Holly and Her Naughty eReader (23 page)

Max agreed to pay for the box.
He also paid for the therapy Vivian wanted as a result of our adventure. And my
plane ticket home. He was able to pay for all this because, during his two days
as Christoph Green, his net worth went from near-bankruptcy to millionaire many
times over. Somehow, Christoph had managed to set up a Swiss bank account in
Max’s name and wire two hundred and thirty million dollars into it from the
fictional bank he owned in
His Golden
Shackles
.

“How did he get money into the
real world from a bank in a phony one?” Max asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “How
did any of this happen?”

“What do you think I should do
with it? Should I tell the IRS?”

“What could you possibly tell
them?” I said. “I think you should enjoy your newfound wealth. It’s a nice
little reward for all you’ve been through. And I’m certain the money is
someplace safe where no one in the government can see it. Christoph wouldn’t
have done it any other way.”

“Well, do you want some too?”
Max asked. “Maybe you, me, and Vivian could split it.”

“Max, if Vivian has her way, you
and she will be splitting all of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, forget it,” I said,
deciding it wasn’t my place to tell Max that Vivian had mapped out the rest of
his life for him, with kids and a house in the burbs and all the trimmings, and
the fact that he was a millionaire now meant she was certain to never let him go.

“Holly, this is a lot of money,”
Max said. “We could ask the bank in Switzerland to set up an account for you
too.”

“No thank you,” I said. “That
money will just remind me of what almost happened to you, and I think I’d like
to forget it. I’d like to forget everything and go back to my normal life.”

And that’s just what I did. I
went back to Dallas. I finished unraveling what was left of my life with Derek.
I hung out with Angela and Natalie. I welcomed a new crop of 12
^th
graders in the fall. I taught them to take their role as readers seriously.

“Have you ever thought about
your responsibility as reader of the story?” I asked them on the first day of
school.

No one said a word.

“Think of it this way,” I told
them. “Where would those characters be without you?”

A few seconds of silence before
a blonde girl raised her hand and said, “Nowhere.”

“That’s right,” I said. “The
words on the page are nothing but ink. Lines and curves and dots organized in a
most peculiar fashion. It’s not until you read them that they become something
more. It is you who gives them life. The characters of a book are only alive
when a reader makes them so.”

“What does that have to do with
responsibility?” said a boy from the back row.

I smiled, realizing that boy’s
desk, the one in the back corner, once belonged to a shirtless Taylor Lautner.

“Well,” I said, “imagine if your
life was all in the head of some alien from a higher dimension. On days when
the alien was tired or bored, your life became tired and boring. But on days
when the alien gave his full attention to this vision in his mind, your life
was the most fascinating one ever lived. Which would you prefer?”

“The fascinating one,” mumbled a
few kids in unison.

“Precisely,” I said. “So please
give the same courtesy to the characters you’re reading about. If you’re going
to read something, then read it with gusto. Bring that world to life in your
mind with all the vitality, nuance, and adventure you can. Those characters are
counting on you to make their world an interesting place to live.”

On the last day of first
semester, after I’d locked up my classroom and said goodbye to the other
teachers, I got a text message on my phone. It was from Max.

I’m at the ice skating rink at the Galleria. Wanna come?

The text stopped me in my
tracks, and I called him back.

“What do you mean you’re at the
ice skating rink?” I said.

“I mean I’m in Dallas right now
and I want you to meet me at the skating rink,” said Max.

“Max, is this some sort of joke,
because, in spite of all that happened with us, to me that night--”

“There’s a lot you don’t know
about that night,” Max said. “Come to the rink and I’ll tell you.”

Thirty minutes later, feeling
anxious and a bit angry, I joined Max out on the ice at the bottom of the
Galleria. We both were slow, apprehensive skaters who spent most of our time on
the wall.

“I’ve never been ice skating
before,” Max said. “Have you?”

“Once,” I said. “By myself. A
long time ago.”

“Yeah, about that,” Max said.
“I’ve had the same phone number for ten years. My provider was able to rescue some
old texts for me.”

Max handed me his phone. It was
cued up to a screen of text messages between me and him, all of them with dates
ten years in the past. The first one came from me. It said,
It was fun dancing with you tonight, but
that’s all there is between us, okay?

“What is this?” I said. “I never
sent this text.”

“Keep reading,” said Max.

The next text was his response.
What do you mean?

Then, from me:
I mean don’t go getting any ideas that we’re
a couple or something. I was just having fun with you, but you’re hardly my
type.

