The Understory Read Online Free Page A

wipers—yet another reminder that no matter where she went, she was an interloper.
    Before going to work, she stopped back at her own house to shower, change clothes, and work on Twenty-Nine Down, which had been giving her trouble. Thanks to a quirky home décor company, the ten-foot wall in Story’s dining room was covered with special-order wallpaper printed up as a life-sized crossword puzzle. Each time Story used the chunky black marker to fill in an answer, literally scribbling on the wall, she giggled, knowing her mother would scoff at such uncivilized behavior.
    Twenty-nine, as it happened, was also her age. She didn’t dwell on that. In fact, she’d forgotten her birthday for the last three years in a row, remembering it only after the fact, when she was writing a check or looking at a calendar. But she was pushing thirty, the age at which you should have accomplished something in your life. Unfortunately, she could think of nothing she’d done thus far that could be considered important.
    It’ll last for days. Four letters. She stared at the four empty boxes awaiting letters. After a few seconds, it came to her. Duh. WEEK. She was happy she hadn’t called upon the word she sometimes conjured up when she needed a little help in reaching a goal. “Abracadabra,” she muttered under her breath. Good thing I’m not counting on you.
    Ever since she was a little girl, Story Easton had secretly relied on her special word, a word that her mother thought was complete hogwash. And Story figured her mother was probably right, but it didn’t stop her from trying it out on occasion. For Story, the Aramaic definition of “abracadabra”— I create as I speak— had given her a sense of hope, as it was not only a reference to God creating the universe, but a promise that if you speak it, it shall be so. But during her lifetime, in the hundreds of times she’d used the word in hope of a real, magical result, it had failed her. Of course.
    Story walked out of her humble bungalow, one she was renting because she refused to accept down payment money from her mother, who wanted Story to leave municipal Phoenix for a more acceptable locale, like Deer Run or Glendale. She walked through her brown and neglected yard to her brown and neglected hand-me-down Volvo.
    If Story could at least pretend not to be disappointed in disappointment, her mother could not—Story was, indeed, a colossal disappointment to her mother, who was successful to an embarrassing degree. A year ago, in a futile attempt to please her, Story put her English major to “good use” and took a job as a writer. Sort of. She took a job writing annoying, well-wishing prose and verse (if you could even call it that) for Special Occasions, a greeting card conglomerate responsible for eighty percent of the market’s need for optimism at any cost.
    After arriving at work on that Monday morning, she assumed her usual position—that of a hostage in a dismal cubicle—and decided today was the day. She’d endured several months of spewing out bad, rhyming poetry and slinging empty slogans, and she wanted to design more honest cards. So on that Monday, she proposed her new greeting card line, Life’s a Crapshoot the very spirit of which was cheeky and irreverent. Story pitched her innovative idea to her boss, Ivy Powers, when Ivy stopped by Story’s cubicle.
    Ivy loved having a boss-worthy salary, but hated being called boss because she wanted people to like her. Story called her boss every chance she could get, because it was fun.
    On that Monday, Story explained how her new card line would appeal to realists, but Ivy Powers, always stoic and obsessed with the bottom line, stood in the cubicle doorway and retorted, “Realists don’t buy cards.”
    In an effort to convince her that real life was no fairy tale, Story wheeled her chair to Ivy’s side and handed her the first installment of the sassy new series. Ivy stared at the front of the card, which featured