Page 2

ALIX

I f I could take only one item to a deserted island, I’d bring my violin.

Crazy, I know. A more practical person would bring a knife or a Costco-sized box of protein bars, but not me. I’d willingly starve for my art; which is probably a good thing, considering that while I’ll never end up on a deserted island, literally starving for my art is starting to look like a real possibility.

I stand on a pedestrian-only street in Chicago, my electric violin hooked up to a portable amplifier to compete with the surrounding noise. The street is bustling with tourists, and the smell of coffee and cinnamon wafts toward me from the nearby cafe.

It’s the perfect place to perform—except my case contains only six dollars, a couple of quarters, and one shiny silver Snapple cap. Despite playing for an hour, I haven’t even made enough money to cover the parking meter, let alone my student loans.

I spot a large group of tourists heading my way and plaster on a fake smile as I start a livelier tune. To my excitement and relief, the tour guide stops, letting the group listen, and they fan out around me in a wide circle.

This isn’t exactly the venue I pictured myself performing in when I dedicated my life to becoming a musician. Still, I’d rather play here than be locked in some boring office.

Music is everything to me.

I love the emotion of it.

I love how a song can change someone’s mood instantly, turning a bad day into a hopeful one with only a few notes.

I love how a single song can unite strangers.

“Play that song from A Kingdom of Thorns !” someone shouts.

Ugh . I do not love that damn song.

I spot a teenage girl with curly blonde hair in the front of the queue. Her excitement is palpable in her Kingdom of Thorns T-shirt. I pretend not to have heard her and begin another familiar tune—the lullaby Nana sang when I was a baby. I close my eyes, swaying slightly to the haunting melody bursting from the strings.

“Yeah, play that Kingdom of Thorns song!”

Excited murmurs surround me, and I open one eye, struggling not to make my annoyance visible. The teenager catches my gaze, and I can’t keep pretending I don’t see her.

“Can you play the theme song?” she asks again, her eyes filled with hope.

I force my mouth to form a wide, fake smile. “Sure! Are you a fan?”

The girl nods vigorously. “Yes! But I like the books better than the movies.”

Oh, thank God. “Me too.”

I stop Nana’s lullaby mid-verse and switch to the requested theme song, which I’ve grown to hate on principle, only because the movies simply can’t do justice to the books.

I wonder what that girl would say if I told her that my Nana wrote the book this song is based on, and she hates the movies more than I do.

I play through the first verse of the theme song, but get distracted as my phone vibrates in my pocket. After a moment, the call goes to voicemail. And then it starts vibrating again. Shit.

I lower my violin. “Sorry, folks. Five-minute break!”

The teenager looks crestfallen, and several people grumble their displeasure as the crowd disperses. I feel guilty, but I’ve applied for dozens of jobs this week and can’t afford to miss a call from a recruiter. Six dollars and a Snapple cap isn’t going to pay my student loans or my car insurance, but a boring office job might. Even if my soul dies a little just thinking about it.

I sigh and dig my vibrating phone out of my pocket. “Hello? This is Alix Knight.”

“Hey, hun,” my mom says too cheerfully.

Why? Why did I answer? Why didn’t I check the caller ID? “Hey, Mom. Listen, I’m working right now?—”

“Sorry?” my mom interrupts. “I can’t hear you. Can you go somewhere quieter?”

I glance around the crowded street. “Not really. I’m actually in the middle of?—”

“Your Nana had an incident during her interview today.”

I nearly drop my bow in panic and quickly set my violin in its case so I can plug my ear and hear her better. “Oh my God, what happened? Did she fall or something?”

Mom lets out a sharp exhale. “No, nothing like that. She’s not physically hurt.”

I let out a relieved sigh.

Nana is Isabelle Reading, world-renowned author extraordinaire. The mother of modern fairytales and the peddler of happily ever after. Her most famous book, A Kingdom of Thorns , has been a pop culture phenomenon for over forty years and this year is scheduled to be rereleased to coincide with the new movie.

