Austensibly Ordinary

by Alyssa Goodnight

  “You need to see it for yourself, Ethan,” I told him, not quite meeting his eyes. “It’s impossible to explain without the journal, because without the journal it all sounds like a load of crap. I get that. But when have I not been straight with you?” Forcing myself, I lifted my gaze.

  In the darkness, his eyes stared into mine, impossible to read. Whether he believed me or not, he was back, and everything already felt more normal.

  “All right. Why don’t we just get through this dinner, and you can show me the journal when I drop you back at home?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said, nodding.

  I’d noticed when Ethan had come to pick me up that with heels I was only a couple inches shy of his six feet. And now, as we walked along the sidewalk together, it occurred to me that my eyes were just about on level with his lips.

  I stumbled, my heel caught on a tree root pushing up between the concrete squares of sidewalk—something I probably would have noticed if I’d been watching where I was going instead of measuring myself against Ethan like a little kid. Ethan caught me easily, his hand gripping my arm just above my elbow.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m good.” I nodded and sent him a sidelong smile, evidence of my careful concentration.

  I could feel him staring back at me, but I didn’t look. After a beat of silence, he conceded, but rather than let me go completely, he slid his hand down to clasp it firmly, securely around mine.

  He must have had a sixth sense about me in those heels, seeing as I stumbled again, almost immediately, on a clear, flat stretch of sidewalk. Weird.

  Ethan was quite the attentive escort, although I suspected he kept close to me, often with his hand on my lower back, to make sure I didn’t go all Catwoman on him. It felt strangely like we were on an actual date. Very strangely.

  By the time Ethan had pulled back into Mom’s driveway, I was carrying my heels and desperate to get out of that pencil skirt and into some pajama pants. Judging by the speed with which he shrugged off his suit jacket and yanked off his tie, Ethan had precisely the same idea.

  “I’m making hot chocolate,” I told him, scuffing through the apartment on the way to my mini-kitchen. “You want some? I add lots of marshmallows.”

  “Sure,” he agreed. His eyes were already shuttered closed as he lounged on the sofa, no doubt gearing up for our little show-and-tell-all. Too bad nothing would prepare him.

  I came back to the couch carefully toting two mugs of cocoa and a bag of Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos under my arm. Settling everything on the coffee table, I unearthed the journal from underneath the sofa. I was slurping up marshmallows and the journal was waiting patiently between us when Ethan finally opened his eyes.

  “You wanna do this tonight?” I asked, offering him an out.

  “I think we’d better,” he said, looking me over. “You’re easier to talk to like this.”

  “You mean in flannel?” I teased.

  “Yep,” he said, reaching for his cocoa. “So tell me again about the journal, and I’ll see if I can make sense of what you’re saying this time.”

  I pulled my legs up onto the couch, sitting cross-legged, and suggested, “Why don’t you take a look for yourself, and then I’ll answer your questions till we’re on the same page?”

  So he looked. He looked at the inside, glanced at the dedication, paged through and pored over the four pages with messages, and even riffled through the blank pages till the end. Then he closed the book and examined it all over again from the outside. As a silent observer, it didn’t appear that his efforts produced any additional findings over and above the original perusal in the Trailer Park. He looked up at me.

  “No joke, right?”

  I stared at him from under lowered lids. “Well, it’s not funny, is it?”

  “Judging from past experience with you, that doesn’t exactly eliminate it as a possibility.”

  I plastered on a snarky little smile before confirming, “No joke.”

  “Anybody know you found this journal?”

  “Nobody but you.”

  “Where have you been keeping it?”

  “Under the couch.”

  He shot me a look, but didn’t comment.

  “Okay, let’s see it in action.” He held the book out to me, and I took it cautiously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, let’s write in it and wait for words to disappear and the secret message to emerge.” By the sound of his voice, he wasn’t taking this completely seriously, so I wasn’t about to reveal any of my conspiracy theories. At least not yet. Maybe I’d wait to hear his theories before telling him mine. But clearly he was going to have to see the little transformation for himself.

