Set This House in Order deleted scenes
When Andrew met Julie (extended version)
Below are two versions of the scene in chapter two where Andrew and Julie first get acquainted. On the left is the scene as I originally submitted it to HarperCollins; on the right, the version that appears in the published book. Cuts are marked in red, changes and additions in blue. Underscored passages are linked to notes explaining why that particular edit was made.
Submission draft: 2019 words
† † †
We were at the Bridge Street bar by then, sitting in a booth near the jukebox. Julie
had ordered us a Saturday Night Special, which I found out too late was a gallon-
I told her about the house. I told her pretty much what I’ve told you, about the dark room in Andy Gage’s head, and about my father’s struggle to create a geography there. I wasn’t as coherent as I would have liked; it was my first time telling a story to someone, and I was nervous, unsure which details to include or what order to put them in. It also didn’t help that I had a critic. My father had left the pulpit to give me some privacy, but Adam was still up there, still kibitzing. He thought I was being far too candid with this stranger.
“But why shouldn’t I be? You said yourself she’s not dangerous.”
“I said she’s not an ax murderer. That doesn’t mean it’s OK to tell her everything about us.”
“I’m not—”
“So Horace Rollins is your father?” Julie asked, not realizing she was interrupting.
The question startled me. “Not my father,” I told her. “Andy Gage’s father. Andy Gage’s stepfather. He’s no relation to me at all. No relation to Andy Gage either, really.”
“Your real father died?”
“Andy Gage’s father,” I corrected her. “Silas Gage. He drowned.”
“Andy Gage’s father... So when you talk about your father, you don’t mean Silas Gage, and you don’t mean Horace Rollins, you mean another personality. Another ‘soul.’”
“Aaron,” I said, nodding. “My father.”
“The one who called you out of the lake...who created you.”
“Right.”
“And when exactly was that?” Julie wanted to know. “That you were called out?”
I’d been hoping she wouldn’t ask that. Despite Adam’s accusation, there were a number of things I’d consciously avoided telling Julie. In most cases these omissions were instinctive, and I couldn’t have explained the reasoning behind them at the time. But I knew perfectly well why I’d been vague about my birthdate: I was embarrassed. Julie had so much life experience, and I had so little, I was afraid she wouldn’t want to be friends once she found out how immature I really was. But there was no helping it now.
“A month ago,” I admitted. “I came out of the lake a month ago.”
I nodded. “I know I probably seem really naive, but I’m trying really hard, and my father says I’m a fast learner, so—”
“You’re a month old?”
“No,” I said, confused. “I’m 26 years old. I was born a month ago.”
Julie shook her head as if there was something inside of it she was trying to knock loose. “Wait,” she said. “Start over...You were born a month ago, and you’re 26?”
“Yes.”
“How can both of those things be true?”
“They just are,” I told her. “What’s the problem?”
Adam knew what the problem was, but he let Julie and I talk circles around each other for another couple minutes before offering to explain.
“Oh,” I said, after he finally spoke up. “Oh, I see... I think I see...”
“See what?” said Julie.
“Adam says it’s different for you, because you’re singular. You’ve only got one soul, and it was created at the same time as your body, and it’s always in your body, so naturally they’d be the same age.”
“So it’s your physical body that’s 26?”
“No, the body is 29.”
“Then what part of you is 26?”
“My soul.”
Julie shook her head again. I went back to Adam for more help.
“All right... Adam says, because your body and your soul have always been joined together, they’re basically reflections of each other. They’re like twins.”
“You mean they look the same? Souls have an appearance?”
“Of course.”
Julie laughed. “So my soul has crooked teeth?”
“I guess,” I said, glancing at her mouth. “If your body does. And it’s got the same color eyes, and the same build, and the same voice, or anyway pretty close... But for us, it’s not like that. It can’t be. None of us is in the body all the time, so there’s not that same connection. Besides, if we were all the same as the body, we’d all be the same as each other, too, and we’re not. Adam says–”
“Who’s Adam?”
“My cousin.”
“This is another soul? Like your father?”
“Yes.”
“And how old is Adam?”
“Adam is 15.”
“But that doesn’t mean he was born fifteen years ago...”
“No.” I was starting to see how this might be hard to understand. “It means...it means if, instead of sharing this one body with the rest of us, Adam had a body all his own, a body that reflected his soul, the way your body reflects your soul—”
“It would be a teenager’s body.”
“Right! You’ve got it!”
“Kind of,” said Julie. “Has Adam always been 15, or has he gotten older?”
“He’s gotten a little older,” I said.
“How much is a little?”
