Adapt

by Melanie Rachel

  Excerpt from A Good Name

  If you are enjoying Headstrong, you might also enjoy A Good Name, another Pride and Prejudice Modern AU novel by author Sarah Courtney. It will be released on November 22nd at Amazon.

  It was Saturday, and George Wickham was hungry again.

  He was always hungry, really. Okay, maybe not starving like those children he sometimes saw in pictures, those hollow-eyed children in other parts of the world. But hungry.

  He knew should be grateful that he got a free breakfast and lunch at school every weekday. It might not be great food, but it was food, and since his mother was usually too out of it in the evenings to make him dinner, it was nice to have two meals he could be sure of. At least on school days. Even when school was out, like it would be soon, kids could go by the school for breakfast and lunch, and nobody asked any particular questions.

  He’d long since stopped being embarrassed about getting free meals. Hunger would do that to you.

  Sometimes his mom’s boyfriend, Mark, bought groceries. George was allowed to share, but it always went fast, and there were too many days between grocery trips. When that happened, it was always weekends that were the worst. He’d have no food but what he could scrounge up until Monday, unless Mom or Mark sobered up enough to get something. Sometimes George got so hungry that he’d sneak into a fast-food restaurant to take a ketchup package or two. He hoped that didn’t count as stealing since they gave them away for free.

  His walks didn’t help his hunger, but he couldn’t resist. He hated Mark’s apartment complex. The kids there thought they were so tough, and they were always threatening him. There was a little playground, but the teenagers had taken it over and painted nasty stuff on the slide, and no younger kids ever played there anymore.

  But if he could handle a mile of walking, he could hang out in a park with a pond. He liked to sit on a bench near the playground and watch the kids play. Or sometimes he would walk down the short path through the trees to the pond and watch the ducks. It was worth the long walk to be somewhere quiet and peaceful.

  He passed the tattoo parlor, the auto shop where Mark worked, and the payday loan place that his mom sometimes dragged him to when she got desperate. She was sure that having a child along helped. He hated the next corner, where the cell phone store was. The men who liked to hang out there scared him.

  Once he passed that corner, though, the road was wider and the stores nicer. Traffic was heavier, but he didn’t have to cross for several blocks and there was a traffic light. After he’d crossed and turned the corner again, he was on a street that had a pretty church and even trees in front of some of the stores. He enjoyed the hint of greenery as he approached the park.

  The trees were full and provided plenty of shade once he’d crossed the parking lot and gone up the path to the playground. He took his usual seat at a bench overlooking the playground.

  It was hard, though, to forget his hunger, when there was a girl eating a sandwich at the next bench. He couldn’t keep from glancing repeatedly in her direction. He could smell the peanut butter from where he sat, and it was torture.

  She caught him looking at her, and he blushed and turned his head all the way to the side towards the kids on a set of monkey bars. He didn’t want her to think he was staring.

  He yelped with surprise when he turned back to see her sitting right next to him on his bench.

  “What are you, a ninja?” Up close, he could see every tiny freckle on her nose and cheeks.

  She laughed and shook her head, brown braids flying. “What are you, deaf? I wasn’t even trying to be quiet. So, are you allergic to peanut butter?”

  “Allergic to... why?”

  She shrugged. “Well, I’ve got an extra sandwich. I don’t think I’ll eat it, and you looked like you forgot to bring lunch. You can have it if you want it. As long as you aren’t allergic.”

  “How would I know if I was allergic?” he asked to hide the fact that he didn’t know exactly what “allergic” meant. He’d heard the word, of course, from grown-ups at school during lunch and sometimes Mark muttering about pollen, but how would he know if he was?

  She flipped a braid behind her. “Have you ever eaten peanut stuff and stopped breathing and had to go to the hospital?”

  He widened his eyes. “No.”

  “Well, then.” She gave him a huge grin. “Here. Have a sandwich.”

  He took it gingerly, but once he’d taken a bite, it was all he could do not to make a fool out of himself by eating like an animal.

  “Thank you,” he gasped out between bites.