  “Fine. Do you want to do it, or shall I?”

  “Why don’t you do it? You’re already pen pals.” He tipped his head back against the couch and smirked. I considered popping him with one of the pillows, but rose above it. I did, however, spoon the rest of the marshmallows out of his mug and into mine before settling in to write. In pen.

  I get that you’re calling the shots—erasing words, offering up clues, refusing to answer any questions or supply any more information than you deem necessary—but I’m still clueless, so I’ve been forced to call in backup. Ethan was with me when I found the journal, and we’ve been friends for a long time. I trust him, and he’s clever, good with words and puzzles. He is not, however, as open-minded as I am, and is not likely to go haring off on a mystery adventure without more information. And even then, it would be a stretch. He’s humoring me now, despite really believing this is all one big practical joke. Either that, or else I’m out of my mind.

  So this time, it’s for posterity. We need to convince him between the two of us (whoever you are) that, logical explanation or not, this is really happening. Let me down now, and something nasty just might happen to you.

  Well, it wasn’t much, but I couldn’t very well write any private things because Ethan would obviously want to read the before as well as the after.

  “Okay,” I said, nudging his thigh with my foot. “The hard part’s done. Now we wait.” I leaned over to retrieve my cocoa, holding the journal open between us. We’d have to go through this entire procedure all over again if Ethan didn’t get a peek at my entry before it got hacked to bits.

  Ethan leaned forward, took the open journal, and then propped his elbows on his knees to read over my token entry. Just after his muffled snort of amusement, he turned his face toward me, eyebrows raised and lips quirked. “I’m flattered.”

  I shrugged. “Just greasing the skids, my friend. Now you’re in a much more accommodating frame of mind.” I sipped my cocoa and smiled to myself.

  “That remains to be seen. So now what?”

  “Now we wait.”

  “How long do we have to wait?” He glanced at his watch, which likely read the same as the clock on the wall beside the kitchen: ten-thirty.

  “No idea. I write in the journal and then stuff it under the couch and check it when I get a chance.”

  “What kind of experiment is that?” He reached for his mug, started to take a sip, immediately noticed the missing marshmallows, and glanced over at me in exasperation. Worth it.

  “It isn’t one,” I confirmed. “I brought you in as a sidekick—this is your area of expertise. I’m the front woman; you’re the details man.”

  He ran a heavy hand through his hair and ignored me for several moments. I assumed he was coming up with a strategy. I waited. It didn’t take long.

  “Okay.” He turned toward me on the couch. “Let’s start with this: We’re going to tip the journal closed and open it right back up again.”

  “I’m all in,” I assured him, not moving from my lounge position.

  “Ready?” He held the journal out in front of him like some sort of offering, used his finger to save the page, and then closed and opened it again in the space of a single second.

  “No change,” he told me. That didn
’t surprise me.

  “Okay,” he suggested quickly. “We’ll close it completely, count to five, and then open it.”

  I stayed quiet, content to just watch.

  Predictably, that didn’t provide the expected results either. This little trial-and-error-fest went on for a little while, and I couldn’t tell if Ethan’s mounting frustration was with the journal or with me. Foreseeing an imminent need to tack on a few ego-boosting sentences to the original entry, I decided to step into the fray.

  “What if we just give it a little privacy to work its magic and check it again in fifteen minutes?”

  Ethan tossed the journal onto the coffee table and collapsed back onto the sofa. “Fine. This can be the absentee experiment. We don’t talk, we don’t move, we just wait.” So decreeing, he crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. I snapped mine shut too, thinking of several other things I would be jotting into that journal should a follow-up experiment prove necessary.

  I blinked my eyes back open, squinting against the light. At some point I’d shifted onto my side and stretched my legs out onto Ethan’s lap. He had his head turned away from me, but his hands were settled comfortably on my knee and ankle. . . awkward! Sitting up slightly, I peeked at Ethan’s watch. It was almost midnight!

