{"product_id":"await-your-reply-isbn-9780345476036","title":"Await Your Reply","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this “deliciously disturbing literary thriller” (\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e), the lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways—and with unexpected consequences—from the award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eAmong the Missing.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“A riveting thriller, chock-full of plot twists, and a sober meditation on the erosion of identity in the age of technology.”—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF \u003ci\u003eTHE NEW YORK TIMES’\u003c\/i\u003eS TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMiles Cheshire longs to get on with his life, but can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMy whole life is a lie\u003c\/i\u003e, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself—through unconventional and precarious means.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, \u003ci\u003eAwait Your Reply \u003c\/i\u003eis an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e, NPR, \u003ci\u003eSalon, Entertainment Weekly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Kansas City Star, The Arizona Republic, Akron Beacon Journal, Lansing State Journal, The Week, Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Stunning . . . Chaon succeeds in both creating suspense and making it pay off, but \u003ci\u003eAwait Your Reply\u003c\/i\u003e also does something even better. Like the finest of his storytelling heroes, Chaon manages to bridge the gap between literary and pulp fiction with a clever, insinuating book equally satisfying to fans of either genre. He does travel two roads, even though that guy David Frost said it wasn’t possible.”\u003cb\u003e—Janet Maslin, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A riveting thriller, chock-full of plot twists, and a sober meditation on the erosion of identity in the age of technology . . . There’s a bristling momentum that develops, as in any great tale of suspense. . . . [Chaon] writes with an eloquence rarely seen in the world of page-turners.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mesmerizing . . . engrossing . . . You need to step into this world of psychological suspense completely unprepared for what lurks in here. . . . Mysteries lurk in this hypnotic novel that you’ll never guess.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The brilliant Dan Chaon has done it again. Both a genre-bending whodunit and a profound meditation on identity, \u003ci\u003eAwait Your Reply\u003c\/i\u003e left me breathless with admiration. The pages turn themselves.”\u003cb\u003e—Justin Cronin, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003e The Passage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“I’ve been waiting for somebody to write the essential identity-theft novel, and I’m very glad Dan Chaon’s the one to have done it, because he believes in real story and is faithful to the reader.”\u003cb\u003e—Jonathan Franzen, author of \u003ci\u003e The Corrections\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is a stunning and beautiful book. I must have read its final pages half a dozen times, just letting what lay packed and coiled within them settle into me. Out of pure loss, Chaon has created real magnificence. \u003ci\u003eAwait Your Reply\u003c\/i\u003e attains a kind of blurry, bloodstained perfection.”\u003cb\u003e—Peter Straub, author of\u003ci\u003e A Dark Matter\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I was completely hooked—a credit both to Chaon’s intricate and suspenseful plotting and to some of the most paranoid material to hit American literature since Don Delillo’s \u003ci\u003eWhite Noise.\u003c\/i\u003e . . . \u003ci\u003eAwait Your Reply\u003c\/i\u003e is a dark, provocative book; in bringing its three strands together, Chaon has fashioned a braid out of barbed wire.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A deliciously disturbing literary thriller. In the end, \u003ci\u003eAwait Your Reply \u003c\/i\u003eis a story that unfolds with chilling precision. You'll be spellbound from start to finish.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePeople \u003c\/i\u003e(four stars)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A tender, melancholy meditation on attachment and loss.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eO: The Oprah Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Far more than an absorbing mystery, in this complex and psychologically astute story Dan Chaon put on a virtuosic display of his literary talent. It's a thrilling example of the best of contemporary literary fiction.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBookpage\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Chaon deftly intertwines a trio of story lines, showcasing his characters’ individuality by threading subtle connections between and among them with effortless finesse, all the while invoking the complexities of what's real and what's fake with mesmerizing brilliance. This novel’s structure echoes that of his well-received debut–also a book of threes—even as it bests that book’s elegant prose, haunting plot and knockout literary excellence.