What Misty’s learned is the pain and panic and horror only lasts a minute or two.

What Misty’s learned is she’s bored to death of dying.

Just for the record, your wife knows you were bluffing when you wrote about putting every toothbrush up your ass. You were just trying to scare people back into reality. You just wanted to wake them up from their own personal coma.

Misty’s not writing this for you, Peter, not anymore.

There’s nowhere on this island she can leave her story where only she’ll find it. The future her in a hundred years. Her own little time capsule. Her own personal time bomb. The village of Waytansea, they’d dig up every square inch of their beautiful island. They’d tear down their hotel, looking for her secret. They have a century to dig and tear and hunt before she comes back. Until they bring her back. And then it will be too late.

We’re betrayed by everything we do. Our art. Our children.

But we were here. We are still here. What poor dull Misty Marie Wilmot has to do is hide her story in plain sight. She’ll hide it everywhere in the world.

What she’s learned is what she always learns. Plato was right. We’re all of us immortal. We couldn’t die if we wanted to.

Every day of her life, every minute of her life, if she could just remember that.

September 10

1445 Bayside Drive

Tecumseh Lake, GA 30613

Chuck Palahniuk

c/o Doubleday

1745 Broadway

New York, NY 10019

Dear Mr. Palahniuk,

My guess is you probably get a lot of letters. I’ve never written to an author before, but I wanted to give you a chance to read the attached manuscript.

Most of it I wrote this summer. If you enjoy it, please pass it along to your editor, Lars Lindigkeit. Money is not really my goal. I only want to see it published and read by as many people as possible. Maybe in some way it can enlighten just one person.

My hope is this story will be read for generations, and it will stay in people’s minds. To be read by the next generation, and the next. Maybe to be read by a little girl a century from now, a little girl who can close her eyes and see a place—see it so clear—a place of sparkling jewelry and rose gardens, that she thinks will save her.

Somewhere, someday, that girl will pick up a crayon and start to draw a house she’s never seen. My hope is this story will change the way she lives her life. I hope this story will save her—that little girl—whatever her name will be the next time.

Sincerely,

Nora Adams

Manuscript enclosed