Jane Air Read online

  Jane Air

  Around Midnight, Book 1

  Anna Wellschlager

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Pride and Penelope

  Excerpt

  Also by Anna:

  Midnight, Maine

  About the Author

  Jane Air

  by Anna Wellschlager

  Copyright 2020 by Anna Wellschlager

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without express permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  Cover design by Sarah Hansen

  Edition: June 2020

  For more information or to subscribe to Anna’s newsletter, visit www.annawellschlager.com.

  Readers help writers keep writing. If you enjoy this love story, please consider leaving a review wherever you feel readers will find it!

  Created with Vellum

  For Booklovers

  and

  The Real Jane

  1

  Jane

  Everyone’s talking about it. What he looks like. When he’s coming. Putting the last of the mail in my bag, I hear the whispers floating down the hallway. No one is speaking at full volume, but the place practically vibrates with gossip.

  Because it’s not every day that a big movie star moves into a small town.

  A small town like Midnight, Maine.

  And a big movie star like David Jacobs.

  Yes, that David Jacobs.

  The one you’ve read about.

  The one I’ve read about. And I don’t have time for that.

  He’s moving here.

  That’s the word, anyway.

  “It’s the old Hanson estate, up the hill behind the orchard.”

  “No, no, he’s buying the orchard.”

  “I heard he’s building something, down the road.”

  I close my bag and stand up. It’s hard not to smile. The students are so excited, but I even overheard Professor Jeffreys, twenty years older than me, discussing it with one of the administrators.

  “I think it’s all made up.”

  That last voice is a bit louder than the rest and I bite my lip as I head to the door.

  Whoever said that, I have to agree. I mean, no offense to Midnight, our lovely little town, but it’s just not the kind of place where the beautiful people want to live. Visit, maybe. Shoot a movie, sure. Every Lifetime movie I watch looks like it was shot here.

  But move in? Let’s see…

  We have three bars. They shut down by 11.

  We have a few restaurants. Cafes, more like. My friend, Dory, owns one. The pie is great, I’ll admit, but I doubt that’s enough to appeal to the Hollywood set.

  Cute little shops. Great public library. Couple of dog parks. Local college down the road. Orchards. Small lakes tucked behind winding roads. Farms with horses and sheep and goats, and all that stuff. Good school system. Low crime. The kind of place where neighbors know each other and everyone has a set of everyone else’s keys.

  It’s great, actually. Midnight is a fantastic town.

  Personally, I’d like to keep it that way. No offense to the Hollywood crowd, but there’s a reason that the people who live here don’t live there.

  Not that you’d know it, the way everyone keeps whispering his name, passing it back and forth in secret like a dirty magazine.

  Names are funny things. Some, like David Jacobs, inspire lurid fantasies, heated discussions, and I’m sure more than the occasional late night, ahem, session.

  Others do not.

  Like mine.

  Professor J.A.

  The script is bold and black and hangs on a plastic board that catches my eye as I close my office door, locking the monstrous piles of books behind me. I keep meaning to replace it with an actual sign, something official that says, Here is where I belong, but the university has moved my office so many times I can’t be bothered to drill something into a wall that I’m just going to have to remove later.

  Plus, I like to avoid presenting my name in full wherever possible.

  Jane Air.

  Yeah, I know. It’s cute, right? The literature professor named after the famous character. You think, when I tell you it’s Jane Air, that I spell it Jane Eyre. Like the novel. And you get all excited and wonder if I have some sort of gothic romance in my life, if I’m a governess in a castle, escaped from a terrible situation. If some hot recluse is going to fall in love with me, sweep me off my feet, and then accidentally let slip that he’s locked his first wife in the attic. Then I’ll run off and almost marry some lame dude, but get called back, the aching cry of my lost love summoning me over the moors. And he’ll be blind, and the first wife conveniently dead, and I’ll have found out about a magical inheritance and we’ll make it work, in the burned down castle, with the dead wife’s ghost and the super weird servants.

  Yeah, sure.

  I’ve read that. I even teach it.

  I don’t live that.

  But my name makes you think it’s a possibility. If only my Mom had gotten the spelling correct. Then, maybe, I could have been a Bronte goddess, ripped from the novels of a classic romance, forever associated with problematic protagonists and moody heroes. Perhaps I could have been running across wild, windswept landscapes towards some dark, brooding man, instead of writing an academic analysis of the significance of gender representation in the last quarter of the text.

  Nope.

  Not even a little bit.

  If my life were a book, you would skim it, if you picked it up at all.

