inJessica Jones, but the actress is bound to turn heads with her upcoming literary debut.
(EW previously premiered an excerpt of the prologue, which it’s possible for you to revisithere.)
Read on to see whats in store for Abby andBonfire.
Cindy Ord/Getty Images; Random House
The old wooden sign is easy to miss, even among the colorless surroundings.
Hold my breath, count to five.
Leave Barrens safely behind, no old shadows running out of the dark woods to strangle me.
Thats a game I used to play as a kid.
I even taught Kaycee this game back when we were kids, before we started hating each other.
Its embarrassing, but I still do it.
And the thing is, it works.
Most of the time.
Its the third time Ive washed my hands since I crossed the border into Indiana.
This was a bad idea.
Impossible to say whether it was hit by a car or struck by a passing bullet.
But this deer is, for some reason, undisturbed.
Hunting game is a main activity in Barrens themain activity, actually.
Its built into the culture.
If it’s possible for you to call it that.
And after a few beers, they take shots at whatever they can aim for.
Deer, coyote, and bear heads adorn the walls of our house like trophies.
Death is beautiful, he said.
My mother was beautiful once, too, until bone cancer did its work.
Its mid-June, end of the school year, but it feels like high summer.
Fields brown beneath the sun.
Another mile on,
I pass a brand-new sign:Welcome to Barrens,Population5,027.
The last time I was here, ten years ago, the population was barely half that.
I count telephone poles.
I count crows swaying on the wires.
I count silos in the distance, arranged like fists.
I turn my life into numbers, into accounting.
For ten years Ive lived in Chicago.
Ive been a lawyer for three.
I have friends now, period and boyfriends, if you’re able to call them that.
Most nights, I dont even have nightmares anymore.
I swore, many times, that I would never go home.
But now I know better.
Any self-help book in the world will tell you that you cant just run your past away.
Barrens has its roots in me.
If I want it gone forever, Ill have to cut them out myself.