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“So breathtaking . . . that the reader practically feels compelled to start the novel anew, just to discover the cues that he’s missed along the way.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eDan Chaon is the acclaimed author of \u003cb\u003eAmong the Missing\u003c\/b\u003e, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and \u003cb\u003eYou Remind Me of Me\u003c\/b\u003e, which was named one of the best books of the year by \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eFrancisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monito\u003c\/i\u003er, and \u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, among other publications. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including \u003cb\u003eThe Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize\u003c\/b\u003e, and \u003cb\u003eThe O. Henry Prize Stories\u003c\/b\u003e. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing.\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe are on our way to the hospital, Ryan’s father says. \u003cbr\u003eListen to me, Son: \u003cbr\u003eYou are not going to bleed to death. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRyan is still aware enough that his father’s words come in through the edges, like sunlight on the borders of a window shade. His eyes are shut tight and his body is shaking and he is trying to hold up his left arm, to keep it elevated. We are on our way to the hospital, his father says, and Ryan’s teeth are chattering, he clenches and unclenches them, and a series of wavering colored lights—greens, indigos—plays along the surface of his closed eyelids. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the seat beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan’s severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in an eight-quart Styrofoam cooler. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe hand weighs less than a pound. The nails are trimmed and there are calluses on the tips of the fingers from guitar playing. The skin is now bluish in color. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is about three a.m. on a Thursday morning in May in rural Michigan. Ryan doesn’t have any idea how far away the hospital might be but he repeats with his father \u003ci\u003ewe are on the way to the hospital we are on the way to the hospital\u003c\/i\u003e and he wants to believe so badly that it’s true, that it’s not just one of those things that you tell people to keep them calm. But he’s not sure. Gazing out all he can see is the night trees leaning over the road, the car pursuing its pool of headlight, and darkness, no towns, no buildings ahead, darkness, road, moon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2\u003cbr\u003eA few days after Lucy graduated from high school, she and\u003cbr\u003eGeorge Orson left town in the middle of the night. They were not\u003cbr\u003efugitives–not exactly–but it was true that no one knew that they\u003cbr\u003ewere leaving, and it was also true that no one would know where\u003cbr\u003ethey had gone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey had agreed that a degree of discretion, a degree of secrecy,\u003cbr\u003ewas necessary. Just until they got things figured out. George Orson\u003cbr\u003ewas not only her boyfriend, but also her former high school history\u003cbr\u003eteacher, which had complicated things back in Pompey, Ohio.\u003cbr\u003eThis wasn’t actually as bad as it might sound. Lucy was eighteen,\u003cbr\u003ealmost nineteen–a legal adult–and her parents were dead, and\u003cbr\u003eshe had no real friends to speak of. She had been living in their parents’\u003cbr\u003ehouse with her older sister, Patricia, but the two of them had\u003cbr\u003enever been close. Also, she had various aunts and uncles and\u003cbr\u003ecousins she hardly talked to. As for George Orson, he had no connections\u003cbr\u003eat all that she knew of.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd so: why not? They would make a clean break. A new life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStill, she might have preferred to run away together to somewhere\u003cbr\u003edifferent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey arrived in Nebraska after a few days of driving, and she was\u003cbr\u003esleeping, so she didn’t notice when they got off the interstate.\u003cbr\u003eWhen she opened her eyes, they were driving along a length of\u003cbr\u003eempty highway, and George Orson’s hand was resting demurely on\u003cbr\u003eher thigh: a sweet habit he had, resting his palm on her leg. She\u003cbr\u003ecould see herself in the side mirror, her hair rippling, her sunglasses\u003cbr\u003ereflecting the motionless stretches of lichen- green prairie\u003cbr\u003egrass. She sat up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Where are we?” she said, and George Orson looked over at her.\u003cbr\u003eHis eyes distant and melancholy. It made her think of being a child,\u003cbr\u003ea child in that old small- town family car, her father’s thick, calloused\u003cbr\u003eplumber’s hands gripping the wheel and her mother in the\u003cbr\u003epassenger seat with a cigarette even though she was a nurse, the\u003cbr\u003ewindow open a crack for the smoke to trail out of, and her sister\u003cbr\u003easleep in the backseat mouth- breathing behind their father, and\u003cbr\u003eLucy also in the backseat, opening her eyes a crack, the shadows of\u003cbr\u003etrees running across her face, and thinking: \u003ci\u003eWhere are we?