Page 2 of Wish You Were Her
“Aha! Got it. These wretched customers will NOT defy me!”
Jonah Thorne shouted the words from atop his ladder in Brooks Books.
He had deduced that a customer had been moving some of the books around earlier that morning and his suspicions had just been confirmed by a classic that was covering up a stack of self-help manuals.
He stared down at the copy of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
It was one of those rare books, where he actually preferred the movie version: Apocalypse Now .
“Lake Pristine,” he said under his breath, and only to himself. His best impression of Martin Sheen. “I’m still only in Lake Pristine.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Found it!”
“Why do they do that?” asked Simon, his fellow bookseller, from the bottom of the ladder.
“Might be an author?” Jonah replied. “Around festival time, they show up and start moving things around. Putting their books out front and center, and their enemies in the back.”
“That’s cracked.”
Jonah leaped down onto the shopfloor and sneezed. “Though Joseph Conrad has been dead for some time now so perhaps not. It’s dusty as well, man. We need to get up there with a dry cloth.”
“Well, if you weren’t always lurking around the computer, you could do it.”
There was only one computer in the expansive bookshop and it was older than the booksellers who worked there. A large, chunky thing sitting on the cash desk. Jonah had a tempestuous relationship with it and its slow speed.
But after some recent, pleasing email exchanges, he was growing fond of the old thing. The last week had been full of sweet missives from a stranger and he now found himself looking forward to checking the work inbox.
“Jonah?”
“Yes, Simon? Speak while helping me open this delivery, please.”
Simon joined Jonah by the large blue boxes full of new books and helped his friend to scan them into the system, all without losing his enthusiasm.
“Heard the boss’s exciting news?”
“Nope. He barely speaks to me anymore.”
Jonah did not mean for the words to sound embittered, but that’s how they came out. He had been working in Brooks Books since the age of sixteen. Almost three years on, and his once warm relationship with the bookshop owner and general manager, George Brooks, had cooled.
He did not know the reason, and he had never been skilled at reading other people and their changing emotions.
“His daughter’s coming here for the whole summer.”
Jonah could feel himself making a face. “Didn’t know he had one.”
“Not just any old daughter.”
Jonah looked up at Simon, who was positively salivating. “You’re being weird. What’s wrong?”
“It’s just too good, Jonah. I can’t believe he’s never milked this or even mentioned it. His daughter is—”
The shop door opened and their employer came striding in. He had a newspaper tucked under one arm and, in a first since Jonah had met him, he was humming.
“Morning,” Jonah said.
“Morning, lads.”
“I was just telling Jonah that your daughter’s staying with you this summer, boss.”
The words were volleyed with sunny familiarity.
Jonah had always marveled at that talent of Simon’s.
Whenever it was just the two of them—and they had been friends since they were kids—Jonah saw all of Simon.
Savvy, sarcastic, sometimes a little bratty.
When he was around other people, he turned into sunshine.
It always took a little while for people to see the real Simon, and George still got the sunshine version five days a week. Jonah wished he could do the same.
The bookshop owner smiled and looked younger in the process. “Yes. She had a break in her schedule so she’s coming home.”
“Home?” Jonah said. He had never even heard George refer to Lake Pristine as home, let alone a mysterious daughter that none of them had ever seen.
“Well, she’s never visited here before. But it’s always home for her if she needs it,” George clarified. “Which is a good segue to this: I want her to enjoy the festival. I thought she might like to work it alongside the both of you.”
That was enough to stamp out all of Jonah’s good humor and curiosity. “Our festival? The one we’ve been planning for months. That festival?”
“Yes, Jonah,” said George, a little curtly. “She’s smart. She’ll be an asset.”
“Definitely an asset on the PR front,” Simon said, a joke laced into his voice that Jonah did not understand.
“We have a packed program! We don’t have time to train someone new,” Jonah insisted. “And when I say ‘we,’ I mean me, because Simon doesn’t know the half of what I do.”
“When it comes to this place, true,” Simon conceded. “To life outside of it? You’re an old man and you need me.”
Jonah smiled. He and Simon were the same age.
“She won’t need any training. Books are in her blood and she’s a hard worker. She’s taken on more than a small-town book festival in her life, son. She’ll be fine.”
The use of the word “son” softened Jonah’s irritation and he decided to drop his protestations.
“Right,” said George. “I’ll be in the office. She’s arriving this afternoon.”
