You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.

14
Even though the last thing I wanted to do was perform, I still had tour dates left
in my contract, so I went back out to nish them. All I wanted was to get o the
road: To have days and nights all to myself. To walk out onto the Santa Monica
Pier and breathe in the salt air, listen to the rattle of the roller coaster, stare out at
the ocean. Instead, every day was a grind. Load in. Load out. Sound check. Photo
shoot. Asking, “What town are we even in?”
I’d loved the Dream Within a Dream Tour when it started, but it had become
a slog. I was tired in mind and body. I wanted to shut it all down. I had begun
fantasizing about opening a little shop in Venice Beach with Felicia and quitting
show business completely. With the gift of hindsight, I can see that I hadn’t
given myself enough time to heal from the breakup with Justin.
In late July 2002, at the very end of the tour, we headed south to do a show in
Mexico City. But getting there was almost a disaster.
We were traveling in vans, and once we’d crossed the border, we came to a
sudden halt. We’d been stopped by a bunch of guys holding the biggest guns I’d
ever seen. I was terried; it felt like we were being ambushed. It just didn’t make
sense to me, but all I knew was we were surrounded by these angry-looking men.
Everyone in my van was so tense; I had security with me, but who knew what
was going to happen. After what felt like forever, there seemed to be some kind
of peace talks happening—it was like in a movie. It’s still a mystery to me what
actually happened, but in the end, we were allowed to carry on, and we got to
play to fty thousand people (though the second show, on the following day,
had to be canceled halfway through because of a massive thunderstorm).
That thunderstorm-canceled show was the last date of the Dream Within a
Dream Tour, but when I told people after nishing the tour that I wanted to
rest, everyone seemed nervous. When you’re successful at something, there’s a
lot of pressure to keep right on doing it, even if you’re not enjoying it anymore.
And, as I would quickly nd out, you really can’t go home again.
I did an interview with People magazine back in Louisiana, for reasons that
seemed ridiculous to me: I wasn’t promoting anything, but my team thought I
should show that I was doing well and “just taking a little break.”
The photographer shot me outside, and then inside with the dogs and my
mom on the couch. They had me empty out my purse to reveal that I wasn’t
carrying drugs or cigarettes: all they found was Juicy Fruit gum, vanilla perfume,
mints, and a little bottle of St. John’s wort. “My daughter is doing beautifully,”
my mom told the reporter condently. “She’s never, ever been close to a
breakdown.”
Part of what made that period of time so dicult is that Justin’s family had
been the only real, loving family I had. For holidays, the only family I would go
to was his. I knew his grandmother and his grandfather, and I loved them so
much. I thought of them as home. My mom would come out and visit us every
once in a while, but she’s not who I went home to, ever.
My mom was trying to recover from her divorce from my dad, which she’d
nally gone through with; depressed and self-medicating, she could barely get up
o the couch. My dad was nowhere to be found. And my little sister—well,
when I tell you she was a total bitch, I’m not exaggerating.
I had always been the worker bee. While I was doing my thing on the road
with Felicia, I hadn’t been paying attention to what was happening in
Kentwood. But when I came home, I saw how things had changed. My mom
would serve Jamie Lynn while she watched TV, bringing her little chocolate
milkshakes. It was clear that girl ruled the roost.
Meanwhile, it was like I was a ghost child. I can remember walking into the
room and feeling like no one even saw me. Jamie Lynn only saw the TV. My
mother, who at one time had been the person I was closest to in the world, was
on another planet.

You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.

