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to your own happiest day.
    There is no such line. There’s just the waiting room scene from Beetlejuice . (Another movie where I’m not Winona.)
    I had dresses spread all over the spare bedroom when Chris came home. I tried to come up with some normal reason to be wearing a dusty bridesmaid dress and crying. But he reeked of cigarette smoke and went straight in to take a shower, so I didn’t have to explain—which was even more upsetting because what I really wanted was for someone else to feel sorry for me.
    <> I feel sorry for you.
    <> Really?
    <> Really. I think you’re pathetic. It’s almost painfully embarrassing to read your messages when you’re like this.
    <> You know just what to say to a girl. Next you’ll be telling me that I’ll make a beautiful bride someday …
    <> You will. Of course you will. And by the time Chris gets around to asking you, I’ll bet everyone will get married in silver jumpsuits.

CHAPTER 8
    “ WHAT DO YOU care if they pay you to sit there?” Lincoln’s sister asked.
    He’d called Eve because he was bored. Because he’d already read everything in the WebFence folder. He’d read some of it twice …
    Beth and Jennifer again. He didn’t send them a warning. Again. He was starting to feel like he knew them, like they were his work friends. Weird. Yet another reason to quit this job.
    “I don’t care,” he said to Eve.
    “You must. You called me to whine about it.”
    “I’m not whining,” Lincoln said, a little too forcefully.
    “This was supposed to be your nothing job. You told me you wanted a job that wouldn’t take too much brainpower, so that you could devote all your energy to deciding what to do next.”
    “That’s true.”
    “So, what do you care if they’re paying you to do nothing? That sounds ideal. Use that time to read What Color Is Your Parachute? Start working on your five-year plan.” She was practically shouting to be heard over some mechanical noise.
    “Are you vacuuming?”
    “I’m DustBust-ing,” she said.
    “Stop. It makes you sound strident.”
    “I am strident.”
    “Well, it makes you sound excessively strident,” he said. “Now I don’t remember what I was saying.”
    “You were whining about getting paid to do nothing.” Eve turned off the DustBuster.
    “It’s just that getting paid to do nothing is a constant reminder that I’m doing nothing,” Lincoln said. “And doing nothing takes more energy than you’d think. I’m tired all the time.”
    “How could you possibly be tired all the time? Every time I call, you’re asleep.”
    “Eve, I don’t get off work until one in the morning.”
    “You should still be awake by noon.”
    “I get home at one thirty. I’m wired. I mess around on the computer for another hour or two. I fall asleep at, like, four. I get up at one, one thirty. And then I spend the next three hours thinking about how there’s not enough time to do anything before I go to work. I watch Quantum Leap reruns and mess around on the computer some more. I go to work. Rinse. Repeat. ‘Second verse same as the first.’”
    “That sounds awful, Lincoln.”
    “It is awful.”
    “You should quit that job.”
    “I should quit this job … ,” he said, “but if I keep it, I can move out of Mom’s house.”
    “How soon?”
    “As soon as I want. The money’s good.”
    “Don’t quit,” Eve said firmly. “Move out. Find a new job. Then quit.”
    He knew she would say that. In Eve’s mind, all of Lincoln’s problems would go away if he moved out of their mother’s house. “You’ll never have your own life as long as you live there,” Eve told him whenever she had the chance. She’d tell him to keep a job at a meatpacking plant if it meant getting his own apartment.
    But Lincoln wasn’t sure he even wanted to move out. He liked his mom’s house. He liked the way everything about it was already broken