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One of the greatest advantages to the alien tongues was that it served as a sort of code Keeping our secrets from our parents as well as our classmates More than once we embarrassed a teacher who intercepted a note we’d passed with the intention of reading it out to the class Most of the after a while

“How’s the job search going, working girl?

“You could led

“Right, sorry

“It’s stopped actually I’ot a post at Boucher Books

“Boucher, as in Hugo Boucher?

“The same He even sent me the acceptance himself

If there was one word to describe Maya Doo, it would be unaffected She never put up any sort of front, what you sahat you got I also had no asped

“It’s not that strange,” I said, her reaction confusing me

“You know he’s been in hiding, right?”

“Like from the police?

“Oh, no, nothing like that”

“Oh, thank goodness Thought

“Not that I know of No one really knows for sure, what happened He just disappeared one day, about five years ago The ru at his vineyard upstate Runs the publishing house over email

Just when I though Hugo Boucher couldn’t get any oes and tells me that

“Interesting,” I sta to hide my surprise

“Kinda sexy though, yes? Makes him even more mysterious

I couldn’t ad in the way of my natural curiosity If I was honest, even only with myself, Maya was absolutely correct It wasn’t much of a surprise to me that he disappeared

He’d always been ht it was to enuinely disliked the attention He would hardly be the first Plenty of creatives withdrew from public life

Asfame only to hide from it

“Do you think you’ll get to meet him?”

“I doubt it,” I said,a little, “I mean, I’m just a lowly newbie”

“I dunno You’re pretty sexy, hon He ht want to whisk you away”