An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(56)
I was trying to be a good sister, so I didn’t look at my phone for like three straight hours, and when I picked it up, all hell had broken loose. I went to the bathroom and stayed there for a full half hour during the rehearsal dinner trying to catch up.
Robin texted me, I assume you’ve heard about this “infection” nonsense. Otherwise, do you need me to get you some laxative?
I feel like I need to do something. People are looking to me to say something but I don’t know how to frame it, I texted, still in the stall.
There were tons of tweets from Defenders like,
@BadApple24: It seems that @AprilMaybeNot is suddenly, very loudly silent. Nothing to say about this news, eh girly?
And Peter Petrawicki himself tweeted:
@PeterPetrawicki: Don’t expect folks like aprilmaybenot to talk at all today, they don’t want to engage with the reality that scientific study has concluded definitively that we have been infected with a mind-altering contagion.
This was a thing they did to draw you into the conversation they wanted to have. Which is not to say it didn’t work. There was so much frustration and fear already that people were forcing themselves to stay awake so they could avoid the Dream, some taking amphetamines. But you can’t not sleep. A couple of people had died . . . They had died of the fear that Peter Petrawicki was peddling.
Robin: April, your family is out here and they know what you’re doing.
Frustrated, I pocketed my phone and made my way out.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Robin when I got out into the room. “You’re right. Is there any way you could prep a couple of talking points on this for me for later?”
“Of course.”
“You look fantastic in that suit, by the way.”
“Thanks, it was not cheap.”
“I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about this. It’s such bad optics. Everyone is saying ‘infection.’ Maybe if I had been there a few hours ago, I could have molded that language a bit, maybe called it something more technical.”
“April, your brother needs you.”
“I know, thank you, Robin. You’re a good friend.” He blushed a bit. Then I went back to pretending I wasn’t completely distracted and attended my brother’s wedding with 25 percent of my mind, max.
May 19
@AprilMaybeNot: “My Life with Carl: A Memoir and Manifesto” is in stores now! But who are we kidding, you’re ordering it on Amazon just like me because we care more about saving two dollars than the continued prosperity of our country! http://amzn.to/2ElGwTL
I am standing in a Barnes & Noble; my book is on the shelf. The cover looks abstract, but it’s actually a close-up shot of Carl’s shoulder. The publisher wanted my face on the cover, they said it would sell more books, but I couldn’t imagine having my face staring out from every airport bookstore in the world. I picked it up and opened it to a random page and read words I wrote that were now sitting on the shelf of a bookstore.
It seems likely that the iodine was necessary for the creation of the Dream. Harvard biochemist Alan Reichert writes that iodine, of the chemicals asked for, “is the only one commonly used in biochemical processes.” It’s a necessary compound for the creation of multiple thyroid hormones. While we still do not understand the mechanism of the Dream’s spread, when I touched the iodine to Carl’s hand, a wave of dizziness came over me. Soon after, everyone who had been exposed to me was also a carrier for the Dream. However the Dream is carried, it must have required raw materials that Carl had available, in either in the air or in the concrete as well as iodine.
Did you spot it? A friend of mine once told me that, no matter how much you proofread, the first time you open the final version of your book, you will find a typo on the very first page you look at. Ugh.
But I’d done it. I wrote a book. There it was. Hardcover, tens of thousands of words, and I wrote them all. Sylvia, of course, gave me a lot of nudges, but ultimately, it was a thing I made. It felt very different from any of the other art I had done. So much of me was in it, and now here I was on the shelf. People were going to read it and, I hoped, maybe some minds would be changed. Ultimately, almost everyone who read that book was already on my side, and the only thing it served to do was make people like me angrier.
June 1
@AprilMaybeNot: I’ve only been on tour for like a week, but I already feel like maybe I’ve lived my entire life on this bus and everything else was an illusion.
I’m on a stage in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in front of two thousand people. They’ve all bought tickets to see me read from my book and then to have me, Andy, and Miranda answer questions after the show is over. The space is not a traditional auditorium; it’s just a big carpeted box in a hotel that someone set up a couple thousand chairs in. The event sold out in less than a day. Every person had to buy a book—even if they already had one.
The tour has actually been a blast. The three of us and Robin (and occasionally others—Andy’s dad, Jennifer Putnam, Sylvia Stone, publicists, marketers, etc.) are on a tour bus with bunks and a Nintendo and a shower and a refrigerator. It’s close quarters, and occasionally we grate on each other, but mostly it’s goofy, silly fun. Miranda and Andy actually have been spending a bunch of time together, which has given me time to write and hang out on the Som and yell at Defenders on Twitter.
We’ve been answering questions for about twenty minutes. Most of them are about the Dream or about what I think about the cult in New Mexico that will shoot at anyone who approaches for fear of contracting the Dream or this or that crackpot theory about the Carls. We have a deal: I handle crackpot theories, Andy handles people who make “jokes” about me and Miranda being cute, and Miranda handles anything technical. Miranda often resents the time we have taken away from her work on the Som, but she agreed to come as long as there was really good Wi-Fi on the bus. Throughout the entire tour I have wished that Maya was there with us to handle questions about the Dream.