  And that’s the real joke. The misspelled namesake, Jane Air, could totally work on a different sort of woman. Someone funny and witty, clever and creative. Becky with the good hair. An international business person, or world traveler. One of the beautiful people. It would be so perfect. Can you imagine? On talk shows and magazine covers. The press would have a field day. Every time they’d bring it up, she could laugh it off and smile and say, I don’t know what you mean. Oh hey, here’s my hot blind boyfriend and his burned-down castle. By the way, I’m super rich. Nice to meet you!

  But that’s not me.

  People bring it up, of course, with terrible jokes. Sometimes it’s my students, wondering if Professor Jane Air is named after the book we’re reading.

  Ha ha. You spelled your name wrong!

  No, I didn’t.

  Are you making us read this because it’s named after you?

  Nope. And how could it be nam
ed after me if it was written hundreds of years before I was born?

  Were your parents kidding?

  Maybe. But I doubt it. Between Mom’s multiple jobs and Dad’s absence…let’s just say it’s pretty obvious why I spent all my time in the library.

  So, here I am. Plain Jane. Professor Air.

  I rarely introduce myself with my first name and my last. It’s Jane. Or Professor Air. Jane Air is reserved for income taxes and flight reservations. Why? Well, apart from the terrible jokes, it’s just…sort of a bummer. Every time I introduce myself, I think of what I could be. And then I look in the mirror.

  Five foot four. Size fourteen.

  Nerd.

  Not just plain, but average. Literally the American average.

  Ugh. Maybe I’ll move to France. I won’t be average there. Just fat.

  But in my next life, sure. Instead of just reading and teaching about them, I’ll be the gothic heroine with flowing locks (mine are mouse brown) and passionate lovers (Ha! Where?) and a secret inheritance. That last one could work out. I mean, it’s a secret from me too, so maybe it’s out there?

  Doubt it.

  So, I’m Jane, when they ask. Just Jane. Jane the professor. Jane the book collector. Jane who reads a lot.

  What was it my mother used to say? Women like us weren’t born special, Jane. We have to make our own way in the world.

  Non-special Jane. Jane with the friends.

  I do have those, thank goodness.

  There’s Kate, corporate tiger who works in the city most days. Honestly, I’m amazed she hasn’t become President or CEO or something like that by now. She will.

  Jessica, always campaigning to save whales or rainforests or organic mayonnaise or something. It’s hard to keep track. Let just say that, as much as I hate clichés, every cliché about feisty redheads is true.

  Christine, far too good for this world. Spends most of her time volunteering, and we’ve never figured out how, exactly, she pays her bills. I suspect a secret trust fund. Kate says wise investments. Jessica thinks she’s in a marriage of convenience to an Emperor or a Sheikh. No one knows.

  Dory, runs our local café, as sweet as the baked goods she sells. So shy, she jumps when a door slams. I wonder sometimes if something happened to her, to make her so nervous.

  And Penelope. Free spirit. Artistic genius. Holes up in her hand-built garage for days on end, weaving tapestries and surviving on microwaved burritos. Penelope could build a shed, milk a goat, and sew a wedding dress in the time it takes me to pour a cup of tea and find my glasses.

  We’ve known each other for years, and it’s fun to live in the same small town, down the road from each other. It’s a wonderful thing to have such close friends. We love each other, we support each other. When I start going on tangents about traditional depictions of masculinity in gothic literature, one of them knows to swoop in with a joke about action movies or farts. They keep me grounded.

  One night, after too much of Penelope’s homemade wine, we talked about surviving the zombie apocalypse. Who would do what. Kate even made a spreadsheet. It’s pretty clear:

  Kate: Battle Strategist.

  Jessica: Mercenary.

  Christine: Zombie Resuscitator. If there is a way to cure them and save them, she will find it.

  Dory: Caretaker. Someone has to feed and water the zombie killers when they return from fighting, right?

  Penelope: Bard and Armor Designer.

  Oh, and me? Kate joked once I’d be the anthropologist, to which I responded that I was actually trained as a textualist, and she just rolled her eyes.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “You’ll record everything, so people can study it later.”

  That’s how the world sees me: passive record keeper.

  Personally, I think I’ll just get bitten.

  I open the windows when I get home, letting the warm evening air waft through my kitchen. Classes are out for the summer, so I only swing past the office to pick up mail or a book I need. Otherwise, I spend most of my days at Dory’s café, working from home, or visiting friends. My plans for a research trip to England were delayed for a few months, so it’s been an unusual change of pace.

