Excluded and Uninvited novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Nine Days

Katja read the script standing up, in Jo's kitchen, with her coat still on.

She read all four pages without a word.

When she reached the note at the bottom of the second one, she stopped, put the page down on the table and put both hands flat on it.

"Say something," Jo said.

"I'm trying to find a sentence that doesn't have a swear word in it."

"Take your time."

"He used your father's death," Katja said to me. "On purpose, so it would hurt."

"Yes."

"And he drove you to the ER."

"Yes."

"And sat with you in the waiting room and told the nurse you were the bravest man he knew."

"He did that too."

She closed her eyes for a second.

When she opened them she had stopped being angry and started being something steadier.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. What do you want to do?"

I sat at Jo's table with the script in front of me.

The thing I had been thinking since the parking lot came out of my mouth before I had finished thinking it.

"I thought I was the one they put up with," I said.

Jo looked at me.

"For years. Brandy, the Thursday Crew, Greg. I thought they let me come along because I had a truck and I'd carry the cooler. I thought one day they'd quit inviting me and I wouldn't be surprised."

"Cal."

"They didn't just quit. They wrote a whole show. They paid two men and borrowed a camera." I stared at the page. "It took eight months and a script to get rid of me."

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