On Earth as It Is on Television


 Contents
 
 TITLE PAGE
 COPYRIGHT
 CONTENTS
 DEDICATION
 PREQUEL: The Crush
 EPISODE 1
 
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Husband
 Mr. Meow-mitts
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 
 EPISODE 2
 
 The Cat
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Husband
 
 EPISODE 3
 
 The Wife
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Wife
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Wife
 
 EPISODE 4
 
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Wife
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Wife
 The Brother
 
 COMING SOON!
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Contents
 Start Reading
 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Emily Jane
 All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion Avenue, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion Avenue, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023.
 First Edition, June 2023Designed by Amy C. King
 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023930394Harcover ISBN 978-1-368-09299-9eBook ISBN 978-1-368-09385-9
 www.HyperionAvenueBooks.com
 
 CONTENTS
 
 TITLE PAGE
 COPYRIGHT
 DEDICATION
 PREQUEL: The Crush
 
 
 EPISODE 1
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Husband
 Mr. Meow-mitts
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 EPISODE 2
 The Cat
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Brother
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Husband
 EPISODE 3
 The Wife
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Wife
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Wife
 EPISODE 4
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Wife
 The Brother
 The Stepchild
 The Husband
 The Stepchild
 The Wife
 The Brother
 
 
 COMING SOON!
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 
 
 For Steve
 
 PREQUEL
 The Crash
 A white tempest swept the mountain. The dark road iced. The lines disappeared beneath fresh snow. The road was empty, but for a single car.
 The car turned a sharp bend. Snow pummeled the windshield. The girl in the passenger seat pressed her hand to the glass.
 “We’re free, Ollie,” she said. She felt ecstatic. Maudlin. Reverent. So many things. She was just a girl and not even that bright, folks said. Got by on her looks, folks said, except when she caught a fist, and her eye swelled shut tight.
 Not any more though. Not ever again.
 “Ain’t no one’ll come looking for us all the way out here,” Oliver said. “That’s for sure.”
 “California.”
 “California,” he echoed.
 She laughed, and her laugh made Oliver Smith think of the glint of sun on the waves that rolled in toward the white sand shores of Malibu, the Eden he envisioned when she said California. California. California. They listened to the songs on the radio as they fled, California songs, the siren of West Coast promise.
 “What’s that shit called?” he had asked, somewhere back in Missouri.
 “What?”
 “The thing they say. About like, going west and shit. About America. Like, ‘Go west, young lad.’ Like, you know, the mouse. Fievel and shit.” He was high on skunk weed, which littered his parlance with extraneous likes and shits. He stayed high on skunk weed the whole drive west, until he’d run out, so that didn’t explain what happened to them next on that snow-covered road.
 “Manifest destiny,” she said.
 “Yes. Fucking yes. Manifest destiny.”
 Except like a lot of westward travelers, they’d reached a decent spot and settled. They settled just across the Nevada border because they ran out of cash, and he saw a sign on the window of a diner—line cook wanted—and the manager offered to lease them a little A-frame cabin, no deposit, no rent due until he got his first paycheck. Hey, buddy, I been there, I know. And it made him think that maybe the similarities amongst us all outshined the dissonance. We were all here or there, under the great big sky, hankering for California, or whatever vision we held in its stead.
 “Damn, this snow is crazy.”
 The snow blew sideways, each flake illuminated by headlights, each flake different, a hundred thousand million billion galaxies of swirling snow. Oliver hugged the curve. He drove into the barrage. Snow covered the windshield as fast as his wipers could brush it off. He had never driven through snow like this. He had barely driven before the long drive west. He was eighteen.
 She was seventeen. She wanted to go to cosmetology school. The name tripped him up. It made him think of the cosmos. His stoner brain got confused by linguistic commonalities. Cosmos/cosmetology. Astrology/astronomy. He envisioned tiny planets encapsulated inside shampoo suds; the ruthless clippering of solar systems; split, brittle universes trimmed away. She wanted to cut, color, make beautiful. There’s so much beauty in the world, Oliver. She believed in beauty even when she couldn’t see it. Behind the black eyes, the split lip, the swollen rainbow of purples and blues fading into sallow yellow, there was beauty.
 He was eighteen and maybe, technically, theoretically might get charged with abducting a minor. He had gone to the library and opened up some dusty volume of criminal code that no one had read for a thousand years. He skimmed words that eluded his comprehension, until he saw the word kidnapping. Better not to know, he decided. Better to wipe the volume clean of fingerprints and get the F out of libraryville.
 She still had a faint bruise on her cheek, from the last time Bill hit her.
 What else? Ollie had asked her. What else did he do to you? Tell me.
 Oh, Bill was just a little bit fisty. Occasionally punchy. Intermittently inspired to yank a lamp from the socket, swing