Meta (26 page)

  
"Sorry, that was stupid. I tend to stick my foot in my mouth sometimes," she says.

  
"What? No. Of course that's not stupid. Of course I've got my eye on you. I'd be crazy not too. Annnnd now, I'm the one who stuck his foot in his mouth," I say.

  
Sarah laughs. There's still a slight nervousness behind it, but it seems like at least a little bit of a laugh of relief too.

  
"All right, look, I'm just going to ask before this gets anymore unnecessarily awkward for either of us. Would you... and you can totally say no, seriously, it's not a big deal, but would you possibly ever be interested in maybe seeing a movie together sometime?" she asks me.

  
"Seriously?" I ask back.

  
"Sorry, like I said you can totally say no, I probably..."

  
"I'd love to."

  
"Really?"

  
"Of course."

  
"Great! I mean, cool," she says, trying to hide what I think is actual excitement. "Are you doing anything tonight?"

  
"No, not at all."

  
"Perfect. What about that new movie 'Horses on a Plane'? I know it sounds stupid but..."

  
"Stupid? That sounds absolutely horrifying! What if one of them got spooked and decided to kick out one of the windows?" I say.

  
"Exactly! That totally happens in the trailer! The movie trailer that is, not the horse trailer. I think they're actually pretty calm whenever they're in the horse trailer, but I don't know about these horses. They've been infected with some type of zombie disease as they're being flown on a commercial flight to the big horse race down in Kentucky..," she says.

  
I've stopped listening. The girl, who I think is the most amazing girl I've ever met, is geeking out to me over a horror movie, a horror movie that we're actually going to see together, as in a date, and I'm not listening. It's not because I'm rude. It's because something else has grabbed my attention.

  
It's the sky. It's lit up. Dozens of lights, all streaking down from the sky. Maybe hundreds. Like comets entering the Earth's atmosphere. Sarah slowly realizes that I'm not listening to her anymore and turns to look at what has grabbed my attention.

  
"Whoa. What is that?" she asks.

  
"I don't know.”

  
Now the majority of the lake goers are staring into the sky as well, asking the same question, when someone comes running up to the beach and pulls an earbud out from their ear.

  
"They're metabands! The news is saying there are reports coming in from all over the world! Hundreds of metabands are falling from the sky!"

  
Before my brain has time to even process the words coming from this man's mouth, I can feel my phone buzzing in the pocket of my shorts. I pull it out, but it takes a moment before I can pull my eyes away from the sky to read the message.

  
"HQ. NOW! - M." It reads.

  
"Sarah," I say.

  
"Uh huh," she replies, unable to unfix her gaze from the sky either.

  
"I might have to take a rain check on tonight..."

Social Media and Internet Things

Thank you so much for taking the time read my book. If you enjoyed it and would like to leave a review about it on whatever Internet website you bought it from it would mean the absolute world to me and make sure that there’s more. If you bought the book at an actual store, wow. I guess you can go to the store and tell the nice man or woman that sold it to you how much you enjoyed it.

  
To stay in the loop on all things ‘Meta’ and otherwise with me, please sign up for my mailing list at
http://tomreynolds.com/list
. No spam, I promise.

  
You can find me online elsewhere at the following, or you can email me at
[email protected]
. Don’t be a stranger!

  
Internet:
tomreynolds.com

  
Twitter:
twitter.com/tomreynolds

  
Instagram:
instagram.com/tomreynolds

  
Facebook:
facebook.com/sometomreynolds

  
Podcast:
tcgte.com

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, thank you to my Mom, Dad and brother Ryan. They’ve been my sounding board my entire life and have always been more sure of myself than I ever have. This book would have never been finished without their encouragement.

  
Thanks to Tim Daniels for pushing me creatively, every week, for four years now on The Complete Guide to Everything. I’ve always found that the hardest part of doing anything creative is actually
doing
it, but having Tim push me for so long again made it possible for this book to be written.

  
Thank you to my editor Laura Kingsley who did a great job deciphering the mess of the first drafts I gave her to get them to the point where you’re here and have presumably finished the book.

  
Extra special thanks to cover artist Damon Za whose amazing work was the final, extra hard kick in the ass I needed to get this out of me. He’s been extremely generous with his time and talent and helped inspire me to make this book as good as I possibly could.

  
Finally thank you to everyone who bought this because you know me from The Complete Guide to Everything. All hyperbole aside, I really think we have the best, most supportive listeners a podcast could ever ask for. Knowing that there would at least be someone besides my friends and family to show this to when I was done was the best motivation I could ever have, and that would have never been the case without you guys, so thanks.

About the Author

Tom Reynolds graduated from The University of Maryland - College Park with a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies, where he also accidentally minored in English. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with a dog named Ginger who despite being illiterate proved to be a really great late night writing partner.