Is this—isthiswhat he’s been working on?
Put it down, Bea. Walk away. Ask him later.
I ignore myself and keep reading.
Act One
An ambulance converted to operate as a food van parked on a country road – dusk
A woman with red hair and a T-shirt bearing the logo for Mad Emergency Corn Dogs cleans up inside the converted ambulance after a long day without enough customers. A man steps out of a truck and approaches. She does not see him.
PORTER JACQUES
Sell more corn dogs when you don’t betray people, Mad.
Madonna “Mad” Bigley jumps in surprise, then aims her cleaning spray at him.
MAD BIGLEY
Get lost, Porter. You can scare my customers away for one day, but you have no idea who you’re dealing with.
PORTER
Everyone knows who they’re dealing with when they deal with you. Fancy city girl who had to come home to raise her brothers. Thinks that makes you special. Well, it doesn’t.
My heart starts a familiar beat as I scan the rest of the page, then the next.
It’s not butterflies fluttering my heart.
It’s not swooning.
It’s not eager anticipation or infatuation or love.
No, my heart is cramping.
It’s cramping the same way that it cramped when Jake told me it was over and I realized he was taking my restaurant.
It’s cramping the same way it did when Will told me I spent too much on groceries to make him gourmet meals every night and it just wasn’t going to work.
The same way it did when Andreas took off to do the Appalachian Trail, solo, becauseyou’re just a bummer with all of this worry over everything with your brothers, Bea, and I need to find the good parts of myself again.I thought someone who did something selfless would be less self-involved.
It might even be cramping the same way it did when my phone rang in my dorm at midnight with Ryker calling to tell me the house burned down and that Dad didn’t make it out after going back in for Mom. That neither of them made it out.
I scan three more pages, confirming what the burning in my eyes and the cramping in my stomach are already telling me.
Simon’s secret project?
The one he’s been working on all summer? The one he’s told me he’ll share with me once he’s put the sparkling finishing touches on it?
It’s about me.
About my life.
He’s telling my story,without permission, for his own personal gain.
It’s Jake all over again, except worse.
Because Simon knows what Jake did to me.