“Well, it’s hard to say exactly. It depends on how much time he’s spent outside. Adam used to steal time in the body, the same as the others; if you added up all that stolen time, plus the time he’s been allowed out since my father took over and started building the house, that would tell you how much older he’s gotten. My father thinks it’s about a year, but Adam won’t say.”
“He doesn’t want your father to know how much time he really stole,” Julie guessed.
“He doesn’t want to have to explain what he did with it,” I told her.
“Souls only age when they’re in control of the body?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the way it works.”
“What does Adam say about it?”
“Adam says... Adam says it’s the same reason you don’t get better at poker unless you play for real money. I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”
“That’s OK,” said Julie. “I think I do.”
She picked up the pitcher to pour herself some more beer, and noticed that my glass was still full. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You don’t like stout?”
“I don’t drink, actually,” I confessed, feeling caught out. “House rule.”
“You sure?” She held up the pitcher, which still had more than half the gallon in it. “If I finish this myself, you may have to carry me out of here.”
“I’m sorry. I should have said something.”
“No, it’s all right. I should have asked.” Julie gestured in the direction of the bar. “Do you want something else?”
“No, really, I’m fine. And don’t worry, I’ll still pay for my half of the beer.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“No, but I want to.”
“Andrew,” said Julie, looking me in the eye, “it’s really OK. You haven’t insulted me, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.” She shook her head. “Born a month ago...you’ve never been out to a bar before, have you?”
“I’ve never been out anywhere before,” I said. “I mean, not like this, with someone I just met.”
“Well don’t sweat the etiquette so much then,” Julie said, for a moment sounding a lot like my father. “You’ll get it down eventually.”
“I hope so.”
“You will,” she promised. “And in the meantime, don’t feel like you have to apologize for every little mistake. That only irritates people.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m s—...I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.” She laughed, and refilled her glass. “So tell me something about your soul,” she said.
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, what do you really look like? If I could see your soul, and compare it to what I see now, what would be different?”
“Oh,” I said. “Not that much, actually. I look an awful lot like my father, and my father looks more like Andy Gage than any other soul except...well, it’s a very close resemblance.”
“But there are differences?”
“A few. My hair’s darker, and my face is thinner—it’s put together a little differently, too, enough so you’d notice.”
“What else?”
“Well, scars.” I pointed to a jagged line above Andy Gage’s right eye. “Jake—he’s another one of my cousins—Jake did this one time when he had the body. He tripped and fell against the edge of a glass table. Jake’s soul has the same scar, but mine doesn’t, because—”
“Because it didn’t happen to you.”
“Right.”
“What about this one?” Julie touched a spot on the body’s left palm, just above the ball of the thumb. Her fingers were cool and damp from the beer glass, and felt good in a way I hadn’t experienced before, but when I realized what she was talking about I pulled the hand away from her.
“That’s just something my father did once,” I said. “He stuck himself on a bill spike.” I think Julie could tell there was more to the story than that, but she didn’t press me on it.
“Any other differences?” she asked.
“Just some little things. Nothing major.”
In the pulpit, Adam let out a snort. “Sure, nothing major. Nothing except—”
“Adam!” I warned.
“What?” said Julie.
“It’s nothing,” I told her. “Adam just said something very rude, is all.”
She leaned forward, curious. “What did he say?”
“It’s nothing, really. Just Adam being a pest.”
“Has he been listening to us this whole time?”
I nodded. “Listening and commenting. It’s what he does.”
“Can I talk to him?”
It was an innocent request, and, as I eventually learned, a very common one. Like a lot of Julie’s other questions, though, it caught me by surprise, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Instead of recognizing that she was simply curious about Adam, my first thought was that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore, either because I’d bored her, or because, despite what she’d said earlier, I really had insulted her somehow.
“What did I do wrong?” I asked Adam, feeling a flutter of panic.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. She’s not mad at you—she just wants to see a trick.”
“A trick?”
“A magic trick.”
“You want to see a magic trick?” I asked Julie, confused again.
“What?” said Julie.
“Here,” Adam offered, “I’ll show you what I mean. Just let me have the body for a second...”
I should have refused. It’s not a house rule, but it ought to be: you don’t give
Adam the body unless you know exactly what he’s planning to do with it. Especially
in mixed company. But he sounded so self-
Now it was Julie’s turn to be startled. People who have never seen a switch before often expect some dramatic physical transformation, like a werewolf sprouting hair and fangs under a full moon. This is what Adam had meant by a magic trick. In reality it’s much more subtle than that—the body doesn’t change, just the body language, which can actually be a lot more unsettling to someone who’s paying enough attention to notice it.
