Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
This man. He’s full of surprises. I don’t know why I like this, but I do.
Olsen feels… like home.
“Obviously I’m not part of the details. Because I’m not in the lab. Locke’s not part of the details either, though. He’s not in the lab. Only you and Mercer have access to the lab.”
“OK.”
“But I’ve been here almost as long as Locke.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Seven years, I guess. Plus the first year. He did a stint in a lab too. But they rejected him.”
“What?”
“Don’t tell him I told you this—though, if you ask him, he will admit it. They said he’s not Institute material. His father bought him a yacht and told him to go sailing for a few years. But he and Mercer, they go way back. And Mercer was bred for this place. So when he said he wanted Locke on the island, guess who got to live on the island.”
I sit back in my chair, reevaluating everything I’ve learned about Locke so far. “So what’s his deal? What’s his job?”
Olsen shrugs. “What’s my job?” Then he laughs. “I mean, I know what our jobs used to be, but why we’re still here? No clue.” Then he amends his answer. “Well, not true. We all know why Locke is still here. Mercer just loves him.”
“What is up with their relationship?”
Another shrug from Olsen. “Some kind of abuse, I think.”
“What?”
“Mercer, Nova. He’s… different.”
“You think the love is one-sided?”
“I can’t really tell. Which is a bad sign, don’t you think?” Then Olsen does something weird. He narrows his eyes at me. “Shouldn’t it be apparent, Nova? When two people love each other?”
I nod. But my stomach is all queasy for some reason. Like I just got caught in a lie.
His eyes un-narrow, and he smiles at me. “I’ll never figure them out. I’ve known them both for seven years and I will never figure them out. Rich people, Nova. You gotta be careful with them. And I’m not talking about newly successful rich people, either. That’s one breed. These people”—he nods his head towards everything outside this cottage—“they’re another breed altogether. You see it on TV. It’s all over the movies, how different they are. But Hollywood never completely explains just how different.”
“What do you mean?” I have to admit, I’m kinda captivated by this topic.
“It’s hard to pin down, exactly. Obviously, I wasn’t in The Little Rascals: Billionaire Edition.”
I guffaw. “What?”
“That’s what they call it.”
“Call what?”
“Their childhood. They grew up on estates, Nova. Hundreds and hundreds of acres in upstate New York. A collection of mansions worth tens of millions of dollars. Forests filled with old buildings and dirt paths. They had a fort out there. And by fort, I mean a house. Someone’s leftover house. With power and everything. This was their clubhouse. The neighborhood girls would ride their ponies to it. The neighborhood boys would arrive on dirt bikes. And they would sit in this house and just… dream things up.”
“Like what?” Captivated? No. I’m enthralled. I want to know everything about this for some reason.
“Projects, I think.”
“For here?” I point to the ground.
He nods.
“As kids? Don’t you think they were… I dunno. Playing games? Maybe spin the bottle when they got older?”
“Oh, they were playing games, all right. But spin the bottle?” Olsen leans back and smiles. “Maybe. But I doubt it.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah. It’s intriguing.”
“But it doesn’t prove anything. So they had more than most.”
“More than most? You would’ve died for a pony when you were a kid.”
This makes me chuckle. “I would’ve. That’s so true. But I don’t have time to begrudge people, ya know? It’s so pointless. We’re born where we’re born. And then we take it from there.”
“You say that because you made it.”
“I did. I worked very hard and I made it.”
Olsen just stares at me. Then he says, “Let’s forget about them. They make me tired. Did you like your dinner?”
When I look down at my plate, I realize I have eaten most of it while we were conversing. I look back up at him and nod. “You’re a really good cook.”
“Thank you. I love cooking. And barbecuing was a thing where I come from.”
I chuckle. “Me too. I could smell the ribs when I walked out of my cottage and I was immediately back home.”
“You miss the trailer park?” And again, his eyes narrow a little. I decipher this eye-narrowing to be intense curiosity. Which means this is a real question.
So I nod. “I do.”
“What was good about it?”
“Well, besides what I already told you… I… I dunno. It was just home.”
“Did you have friends?”
I pause to think about this. I didn’t really. “I was mostly a loner. I was so focused on education, ya know? There were some girls in high school I would sit with during lunch. And I was in a club.”