Holly and Her Naughty eReader

by Julianne Spencer

  She didn’t respond.

  “Vivian, please wake up!” I pleaded. I was getting worried that this was more than being lost in the Kindle. Was I ever this far gone? Had something gone wrong this time, and Vivian was stuck in there?

  I grabbed the Kindle and tried to pull it from her hands, but her fingers had a vise-grip on that thing, and her arms were oddly strong at holding it in place.

  “What in the world?” I whispered.

  Grabbing the Kindle again, with one foot up on the table for leverage, I gave a big heave-ho to try and get it loose, but she wouldn’t let go, and I ended up falling on my ass.

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered. Then I did something that, in the back of my mind, I knew was kind of risky, but I charged ahead with it anyway. I think I was mad at Vivian for commandeering my Kindle like this. I wanted it back. I wanted to go to my hotel and get lost in His Golden Shackles all night and let Christoph use his whips and chains and magic Ben Wa balls to wash away any thoughts of Derek. I wasn’t thinking about all the unknowns surrounding this Kindle. I didn’t consider that when presented with a device that violates all basic precepts of time and space, it’s probably wise to treat it with care. I didn’t consider that this frozen-in-place woman who was holding onto the Kindle like a puppy on a chew toy was actually a human being with a life that was precariously balanced somewhere between reality and fantasy.

  I didn’t think of any of these things, and I reached underneath the Kindle and pressed the button to turn it off.

  The screen went black.

  Instantly, Vivian’s eyes closed and her body fell forward. I’m embarrassed to say that, my hands were so excited to jar the Kindle loose from her fingers that I didn’t even bother to catch her on the way down, and her head landed hard on the tabletop.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “Vivian? Vivian, are you okay?”

  Of course she’s not okay you stupid twit. Look at her! I thought.

  Look at her I did. Even more so than the moment when my hands rescued the Kindle rather than Vivian’s head, this moment was probably my worst of all. This was when I really turned into Gollum, prepared to bite Frodo’s finger off and jump into the fire for My Precious. Rather than race to help her, rather than check for a pulse or call 911, I sat down in the chair opposite Vivian and turned on the Kindle.

  What the hell was I doing? Was I going to sit there and read a book? Was I going to go in and see if I could find her there? Was I going to enjoy another evening with Christoph while my friend lay comatose on the table?

  I have no idea why the hell I sat down and turned on my Kindle when Vivian was so clearly in distress, but I’m glad I did. For as soon as I hit that button and the Kindle came back to life, so did Vivian. With a giant gasp of air and a jerk-like movement, she sat up. Her eyes were wide open.

  “I’m back,” she said. “Jesus Mary and Joseph what a ride that was. But I’m back. I made it. Was I…was….bloody hell what happened to my head?”

  She put her hand to the spot on her forehead where she’d hit the desk.

  “Your body keeled over for a bit,” I said. “It was…I think it was my fault.”

  “Your fault? What did you do? I’m the one who wanted to go back so bad. And holy hell am I glad I did. Christoph did things to me--”

  “Christoph! You were supposed to be reading Mane of the Werewolf!”

  “Whatever Holly. I just said that to get you out of here for a minute, then I went back in and visited our friend and his Den of Decadence. He did things to me that I didn’t know were possible. I guess they aren’t possible. That’s the point, isn’t it? He’s a magic man. A magic man with a magic wand between his legs. I don’t know if I can ever be with another man again. I mean, who can possibly compete with that? I’d be perfectly happy to spend the rest of my days on this earth as Annabelle Stone and just let him have his way with me again and again and again. Good night in Heaven the heights of pleasure to which--”

  “Stop it! Just stop it! I’m Annabelle Stone and you can’t have--”

  Hearing my own words, I cut my sentence short.

  “Did you say, you’re Annabelle Stone?”

  “Yes, I think I did.”

  “Oh Holly. You have a problem.”