Probably the most obvious difference between my body language and Adam’s is the way we look at people. I’m naturally a little shy, and though I try to keep eye contact for courtesy’s sake, I have what Aunt Sam calls “a politely unintrusive gaze.” Adam, of course, is the opposite of unintrusive. The first thing he did when he took the body from me was flash Julie his crudest adolescent leer. I could tell by the way she reacted: she stopped smiling and shifted back defensively in her seat. It was my first hint that I’d just made a big mistake...
Final version: 1540 words
† † †
We were at the Bridge Street bar by then, sitting in a booth near the jukebox. Julie
had ordered us a Saturday Night Special, which I found out too late was a gallon-
I told her about the house: about the dark room in Andy Gage’s head, and my father’s struggle to create a geography there. I wasn’t as clear as I would have liked; it was my first time telling a story to someone, and I was nervous, unsure which details to include or what order to put them in. It also didn’t help that I had a critic. My father had left the pulpit to give me some privacy, but Adam was still up there. He thought I was being far too candid with this stranger
“But why shouldn’t I be? You said yourself she’s not dangerous.”
“I said she’s not an ax murderer. That doesn’t mean it’s OK to tell her everything about us.”
“I’m not—”
“So Horace Rollins is your father?” Julie asked, not realizing she was interrupting.
The question startled me. “Not my father,” I told her. “Andy Gage’s father. Andy Gage’s stepfather. He’s no relation to me at all. No relation to Andy Gage either, really.”
“Your real father died?”
“Andy Gage’s father,” I corrected her. “Silas Gage. He drowned.”
“Andy Gage’s father... So when you talk about your father, you don’t mean Silas Gage, and you don’t mean Horace Rollins, you mean another personality. Another ‘soul.’”
“Aaron,” I said, nodding. “My father.”
“The one who called you out of the lake...who created you.”
“Right.”
“And when exactly was that?” Julie wanted to know. “That you were called out?”
I’d been hoping she wouldn’t ask that. Contrary to Adam’s accusation, there were a number of things I’d consciously avoided telling Julie. In most cases these omissions were instinctive, and I couldn’t have explained the reasoning behind them at the time. But I knew perfectly well why I’d been vague about my birthdate: I was embarrassed. Julie had so much life experience, and I had so little, I was afraid she wouldn’t want to be friends once she found out how immature I really was. But there was no helping it now.
“A month ago,” I admitted. “I came out of the lake a month ago. I know I probably seem really naive—”
“Wait,” Julie said. “You’re a month old?”
“No,” I said, confused. “I’m twenty-
Julie shook her head. “How can both of those things be true?”
“They just are,” I told her. “What’s the problem?”
“So it’s your physical body that’s twenty-
“No, the body is twenty-
“Then what part of you is twenty-
“My soul.”
Julie shook her head again. I went to Adam for help.
“All right... Adam says, because your body and your soul have always been joined together, they’re basically reflections of each other. They’re like twins.”
“You mean they look the same? Souls have an appearance?”
“Of course.”
Julie laughed. “So my soul has crooked teeth?”
“I guess,” I said, glancing at her mouth. “If your body does. And it’s got the same color eyes, and the same build, and the same voice—and the same age. But for us, it’s not like that. None of us is in the body all the time, so there’s not that same connection. Adam says—”
“Who’s Adam?”
“My cousin.”
“This is another soul? Like your father?”
“Yes.”
“And how old is Adam?”
“Adam is fifteen.”
“Has he always been fifteen, or has he gotten older?”
“He’s gotten a little older,” I said.
“How much is a little?”
“Well, it’s hard to say exactly. It depends on how much time he’s spent outside. Adam used to steal time in the body, the same as the others; if you added up all that stolen time, plus the time he’s been allowed out since my father took over and started building the house, that would tell you how much older he’s gotten. My father thinks it’s about a year, but Adam won’t say.”
“He doesn’t want your father to know how much time he really stole,” Julie guessed.
“He doesn’t want to have to explain what he did with it,” I told her.
“Souls only age when they’re in control of the body?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the way it works.”
“What does Adam say about it?”
“Adam says... Adam says it’s the same reason you don’t get better at poker unless you play for real money. I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”
“That’s OK,” said Julie. “I think I do.”
She picked up the pitcher to pour herself some more beer, and noticed that my glass was still full. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You don’t like stout?”
“I don’t drink, actually,” I confessed, feeling caught out. “House rule.”
“You sure?” She held up the pitcher, which still had more than half the gallon in it. “If I finish this myself, you may have to carry me out of here.”
“I’m sorry. I should have said something.”
