw Walt. “Do we know him?” he asked in a whisper to Palmer.

  Before she could answer, though, a bookstore employee—in an apron, for some reason—walked toward the podium, tapping on the microphone twice. “Hello,” she said, smiling at the crowd. “Welcome to Clymer Books.” She then launched into an introduction, covering how the signing following the reading would work and that we were required to buy books before having them signed. Then she started to introduce Clark, and as she listed his résumé and accomplishments—so impressive, for someone so young!—I could feel my pulse picking up. Clark was here. He was probably just feet away from me, hiding behind a bookshelf or something. I was here, and so was he, and it really seemed like this was going to happen.

  I didn’t even hear the end of her introduction, but realized it was over when people started clapping, and then Clark was coming out, adjusting his glasses the way he always did when he was nervous, looking so handsome in his dark-blue button-down that it took my breath away.

  “Hi,” he said, stepping up behind the microphone and giving the crowd a nervous smile before looking down again. “Thank you all so much for coming. I’m . . . actually going to read from my work in progress, if that’s okay.”

  It was like the crowd all held their breath for a moment before everyone started talking at once. I noticed that Tom had an incredibly pleased look on his face, like he was thrilled he had known about this before the rest of the world.

  “Uh—” Clark said, and everyone quieted down pretty quickly, seeming to realize that if they kept talking, they wouldn’t get to hear any of the new book. “It’s still pretty new. So it might change. Just letting you know so you don’t hold me to anything here.” There was low, polite laughter, and then Clark cleared his throat, looked down at the paper in front of him, and started to read.

  For the next ten minutes the room was silent except for the sound of people’s camera phones clicking. You could have heard a pin drop as Clark read from a section of his new, untitled book. I listened, my hands twisted against each other and my heart in my throat, not quite able to believe what I was hearing, but for different reasons than the rest of the crowd in the bookstore.

  Because it was about us.

  It was about all of us—me, Palmer, Tom, Toby, Bri, even Wyatt—and the summer we’d had together. It was still set in Clark’s fantasy world, but it was about a group of friends off on an adventure together. And when Clark finished and there was deafening applause, I felt a piece of responsibility for it. Like maybe this new book wouldn’t be happening if it hadn’t been for me—if it hadn’t been for all of us.

  Clark started taking questions then, and it seemed like every hand in the crowd was going up. People wanted to know why he’d taken so long to write the follow-up, where he got his inspiration, and what he thought about the casting of the movies. They wanted to know how to get an agent, when the new book would be out, and who his favorite authors were. The questions kept coming, until the aproned bookstore lady announced that they had time for only one more. Palmer gave me a look and I took a breath. I knew this was the moment. Clark was searching the room through all the hands that were waving frantically, but I didn’t wait to be called on. I just stepped forward into the aisle and said, a little too loudly, “Um. I have a question?”

  “I’m actually calling on—” Clark started before he saw me. I saw his eyes widen before he composed himself, and I could tell that I’d surprised him. “You had a question?” Clark asked, giving me a small, tentative smile.

  “Yes,” I said, making myself take another step forward, trying not to think about the fact that my dad and my friends and a middle-aged bus driver—as well as a crowd of hundreds of strangers with smartphones—were there, and that everyone was watching me. “I actually had a question about two of the more minor characters.”

  “And who might those be?”

  “Kar
l and Marjorie,” I said, and I heard the guy on the aisle next to me ask, “Wait, who?”

  “It’s canon,” the guy next to him scoffed, and I made myself take another step forward.

  I could do this. If whole galaxies could change, so I could I. For just a moment I thought about Palmer calling the play. She asked if the cue was ready but then didn’t wait to hear the response before giving the go-ahead. You got a warning, but not time to change your mind or come up with another plan. You just had to act.

  “What about them?” Clark asked, and I could sense the restlessness of the bookstore lady next to him, probably wishing he’d just called on someone else.

  “Just . . . I was wondering if you were committed to their ending,” I said. I heard the guy on the aisle scoff loudly again. “If . . . maybe there was any way it could be different.”