  I slumped back in my chair. Vivian spoke the words and I knew they were true. She was right. I did have a problem.

  I had a problem with my Kindle. I was so addicted to it that I didn’t know what was real anymore. First I was craving raw meat like Blair the Werewolf. Now I was shouting at Vivian that I was Annabelle Stone.

  Worse than that, I had turned off the Kindle, knocking Vivian’s body into some comatose state, facedown on the table, and I didn’t even try to help her. Instead, while she crashed into the table, I sat down and turned on the Kindle.

  I was about to start reading when my friend was….was what?

  “Vivian, did you feel anything weird while you were in there?” I said.

  “I think we were talking about you, Holly.”

  “Just answer the question!” I snapped. “While you were reading, I turned off the Kindle, and your body fell forward on the table. Then I turned it on again and you woke up.”

  Vivian’s eyebrows shot up.

  “You know, there was a time in there when things were different,” she said. “I was lying in bed with Christoph, and it was like, suddenly it wasn’t fantasy anymore. It felt like I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to. I was a part of the story for good.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, wondering if I had almost confined Vivian to some eternal Inception mind limbo or something.

  “Holly, give me the Kindle,” Vivian said.

  Like a kid with a candy bar, I pulled the Kindle close to me.

  “Holly. It’s for your own good. Give it to me.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said.

  “It doesn’t have to be permanent,” Vivian said. “You just need a night off.”

  “A night off,” I repeated.

  “You need to get yourself grounded again in the real world. When you realize you’re Holly again, and not Annabelle--”

  “Vivian, it’s my Kindle,” I said. I pointed at the sticker of the blue holly flower on the back. “See this flower? That means it’s mine!”

  “I’m afraid the law wouldn’t side with you on this one, even if you do have a flower sticker on the back. It was your Kindle when it was the plain old eReader you bought, but this new version is a totally different animal. I made it magic, Holly. It was my spell that summoned the Dream Spirit and put it in your Kindle.”

  “The Dream Spirit? You don’t know--”

  “I do so know. This is exactly how the Dream Spirit works. When you summon the Dream Spirit, she comes into your life to give you exactly what you need. You and I were both there and I called her to be with us, not with you. She decided we need a magic Kindle with a beautifully disturbed sex wizard inside it. She let you play around and get lost in there so you could see how easy it is to lose yourself. Don’t you get it, Holly? The Kindle is Derek. You haven’t let go of him. But if you let go of the Kindle now, you’ll be free.”

  “You’re just making all this up,” I said. “How do you know what the Dream Spirit wants?”

  “Because I summoned her!”

  “That doesn’t mean you get to speak for her. It’s my Kindle!”

  “It’s my Dream Spirit, Holly. I called her out. I can send her back.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I hissed.

  “You need to take a break, Holly. You’re getting too attached. Look at you. You came in here tonight with your hair all in knots and your clothes wrinkled and you stink.”

  As she spoke, I looked at the Kindle, which was on a black screen at the moment, and I saw my own reflection.

  Vivian was right. I looked terrible.

  “Do I really stink?” I said.

  “You smell like a homeless person, and you’ll thank me later for telling you. Right now you’re like a
heroin addict who is nearing a precipice. It’s not too late for you to break away for a bit and regain control of yourself, but you’re close. Another night with this Kindle and you’re not coming back.”

  “I always come back,” I said, hearing the trepidation in my own voice. Vivian heard it too, and she pounced.

  “This is a big night for you,” she said. “You’ve got a big decision to make. Are you going to take charge of your own life, or are you going to give in to your addiction and become a junkie who dies on the streets.”

  “I’m not gonna die on the streets,” I said, but without any confidence. Vivian’s words were striking a nerve. As she said them, I thought about how frantic I’d become while she was reading the Kindle. I remembered taking the Kindle out of Vivian’s hands as she fell flat on the table, dead for all I knew, and not feeling distraught over her condition, but excited that the Kindle was mine again.