  I carry plates and silverware to my balcony, setting six places for tonight. The barbecue is heating up and I hope that Jessica has brought her skewers of marinated mushrooms. I never thought vegans could cook, but Jessica does things with vegetables that are downright magical. Kate will have steaks with her, no doubt. Long ago, the two of them agreed to separate any shared cooking surface. I even have a small, green tab on the left of the grill, to remind me which side is only for vegetables.

  The student newspaper sits in my bag, next to the stove where corn is boiling. I pick it up and skim the cover page.

  Movie Star Moves to Midnight.

  I can’t help but smile as I read the effusive article, probably written by a freshman, based on a random blog post that has no connection to reality.

  If ever you thought our town was BORING, well IT. IS. NOT. We are OFFICIALLY HAPPENING!!!!!

  I take a sip of iced tea and can’t help but wonder why the student editors allowed so many exclamation points.

  Rumor has it, David Jacobs, YES, THE DAVID JACOBS, is moving to Midnight!!!!!!! Star of the mega-hit superhero series, Saviors of Space, DAVID JACOBS, best known for his role as the time-traveling, cyborg-human super spy who saves the galaxy from the nefarious Lord Angelsin and his army of intergalactic mutants, has been looking at real estate in the area.

  Allegedly.

  I take another sip. I have actually seen one of these movies. Penelope dragged me to the theatre, after watching me roll my eyes one too many times at the plot summaries. It wasn’t terrible, as I recall. Of course, I hadn’t seen the eight previous films, nor did I plan to watch the ten following ones, so I just sort of sat in the cinema enjoying the intergalactic mutants and their very strong desire to kill all living things. Then, the super spy flew in on a magnetic surfboard of some kind, grew several bodily extensions, and fought off the entire army, whilst reminiscing about his lost love who was killed by an iceberg.

  Or something.

  Honestly, this is why I stick to old books. New plots, especially new movie plots, are so hard to understand.

  But even I have to admit, that David Jacobs…there’s a reason he’s on the silver screen. The face, the eyes, that body.

  It must be Photoshop. Or CGI.

  There’s no way a living human could actually look like that.

  Nonetheless, whatever technical wizardry went into making him look the way he looks in that film…hat’s off.

  The door opens and I’m still smiling as I wave to Kate, who is striding in and putting steaks on the counter. Being the most responsible person I know, she has a spare set of my keys. None of us has a set of hers. I suspect her house is actually booby-trapped.

  “I swear to God, I think that’s who I saw,” Kate says as she pulls a kebab off its skewer and studies it.

  Christine laughs and sips her wine. “I don’t believe you.”

  Kate pops the piece of meat into her mouth. “It’s true. I recognized him from an interview he did on the Late Show.”

  Dory leans forward, “What was he in again?”

  Penelope huffs, indignant that we are not all as up to date on film franchises as she is, “Saviors of Space.”

  Dory nods slowly, “And who did he play?”

  Penelope rolls her eyes and gasps, “Agent Carson. Remember? He was selected to test a new military training regime, but it actually was a robotic, cyborg serum that resulted in super-human strength and time-traveling capabilities.”

  Kate takes a sip of her wine. “That’s quite a combination.”

  “Huh,” Dory nods. “Was he the one in blue?”

  Penelope places her head in her hands.

  I place the salad bowl on the glass table top and pick up my iced tea.

  “What does he do with the time-travel capabilitie
s?” Christine looks between Dory, who seems just as confused as she, and Penelope, who is still face down on the table.

  “He saves the world!” Jessica laughs from her side of the table. “That’s the whole point of the movie.”

  “Galaxy,” Penelope lifts her head and looks towards the sky. “He saves the galaxy.”

  “Doesn’t he save space?” Dory asks, “Isn’t that the title?”

  “Space is in the galaxy,” Kate says.

  “Technically, the galaxy is also in space,” Jessica points out.

  “Either way, that’s exciting!” Christine smiles and Dory nods.

  “Yes,” Penelope nods, speaking slowly as if to a toddler. “It is. These movies have made billions of dollars.”

  “Well, we should see them. When will they be in the theatre?” Dory asks the table. Christine shrugs and turns to Penelope, who puts her head back in her hands. Jessica and Kate both laugh into their wine glasses.

  “What did he look like?” I am grinning as I take my seat, passing the plate of corn-on-the-cob to my left and the salad to my right.

  “Good,” Kate swirls her wine. “Older, and with a beard.” She pauses. “I thought he was blonde, but he’s definitely brunette in real life.”

  “Huh,” Jessica chews a crouton. “Maybe he wears a wig in the films?”

  “They’re called hairpieces!” Penelope blurts out and even Dory laughs at that.

  “I bump into actors in New York,” Kate scoops salad onto her plate. “They’re always smaller in real life.”