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Hello Now

Jenny Valentine
Chapters (37)
  1. Cover
  2. Also by Jenny Valentine
  3. Dedication
  4. Novo
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. Novo
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. Novo
  35. Acknowledgments
  36. About the Author
  37. What’s next onyour reading list?

Cover

Cover for Hello Now

Also by Jenny Valentine

FIRE COLOR ONE

Dedication

For Jeff

Novo

When it happens, I don’t feel it. I never feel it. I just sleep. And they wash away, the things I’ve held on to, all of them. I let them go, leave them unchanged, and they are clean and new and nothing and then I am back. Never the same place—sometimes the cut and pulse of human traffic, sometimes a vast empty space. Anywhere and Always. The hot bite of dust, a blanket of snow. Soft opening of a morning or deep, sharp night. Sometimes before Now, and during, and also after, just the land holding bodies and the birds rising up over the sea. Square one, in all its different disguises. Always moving. Always alone.

I never forget what I am looking for, over and over, somewhere in that black-hole sleep. The one that keeps me. The one I can keep. My hook. A face at a window, the air in a bubble, a bird in a cage. Consequence. Purpose. Belonging.

A street. Here. Now.

Will it be this time? Will it be never? I get out of the car, know my name and my age, my own hands, all my histories, same as ever. Quiet facts come to me like old finger drawings on glass, only traces. These trees. This house. This beginning. I stand at the side of the road, taking it all in, hoping and hoping. And I wonder, not for the first time, if it has some kind of start, this life, and who’s controlling it, and if it is ever, ever going to stop.

ONE

Jude

I’ve never been into love stories. Too much sugar, too much gloop, same reasons I don’t like cotton candy or fondue. Only so many sunsets and hand-holds and ever-afters I can stomach, honestly. Seven words for it in Greek. Twenty-seven in Tamil. All those subtleties and we just have this one four-letter word and expect everyone to make a religion out of it.

I’ve never been into magic either, not the made-up, miracle kind. Not when there’s the miracle of actually existing to deal with, the magic of infinitely small particles, the exact same particles, coming together to make a human being or a seashell or the earth’s atmosphere or a cup of tea or just a log. There’s magic in putting one foot in front of the other, isn’t there? There’s magic in a foot, come to think of it. It’s everywhere. Even to be here is so much.