“No, it’s all right. I should have asked.” Julie gestured in the direction of the bar. “Do you want something else?”
“No, really, I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself...” She refilled her own glass, then said: “So tell me something about your soul.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, what do you really look like? If I could see your soul, and compare it to what I see now, what would be different?”
“Oh,” I said. “Not that much, actually. I look a lot like my father, and my father looks more like Andy Gage than any other soul except...well, it’s a very close resemblance.”
“But there are differences?”
“A few. My hair’s darker, and my face is thinner—it’s put together a little differently, too.”
“What else?”
“Well, scars.” I pointed to a jagged line above Andy Gage’s right eye. “Jake—he’s another one of my cousins—Jake did this one time when he had the body. He tripped and fell against the edge of a glass table. Jake’s soul has the same scar, but mine doesn’t, because—”
“Because it didn’t happen to you.”
“Right.”
“What about this one?” Julie touched a spot on the body’s left palm, just above the ball of the thumb. Her fingers were cool and damp from the beer glass, and felt good in a way I hadn’t experienced before. But when I realized what she was talking about, I pulled the hand away from her.
“That’s just something my father did once,” I said. “He stuck himself on a bill spike.” I think Julie could tell there was more to the story than that, but she didn’t press me on it.
“Any other differences?” she asked.
“Just some little things. Nothing major.”
In the pulpit, Adam let out a snort. “Sure, nothing major. Nothing except—”
“Adam!” I warned.
“What?” said Julie.
“It’s nothing,” I told her. “Adam just said something very rude, is all.”
She leaned forward, curious. “What did he say?”
“It’s nothing, really. Just Adam being a pest.”
“Has he been listening to us this whole time?”
I nodded. “Listening and commenting. It’s what he does.”
“Can I talk to him?”
It was an innocent request, and, as I eventually learned, a common one. Like a lot of Julie’s other questions, though, it caught me by surprise; instead of recognizing that she was simply curious about Adam, my first thought was that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore
“What did I do wrong?” I asked Adam.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. She’s not mad—she just wants to see a trick.”
“A trick?”
“A magic trick.”
“You want to see a magic trick?” I asked Julie, confused again.
“What?” said Julie.
“Here,” Adam offered, “I’ll show you what I mean. Just let me have the body for a second...”
I should have refused; even a month out of the lake, I knew better than to trust
Adam’s generosity. But he sounded so self-
Now it was Julie’s turn to be startled. People who have never seen a switch before often expect some dramatic physical transformation, like a werewolf sprouting hair and fangs under a full moon. In reality it’s much more subtle—the body doesn’t change, just the body language, which can actually be a lot more unsettling. I’m naturally a little shy, and though I try to keep eye contact for courtesy’s sake, I have what Aunt Sam calls “a politely unintrusive gaze.” Adam, of course, is the opposite of unintrusive. The first thing he did when he took the body from me was flash Julie his crudest adolescent leer. I could tell by the way she reacted: she stopped smiling and shifted back defensively in her seat. It was my first hint that I’d just made a big mistake...
Notes on changes:
I decided to be tactful — This is a reference to an earlier exchange, also cut, in which Andrew and his father discussed the difference between tact and lying. Andrew’s “tactfulness” was a running joke in the first draft—a joke that got overused.
“A month?” Julie said... — Obviously, part of the function of this scene is to help explain the “rules” of Andrew’s multiplicity. In answering Julie’s questions, Andrew is also answering the reader’s questions. But the reader has been living with Andrew for a chapter and a half at this point, and the fact that he has two different ages has already been covered—it’s literally the first thing he talks about in the prologue. I revisited the topic here because (a) it was something that would realistically come up in the conversation, (b) it made for a good bit of comic confusion, (c) it underscored the soul/body split that would become a major issue in Andrew’s relationship with Julie, and (d) I had developed an irrational fear that readers would somehow not have gotten it the first time, even though it’s a fairly simple concept. Although my editor agreed with the logic of reasons a through c, she still felt I was belaboring the subject more than was necessary, and eventually I realized she was right.
“And don’t worry...” — As my editor pointed out, Andrew’s lack of self-
It’s not a house rule, but it ought to be... — The “political situation” inside Andrew’s head changes over the course of the story, so for reasons of continuity I wanted to avoid talking about what the rules are, as opposed to what they were at a given moment. But recasting this sentence in past tense made it clunky, so I decided to replace it entirely.
This is what Adam had meant by a magic trick. — An example of stating the obvious. It’s amazing how much verbiage you can get rid of when you assume that your readers are (a) awake and (b) minimally intelligent.