Free The Plagiarist by Hugh Howey Page A

the lights off in his apartment, kept the blinds drawn, so he couldn’t see the reminders of his laziness. The bee dimly betrayed him with its steady glow.
     
    Griffey575: This way seems nice.
     
    After the barest of pauses, he added a smiley face:
     
    Griffey575: :)
     
    It wasn’t sarcasm. It wasn’t real humor. It was an apology, something to soften the blow of what he knew to be the wrong answer. Adam had replied incorrectly; Amanda’s silence confirmed it. An icon came up to let him know she was typing something. It disappeared for a moment, reappeared, then disappeared again. He was watching her think. He wondered what things had been erased, if it was anger or disappointment she was refraining from sending.
     
    Griffey575: I think I’m just not ready.
     
    He wondered if that sounded better. It at least filled the silence.
     
    lonelyTraveler1: I’m gonna find out you’re married, aren’t I?
     
    Griffey575: I’m not married.
     
    Such lies were not in him. Such a life, perhaps, was not in him.
     
    lonelyTraveler1: but there’s someone else.
     
    Griffey575: There’s no person else.
     
    Clumsy. The sentence sounded stilted, but it kept his response, strictly speaking, from being an outright lie.
     
    lonelyTraveler1: I won’t push you. just think about it. or at least write me something, write me something about why you’d want to or not want to.
 
    A pause.
     
    lonelyTraveler1: I feel like we’re living in 2 separate worlds lately.
     
    Adam laughed nervously. His fingers left the keyboard and moved to rub his sore temples. For a brief moment, just an insane instant, he considered telling Amanda the truth. He pictured typing all the craziness of his life out in one uninterrupted, suicidal message. He imagined her sitting there, staring at the icon that let her know he was typing for hours and hours while he crafted a biopic admission of how scary and surreal and demented his life had become…
    He deleted the thought.
     
    Griffey575: I do have a piece I haven’t shared.
     
    His mind was suddenly in a spilling mood—as long as it was spilling other things. It sought release of some cryptic truth. There were thousands of haikus that Adam kept to himself. They lived in his head, swirling beneath the layered façades, keeping him company. The impulse to let one out became great. He figured he could trade it for the impossible thing Amanda was asking, this meeting each other in person. Perhaps a bartered poem could delay the inevitable.
     
    lonelyTraveler1: oh. PLEASE!!
     
    Griffey575: Just one, then I really need to get some sleep. I have an early class.
     
    lonelyTraveler1: is this a new one? when did you write it?
     
    When did he write it? He couldn’t exactly remember. All his life, Adam had wanted to be a writer. The problem was: he was too good at reading . He had too many of Shakespeare’s sonnets memorized. Too much Blake and Shelly and Proust. All that good stuff was crammed up in his brainstem, pooled in his pons, dripping down his spine, now a part of his very fiber. Trying to sneak a sham of his own past such a gang of real McCoys was impossible. Adam’s great gift—knowing the good stuff—was also his failing. The only words of his own that he could sneak through his literature-stuffed brain were his little haikus, unassuming and light on their feet. They were like neutrinos streaming out from the dense center of a star, cruising across the cosmos invisible and unknowable.
     
    Griffey575: About a year ago I think.
     
    He hit enter, let the words come to him from memory.
     
    Griffey575: Here it goes; then I need to get away from this screen:
     
    Moments spill through hands
    idling away at nothing
    To puddle in years
     
    Adam logged off, but the chat window remained open. It held another uncomfortable conversation he could scroll through and regret. He read over the poem and realized that at that very moment, Amanda was reading it as well. They were both seeing it for the