“He’s at the first-aid station,” she said.
“The first-aid—?”
“He had a bloody nose. He said he wanted to take me dancing, but it turned out it was because he wanted to enter me in the wet T-shirt contest, the slimewad,” she said. “So what’s going on?”
“Lindsay’s still trying to get in to see Christmas Caper,” Zara said.
“You mean, you haven’t managed to see it yet?” Kett asked. “Geez, how long have you been standing in line?”
“Forever,” Zara said, studying her phone. “And she’s definitely not going to get in to see the seven o’clock. This is showing it as sold-out.” She scrolled down. “And the next showing isn’t till ten”—she scrolled some more—“which doesn’t get out till after the last train to Hanover leaves, so that one won’t work either.”
“Geez,” Kett said. “You spent all this time standing in line for a movie you don’t even get to see. Was it worth it spending the whole day on it?”
Oh, yes, I thought. Because, lies or not, bill of goods or not, it was still the best afternoon at the movies I’d had in a long time. Much better than if I’d gone to see A Star-Crossed Season. Or Lethal Rampage. And much better than wandering around looking at Black Widow boots and Silver Linings Playbook leotards like Zara, or dealing with creeps, like Kett had. Unlike theirs, my afternoon had been great. It had had everything—adventure, suspense, romance, explosions, danger, snappy dialogue, kissing scenes. The perfect Saturday afternoon at the movies.
Except for the ending.
But it might not be over yet—Jack had after all promised me he’d watch Christmas Caper with me if it ended up being streamed. And right before the end of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Jack had left Whoopi Goldberg sitting waiting for him in a restaurant. Michael Douglas had left Kathleen Turner standing abandoned on a parapet. Han Solo had left Princess Leia on the rebel moon. And they’d all showed up again, just like they’d said.
Of course Jack had also told me he’d graduated from Yale and was investigating a huge, far-reaching conspiracy, and that putting those geese in the dean’s office hadn’t been a prank. But not everything he’d told me was a lie. He’d said he loved movies, and that was true. Nobody who didn’t love them could have engineered such a perfect one.
And even if he’d made up everything else, even if he was every bit the scoundrel I was afraid he was and I never saw him again, it had still been a terrific afternoon at the movies.
“Well?” Kett was saying. “Was it? I mean, you didn’t get to do anything.”
“Or have anything to eat,” I said, getting out of line. “Let’s go get some sushi or something. How late is Nemo’s open?”
“I’ll see,” Kett said, getting out her phone. “I think it stays open till—Oh, my God!”
“What?” Zara asked. “That slimewad Noah didn’t text you something obscene, did he?”
“No,” Kett said, scrolling down through her phone-number list. “You won’t believe this.” She tapped a number and put the phone up to her ear. “Hi,” she said into it. “I got your text. What happened? … You’re kidding! … Oh, my God! … Are you sure? Which channel?”
Oh, no, I thought, even though I’d decided he’d concocted the whole thing, they’ve arrested Jack. They caught him with the camera strip.
“Oh, my God, what?” Zara said.
“Hang on,” Kett said to whoever was on the other end, and pressed the phone to her chest. “We should have stayed home,” she said to us. “We missed all the excitement.”
Jack went back to the campus to leave me a message, I thought, and the campus police caught him.
“What excitement?” Zara asked. “Tell us.”
“Margo says there are all these TV-camera crews and squad cars with flashing lights around the admin building, and a few minutes ago Dr. Baker told her the dean’s been arrested.”
“The dean?” I said.
“For what?” Zara asked.
“I don’t know,” Kett said. She texted like mad for a minute, and then said, “Margo says it has something to do with taking federal loan money for students who don’t exist. It’s apparently all over the news,” and Zara began swiping through screens to find the coverage.
“The dean says it’s all a big mistake,” Kett said, “but apparently the FBI’s consumer-fraud division’s been investigating him for months, and they’ve got all kinds of evidence.”
I’ll bet they do, I thought, thinking of Jack’s saying he had to go, that something had come up, and of what a good idea geese had been. In all the chaos—and mess—nobody would have even thought to check the dean’s office to see if anything was missing.
“There are?” Kett was saying. She put her hand over her phone. “Margo says the place has been crawling with scorching FBI agents.”
“Here it is,” Zara said, holding her phone so I could see the screen, which showed the quad full of police officers and FBI agents, and reporters trying to get a shot of the dean as he was perp-walked down the steps and over to a squad car. There was no sign of Jack.
“Are they still there?” Kett said and then glumly, “Oh.” She turned to us. “She says there’s no point in our coming home. It’s all over. I can’t believe we missed it.”
“Especially the FBI agents,” Zara said teasingly.
“Right,” Kett said. She sighed. “Instead, I got felt up by a slimewad.”
“And I still don’t have a present for my mother,” Zara said. She turned to me. “And you didn’t get to see your movie, after I promised you would.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“We could go to the 9:30,” Zara said, “and leave before it’s over. That way you could at least see part of it.”
“And miss the ending?” I said, thinking of Romancing the Stone, where Michael Douglas comes back when Kathleen Turner least expects it, and of French Kiss, where Meg Ryan’s already on the plane, and of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, where he finally shows up in the very last scene and is every bit as wonderful as she thought he was.
“No, that’s okay,” I said, trying hard not to smile. “I’ll watch it when it comes out on the Net.”
Patrick Rothfuss
New York Times bestseller Patrick Rothfuss gained great popularity and critical acclaim with the publication of his debut novel, The Name of the Wind. The second novel in the series, The Wise Man’s Fear, was greeted with similar success and acclaim all over the world. Patrick’s other projects include a darkly humorous children’s book, The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle, and Worldbuilders, a geek-centered charity that has raised more than $2 million for Heifer International since he founded it in 2008. (Worldbuilders.org)
Here he takes us to the iconic Waystone Inn to follow a typical day in the life of one of the Kingkiller Chronicles most popular characters, the mysterious Bast, ostensibly an errand boy, who is much more than he seems to be—a day in which Bast learns many lessons, and teaches a few as well.
THE LIGHTNING TREE
Patrick Rothfuss
Morning: The Narrow Road
Bast almost made it out the back door of the Waystone Inn.
He actually had made it outside, both feet were over the threshold and the door was almost entirely eased shut behind him before he heard his master’s voice.