Read 2012 for Free Online Page B

faces the truth.”
    “What’s happening is much stranger than the arrival of aliens from another planet. And this book, it’s-wow-it’s possessing me.”
    “You write fiction that you come to believe is real and in the process you drive this entire family crazy, and I’m sorry, no more.”
    “Brooke-“
    “No more! End of story! Books that possess you, that drive you nuts-no, I’m finished, I’ve had it!”
    “Mom? Dad?”
    Nicholas appeared, looking bleary and pissed off.
    “Wonderful,” Wiley said.
    Brooke said to their son, “Dad has a sour stomach.”
    “You’re fighting.”
    “I love your mom too much to fight with her. I just obey.” He made a steeple of his hands and bowed toward her.
    “Except you don’t, Daddy.” Now Kelsey had arrived, his gorgeous little girl. “He has cigars hidden in the woods.”
    “That is not true!”
    Brooke folded her arms. So did Kelsey. Brooke glared. “The aliens you go looking for in the woods, Wiley Dale? Would they be from Cuba?”
    “The cigars are Matt’s,” he said.
    “And he’s out there right now, isn’t he, smoking a Monte and sucking on a bottle of Beam, and that’s the real reason you want to take a walk-to make yourself sick on cigars and hootch.”
    “Cubans are the best cigars in the world.”
    “You’re coming to bed with me. And scoot, you two, the sandman’s gonna be furious.”
    “I’m past the sandman,” Nick said.
    “I’m not,” Kelsey told him. “I’m just a little girl, and I still believe.”
    “Meaning, don’t rain on your sister’s parade.”
    “No, Sir.”
    Wiley went into the bedroom and fished his flashlight out from under the bed where he kept it alongside his shotgun. “I need some space, hon. This thing I’m writing, it’s getting to me, for sure, and I agree with you, we need that not to happen. It’s about us and about people who live in another version of this house in a parallel universe. I think that’s what it’s about, anyway. I’m sort of more of a reader than a writer, here. Reading as my fingers write, as it were.”
    “About us in what sense?”
    “Well, like this conversation. This will be in the book. Because we’re part of the story, somehow. I’m not sure how, yet, but we’re part of it.”
    “Not our names again!”
    Uh-oh. He had to tread carefully here. “Well, uh…hm. The people in the parallel universe aren’t us. They have different names. They live in their version of this house and the town is called Harrow, too, but the people are not the same.”
    “I am so tired of this.”
    “Whoa, slow down. The parallel universe is obviously different. Their McDonald’s has emerald arches. Their Target target is blue. The president’s named James Hannah Wade and the family’s named Winters. We’re the Dales, if you hadn’t noticed. And here, McDonald’s has golden arches, obviously. Plus there is no British Empire, among numerous other things. They have two small moons rather than one large one.”
    “In the part of it that’s set in our universe, what are the characters’ names?”
    She knew him well and she was not dumb. Far from dumb. “Well, of course, I’m using ours-“
    “NO!”
    “Well, uh, it’s us. They’re us.”
    “My kids’ names will not be in another one of your books. You know what Nicholas said? He said you really are the most embarrassing father in the world, and he was right! Saying you were taken aboard a UFO was bad enough, but you included him! When he was all of seven years old. Wiley, where do you get off?”
    “The names are-are-like, they’re just place markers. After I’m done, I’ll change them.”
    “Because it’s an act of vanity to write novels about yourself!”
    “Brooke, goddamnit, that’s a betrayal. You know it happened.”
    “It hurt this family so much, honey. I just can’t go through it again. The kids can’t. Especially not your son. He is so brave but he suffers.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The kids eat him