Michael Alan Peck - Michael Alan Peck

…at the promo copy for the next book in the Commons series, The Margins:

“I think I did something. Something someone really bad was counting on me to do. And I think you helped me.”

Ray-Anne Blair isn’t buying it. She just wants Paul Reid to forget about the imaginary place he says he needs to return to—and to stop calling her Rain.

Everyone wants something. Jeremy Johns wants to do well at his job, but the new office is strange. So is his boss, Mr. Truitt. Annie Brucker wants to understand how she ended up back with her abusive ex. Her son, Zach, wants to know if he should trust whatever it is that talks to him from the dark of his closet, something so heavy it makes the floorboards creak. Jonas Porter, Audra Farrelly, Po the silent monk, and Charlene Moseley want to know where their prospective Journeymen have disappeared to—though the answer might spell the end of all existence.

Welcome to The Margins, a place that shouldn’t be but is, thanks to Paul and the others. They thought they’d won. Instead, they played right into the hands of someone who anticipated their heroic act. Now realms are crossing over, the universe is collapsing, and it’s up to those who created the danger to overcome it.

It won’t be easy, but why would it be? It’s The Commons.

Image credit: Dan Fernandez

It’s 82 degrees outside, and we work with the windows open. It’s supposed to go back down into the 40s in a couple of days, but for now, it’s shorts weather.

And mask weather. But it was already that, no matter the temperature. Most people walking past wear everything from kerchiefs to surgical masks. Some are clearly homemade offerings, which earn extra respect from me. One guy, strolling with his wife and little girl, looks like an Old West train robber. Another looks like Bane.

We leave to get steps. In front of the building next door, somebody’s done up the sidewalk with a chalk activity walk. We’re supposed to follow a snaky line, skip, hop like a bunny, and take advantage of safe spots to avoid falling into lava.

We greatly appreciate the effort but cross through at a normal walk, as if none of it is there. We like when others get creative; we just usually refrain from participating. In that way, nothing’s really changed.

At the end of the day, a couple in the building across the street play a duet out their window, serenading two friends who stand on the sidewalk with their dog. It’s a perfectly respectable rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I can’t see them clearly through the combo of our screen and theirs, but from the sound of it, I think the woman’s playing a ukulele. And her harmony is pretty damn good. After the friends move on, she starts into R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” but her heart isn’t in it, so she fades to a stop. Or maybe it’s just that it hits too close to home.

More people pass the window. I find myself thinking of the Gena Rowlands line from A Woman Under the Influence: “All of a sudden I miss everyone; I don’t know why.”

Only I do know why.

And I want them all to make it.