  “A night off would really do you some good, my friend,” Vivian said. “I’ll take good care of your Kindle.”

  I sat still, holding the Kindle to my chest. It pained me to think of letting it go again, but that in itself was proof of what Vivian was saying. I had a problem.

  “I don’t want to die in the streets,” I whispered.

  Moving slowly, I pulled the Kindle away from my chest and gave it to Vivian. She snatched it out of my hands.

  “I have a flight back to Dallas tomorrow,” I said.

  “Cancel it,” said Vivian. “There’s no way I’m letting you leave here with this until you’ve got it under control.”

  “My home is in Dallas,” I said.

  “I’ll pay for your room.”

  “I can’t make you pay for my room,” I said.

  “Yes you can and yes I will. Now go home and get some rest.”

  I got the feeling this was the way Vivian spoke to the other employees in her office. She had the distinct tone of a bitchy boss.

  “When do I get my Kindle back?” I said.

  “Come to my house tomorrow morning and we’ll talk,” Vivian said.

  “Alright. I guess I can--”

  “And close the door on your way out, will you?”

  Close the door? Was this really goodbye? Could I really do it? No more Kindle?

  Yes, I had to do it. I had to rejoin the waking world.

  “Tomorrow morning,” I said.

  Vivian smiled and stood up.

  “Let me just help you here,” she said, and she gave me a gentle push out of her office.

  Then she closed the door in my face.

  Chapter 13

  I left Vivian’s office and drove aimlessly in the rental car for a while. I didn’t want to go back to the Wyndham without my Kindle. I felt like it would be a cold, empty place, and had no interest in arriving there until it was time for me to sleep.

  I landed at a Barnes & Noble.

  It felt like I was stepping into another life.

  All these beautiful books—just eighteen months ago, a bookstore like this one was my favorite place in the world to be. But the Kindle had changed all of that, even before it had become a magic portal to a not-so-virtual realm of fantasy and play (lots of play, God I wanted to have it in my hands and be on my way to play with Christoph again).

  I went to the literature section and pulled down a copy of Life of Pi. Flipping through the pages, feeling the soft paper on my fingers, looking at the font, I felt nostalgic for the first time I read the book in paperback. A young man cast away at sea with a motley crew of zoo animals as companions. An outrageous adventure that, along the way, makes us think about the biggest questions of all—that’s a fine, fine book.

  I flipped to chapter 1 and read the first few sentences, wondering if I would find myself in the body of a young man from India.

  Nothing happened though. Nothing other than the magic of reading a book. It was fun, actually, to let the words build an image in my mind, to enjoy the sound of their poetry. With my wacky Kindle, I wasn’t really reading this way anymore. I was getting entirely immersed in the world with all my senses, but in this old-school reading session on a paper page in an actual bookstore, I was having to do it the old fashioned way. I was having to use my imagination.

  I spent a few more minutes reading Life of Pi, then I put it back on the shelf and kept browsing.

  Water for Stone, The Night Circus, The Corrections, Gold—I spent an hour pulling down some of my favorite titles and letting the author have her way with me (or his). That’s how Stephen King described fiction writing: mind control. You sit down as a reader and consent to let the author take control of your thoughts for a time.

  I like telling that one to my students. It gets them thinking about how amazing this thing is that we do. Books and reading, as well as all the other forms of art, are about mind control. We step away from the world we know for a time and let someone have at our thoughts. If that someone is skilled, we enjoy the experience and come away from it a little wiser about the human condition. Reading broadens our comprehension of the world. It allows us to see things more clearly from someone else’s point of view.

  I tell my students that I became an English teacher because I wanted to bring about peace on earth. I truly believe that art has the power to do that. Good art brings people together in a way that eliminates the need to fight. No joke: I had a student in my senior class the year before last who told one of his friends, in total seriousness, that he thought the earth would be a better place if the US turned the entire Arab world into a radioactive wasteland. That year I pulled A Tale of Two Cities from the curriculum and instead had my seniors read The Kite Runner and write an essay about their thoughts on the Middle East before and after reading it.