CHAPTER 14
“We really should get going,” Kitty said, putting her iced tea back on
the coffee table.
“Just a minute,” Patricia said. “What’s happening to the children?”
Kitty twisted around on the sofa and cracked the curtains, letting a
slash of harsh sunlight into the living room.
“That boy is still hanging around your car,” she informed Patricia,
letting go of the curtains.
“It’s nothing you ought to trouble yourself about,” Mrs. Greene
said. “I would just feel a whole lot safer with my babies away.”
For two months, ever since she’d been bitten, Patricia had felt
useless and scared. The Old Village she’d lived in for six years had
always been someplace safe, where children left their bicycles in their
front yards, and only a few people ever locked their front doors, and
no one ever locked their back doors. It didn’t feel safe now. She
needed an explanation, something she could solve that would make
everything go back to the way it was.
The check had been poorly judged and not nearly enough. She’d
come out here to help and gotten into trouble with those boys and
Mrs. Greene had had to help her out instead. But if there was some
trouble with her children, she could maybe do something about that.
Here was something tangible. Patricia felt victory at hand.
“Mrs. Greene,” Patricia said. “Tell me what’s wrong with Jesse and
Aaron. I want to help.”
“Nothing’s wrong with them,” Mrs. Greene said, pulling herself to
the edge of her recliner, as close as she could get to Patricia so she
could talk low. “But I don’t want to have happen to them what
happened to the Reed boy, or the others.”
“What happened to them?” Patricia asked.
“Since May,” Mrs. Greene said, “we’ve had two little boys turn up
dead and Francine has gone missing.”
The room stayed silent as the Christmas tree lights cycled through
their colors.
“I haven’t read anything about it in the newspaper,” Kitty said.
“I’m a liar?” Mrs. Greene asked, and Patricia saw her eyes get hard.
“No one says you’re lying,” Patricia reassured her.
“She just did,” Mrs. Greene said. “Came right out and said it.”
“I read the paper every day,” Kitty shrugged. “I just haven’t heard
anything about children going missing or getting killed.”
“Then I guess I made up a story,” Mrs. Greene said. “I guess those
little girls you heard singing out there made up their rhymes, too.
They call him the Boo Daddy because that’s what they say’s in the
woods. That’s why those boys were so nervous about strangers. We
all know someone’s out here sniffing after the children.”
“What about Francine?” Patricia asked.
“She’s gone,” Mrs. Greene said. “No one’s seen her car since May
fifteen or so. The police say she’s run off with a man, but I know she
wouldn’t leave without her cat.”
“She left her cat?” Patricia asked.
“Had to get someone from the church to sneak open her window
and get it out before it starved,” Mrs. Greene said.
Next to her, Patricia felt Kitty turn and look through the curtains
again, and she wanted to tell her to stop squirming but she didn’t
want to break Mrs. Greene’s concentration.
“And what about the children?” Patricia asked.
“The little Reed boy,” Mrs. Greene said. “He killed himself. Eight
years old.”
Kitty stopped wiggling.
“That’s not possible,” she said. “Eight-year-old children don’t
commit suicide.”
“This one did,” Mrs. Greene said. “Got hit by a tow truck while he
was waiting for the school bus. The police say he was fooling around
and stumbled in the road, but the other children in line with him say
different. They say Orville Reed stepped right out in front of that
truck deliberate. It knocked him clean out of his shoes, threw him
fifty feet down the street. When they had his funeral he looked like
he was just sleeping there in his coffin. Only thing different was a
little tiny bruise on the side of his face.”
“But if the police think it was an accident…,” Patricia began.
“The police think all kind of things,” Mrs. Greene said. “Doesn’t
necessarily make them true.”
“I haven’t seen anything in the paper,” Kitty protested.
“The paper doesn’t talk about what happens in Six Mile,” Mrs.
Greene said. “We’re not quite Mt. Pleasant, not quite Awendaw, not
quite anyplace. Certainly not the Old Village. Besides, one little boy
has an accident, an old lady runs away with some man, the police
figure it’s just colored people being colored. It’d be like reporting on
a fish for being wet. The only one that looks unnatural is what
happened to that other boy, Orville Reed’s cousin, Sean.”
Patricia felt caught up in a particularly lurid and unstoppable
bedtime story and now it was her turn to prompt the teller.
“What happened to Sean?” she asked.
“Before he died, Orville’s mother and auntie say he got real
moody,” Mrs. Greene said. “They say he was irritable and sleepy all
the time. His mother says he took long walks out in the woods every
day when the sun started to go down, and came back giggling, and
then the next day he’d be sick and unhappy again. He wouldn’t take
food, would hardly drink water, he’d just stare at the television,
