Sweet Misfortune: A Novel by Milne Kevin Alan

Author:Milne, Kevin Alan [Milne, Kevin Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781599952970
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2010-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Compel yourself to do something you wouldn’t normally do,

because what you normally do doesn’t seem to be working.

Ubeen online lately?

The text message from Garrett popped up on Sophie’s cell phone just as she was preparing to go to bed on Sunday evening. It had been four days since they’d talked on the phone in the wake of the Channel Two News debacle. Sophie slid under her covers and stared at the short note, then decided she wasn’t interested in texting at the moment—at least not with Garrett. She set the phone down on her nightstand just as another message popped up. Frustrated at being bothered, she flipped the phone open quickly to see what it said.

It’s gone viral!

The odd message caught her attention and she thumbed a quick response. What has?

IT! The want ad. It’s everywhere!

Sophie’s breathing picked up as she typed again. R U kidding??

Get online. I just sent you an e-mail with a few links… uuuggghhh.

Snapping the phone shut, Sophie jumped out of bed and hurried downstairs to her computer. Her Gmail account was loaded to the gills with spam, but it didn’t take long to filter through them. Garrett’s e-mail had the subject line “Uh Oh… don’t blame me.” The body of the message had no text, simply URLs to various Internet sites.

The first link was to YouTube, where Lori Acres’s newscast had already been viewed by nearly 500,000 people worldwide. But other media outlets across the country had picked up on the story, too, and at least a dozen other TV stations had aired their own versions of the story, which were also posted on YouTube, each of them retelling it as though they were the first to report on what one overly dramatic anchorman described as the “epically sad, heroically unhappy, mystery want-ader in Tacoma, Washington, who has gripped our hearts, and made us all pause to reflect on what happiness is, where to find it, and above all, how to hold onto it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Sophie out loud. “This is absolutely absurd.” She cringed as video after video flashed her PO box on the screen, urging viewers to respond.

Other links in Garrett’s note sent Sophie exploring chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. On one site, a group calling themselves H-Cubed, short for “Happy Helping Hands,” had raised enough money among themselves to run Sophie and Garrett’s want ad for four weeks in the twenty largest US newspapers.

After an hour and a half of poring through web pages, with each new link taking her to at least ten others, Sophie finally gave up and turned off the computer. Her head was pounding from staring at the screen for so long. Slowly, she made her way upstairs and climbed back into bed, but it would be another hour before she fell asleep. As she laid in bed, the one thought that kept cycling through her mind was, Why didn’t I just let Garrett have one stupid date?

* *

THE NEXT DAY, as soon

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