  I attempted to slide my legs out of his grasp, but he only gripped them harder. So I went with Plan B: Reaching for the journal, I lay back on the couch, closed my eyes, and smacked it hard against the coffee table. We “came awake” at the same time, and I pretended not to notice as Ethan slipped his hands from my legs and rubbed his face into semiconsciousness.

  “I suspect it’s been more than fifteen minutes,” I offered, vaguely chagrined. This had, after all, been my idea.

  “Little bit,” he said, after glancing at his watch. “It’s been almost an hour and a half. I guess we’ll check in with the journal.” He reached for it as it hung half-on and half-off the table. Unwilling to surrender first dibs, I scrambled up and leaned in next to him as he turned back the cover and paged through the first few inconclusive “communiqués.” Just before turning the page to finalize this latest experiment gone awry, we glanced at each other, cognizant that this was somewhat of a moment of truth. And then he flipped it.

  puzzle it out between you

  “Aha!” I announced. “There it is, in black and white. Proof.”

  Ethan turned carefully and raised an eyebrow. “Unless you only faked being asleep. You didn’t drug my cocoa, did you?” I elbowed him, hard.

  “If I’d drugged your cocoa I’d have thought of something considerably more imaginative to do with the time and opportunity,” I assured him. It was gratifying to see the uncertainty in his gaze, no matter how short-lived.

  Shifting his attention back to the book, Ethan stared at it a long moment, either trying to determine a strategy of attack or desperately wishing he could chuck it into the trash can and pretend we’d never had this conversation. I decided to take the opportunity to warm up my long-cooled hot chocolate—I knew from experience that Ethan did not partner well in brainstorming; he preferred to work alone.

  Ten seconds was all the time it took the man to start banging the journal on the coffee table.

  I hurried back to the couch and grabbed it back from him, snapping, “I don’t think corporal punishment is the way to get it to talk.”

  The minute it changed hands, something slipped from the binding and fell to the floor with a muffled thud before bouncing under the couch. A quick glance flashed between us before I was on my knees, clutching the journal to my chest while leaning over to peer under the couch. Luckily I quickly found the escapee, which meant that I could ignore the crew of dust bunny squatters hanging out under there. It was a key. And I could only assume it was the key to the journal, although what it had been doing tucked into the spine was just one more mystery to add to the growing list. I held it up for Ethan’s inspection, casually pulling off a dusty little hanger-on.

  He shot me a dubious look and asked, “That key doesn’t fit the journal, does it? The key plate doesn’t even look functional.”

  I shrugged and proceeded to make an attempt. As I slid the key into the evidently more-than-decorative keyhole, something strange happened. Stranger than the things that had already been happening for more than a week now. Feeling a bit out of my depth, I came off my knees on the floor and jumped onto the couch next to Ethan so I could divvy up the weird, wild stuff.

  The journal was growing in my hands. It wasn’t a trim little purse volume anymore—by the time it finished, it was the thickness of an encyclopedia, and my fingers were trembling, cradling the book, as I turned to peer up into Ethan’s face. He was blinking rapidly, his mouth set in a grim line. With tacit approval from me, he relieved me of the weighty tome and flipped it for a hasty examination before settling it on his lap and tipping it open.

  I inched closer and our collective gasps came out side by side just as my finger shot out, homing in on one word. . . “Austen.”

  My heart, already galumphing audibly along, was now joined by odd whistling, fangirl sounds emanating from my throat. I was a regular one-man band. But Oh my God!

  The first page—the dedication page that mentioned the morsels—was magically (because really there was no other word to describe what had just happened) wordier now, and it hinted that my Jane Austen suspicions hadn’t been completely off track. In fact, if we were to take the newly expanded dedication at face value, then Jane had, in fact, believed this very journal, and its bonus features, to be the perfect Austenesque gift for her niece.