\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eShe sat up straighter, shaking this memory away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Almost there,” George Orson murmured, as if he were remembering\u003cbr\u003ea sad thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd when she opened her eyes again, there was the motel. They\u003cbr\u003ehad parked in front of it: a tower rising up in silhouette over them.\u003cbr\u003eIt had taken Lucy a moment to realize that the place was supposed\u003cbr\u003eto be a lighthouse. Or rather–the front of the place, the\u003cbr\u003efaçade, was in the shape of a lighthouse. It was a large tube- shaped\u003cbr\u003estructure made of cement blocks, perhaps sixty feet high, wide at\u003cbr\u003ethe base and narrowing as it went upward, and painted in red and\u003cbr\u003ewhite barber- pole stripes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE LIGHTHOUSE MOTEL, said a large unlit neon sign–fancy\u003cbr\u003enautical lettering, as if made of knotted ropes–and Lucy sat there\u003cbr\u003ein the car, in George Orson’s Maserati, gaping.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo the right of this lighthouse structure was an L- shaped courtyard\u003cbr\u003eof perhaps fifteen motel units; and to the left of it, at the very\u003cbr\u003ecrest of the hill, was the old house, the house where George\u003cbr\u003eOrson’s parents once lived. Not exactly a mansion but formidable\u003cbr\u003eout here on the open prairie, a big old Victorian two- story home\u003cbr\u003ewith all the trappings of a haunted house: a turret and wraparound\u003cbr\u003eporch, dormers and corbeled chimneys, a gable roof and scalloped\u003cbr\u003eshingles. No other houses in sight, barely any other sign of civilization,\u003cbr\u003ebarely anything but the enormous Nebraska sky bending over\u003cbr\u003ethem.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor a moment Lucy had the notion that this was a joke, a corny\u003cbr\u003eroadside attraction or amusement park. They had pulled up in the\u003cbr\u003esummer twilight, and there was the forlorn lighthouse tower of the\u003cbr\u003emotel with the old house silhouetted behind it, ridiculously creepy.\u003cbr\u003eLucy thought that there may as well have been a full moon and a\u003cbr\u003ehoot owl in a bare tree, and George Orson let out a breath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“So here we are,” George Orson said. He must have known how\u003cbr\u003eit would look to her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is it?” Lucy said, and she couldn’t keep the incredulousness\u003cbr\u003eout of her voice. “Wait,” she said. “George? This is where we’re\u003cbr\u003egoing to live?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“For the time being,” George Orson said. He glanced at her ruefully,\u003cbr\u003eas if she disappointed him a little. “Only for the time being,\u003cbr\u003ehoney,” he said, and she noticed that there were some tumbleweeds\u003cbr\u003estuck in the dead hedges on one side of the motel courtyard. Tumbleweeds!\u003cbr\u003eShe had never seen such a thing before, except in movies\u003cbr\u003eabout ghost towns of the Old West, and it was hard not to be a little\u003cbr\u003efreaked out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“How long has it been closed?” she said. “I hope it’s not full of\u003cbr\u003emice or–”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No, no,” George Orson said. “There’s a cleaning woman com-\u003cbr\u003eing out fairly regularly, so I’m sure it’s not too bad. It’s not abandoned\u003cbr\u003eor anything.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe could feel his eyes following her as she got out and walked\u003cbr\u003earound the front of the car and up toward the red door of the\u003cbr\u003eLighthouse. Above the door it said: office. And there was another\u003cbr\u003eunlit tube of neon, which said:  NO VACANCY.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt had once been a fairly popular motel. That’s what George\u003cbr\u003eOrson had told her as they were driving through Indiana or Iowa or\u003cbr\u003eone of those states. It wasn’t exactly a \u003ci\u003eresort, \u003c\/i\u003ehe’d said, but a pretty\u003cbr\u003efancy place–“Back when there was a lake,” he’d said, and she\u003cbr\u003ehadn’t quite understood what he meant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe’d said: “It sounds romantic.”  This was before she’d seen it.\u003cbr\u003eShe’d had an image of one of those seaside sort of places that you\u003cbr\u003eread about in novels, where shy British people went and fell in love\u003cbr\u003eand had epiphanies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No, no,” George Orson said. “Not exactly.” He had been trying\u003cbr\u003eto warn her. “I wouldn’t call it romantic. Not at this point,” he said.