Total by Rebecca Miller

Author:Rebecca Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

* * *

I went home for Christmas. Holly flew to the Bahamas. At home, it was the usual round of parties—people singing around a piano, drunken entrepreneurs and IT people conversing in large New England farmhouses, their children, often high on their parents’ prescription drugs, smiling idiotically through torturous dinners. The only kid I liked in that bunch was named Jack. He was a violinist. He had eyes that dipped down a little on the outer corners and very long, straight lashes. He was husky and sweet, handsome and kind. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with kidnapping my sister at that moment in my life, I might have tried to flirt with him. Instead, I talked to him about E.

“I only know one other family with a Total,” Jack said. “But it died in a week.”

“Were they relieved?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They’re my parents’ friends. My mother never had the phone, because my dad said we couldn’t afford one. Now she’s grateful.”

“My mom helped invent them,” I said. “And now she can hardly look at my sister.”

“Man is a frightening animal,” said Jack, plucking a mini lobster roll off a passing tray and popping it into his mouth.

“Are you good at keeping secrets?” I said.

“No,” said Jack.

I was quiet then. “That is,” he said, “yes, but don’t tell me. You don’t know me well enough to tell me a secret.”

“I’ve known you since I was five,” I said.

“You see me once a year at one of the Christmas freak shows,” he said. “We don’t know each other at all, Roxanne.”

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