The Invisible Husband of Frick Island Colleen Oakley (ebook reader library .txt) 📖

if he saw one—before slinking over to his mattress and collapsing onto it.

He kicked his shoes off and lay there for a minute, enjoying the rest. The silence. And then, as if his thought had jinxed it, the bass started thumping from upstairs. Anders groaned. He sat up and contemplated walking up to his neighbor’s apartment to ask him to turn down the music, but it was too many steps. Instead he crawled over to where he’d dropped his laptop and pulled it out, along with his headphones, and then made his way back to the mattress, where he plugged the buds into his ears and the keyboard and sighed as an old This American Life episode filled his brain. He adjusted his stack of pillows behind him so they made a big cushion against the wall and then leaned into them, so he was sitting up, but comfortable.

Then he mindlessly checked his email, Twitter, the news, his eyes drooping heavily, thanks to his exhausting day and the music lulling him under. He slid the computer onto the mattress and nearly closed it before remembering his website, the podcast that he had uploaded the night before. He clicked on the URL, thinking he would glance at the stats before allowing himself to drift off for the night, but when he saw the numbers, he took a sharp breath and sat straight up.

There were 894.

He had 894 downloads. In one day. What in the world? He knew it had been good work; an intriguing premise, and he had told it well. But still, 894?

Heart thrumming in his chest, his gaze moved from the listens to the comments. He had six. Six! Wide awake now, he scrolled down. Leonard, of course, was the first.

LeonardC404: Riveting. Hope you don’t mind, but I shared it with a few colleagues in the department. We’ve all got to know—what happens next?—Dad

Jsweets: An invisible husband? Haha! Dying for more—why are the people just going along with it?

StanforKeanu: This happened to my mom after my dad passed. She swore she could see him and talk to him. I didn’t know it had a name, but yeah, I think it’s more common than people know.

Dems4Life: Fifteen bucks it’s a bunch of Repugnicans high on the meth they cook up in their crab shanties. You’d see people too if you were stoned all the time.

Patriot1976: Libtard.

LDE4892898: I make $230,000 working from home. Want to learn how? Go to bit.x.z.url.com

Anders stared at the screen, a mix of pride and joy flooding his body (and only a touch of disappointment at the comment that was missing this time). His instincts had been right. People were responding to this story. What’s more—they wanted to know what happened next! And Anders was going to give the people what they wanted. He could go over to the island on weekends—every weekend if he needed to. Until he could answer Jsweets’s question, anyway, which was his question as well: Why are the people just going along with it?

His exhaustion quickly forgotten, Anders stayed up late into the night, revamping his website, archiving all his old podcast episodes, and leaving the two Frick Island episodes front and center beneath the title of his new serial, in a big-serif font on the home page: WHAT THE FRICK?

—

On Saturday morning, when BobDan spotted the familiar visage waiting on the dock at the Winder Cove Marina a hundred yards out, his heart stopped in his chest for a beat. Pearl had called Lady Judy, who told Shirlene at the market, who in turn told BobDan that the boy wasn’t in fact a Mormon, as BobDan had incorrectly assumed, but a journalist. And BobDan—and the island as a whole—had even less use for one of those. The last thing they needed was some young Carl Bernstein wannabe snooping around, looking under rocks that were better left unturned.

He swallowed and pulled back on the throttle, letting the boat putter closer, and then killed the engine completely so he could drift the final yards up to the Winder docks. Instead of reaching for the boat line to help, the boy stood there engrossed in his phone—not that BobDan expected much else. Once he got the boat properly tied off and secured to the piling, BobDan stepped off onto the dock and reached his hands to the sky, stretching out the tight muscles hugging his spine, which seemed to grow tighter by the day. Then he reached in his back pocket for his pack of Winstons, shook out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply, before acknowledging the boy. “Well, if it isn’t Bob Woodward himself.”

The boy glanced up from whatever life-wasting app he’d been scrolling through. “Actually, my name’s Anders.”

BobDan rolled his eyes heavenward and let out a long exhale of smoke, his breath whistling lightly between his lips. His anxiety at a reporter coming to the island was lessened by the fact that at least this one wasn’t very bright.

“I mean, I know who Bob Woodward is,” Anders said quickly. “I just realized I’ve never properly introduced myself.”

“You’re doing one of those iPod things, huh?”

Anders cleared his throat. “A podcast. Yes, sir.”

“On climate change?”

Anders nodded. Mumbled something.

“Speak up, boy. I can’t hear you.”

Anders shook his head. “It’s not important.”

“That’s prolly true,” BobDan muttered, and then louder: “Well, boat’s not leaving for another twenty minutes.”

“Yes, I just—”

“So why don’t you make yourself useful.” BobDan nodded at the day’s cargo—a dozen cardboard Chiquita banana boxes holding the week’s grocery orders for the island. Things they couldn’t get at the general store, like kitty litter, fruit, any flavor of Utz potato chip besides plain. Apparently grocery delivery was the next big thing on the mainland—BobDan thought it was ironic that Frick Island had been doing it decades before anyone else.

He looked back up at Anders and noticed the boy hadn’t moved.

“Well, go on.”

“You want me to . . . load those up on the boat?”

“No, I want you to perform all five acts