Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [0]
Title Page
Dedication
December 31, 2005
note book number
one saturday: the second
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
sunday: the third
Chapter eleven
Chapter twelve
Chapter thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter seventeen
Chapter eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter twenty
Chapter twenty-one
Chapter twenty-two
Chapter twenty-three
Chapter twenty-four
monday: the fourth
Chapter twenty-five
Chapter twenty-six
Chapter twenty-seven
Chapter twenty-eight
Chapter twenty-nine
Chapter thirty
Chapter thirty-one
Chapter thirty-two
Chapter thirty-three
Chapter thirty-four
Chapter thirty-five
Chapter thirty-six
tuesday: the fifth
Chapter thirty-seven
Chapter thirty-eight
Chapter thirty-nine
Chapter forty
Chapter forty-one
Chapter forty-two
Chapter forty-three
Chapter forty-four
notebook number two
wednesday: the sixth
Chapter forty-five
Chapter forty-six
Chapter forty-seven
Chapter forty-eight
Chapter forty-nine
Chapter fifty
Chapter fifty-one
Chapter fifty-two
Chapter fifty-three
Chapter fifty-four
Chapter fifty-five
Chapter fifty-six
thursday: the seventh
Chapter fifty-seven
Chapter fifty-eight
Chapter fifty-nine
Chapter sixty
Chapter sixty-one
Chapter sixty-two
Chapter sixty-three
friday: the eighth
Chapter sixty-four
Chapter sixty-five
Chapter sixty-six
Chapter sixty-seven
Chapter sixty-eight
Chapter sixty-nine
Chapter seventy
Chapter seventy-one
Chapter seventy-two
Chapter seventy-three
saturday: the ninth
Chapter seventy-four
Chapter seventy-five
Chapter seventy-six
Chapter seventy-seven
Chapter seventy-eight
Chapter seventy-nine
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Megan McCafferty
Copyright
For Christopher (again).
And for Collin (who wanted to know
if he was “in the book”).
* * *
December 31, 2005
My dear Jessica,
I have but one request before you depart for Virginville, Pennsylvania: Don’t forget to write.
Handwritten letters are going the way of the telegram. Landlines. VHS. It won’t be long before we’re all communicating via a wordless, emoticon-only language from a microcomputer directly implanted into our brains. Sci-fi writers have anticipated this for decades: a world in which language as we know it no longer exists, replaced by unpronounceable symbols that are instantly recognizable and incapable of being distorted by multiple interpretations. Maybe the written word will vanish altogether, and our descendants won’t even comprehend the meaning of the word handwriting. It will be a baffling term one stumbles across in an old text, until all such texts crumble into so much dust.
(Dust is on my mind and under my skin. It cracks my eyelashes, sludges my nostrils, and muddies my tongue. Buddhists believe we’re all dust, we’re all everything. Here in the desert, I’m inclined to agree.)
I’ve always preferred laboring in longhand over swiftly skimming my fingertips across the keyboard, over dumbly thumbing messages short on characters and character. I feel sorry for future generations who will never know the pleasure of uncovering (recovering, discovering) old letters. I imagine myself far in the future, my knotty, gnarled fingers gingerly handling the delicate papers addressed to me from you.
You claim you’re too impatient to practice zazen, and yet you stay still long enough to write and write and write. Writing is your preferred form of mediation. Hours slip away in seconds. The present is exchanged with the past. Time transcribed is time transformed.
(Translated. Transposed. Transferred. Transgressed. Transcended.)
And so, in addition to the eleven notebooks I’ve filled over the past two years, I give you this empty notebook as a simple going-away gift. I hope it inspires you to share your life stories with me, as I have with you. The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves make us who we are. To know them, dear Jessica, is to know you.