Will You Won't You Want Me?: A Novel by Nora Zelevansky Read Free Book Online

pulled an extra phone charger from a junk drawer in the pantry, then walked down the hall to her childhood bedroom and plugged it in. She stood at center, taking in her surroundings. A million years had passed since she painted one wall red and thumbtacked up pictures of Jared Leto in My So-Called Life and Scott Speedman in Felicity. Where was she when everyone else was getting a life?
    Marjorie crossed to a gray speckled bookshelf, filled with children’s staples like Encyclopedia Brown and Judy Blume’s Forever, classics like Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, comics from Archie to The Adventures of Tintin. The shelf’s disorganized twin bookended the bed. On the bottom was a defunct record player, and records from Marjorie’s early childhood—not cool enough to be dubbed “vinyl” by baseball-capped DJs—leaned against the side: Free to Be … You and Me, Really Rosie, Hans Christian Andersen.
    Behind that teetered a tower of small rectangular books. Marjorie felt a pang. When she was seven years old, her father bought her a black-and-white flip book of Charlie Chaplin duck-walking down the street, nearly beheaded by a passing lady in an enormous feathered hat. Despite the simple story, Marjorie had been taken by the still images launched into motion. She started collecting flip books, even making her own. She pulled out an original now: a roughly drawn flower growing from a seed. Flip. Flip. Flip.
    Random objects and loose papers cluttered the shelf above. (No one ever accused Marjorie Plum of neatness.) Lime green brocade peaked out. Curious, Marjorie plucked the item from beneath the layers and turned it over in her hands: That’s right! She and her fourth-grade classmates had written their own books. For the cover, she had chosen a material fit for a nineteenth-century English manor’s drapery. “Oh, my God,” she said, laughing.
    Suddenly, she felt like she’d fallen through a wormhole. She could distinctly recall crafting some story about a girl stuck inside a flip book (what else?). She’d left indelible teeth marks in many a pencil while her mother suggested big words like “imperceptible” and then instructed her to “look them up.” Now she thumbed to the book’s back, finding an About the Author written in her then unpolished hand (clearly ignoring any editorial guidance from the teacher, since the story itself was without mistakes) beside a Polaroid of her ten-year-old self in a flowered sundress and clunky New Balance sneakers.
    Marjorie Plum is a riter and artist. She will one day live in a big blue glass house, where she will rite storys for movies and books. She will have two cats named Bimpy and Bop, and a million freinds will visit to do art projects together. She will be very happy. She will never eat cooked carrots, EVER.
    Marjorie could hardly bear the innocence.
    Next, she excavated a blue leather coin-collecting kit with slots for pennies, their open mouths waiting to be fed. Mac, she thought, would relish this proof of her inner geek. Mac, Mac, Mac. Had he cornered the market on contentment? Was that the secret: spending nights tanked, mornings alone drinking high-end espresso, your only guiding principles anonymous sex and a good personal trainer?
    Marjorie’s phone finally sprang to life, a flurry of bings, bongs, and whooshes. Picking it up, she scrolled through: mostly texts from Tina, before and after the insanity.
    Massaging her aching head, Marjorie pulled her hair out of its bobby pins. Amid the nausea and upset, she realized with alarm that on some twisted level she’d been disappointed that the messages were not from Mac. She allowed herself for the first time that day (and she hoped the last time ever ) to think about the night before: how they’d laughed after Vera left, how he’d looked at her after that first kiss, how they’d lain drifting off to sleep, pillow to pillow, his hand warm and comforting on her lower back. What felt right under the cover of night