Rinn couldn’t believe it. That all of this could be gone soon.
She didn’t want to believe it.
Don’t just tell me a problem, give me solutions. That’s what Papa was always saying. And that’s what Rinn had inevitably learned to do.
That’s why she’d started her books account. She wanted to encourage reading. She wanted to take photos of what she was reading and share them with others. She wanted to celebrate books. She even had built a reading counter onto her website that people could add their books to.
And this was the wild part: she’d gotten nearly ten thousand people to pick up a new book.
She hadn’t cried when she saw the abysmal statistics online about how little Americans read, and she wasn’t going to cry now. She was going to make a plan, and she was going to help.
Rinn Olivera was not going to let Wild Nights Bookstore go under.
She believed deep in her soul if she could get ten thousand people to read a new book, then she could definitely get a few hundred more to come into the store and buy one.
Rinn could do it—she could help. She just needed to be given the opportunity.
No, she needed to find a way to make the opportunity. That’s what Papa would say. That she would have to make her own opportunities in this world. Nobody would hand her anything.
Rinn looked around her. Nobody else was around.
She pulled her phone out of her back pocket.
What was the point of having all these followers if she didn’t reach out to them to help an actual struggling independent bookstore?
Rinn didn’t dare get out her selfie stick, in case Jo came into work soon. It was way easier to stash a phone than one attached to a long, telescopic arm. Rinn had already figured that one out the hard way. Her phone had been immediately confiscated, and she’d been given a lecture on the “no photography, no phones” policy at Wild Nights.
All the employees here had their phones taken at some point. Well, except for Daniella. She had managed to escape detection so far. Rinn still hadn’t figured out how Daniella had gotten away with it.
Rinn moved away from the cash register. She unpinned her name tag. When she filmed, she didn’t want to look like one of the store’s employees. She might be open about herself and her reading habits on the internet, but she wasn’t totally reckless with her personal life, either.
Rinn hesitated for a moment.
If she did save Wild Nights this way, she might have to quit her job here. If people started showing up to the store because of her posts. If people started tagging her every time they came in. She’d be always looking over her shoulder when she got into work.
But either way, Rinn was likely losing one of her favorite haunts. The store could close, or the store could become a place Rinn couldn’t work at regularly. She had to make the decision she could live with. Rinn took a deep breath. She knew what choice she’d make. She might as well save it for everyone else, even if she couldn’t save it for herself.
Rinn smiled and then she hit record. “Greetings, people of Earth—Rinn here. Guess who made it to the bookstore early? I’m not tagging my location—yet—but know that this bookstore is where. it. is. at.”
Rinn panned around the room slightly. She could, from where she stood, catch a glimpse of the roller-skating girl’s feet hanging precipitously over the back staircase. She could even catch a few of the ribbons of words that cascaded around the roller girl’s feet. But then the time ran out, and she couldn’t get any more of the store into the shot.
It was so much easier shooting video of the store than shooting video of herself.
Rinn uploaded the video—it would make a good intro—and began shooting the next. If she twisted, she could maybe get the whole roller girl into the shot, and she knew people would have a lot of questions in the DMs about that.
Rinn swallowed her nerves. She was fine. Filming was fine. She was going to save this bookstore. Sometimes, Rinn wanted to thank God herself for selfie mode.
Rinn offered up a silent prayer and did her best to smile for the camera. But then she tilted her head and the lighting changed on her.
Oof, not a good angle.
Rinn moved her head back to its original position. She held on tight to that smile. But even she could see it—the edge that crept into her face. The way her eyes looked overly bright and her smile seemed totally pasted on.
Rinn took another deep breath. Hit record. “I know there’s going to be a reading, followed by a Q and A, and a signing. But I think there might be some special prizes in store for a few lucky readers. I can tell you that this store is about to start setting up for the signing. I cannot wait to see what they do to the place.”
Okay, Rinn was getting aboard her own hype train, since she was the one who’d planned out the decorations herself. But her viewers didn’t necessarily need to know this. All they needed was to start getting excited for the Brock Harvey signing. Because then maybe a few more people would show up to the store.
Rinn looked through the stickers, trying to find a way to add a geotag to the location. But it came up empty. She couldn’t believe it. Rinn clicked a few more times, because that had to be a mistake. It wasn’t, though. Wild Nights Bookstore wasn’t even on the map anymore. Then Rinn felt a tug as her phone was snatched out neatly from her hand. She whipped around.
Jo had her hand on her hip and her eyebrow raised. “How many times do I have to tell you—no filming in the store?”
Rinn stretched out her smile in an exaggerated nervous expression. She wasn’t faking it, per se. But she did hope that exaggerating the look on her face could at least be comedically winning. “Always once more?”
“Nice try.” Jo rolled her eyes. “I’m confiscating this.”
“But, Jo—” Oh my God she couldn’t take Rinn’s phone. Jo wasn’t a principal or a teacher. As much as the whole staff liked to rag on Jo for being old, she couldn’t have been more than ten years older than Rinn, really.
“No buts,” said Jo. “Now is not the time to piss off Hunt Junior, trust me on this. And given how much you love Brock Harvey, I’m not leaving your self-control in your own hands on this one. You can have this back at the end of the day. After the signing.” Then Jo stuck Rinn’s phone into her back pocket and walked off.
But Rinn didn’t lose at anything if she could help it.
She was going to save Wild Nights all by herself if she had to. And the first order of business was putting it back on the map.
4
Eternity in an Hour
9:02 A.M.
Daniella
Why had she told Rinn Olivera that the store was going under?
That totally had not been Daniella’s intention. Not that she had any intentions other than to get to the bathroom as quick as humanly possible. A wave of nausea had come over Daniella so fast and so furious, she had felt like she was in the middle of a Tokyo drift. Mercifully, she had reached the bathroom in time. She was going to lay her face on the cold tile and then the wave of nausea would pass.
That was, of course, when Daniella spotted all the hair. Little bits and pieces of it. Small dustings of short clippings. Imogen had cleaned up most of the big chunks that she had shaved off, but nothing short of a broom or a vacuum was going to get the stuff that now clung to all the crevices of the bathroom.