\u003cbr\u003eHe explained that the lake–it was a reservoir, actually–had started\u003cbr\u003eto dry up because of the drought, all the greedy farmers, he said,\u003cbr\u003ethey just keep watering and watering their government- subsidized\u003cbr\u003ecrops, and before anyone knew it, the lake was a tenth of what it\u003cbr\u003ehad once been. “Then all of the tourist stuff began to dry up as well,\u003cbr\u003enaturally,” George Orson said. “It’s hard to do any fishing or waterskiing\u003cbr\u003eor swimming on a dry lake bed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe had explained it well enough, but it wasn’t until she looked\u003cbr\u003edown from the top of the hill that she understood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was serious. There wasn’t a lake anymore. There was nothing\u003cbr\u003ebut a bare valley–a crater that had once held water. A path led\u003cbr\u003edown to the “beach,” and there was a wooden dock extending out\u003cbr\u003einto an expanse of sand and high yellow prairie grass, various\u003cbr\u003escrubby plants that she imagined would eventually turn into tumbleweeds.\u003cbr\u003eThe remains of an old buoy lay on its side in the windblown\u003cbr\u003edirt. She could see what had once been the other side of the\u003cbr\u003elake, the opposite shore rising up about five miles or so away across\u003cbr\u003ethe empty basin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLucy turned back to watch as George Orson opened the trunk of\u003cbr\u003ethe car and extracted the largest of their suitcases.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Lucy?” he said, trying to make his voice cheerful and solicitous.\u003cbr\u003e“Shall we?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe watched as he walked past the tower of the Lighthouse office\u003cbr\u003eand up the cement stairs that led to the old house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3\u003cbr\u003eBy the time the first rush of recklessness had begun to burn off,\u003cbr\u003eMiles was already nearing the arctic circle. He had been driving\u003cbr\u003eacross Canada for days and days by that point, sleeping for a while\u003cbr\u003ein the car and then waking to go on again, heading northward\u003cbr\u003ealong what highways he could find, a cluster of maps origamied on\u003cbr\u003ethe passenger seat beside him. The names of the places he passed\u003cbr\u003ehad become more and more fantastical–Destruction Bay, the\u003cbr\u003eGreat Slave Lake, Ddhaw Ghro, Tombstone Mountain–and when\u003cbr\u003ehe came at last upon Tsiigehtchic, he sat in his idling car in front of\u003cbr\u003ethe town’s welcome sign, staring at the scramble of letters as if his\u003cbr\u003eeyesight might be faulty, some form of sleep- deprivation dyslexia.\u003cbr\u003eBut no. According to one of the map books he’d bought, “Tsiigeht -\u003cbr\u003echic” was a Gwich’in word that meant “mouth of the river of iron.”\u003cbr\u003eAccording to the book, he had now reached the confluence of the\u003cbr\u003eMackenzie and the Arctic Red rivers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWELCOME TO TSIIGEHTCHIC!\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLocated on the site of a traditional Gwich’in fishing camp. In 1868\u003cbr\u003ethe Oblate Fathers started a mission here. By 1902 a trading post was\u003cbr\u003elocated here. R.C.M.P. Constable Edgar “Spike” Millen, stationed at\u003cbr\u003eTsiigehtchic was killed by the mad trapper Albert Johnson in the shootout of January 30, 1932 in the Rat River area.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Gwich’in retain close ties to the land today. You can see net fishing year round as well as the traditional method of making dryfish and dry meat. In the winter, trappers are busy in the bush seeking\u003cbr\u003evaluable fur animals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eENJOY YOUR VISIT TO OUR COMMUNITY!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe mouthed the letters, and his chapped lips kept adhering to\u003cbr\u003eeach other. “ \u003ci\u003eT- s- i- i- g- e- h- t- c- h- i- c,” \u003c\/i\u003ehe said, under his breath, and just then a cold thought began to unfold in the back of his mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat am I doing? \u003c\/i\u003ehe thought. \u003ci\u003eWhy am I doing this?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eThe drive had begun to feel more and more like a hallucination\u003cbr\u003eby that point. Somewhere on the way, the sun had begun to stop rising\u003cbr\u003eand setting; it appeared to move slightly to and fro across the\u003cbr\u003esky, but he couldn’t be sure. Along this part of the Dempster Highway,\u003cbr\u003ea silvery white powder was scattered on the dirt road. Calcium?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe powder seemed to glow–but then again, in this queer sunlight,\u003cbr\u003eso did everything: the grass and the sky and even the dirt had\u003cbr\u003ea fluorescent quality, as if lit from within.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was sitting there by the side of the road, his book open in\u003cbr\u003efront of him on the steering wheel, a pile of clothes in the backseat,\u003cbr\u003eand the boxes of papers and notebooks and journals and letters he\u003cbr\u003ehad collected over the years. He was wearing sunglasses, shivering a\u003cbr\u003elittle, his patchy facial hair a worn yellow- brown, the color of a coffee\u003cbr\u003estain. The CD player in his car was broken, and the radio played\u003cbr\u003eonly a murky blend of static and distant garbled voices. There was\u003cbr\u003eno cell phone reception, of course. An air freshener in the shape of\u003cbr\u003ea Christmas tree was hanging from the rearview mirror, spinning in\u003cbr\u003ethe breath of the defroster.