  She popped the last bite of her own sandwich in her mouth, then leaned back on the bench and pulled out a book, with apparently no intention of going back to her own bench.

  They sat quietly for a few minutes, her reading and him eating. Then she spoke again.

  “My dad says I read aloud really well—for a kid, at least. I even do, you know, voices and all. Want me to read to you while you eat?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. You can if you want, I guess.”

  “Okay!” she said brightly. She flipped back to the beginning of her book and started to read. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

  He chuckled. “Is that supposed to be an English accent?”

  “Why yes, yes, it is,” the girl said in the same accent, shaking her head and letting her braids fly.

  “It’s awful,” he said. “Like, the worst ever. What are you, six?”

  “I’m eight! I just had my birthday,” she exclaimed, frowning at him. “And I have a perfectly good English accent.”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t. Just read it like a normal person.”

  She sighed. “Nobody ever appreciates my accent.”

  “Because it’s bloody awful!” He was rather proud of himself for that, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. He’d heard the word on some show of Mark’s.

  She stuck her tongue out and continued to read, in her regular voice now. “Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills.”

  George sat back in the bench and took another bite of his sandwich.

  So she was eight. She really did read well for an eight-year-old. To be honest, she read a lot better than he did, especially considering she was reading aloud.

  It took him several minutes to figure out that she was reading him Harry Potter. He’d heard of it, of course. Kids at school were always pretending to cast spells on each other or playing with sticks as wands. But without a library card or money for books, he’d never read it himself. He wasn’t really much of a reader, anyway. Slogging through the stories in his school reading book was enough for him. Reading was too hard to do it for fun.

  But this Harry Potter was good stuff. He finished his sandwich and kept listening. And the girl kept reading. She took drinks from a water bottle every so often and glanced at him to see his reaction sometimes when something particularly funny or interesting happened, but otherwise she read without comment.

  Finally she closed the book and looked at her watch. “I gotta get home, or Mom’ll get mad,” she said.

  He nodded, but he wished she didn’t have to go. It was like coming out of a dream somehow, to close the book and go back to real life. He felt let down. Going home, going to bed, lying there hungry—well, maybe he’d be a little less hungry tonight—while waiting for sleep to come . . . how could he go back to that now that he had been on a train to magic school? Maybe he could imagine he was Harry Potter still in his cupboard. Harry was probably hungry and lonely sometimes, too.

  “Okay,” was all he said.

  “Wanna read some more tomorrow?” she asked. “I can come in the afternoon sometime.”

  Did he ever! “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Will you
. . . will you bring the book?”

  “Yep.”

  He watched as she put her water bottle and the book into a backpack that appeared full of books. Awfully full, really, for a kid who had to be in, what, like, third grade? She had more schoolbooks than he did, and he was in fifth!

  “Oh,” she said, turning, “I never asked your name. I’m Elizabeth Bennet.”

  “George Wickham,” he said.

  He watched until she was out of sight.

  Acknowledgments

  Many people were instrumental in the writing of this novel, which began as a story on A Happy Assembly in 2016. I thank all my reviewers, readers, and supporters, those who pointed out errors or inconsistencies, and the experts in many areas who contributed their knowledge. A special thanks goes out to the women veterans and those in active service who commented on Elizabeth’s experiences. Thanks to you, the story is better and stronger than it would have been without your assistance.

  As always, a heartfelt thanks to my intrepid beta Sarah Maksim, whose incredible brainstorming skills, keen eye for humor, and quick turn-around had a great influence on the development of this story. Thanks to my editor, Sarah Pesce, at Lopt&Cropt for keeping the writing lean and clean.

  Finally, I must thank my family, who put up with my many hours spent typing away on my computer when I might have been cooking, cleaning, or doing the million other things it takes to run a house. Thank you for your love, support, and the invaluable gift of time.

  About the Author

  MELANIE RACHEL is a university professor who first read Jane Austen at summer camp as a girl. She was born and raised in Southern California, but has lived in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Washington, and Arizona, where she now resides with her family and their freakishly athletic Jack Russell terrier.

  Facebook: facebook.com/melanie.rachel.583

  Website: melanierachel.weebly.com