The Plot by Jean Korelitz (good books to read for teens txt) 📕

“Tavern,” said Purcell.

The waitress returned and set down their plates with a flourish. His burger looked mammoth, with fries piled up so high they spilled onto the table when the plate landed. Purcell’s soup, despite the fact that it was billed as an appetizer, was also in a meal-sized bowl.

“They certainly know how to eat up here,” Jake observed when she’d gone.

“Have to survive the winters,” said Purcell, taking up his spoon.

For a moment, conversation took a back seat.

“It’s nice that you two kept up with each other. After Ripley, I mean. It’s pretty isolated.”

“Well, Vermont isn’t exactly the Yukon,” Purcell said, with a definite edge to his tone.

“No, I mean … for us as writers. We’re so alone in what we do. When you get a taste of that fellowship, it’s something you want to hold on to.”

Purcell nodded eagerly. “That was just what I was hoping to find at Ripley. Maybe even more than the teachers, just that connection to other people doing what I wanted to do. So yeah, I absolutely kept up with a few of the others, Evan included. Him and I sent each other stuff for a couple of months, until his passing.”

Inwardly, Jake winced at this, though whether it was due to the thought of that “stuff” passing back and forth between the two writers or to the “him and I” wasn’t immediately clear.

“We all need a reader. Every writer does.”

“Oh, I know. It’s why I’m so appreciative—”

But Jake didn’t want to go there. At least, not before he absolutely had to.

“So you sent him the same stories you sent me? And he sent you his work, too? I always wondered what happened to that novel he was working on.”

It was a risk, of course. He’d been pretty sure that if Purcell had actually read Evan Parker’s work in progress he’d have mentioned its commonality with Crib by now. But after all, this was what he’d come so far to find out.

“Well, I sent him mine, for sure. He had a couple of my stories when he passed, that he was going to send back edits on, but he kept his own stuff pretty close to the chest. I only ever saw a couple of pages. A woman who lived in an old house with her daughter and worked on a psychic hotline? That’s what I remember. You probably saw way more of that novel than I did.”

Jake nodded. “Very reticent in the workshop itself, when it came to his project. Those same pages you mentioned, that was all he ever turned in. It’s certainly all I ever saw,” he said pointedly.

Purcell was digging into the bottom of his bowl for the chicken.

“D’you think he had other friends in the program he might have been talking to?”

The teacher looked up. He held Jake’s gaze for a bit too long. “Do you mean, was he showing his work to anyone else?”

“Oh no, not specifically. I just thought, you know, it’s a shame he got so little out of the program. Because he’d have been helped by a good reader, and if he didn’t want my help, maybe he managed to connect with one of the other teachers. Bruce O’Reilly?”

“Ha! Every blade of grass has its own story!”

“Or the other fiction teacher. Frank Ricardo. He was new that year.”

“Oh, Ricardo. Evan thought that guy was pathetic. No way he went to either of those two.”

“Well, maybe one of the other students, then.”

“Look, no offense to you, because obviously I’m not arguing with your success, so if bonding with fellow writers helped you out, that’s great, and I’m all for it myself or I wouldn’t have wanted to go to Ripley and I wouldn’t have asked you to read my stuff. But Evan was never into the community of writers aspect. He was a great guy to go to a concert with, or out for a meal. But the touchy-feely things about, you know, writing? That stuff in the catalog about our unique voices and our stories only we could tell? That was so not him.”

“Okay.” Jake nodded. He was realizing, with a certain extreme discomfort, that he and Evan Parker had shared something else, above and beyond the plot of Crib.

“And all the stuff about the craft of writing, and the process of writing, and all that? Never talked about it. I’m telling you, Evan didn’t share, not pages and not feelings. Like the song says: He was a rock. He was an island.”

It was a massive relief to hear, but of course Jake couldn’t say that. What he said, instead, was: “Kind of sad.”

The teacher shrugged. “He didn’t strike me as sad. It’s just how he was.”

“But … didn’t you say his whole family was gone? His parents and his sister? And he was such a young guy. That’s awful.”

“Sure. The parents died a long time ago, and then the sister, I’m not sure when that happened. It’s tragic.”

“Yes,” Jake agreed.

“And that niece, the one mentioned in the obituary, I don’t think she even showed up at the memorial service. I didn’t meet anyone there who said they were related. The only ones who got up and spoke were his employees and his customers. And me.”

“That’s a shame,” said Jake, pushing the uneaten half of his burger away.

“Well, they couldn’t have been close. He never even mentioned her to me. And the dead sister, man, that one he hated.”

Jake looked at him. “Hate’s a pretty strong word.”

“He said she’d do anything. I don’t think he meant it in a good way.”

“Oh? What way did he mean it?”

But now the guy was looking at him with frank suspicion. It was one thing to spend a bit of time on a mutual acquaintance, maybe especially a mutual acquaintance who had died fairly recently and fairly close by. But this? Could it possibly be that Jake Bonner, The New York Times bestselling novelist, had not come to Rutland for the sole purpose of discussing a