The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4) (17 page)

BOOK: The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4)

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I tried to explain all this to Kevin, but I'm not sure he understood. It didn’t matter. We had so much else to talk about.

We stayed together at that gazebo for a long time, kissing some, but mostly sitting on the steps, just holding hands and talking. I did make a point to text my parents and tell them I was going to spend the night with Gunnar—I figured they couldn't complain after my being such a hero the day before, and I was right.

Kevin and I kept talking, sometimes laughing and sometimes even crying again. I didn't notice the cold, and after a while, I couldn't even smell the methane from the swamp anymore. But I could still smell Kevin.

At one point, he saw something out in the mist that had gathered above the grass in the playfield next to the gazebo. The fog wasn't swirling or moving at all—it was completely frozen, a snapshot of a dark smear stretched across the horizon.

"What is it?" I said.

He pointed. A faint yellow light glowed on the other side of that mist like a light bulb through a blanket.

He laughed. "It's morning. We talked the whole night through!"

"Yeah," I said, taking Kevin's hand. I didn't say what I was really thinking, which was that it wasn't just morning on the other side of the mist—it was the future, wild and unpredictable. But we couldn't see it, not hidden behind all that frozen grey.

Thing is, that didn't scare me, not at all. On the contrary, suddenly I couldn't wait for it to begin.

ALSO BY BRENT HARTINGER

Russel Middlebrook: The Futon Years
(Adult Books)

*
The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know
(Book 1)
*
Barefoot in the City of Broken Dreams
(Book 2, 2015)

The Russel Middlebrook Series
(Young Adult Books)

* Geography Club
(Book 1)

* The Order of the Poison Oak
(Book 2)

* Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies
(Book 3)

* The Elephant of Surprise
(Book 4)

Other Books

* Three Truths and a Lie (2015)

* The Divide (2016)

*
Shadow Walkers

* Project Sweet Life

* Grand & Humble

* The Last Chance Texaco

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brent Hartinger is an author, teacher, playwright, and screenwriter.
Geography Club
, the first book in his Lambda Award-winning Russel Middlebrook Series, is also a successful stage play and a feature film co-starring Scott Bakula and Nikki Blonsky. Brent's other books include the forthcoming gay teen thriller
Three Truths and a Lie
, and the forthcoming supernatural thriller
The Divide
(co-written with Michael Jensen). He also has a number of film projects in active development.

In 1990, Brent helped found one of the world's very first LGBT teen support groups, in his hometown of Tacoma, Washington. In 2005, he co-founded the entertainment website AfterElton.com, which was sold to MTV/Viacom in 2006. He currently co-hosts a podcast called Media Carnivores from his home in Seattle, where he lives with his husband, writer Michael Jensen. Read more by and about Brent, or contact him at
brenthartinger.com
.

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