Nana has been on the road for months promoting the film, and I’m constantly worried she’s going to collapse from exhaustion. My mother, who often travels with Nana as her assistant and caregiver, isn’t exactly the person I would trust to make sure Nana isn’t overworking herself.

“So if she’s not physically hurt, then what happened?”

Mom sighs. “She had a…mental breakdown, I suppose.”

“What!”

“I’m sure you’ll see the whole thing on social media later. I’ll send you a link. Watch it.”

“Okay—”

“Anyway,” Mom continues with a long sigh, “I’m really calling because I think it’s time to consider moving your Nana into a retirement community.”

My head spins and I suck in deep breaths, trying to remain calm. I close my eyes. I need to remember that my mother is dramatic and prone to overreaction. Her idea of a “mental breakdown” could mean almost anything. Plus, Nana might be in her eighties, but she looks and acts like she’s barely fifty. There’s no need to panic…yet.

Still, this isn’t a conversation to have in the middle of a crowded street. It’s overwhelming, and I can’t even think of the right questions to ask.

Describe this ‘mental breakdown.’

What kind of retirement community are we talking about here?

Is there anything I can do?

Instead, I chew the inside of my lip and blurt out, “What about her house?”

“Obviously, we’ll have to sell it.”

I frown. “And what does Nana think about that? She loves that house.”

Mom brushes off the question as if it’s nothing. “She’ll love a nice beach condo more, I’m sure of it.”

“Hmm.” I roll my eyes at my mother’s blatant narcissism. “If you say so.”

“Anyway,” Mom continues briskly, “I was hoping you could help out.”

“With what?”

“Nana is staying with me for a few days until we can find her a retirement facility, so I can’t leave the city right now. Could you head over to the house? Someone needs to feed her cat, and I need to know what kind of condition the house is in before we try to sell it.”

“I don’t know, Mom. That’s not exactly a simple favor. I mean, I’d have to book a last-minute flight and I can’t really afford that right now.”

“This is exactly why I told you not to move so far from home. If you’d stayed in Philly, you could have driven.”

“Yeah,” I snap, “and if I’d gone to business school instead of a conservatory, I’d have the money for the ticket, right?”

She clucks her tongue. “You said it, hun, not me.”

Frustrated, I huff and squeeze my eyes shut. “Right…but I didn’t do that, so right now, I’d have to drive twelve hours or pay some insane last-minute booking fee for an already too expensive plane ticket. If this were about helping Nana, I’d do it, no problem, but I’m not going to drop everything to help you sell her house out from under her.”

Mom makes a disapproving noise in the back of her throat. “But what about Sushi?”

The image of Nana’s enormous gray cat pops into my mind. “Who’s been feeding him while you and Nana have been at the book signing?”

“I got a pet sitter, but they refuse to stay any longer than our initial agreement. The house scares them.”

“Can’t you do it, then? I have to work.”

Mom sucks in a sharp breath and sounds happy for the first time since I picked up the phone. “Oh my God, Alixandrea, did you get a new job?”

I close my eyes and hold the phone away for a second, resisting the urge to scream. “No. I’ve been trying but the market is really tough right now. I’ve been playing my violin for extra money while looking for another job.”

After a long pause, she says, “Well, it’s not like you couldn’t take time off from that. It can’t be all that much money.”

I glance at the small amount of change in my violin case and sigh. “I have to go. Please tell Nana I’m thinking of her and I’ll call her later.”

“But—”

I hang up, cutting her off.

Later, I drive home with a measly twenty-seven dollars in my pocket, feeling extremely guilty.

Am I the asshole here?

On the one hand, it’s absolutely insane for my mother to expect me to fly all the way from Chicago just to check on Nana’s house. Especially when she and my stepfather, Kevin, live in Philly a mere hour away. On the other hand, my pathological tendency toward people-pleasing isn’t letting me off the hook. I feel like I should be doing more to be helpful.