  The boy who wanted to nuke them all wrote five moving paragraphs about how The Kite Runner made him realize that the guerillas with guns were a small part of the population in Afghanistan, and that most of the people there wanted to live their lives in peace.

  After I’d gotten my fill of paperback browsing, I went to the eReader counter and picked up a Nook. It had a copy of Divergent preloaded on it. I opened up the book and read it, a piece of me hopeful that I could bring some of the magic from my Kindle with me.

  Nothing happened. I read the first two screens of the dystopian young adult novel with mild interest, then I put the eReader down and left.

  I drove south from Barnes & Noble, heading back towards the airport and my hotel. I was sitting at a stoplight when my phone rang. The name on the screen was entirely unexpected, and to a woman who had spent the better part of her day living in a fantasy world, the incoming call from reality, from her previous reality, was unsettling.

  Incoming call from Derek Yost.

  We hadn’t spoken since I’d moved out. Why was he calling now?

  My first instinct was to leave it. There was nothing Derek and I needed to talk about. Was there?

  No, there is nothing, I told myself. Besides, I’m driving. It’s irresponsible to take a phone call when you’re driving.

  Yep. No phone calls. Derek can…

  But was I going to call him back? Was I going to say, ‘Hey, I missed your call because I was driving. What’s up?’

  How desperate would that be to actually call him back?

  The phone was still ringing. I set it down in the cup holder. Think of the children, Holly. There are children on the road and the adults need to be responsible and not talk on their cell phones while driving. Besides, it’s Derek. You aren’t obligated to take his call. The best thing you could do is make him call you a few times before you ever talk to him. So don’t you dare take that call. Don’t you—

  “Ah fuck it,” I said, and answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  Nobody answered on the other side.

  “Hello?”

  There was the distinct sound of chatter, like I was sitting at a crowded bar and listening to a hundred conversations, but no one was talking to me.

  “Hello, Derek? Are you th
ere?”

  More chatter, and then a sound that made my teeth hurt. The cackling, squeaky laugh of Marianne Masterson. I had come to know that laugh in the final months of my relationship with Derek, when it seemed that Marianne was around all the time.

  “Derek?” I said.

  Nothing.

  “Derek, did you butt dial me?”

  Still no answer. Of course, why would there be if this was a butt dial?

  Because Derek spent the last six months of our relationship talking out of his ass, so he should have no problem talking to me now, I thought.

  I turned the volume on my phone to full blast and tried to make out what was happening on the other end of the line. Other than Marianne’s cackle, I couldn’t get anything distinct. Still, I listened. Through three traffic lights I listened to whatever noisy world Derek was living in today while I drove south on Louisiana Boulevard. It wasn’t until I reached the south end of town, butting up against the Air Force base I couldn’t enter, that I decided it was time to hang up. Upon ending the call, my phone kindly told me it had gone on for nearly seven minutes.

  And then I felt really pathetic.

  “He butt dialed me and I stayed on the phone to listen for seven minutes,” I said to myself. “I need to get a life.”

  I went to Subway and bought a turkey sandwich and some chips, which I took back to the room and ate while watching Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

  Nuggets versus Heat.

  “Take me away, Lebron,” I said.

  Sad to say, even the drama of the NBA Finals wasn’t doing it for me. That’s when I knew I was sick. I’ve been a basketball fan since elementary school. On the days when Michelle and I were the starting guard and forward on our high school team, I was an absolute junkie.

  Back in high school it was Kobe’s heyday. Now it was all about Lebron.

  I admit it. I had a big ol’ crush on Kobe back then and now I have a big ol’ crush on Lebron. What’s not to like? Big, sexy guys with perfect arms, gleaming white teeth, and mad skills? I have posters of both up in my bedroom at home. They’re sandwiched between a picture of the New York Public Library and a flying unicorn.