  “Thanks so much for that question!” the bookstore lady said brightly, clapping her hands together, and my heart sank. Was I really going to be stopped by a random employee in an apron? Without even getting an answer?

  “No, it’s okay,” Clark said, not looking away from me. “I’ll answer that.” He took a deep breath, and I could see his eyes searching mine, like he was looking for an answer. “I had thought that was the ending,” he finally said. “But I might have been wrong.”

  “I was just thinking,” I said, sure that the rest of the crowd could probably hear how hard my heart was beating, since it seemed deafening to me, pounding in my ears, “that maybe Marjorie realized she was in love with Karl. And told him that. And said she was sorry for being scared.”

  Clark nodded and glanced down at his papers, and suddenly a terrible fear shot through me. What if I was about to get rejected, here, in front of all these people? Was I about to be turned down in an incredibly public way?

  “Well,” Clark said, after a pause. When he looked up at me, he was smiling, both dimples flashing. “I think that would certainly change things.”

  I smiled and felt tears spring to my eyes. “Oh,” I said, my voice coming out wobbly, and I could feel that I was torn between laughing and crying and on the verge of both. “That’s really good to hear.”

  Clark smiled at me, and from his expression, I could see that he was feeling pretty much the same way.

  And then Clark was stepping out from behind his podium and walking toward me, and I was running toward him and into his arms, and Clark was picking me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and we kissed, and it was like I was blocking out the commotion all around us, the people yelling and talking and laughing and trying to figure out what was happening, and the bookstore lady clapping her hands and trying to get control of the situation.

  “Hi,” I murmured when we stopped to breathe and Clark set me down to the ground on legs that felt wobbly.

  “Hi,” he said, running his hand over my hair and cupping my face in his hands. “I missed you.”

  “Me too,” I whispered. I knew that this couldn’t last—that there were people waiting and he had things to do and this couldn’t go on forever. But in that moment it was like everything else faded away and there was only me and Clark and the possibility of us—whatever we might become—stretching forward in a hundred different directions, all of them unexpected, each one better than the last, the ending not yet written. And with this thought in mind, and Clark’s hands in my hair, I stretched up to kiss him once again.

  Jack looked around at them—the five who would be accompanying him on this journey. “Are we met?” he asked, dreading the answer. These were the comrades-in-arms who would help him avenge his sister’s death and find the message he knew for certain Tamsin had left behind in the castle for him? This collection of rogues and misfits?

  He looked at them one by one, realizing as he did that most of them weren’t even paying attention, despite the fact that he was (technically) now the king. There was Lord Thomas, who was sulking on a nearby stump, still in the player’s costume he’d been wearing when the king’s guards had pulled him out of the performance. “I had a matinee today,” he said petulantly, shaking his head. “I’ve been rehearsing for weeks. My accent’s finally perfect. But I suppose you don’t care about that?”

  Next to him were the ladies Sabrine and Hannah, who were, as usual, laughing together at something the rest of them weren’t included in. He knew he needed them—Lady Sabrine was the best tracker he’d ever encountered, able to pick out the spot where a deer paused for a second and changed direction. And Lady Hannah had a way with horses that was unmatched. But that didn’t mean he wanted to feel like they were giggling about him behind his back, like they’d been doing since he was a boy of fifteen.

  Leaning up against a tree, not paying attention to any of this, and certainly not the looks Lady Hannah was sending him, was Sir Wylen, who was, as usual, strumming the lute he seemed to carry with him everywhere.

  “No,” a voice at his side said, dripping with disgust. He turned and saw Lady Andrea, who had insisted for the past week she was coming along, until he’d finally stopped arguing. “I’m not coming unless you get him to stop playing that thing. I cannot abide it. I’ll break it up myself and use it for kindling.”

  Jack felt himself smile, and prayed he wasn’t blushing, or he knew he’d never hear the end of it from Sabrine and Hannah. But he couldn’t help it—he’d been in love with her from the moment he’d seen her, when she’d stormed into his court and demanded to know what idiot claimed to be running the kingdom.

  Rather than risk her seeing him blush, Jack knelt down to rub the ears of Bernie, the huge dog that seemed to follow her everywhere and which he had a suspicion was actually part wolf. “I’ll leave that to you,” he said, backing away slightly when the dog bared inch-long fangs at him. “I think you can handle it.”