At a red light, I call my best friend, Jenna, to complain. The ringer echoes through my car’s Bluetooth, then goes to voicemail. I hang up without leaving a message.

Shit. I can’t think of anyone else to call.

Aside from Jenna and Nana, the only other person I talk to regularly is my husband, Ryan, but it’s 3:30PM so he’s still at work. It’s moments like this that I wish I hadn’t let my circle get so small.

In college, I had a huge group of friends, but over the years, we all grew apart. Now, I’m all too aware that I don’t have anyone else to text about my day or grab dinner with or invite to my upcoming thirtieth birthday.

A fresh wave of gloom washes over me, and that makes me feel guiltier.

There’s nothing actually wrong with my life.

So, I don’t have that many friends. So, I got laid off from my shitty sales job which I hated anyway and I can’t find another job because a masters in music theory isn’t exactly in demand right now. So, my marriage has felt kind of stale for a while now. So what? At least I’m driving to my nice apartment right now. At least I’m not dying. Things could be so much worse.

For the rest of my drive, I intermittently berate myself for being ungrateful and try to think of good things in my life. Unfortunately, all I can come up with is full-fat Wheat Thins and that one hot guy from the Kingdom of Thorns movie. I’m still trying to think of a third thing to add to my list as I turn onto my street.

Ryan and I live in the downstairs apartment of a two-family home in Wicker Park. The street is pretty, lined with trees, and though the house is older than the internet, it’s been well maintained. Even before I lost my job due to budget cuts, I never could have afforded this place without Ryan.

There, that’s something to be grateful for. I love this apartment, and even if my marriage is a bit dull, Ryan’s job still keeps us afloat while I’m…figuring things out.

There’s an unfamiliar black SUV in my driveway, so I park on the street and grab my violin from the passenger seat. Then I walk over to check out the SUV before going into the house. Upon a second glance, I spot a pink and white friendship bracelet hanging from the rearview mirror. I frown in confusion.

This is Jenna’s car.

I can’t believe I didn’t immediately recognize the car. Then again, it’s a nondescript black SUV, and I wasn’t expecting to see it here. Jenna didn’t tell me she was coming over…maybe she’s waiting to surprise me? But why? It’s still almost three weeks until my birthday, and my best friend isn’t the most spontaneous person.

A strange nervousness creeps over me, and I jog up the porch steps, fumbling with the lock.

The moment I step inside, the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Nothing looks out of place. My pile of shoes is still by the door, the romance novel I was reading over breakfast is on the couch. Even my half-drunk coffee from this morning sits on the coffee table, exactly where I left it. Still, that seems almost weirder. If Jenna wanted to drop by, she’d be waiting outside, sitting on the porch. Or at most, in the living room.

As if on cue, a loud bang echoes down the hall, followed by giggling.

A cold dread washes over me, making my skin clam up and my stomach churn.

Oh my God.

Some part of me already knows what I’m about to find, but my mind refuses to process it. It’s racing, spiraling—too fast to think, too fast to react.

I can’t breathe. Can’t move. But I have to.

I tighten my knuckles around the handle of my violin case, not bothering to put it down before I move on autopilot toward my bedroom.

To my horror, the door is open and I’m still feet away when I see exactly what I was afraid of since the moment I walked into the apartment.

Jenna is sitting on my desk, bare legs spread wide. Standing between her thighs with his back to me, my husband is furiously pounding into her, making the desk bang against the wall with rhythmic thumps.

I stop just outside the door and stare at them, completely dumbstruck.

What the absolute fuck is going on?

I’m not even angry—at least not yet—I’m just shocked. And weirdly, all I can think about is how they didn’t even make it to the bed. Why my desk? They’re getting cum all over my keyboard. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Suddenly, as if sensing my presence, Jenna looks at me. Our eyes lock over Ryan’s shoulder, and for a fraction of a second, she looks just as surprised as I am. Then she gives a little tilt of her head, as if to say “sorry” and looks away, dismissing me.