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUp ahead, not too far now, was the town of Inuvik, and the wide\u003cbr\u003edelta that led to the Arctic Ocean, and also–he hoped–his twin\u003cbr\u003ebrother, Hayden.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e4\u003cbr\u003eThe man said, “Above the wrist? Or below the wrist?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man had a sleepy, almost affectless voice, the voice you\u003cbr\u003emight hear if you called a hotline for computer technical support.\u003cbr\u003eHe looked at Ryan’s father blandly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ryan, I want you to tell your father to be reasonable,” the man\u003cbr\u003esaid, but Ryan didn’t really say anything because he was crying\u003cbr\u003esilently. He and his father were bound to chairs at the kitchen table,\u003cbr\u003eand Ryan’s father was shuddering, and his long dark hair fell in a\u003cbr\u003etent around his face. But when he looked up, he had a troublingly\u003cbr\u003estubborn look in his eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man sighed. He carefully pushed the sleeve of Ryan’s shirt\u003cbr\u003eup above his elbow and placed his finger on the small rounded\u003cbr\u003ebone at the edge of Ryan’s wrist. It was called the “ulnar styloid,”\u003cbr\u003eRyan remembered. Some biology class he had taken, once. He\u003cbr\u003edidn’t know why that term came to him so easily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAbove the wrist . . . \u003c\/i\u003ethe man said to Ryan’s father \u003ci\u003e. . . or below the\u003cbr\u003ewrist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRyan was trying to reach a disconnected state–a \u003ci\u003eZen \u003c\/i\u003estate, he\u003cbr\u003ethought–though the truth was that the more he tried to lift his\u003cbr\u003emind out of his body, the more aware he was of the corporeal. He\u003cbr\u003ecould feel himself trembling. He could feel the salt water trickling\u003cbr\u003eout of his nose and eyes, drying on his face. He could feel the duct\u003cbr\u003etape that held him to the kitchen chair, the strips across his bare\u003cbr\u003eforearms, his chest, his calves and ankles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe closed his eyes and tried to imagine his spirit lifting toward\u003cbr\u003ethe ceiling. He would drift out of the kitchen, where he and his father\u003cbr\u003ewere pinned to the hard- backed chairs, past the cluttered construction\u003cbr\u003eof dirty dishes piled on the counter by the sink, the toaster\u003cbr\u003ewith a bagel still peeping up out of it; he would waft through the\u003cbr\u003earchway and into the living room, where a couple of black- T- shirted\u003cbr\u003ehenchmen were carrying computer parts out of the bedrooms,\u003cbr\u003edragging matted tails of electrical cording and cables along behind\u003cbr\u003ethem. His spirit would follow them out the front door, past the\u003cbr\u003ewhite van they were tossing stuff into, and on down his father’s\u003cbr\u003edriveway, traveling the rural Michigan highway, the moonlight flickering\u003cbr\u003ethrough the branches of trees as his spirit gained velocity, the\u003cbr\u003eluminous road signs emerging out of the darkness as he swept up\u003cbr\u003elike an airplane and the patterns of house lights and roads and\u003cbr\u003estreams that speckled and crisscrossed the earth growing smaller.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWooooooooooooooooooo–\u003c\/i\u003elike a balloon with the air let out of it, a\u003cbr\u003esiren, a wailing wind. Like a person screaming.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe squeezed his eyes, tightened his teeth against one another as his\u003cbr\u003eleft hand was grasped and tilted. He was trying to think of something\u003cbr\u003eelse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMusic? A landscape, a sunset? A beautiful girl’s face?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Dad,” he could hear himself saying, through chattering teeth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Dad, please be reasonable, please, please be–”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe would not think about the cutting device the man had shown\u003cbr\u003ethem. It was just a length of wire, a very thin razor wire, with a rubber\u003cbr\u003ehandle attached to each end of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe wouldn’t think about the way his father wouldn’t meet his\u003cbr\u003eeyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe wouldn’t think about his hand, the wire looped once around\u003cbr\u003ehis wrist, his hand garroted, the sharp wire tightening. Slicing\u003cbr\u003esmoothly through skin and muscle. There would be a hitch, a snag,\u003cbr\u003ewhen it reached the bone, but it would cut through that, too.Author of You Remind Me of Me; National bestseller; National Book Award finalist","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304802570469,"sku":"NP9780345476036","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345476036.jpg?v=1767722011","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/await-your-reply-isbn-9780345476036","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}