  “We’re going to have to be careful,” Lady Sabrine said, as she stood and pulled Lady Hannah up, ignoring Wylen, who’d reached out his hand to help her. “I’ve heard rumors that the assassin Margery is unaccounted for. And for a prize such as you, my lord, I doubt she’d have to settle for the lowest bidder.”

  “Who?” Wylen asked, frowning.

  “I have an idea!” Thomas said, standing up as well and clapping his hands together. “What if we leave later tonight? Then I can get the evening performance in, and—”

  “No,” Hannah and Sabrine said in unison.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Lady Andrea said, sheathing her dagger and taking a step toward the woods, dog at her heels. “We should get started.”

  Jack took a breath, then let it out as he looked west, toward Haverhall, where they would journey. “Well, then,” he said, looking around at the assembled group. “Let’s begin.”

  —C. B. McCallister, “The Coin of the Realm.” Hightower & Jax, New York.

  Advance reader’s copy. Not for review or quotation.

  Chapter TWENTY

  I took a sip of my latte and looked across the table at Flask’s. I’d switched to hot lattes at the end of September, when it officially got too cold for iced drinks, and now that we were getting close to Halloween, the leaves outside the coffee shop window had all turned color and started to cover the ground. “How are you not done yet?” I asked, shaking my head.

  Toby glanced up from where she was currently doctoring her caramel pumpkin latte with sugar packets and cinnamon sprinkles, as she had been doing for, I was pretty sure, the last twenty minutes.

  “You can’t rush these things,” she said, dropping in a very precise amount of sugar, giving it a stir, tasting it, then nodding and looking back at me. “Perfect. What were we talking about?”

  “I don’t know. It was ten years ago, and I’ve forgotten.” I looked automatically to the chair next to Toby—the one that was sitting empty. This was when Bri would have chimed in, defending Toby or making a joke. But silence just fell between us, and we both took a sip of our drinks in unison.

  “So,” she said, before the pause could grow uncomfortable. “How’s it going with t
he DMV thing?”

  “You mean DVM?”

  “Sure,” Toby said with a wave of her hand. “If you say so.”

  I smiled. I was pretty sure Toby actually knew what it was called and was just doing this to tease me. But there was a chance that she was actually still getting used to it—the change had taken me by surprise as well. In the last month I had switched my focus from premed to veterinary medicine. Now, whenever my dad and I went through my college options, narrowing down where to apply, we were focusing solely on schools that had good veterinary programs. I wasn’t sure if the idea had taken root during the night of Bertie and the chocolate, but by the end of the summer, I’d come to my decision. Maya was thrilled.

  Even though I was no longer working full-time, I was still doing weekend walks for Maya and Dave. Folding a dog into my regular routine seemed like good practice for the winter. Because now my dad and I were spending far too much time on pet rescue websites, either when he was here or video chatting when he was in D.C., arguing about what kind we wanted to adopt when he was out of Congress and home in January. One thing that seemed to be clear was that the dog was going to be named Duke. Every time we talked about our potential puppy, that’s what my dad called it, and I was trying to accept that I was going to have a dog with John Wayne’s nickname.

  “It’s good,” I said, before Toby could ask me if I would be the person who took people’s license pictures—I’d heard all these jokes from her before. “How’s the track team?”

  Toby groaned, but good-naturedly. “It’s killing me,” she said. “These people are maniacs. And did I tell you that we have practices on Saturdays? Like, in the mornings?”

  I smiled as I took a sip of my drink. “You may have mentioned it.”

  She shook her head and started going off about how weekends were for rest, not running, but I had a feeling it was mostly just Toby being Toby. She’d joined the track team right after school started and seemed to eat lunch most days at the track table, laughing with her new group of friends, wearing a ribbon in her hair on the meet days. Palmer and I had gone to one, holding up the signs she had made, but that was before we’d realized just how long they could take. “Anyway,” she said with an exaggerated sigh when she’d finished complaining. “We have a meet next Saturday. You know, if you’re free.”