In a second, my entire world shatters.

I open my mouth to say something, to yell, to do anything . But no words come out. Instead, I turn on my heel and sprint down the hallway.

I fling the front door open and stumble outside, doubling over on the porch, gasping for air. My stomach roils, and it’s all I can do not to vomit all over my shoes.

Oh my God. Oh my fucking god.

If I were the main character in one of my books, I’d march back inside and tell them off. I’d destroy my apartment. At the very least, I’d stand up for myself.

But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve become a side character in my own life, and right now, I just want to escape.

Escape looks like a box of room temperature Pinot Grigio and a cheap hotel room.

I lie on top of an ugly red and gold bedspread and stare at a crack in the low ceiling. Rolling over, I reach for the box of wine on the nightstand and I turn the plastic spout on the side of the box, filling my Marriott - branded water glass to the brim before downing it in two gulps.

The wine tastes like depression.

Like “fuck you.”

Like three liters for $11.99 at the gas station down the street from my hotel.

I came here to think. To decide how to confront my husband. To untangle how things even got to this point.

I’m twenty-nine, married and childless, broke, and now heading for divorce.

How the fuck did I get here?

I’ve been dreaming of happily ever after for as long as I can remember. It’s hard not to when my Nana literally wrote the manual on fated love. Unfortunately, the women in my family have notoriously terrible taste in men. My dad was the one exception, but he died, and the cycle continued like he never existed. I thought I’d escaped that generational curse when I married Ryan, but I guess not.

Fumbling drunkenly for my phone, I check if I have any texts or missed calls. Nope. Nothing has changed in the three minutes since I last looked, and I don’t know why I thought it would.

I open social media and mindlessly scroll, skimming past all the people I went to high school with, flaunting their perfectly curated happily ever afters . Even worse are the relentless ads for strollers and baby toys. My targeted ads are working as hard as the family photos from former friends to remind me that I should be grown up by now. I should have my life together.

I guess no one told the algorithm that what was left of my own happily ever after just came crashing down around me.

Or maybe I never had one to begin with. Maybe I wanted so badly to feel loved and taken care of that I deluded myself into believing a fantasy.

My phone vibrates in my hand, startling me.

Is it Ryan calling to explain himself? Or maybe Jenna wants to apologize? I look at it too fast, causing my head to spin and my wine to slosh out of the glass and onto the ugly bedspread.

A wave of disappointment crashes over me when I see “Mom” flash across the screen.

Please just kill me.

I would rather chew glass than tell my mom what happened. Invariably, she will manage to make my devastation about her. As if this is my fault. As if my husband cheating is a reflection on her failure to raise me right.

I’m getting too old for mommy issues, but sometimes I feel like since my dad died, there’s no one in my family except for Nana who “gets” me.

That thought jolts my memory, and I fumble with the phone, suddenly remembering why my mother is texting. I’d meant to call Nana this afternoon to make sure she was okay, but I completely forgot. Jenna and Ryan drove her accident from my mind, and now guilt piles on top of everything else.

Mom has sent two texts in quick succession. The first is a link to a video. The second says:

Mom:

This is the incident I was talking about earlier. I really hope you change your mind about coming home to help!

I groan. It’s not the most passive aggressive text she’s ever sent, but it still skyrockets my guilt.

I click on the link, grimacing as I take in the 3,000+ comments and 1.5 million likes and shares. It’s a short video, clearly shot from someone’s cell phone.

Across the top, bold text reads:

I saw Isabelle Reading melt down at Northeast Fantasycon

Oh God. This is going to be bad.

In the video, my grandmother is sitting at a long rectangular table on a small stage. Even in this grainy footage, she looks beautiful. Barely sixty, despite being eighty-eight. Her long silvery hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, her smile wide and warm. The interviewer sits beside her, while in the background, my mother stares at her phone.