From Max:
I guess not.

From Me:
Please don’t call me. I only gave you my number because I felt sorry
for you.

From Max:
Fine.

And that was the end.

“Max, what the hell is this? I
never sent any of these messages.”

“And I never sent a message
asking you to meet me for ice skating,” said Max. “At least, ten years ago I
didn’t. Tonight’s text was real.”

His words hit me so hard I lost
my footing and fell right on my butt.

“Ow,” I said.

“Here, let me help you up,” said
Max.

He gave me his hand and tried to
pull me up, but he wasn’t steady enough on his skates and we both ended up on
the floor, laughing. He got up to his knees and helped me do the same, then we
used the wall to get back to our feet.

“Maybe we should just stand here
for a minute,” Max said.

“Max, if you didn’t send me that
text,” I began.

“And you didn’t send me those
texts I just showed you,” he continued.

“Then….”

Once again I found myself
unsteady on my feet. Fortunately, this time I was holding onto the wall and
didn’t go anywhere.

“You weren’t in control of your
phone for that whole night,” Max said.

“No! After you left there was an
hour where I couldn’t find it!” I said. “I was panicked that we’d never talk
again.”

“Who found your phone for you?”
Max said.

“It was….” I shook my head as
the memory came to me. “It was Vivian.”

“Last night she brewed up an
exceptionally potent batch of her mojo,” Max said. “High as a kite, she came
upstairs and confessed everything.”

“Confessed everything? You
mean…Vivian sent those texts?”

“After we said good night, you lost
your phone when you and your friends were dancing at Clarissa’s house.”

“Yes. Bohemian Rhapsody!” I
said. “Every party in high school had to have a Bohemian Rhapsody performance
where you head banged just like in Wayne’s World, and during the head banging
part, I lost my phone.”

“Vivian found it,” said Max.
“But before she returned it to you, she used it to send the messages to me.”

“But why would she do that?”

“She said she was jealous and
drunk,” said Max. “Apparently she had…” He cleared his throat. “Apparently she
had a thing for me and got angry when she saw us dancing together at the
party.”

“So she sent these texts to
you,” I said, still trying to sort it out in my mind.

“And then she reprogrammed your
contact file for me,” said Max. “She made it so that her own number would come
up under my name.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “You mean,
when I thought I was texting with you about a date at the ice skating rink--”

“You really were texting with
Vivian. Last night she told me the thought of sending you all the way out to
the Outpost only to get stood up seemed very funny to her at the time.”

“What a rotten thing to do!”

“Yes, it was,” said Max. “And
she claims she felt guilty about it ever since.”

“If she was so guilty, she
should have made it right.”

“I agree. But that’s not Vivian.
She’s not the sort of person who would do that.”

I shook my head in disgust.

“And now that I know she’s not
the sort of person who would do that, I know I don’t want to be with her,” Max
said.

“You broke up with her? Oh, Max.
She’s not going to take well to that. The night of the reunion she told me this
big vision she had of you and her and how she wasn’t going to let you get
away.”

“I gave her the money,” said
Max.

“You what?”

“Funny how a couple hundred
million dollars just thrown your way can complicate things,” said Max. “I never
really knew what to do with it. I was always afraid to move too much of it out
of the account because I thought it would draw the attention of the Feds or
something.”

“So you just gave it all to
her?”

“The Swiss banks are pretty
amazing,” Max said. “We set up an account for Vivian, moved the money into her
name, and it was done. Nobody saw. Nobody cared.”

“But what about you? What are
you gonna do? I thought you were broke.”

“I am broke, Holly. Broke and
divorced and pushing thirty with no idea what I want to do with my life. And I
don’t care. I feel like I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. Honestly, I feel
like I just graduated from high school and there’s a girl I like and I want to
go skating with her and see what happens.”

And there it was. The smile with
one crooked tooth on the bottom. I knew now that I’d never really gotten over
that smile.

“I feel the same way,” I said. I
held out my hand for him. “Come on. Let’s see what happens.”

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julianne Spencer is a former 12
^th
grade English teacher who loves
Wuthering
Heights,
Twilight, Harry Potter,
Dune, 50 Shades of Grey
, and all the other titles on Holly’s eReader. She
went to her 10-year reunion, but didn’t find nearly as much adventure as Holly
found at hers. She’s happily married, but if her husband ever slept with a 19-year-old
she’d show him some moves that would make Dolph McDougal proud.
 

She can be reached at [email protected]