Jonah watched his employer vanish through the door with a “staff only” sign at the back of the shop, then yelped as he found himself being grabbed by the collar, Simon dropping his professional act completely now that George was gone.
“Dude, relinquish your creepy possessiveness of the work computer and let me google something for you.”
Jonah grumbled but allowed his friend to drag him over to the ancient computer. It took an embarrassing five minutes for Google to load and then Simon was typing furiously while Jonah, who was far taller, peered over his shoulder.
Allegra Brooks.
Google knew what Simon wanted before he had even finished typing the fourth letter of her name. Millions of results appeared, from an IMDb page to multiple articles published in the last twenty-four hours.
“She’s, like, freakishly famous. Not just small-town famous, globally famous. She just won all the awards for… acting and shit.”
Simon was breathless with excitement but Jonah was barely listening.
He was staring at the three pictures of Allegra Brooks that had appeared at the top of the search page.
One was from a modeling shoot for a magazine he had never heard of, and the other two looked as though they were from film premieres.
She had the most voluminous hair and large, incredibly kind eyes. She was smiling in one of the pictures and Jonah had to remind himself to breathe.
“Oh, God,” he said shortly. “She’s coming here?”
“Yup,” said Simon. “And I am going to be the one doing the training, my guy, make no mistake. You just relax.”
Jonah said nothing. He moved swiftly away, leaving Simon to the computer, and began sorting the books from their latest delivery onto his trolley.
His brain categorized them by cover and genre, his hands moving with a quickness that only years of practice and a touch of brilliance could achieve.
He sorted through the boxes of new books, and started wheeling his trolley to the appropriate shelves.
Simon glanced up from his scrolling to peer over at his friend. “You okay?”
Jonah moved to the next box of books. “Fine. Never better.”
Simon’s brow furrowed but he did not question his friend’s strange shift in mood. “Want me to do the morning emails?”
“No,” Jonah said quickly. “I’ll do that.”
“Thank God,” Simon said with a relieved exhale. “I’m going to start on the window.”
They swapped positions, Jonah moving to stand by the old monitor while Simon wheeled the trolley over to one of the shop windows so he could begin constructing a new display. Jonah went to close the internet search but paused, staring once again at the images of Allegra Brooks.
He closed the search and opened the shopfloor email.
He instantly spotted a reply, one he had been hoping to find, so he saved it as a reward for getting through his professional obligations.
He replied to people about pre-orders, author events and the upcoming festival and once they were all cleared, he finally opened the one he had been waiting for.
[email protected]
to: [email protected]
Subject: Twitter Recovery
Dear ex-Twitter addict,
Please accept my apologies, I did not intend to bring up a sore subject. I hope your recovery is going well. I’m so envious, however, because I have to do social media for work and I loathe it. I understand your need to cut yourself off from the rubbernecking. Are you in a group? A program?
In all seriousness, social media is addictive and makes people way sadder than they realize and so I’m glad you’re free. Feel bad for the rest of us.
Yours,
A friend from out of town
“Why are you smiling? Is someone asking where to find something on Amazon again?”
“I’m not smiling,” Jonah said, answering Simon with a forced expression of neutrality. He moved the email to a folder he knew Simon would never check—the handover notes—and started drafting a response.
[email protected]
to: [email protected]
RE: Twitter Recovery
Dearest friend from out of town,
Still mysterious, but slightly less so now that I know you work in social media.
What a career. I’m secretly thrilled to work for a man who hates the internet, it makes my recovery so much easier.
What does your job entail? Do you get lots of trolls?
I once tweeted from the bookshop account that audiobooks are valid and absolutely the same as reading a physical book and a man in his sixties threatened to come to the store and hit me over the head with a copy of his novel.
I’m not part of a group but I am enjoying these emails. They’re tiding me over, so I won’t dive into social media looking for human connection.
So, it would be really awkward at this stage if you turn around and tell me you have millions of dollars to give me, I just need to send you a fee to cover the wire transfer.
I’m usually a pretty disgruntled bookseller but if there is anything else I can do for you, I’m at your disposal.
Yours,
Jonah felt the urge to sign his name. He had been enjoying this email exchange since its random arrival in his life. Everybody knew everybody in Lake Pristine and so it was pleasant to have a little contact with the outside world.
“Jonah?”
Jonah smacked “send” out of sheer panic of being perceived, as George poked his head out of the backroom door and called over to him. The email disappeared into the ether without a moniker.