  I sat quietly, if twitchily, and read the new and improved version, which matched the online version I’d read earlier in the week, marveling that something once belonging to Jane Austen had found its (marginally ignominious) way into my hands via a picnic table at a trailer park in Austin, Texas. And I’d saved it, making me something of a hero.

  June 2d. 1793

  1793. . . It was true. . . it had to be true! I turned triumphantly to Ethan, but his face was still scrunched in ponderous thought. Too bad—my patience quota for the evening had shriveled to nothing the second Jane Austen had come into play. But I couldn’t very well turn the page until he was ready. . . .

  “Don’t even dare suggest that I slipped you a hallucinogen, Chavez,” I warned.

  He smirked and turned toward me, now fully awake with his eyes lit by curiosity.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “I didn’t drink enough of the cocoa anyway.”

  I punched him on the arm. “So??” I grabbed a pillow and wrapped my arms around it, hugging it tightly. “You go first. What are you thinking?”

  I held my breath, waiting, hoping desperately that he was going to step up to the occasion.

  “I would love to write this off, but as much as it pains me to say it, this round goes to the journal. I have no idea what the hell just happened—or what we’re dealing with here.”

  I grinned at his casual use of first person plural, but my expression quickly morphed into shock as he tipped the book closed.

  “In fact, let’s try this again,” he suggested. He took hold of the key, very obviously on the verge of removing it, and I lunged to stop him.

  “Veto!” I said.

  “What?” he said, obviously confused by my outburst.

  “This isn’t Mythbusters, Chavez. We don’t need to understand the nitty-gritty of how it works right this second. Some of us just want to revel in the fact that it does and keep reading. Sound like a plan?” I kept my hand snug over his, conscious suddenly that we were, in effect, cozied up on my couch after midnight, pretty much holding hands. And reading Jane Austen. I bit back a smile and waited for Ethan’s answer.

  “Fine,” he said, waving his free arm expansively. “We’ll read.” He tipped the tome open again, flipped past the facing page, and attempted to skip over the dedication. I laid my hand steadily on the open page, shuddering just slightly over the feel of the brittle pages and the deep-seate
d knowledge that the one and only Jane Austen had penned the words.

  “And the possibility that Jane Austen once owned this journal. . . ?” I inquired, pressing him to acknowledge the full scope of the situation.

  “Well, I’m sure there were other, lesser known women named Jane Austen. It could have belonged to one of them.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said brusquely. “And what about the magic?”

  “To my knowledge, Jane Austen has never been credited with any magical abilities. The weird workings of this book could be purely coincidental.” He shrugged. “Or,” he opined with a grin, “maybe one of those other Austens I just mentioned was a witch and she put a hex on this journal so that anyone who wrote in it—”

  I promptly removed my hand from the page in question and relinquished my grip on the pillow to let it fly toward Ethan’s face.

  “Don’t talk. Just don’t talk,” I insisted, desperately hoping I hadn’t been hexed. “You’ve been demoted to page-turning lackey.”

  He nodded agreeably and turned the page, and we both began to read.

  There is to be a dance, and in as much as that is delightful all on its own merit, I have a better reason to be fidgety, for afterwards, I shall be out! I confess to being both nervous and excited at once. I am to have a new gown and am truly hoping for something lovely. Simply the thought of it will help me to happily endure the days—and moments—in between. Mother will surely endeavor to make use of these golden opportunities to warn me against future folly while at the same time urging me to embrace all that is good and true. But I will endure with high spirits, for I intend to remain, for as long as possible, pleased with the World in general and everyone in it, Mother included.

  I was fairly salivating, reading the giddy exuberance of a young girl—a young Austen—about to make her debut into society. My shoulder brushed against Ethan’s as I eagerly reached to turn the page. He put up a hand to block my attempt, turned to look at me, eyebrow raised, and said, “Control yourself, Cate,” before slowly turning the page.