Someone taps a microphone, and the interviewer introduces Isabelle Reading, celebrated author of the world’s best loved fantasy romance: A Kingdom of Thorns .

I fast-forward ten seconds, too anxious to wait.

“I’m sure you get this question all the time,” the interviewer starts excitedly. “But where did you get the idea for the world of Ellender?”

“A dream,” I mutter automatically.

She had a dream about a beastly prince in a castle made of roses and started writing the book the next day.

It’s an answer I know well. One I’ve heard Nana give at least a hundred times, if not more.

But, this time, she doesn’t.

Nana looks out into the crowd, squinting as if she’s blinded by the bright lights. Her wide smile falters, and she lifts a hand to shield her eyes. Is she swaying? After a long silence, the interviewer repeats the question.

Nana’s expression darkens. “I saw it.”

The interviewer keeps grinning. “Yes, you first saw Ellender in a dream, right?”

“No.” Nana’s tone sharpens. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

Whispers ripple through the crowd. The interviewer furrows her brow. “Yeah, I’d imagine it must seem real to you after all this time. It’s been over forty years since your first ever book was published—that’s a whole lifetime!”

Nana glances sideways at the interviewer, but it’s as if she’s looking through her, not at her. “It was real,” she says, more urgently this time. “I barely escaped.”

“Right,” the interviewer says, her smile faltering as she tries to regain control of the interview. “So–”

Nana stands abruptly, her chair screeching backward across the stage. Her voice rises in panic. “He’s coming. He’s coming for me.”

In the corner of the frame, Mom darts onto the stage. She bends, whispering urgently to Nana before grabbing her arm and trying to pull her away from the microphone.

“You don’t understand!” Nana’s voice trails off as Mom pulls her further away from the mic. “The fire won’t stop him forever. The beasts are coming! He’s coming!”

I click out of the video and stare at the dark phone screen in shocked silence. What the absolute fuck was that?

I always assumed that to be as creative as Nana, you have to be a little nuts. She’s definitely a bit eccentric, but I’ve never thought she was actually crazy.

But now, other odd things about her pop into my mind.

Like the fact that she talks about her fictional characters as if they’re real people. Or the fact that she’s still living in Ironhill, PA, despite pressure from her neighbors, family, and the goddamn U.S. government.

Nana is one of the last eight residents of a rural Pennsylvania mining town. It’s almost literally a ghost town. Decades ago, a mining accident caused an enormous underground fire that’s still burning to this day. It’s incredibly dangerous for her to keep living there, but even after my grandfather died, and Nana made millions from her books, she refused to move.

That’s the house that my mom wants me to go check on, and the fact that it’s in a literal ghost town is certainly the reason Mom doesn’t want to go herself. Hell, compared with my own home right now, Nana’s weird dangerous house sounds like a paradise?—

Wait a minute.

I sit up too fast, and my head spins. My glass slips from my fingers, wine splashing across my lap, soaking through my jeans and into my panties. “Fuck!”

I leap out of the puddle pooling on the bed and pace, already unlocking my phone with my wine-free hand. Without thinking, I call my mom.

She answers on the second ring. “Hello?”

“H-hi, Mom.”

“Alixandrea?” She pauses, and I hear the smack of her lips. “Are you alright? You sound…off.”

I sound drunk, is what she means. Oooph.

I push a long brunette curl out of my face. “I’m f-fine. I just wanted to tell you that I changed my mind. I’d be happy to go check on Nana’s house.”

“Really?” All the judgment disappears from my her voice, replaced with equal parts shock and relief . “Are you sure?”

I close my eyes, hearing Nana’s terrified voice in the back of my head. He’s coming. The beasts are coming.

Maybe that should scare me, but it doesn’t. Even if her house drives me just as crazy as she is, “beasts” can’t be worse than my cheating soon-to-be ex-husband and former best friend.

“I am very sure.” I hiccup. “I’ll be on the first flight to Ironhill tomorrow morning.”