whether it was cartoons or commercials, and it was like he was
asleep while he was awake. He limped when he walked and cried
when she asked him what the matter was. And she couldn’t keep him
out of those woods.”
“What was he doing out there?” Kitty asked, leaning forward.
“His cousin tried to find out,” Mrs. Greene said. “Tanya Reed
didn’t care for that boy, Sean. She put a padlock on her refrigerator
because he kept stealing her groceries. He used to come over when
she wasn’t home from work and smoke cigarettes in her house and
watch cartoons with Orville. She tolerated it because she thought
Orville needed a male role model, even a bad one. She said Sean got
worried about Orville going in the woods all the time. Sean told her
he thought someone in the woods was doing something to Orville.
Tanya wouldn’t listen. Just threw him right out on his behind.
“One of the men who hangs around the basketball court has a few
pistols and rents them to people. He says Sean couldn’t afford to rent
a gun, so he rented him a hammer for three dollars, and he says Sean
told him he was going to follow his little cousin into the woods and
scare off whoever was bothering him. But the next time they saw
Sean he was dead. The man says he still had his hammer, too, for all
the good it did. Says Sean was found by a big live oak back in the
deep woods where someone had picked him up and mashed his face
against the bark and scraped it right down to the skull. They couldn’t
have an open casket at Sean’s funeral.”
Patricia realized she wasn’t breathing. She carefully let out the air
in her lungs.
“That had to be in the papers,” she said.
“It was,” Mrs. Greene said. “The police called it ‘drug-related’
because Sean had been in that kind of trouble before. But no one out
here thinks it was and that’s why everyone’s real skittish about
strangers. Before he stepped in front of that truck, Orville Reed told
his mother he was talking to a white man in the woods, but she
thought maybe he was talking about one of his cartoons. No one
thinks that after what happened to Sean. Sometimes other children
say they see a white man standing at the edge of the woods, waving
to them. Some people wake up and say they see a pale man staring in
through their window screens, but that can’t be true because the last
one to say that was Becky Washington and she lives up on the second
floor. How’d a man get up there?”
Patricia thought about the hand vanishing over the edge of the sun
porch overhang, the footsteps on the roof over Blue’s room, and she
felt her stomach contract.
“What do you think it is?” she asked.
Mrs. Greene settled back in her chair.
“I say it’s a man. One who drives a van and used to live in Texas. I
even got his license plate number.”
Kitty and Patricia looked at each other and then at her.
“You got his license plate number?” Kitty asked.
“I keep a pad by the front window,” Mrs. Greene said. “If I see a
car driving around I don’t know, I write down the license plate
number in case something happens and the police need it later for
evidence. Well, last week, I heard an engine buzzing late one night. I
got up and saw it turning, leaving Six Mile, heading back for the state
road, but it was a white van and before it turned off I got most of its
license plate number.”
She put her hands on the arms of her chair, pulled herself up, and
limped to a little table by the front door. She picked up a spiral
notebook and opened it, scanning the pages, then she limped back to
Patricia, turned the notebook around, and presented it to her.
Texas, it read. – – X 13S.
“That’s all I had time to write,” Mrs. Greene said. “It was turning
when I caught it. But I know it was a Texas plate.”
“Did you tell the police?” Patricia asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Greene said. “And they said thank you very
much and we’ll call if we have any further questions but I guess they
didn’t because I never got a call. So you can understand why people
out here don’t have much patience with strangers. Especially white
ones. Especially now with Destiny Taylor.”
“Who’s Destiny Taylor?” Kitty asked before Patricia could.
“Her mother goes to my church,” Mrs. Greene said. “She came to
me one day after services and wanted me to see her little girl.”
“Why?” Patricia asked.

You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.

14
For the next week, I try so hard not to think about Emily or Campbell or any of that, try not to want
more than I have. What I have is, after all, like winning the fucking lottery, and I’ve learned the hard
way that wanting more is what fucks you in the end.
But it sits there under my skin, itching—the way they’d looked at me, the questions, the insults
disguised as jokes.
And it’s not just the Thornfield ladies. It’s John, it’s whoever was calling him and asking
questions. I feel like he got what he wanted that day in the Home Depot parking lot—to lord
something over me, to watch my fear and anxiety creep in, plus two hundred bucks out of the deal.
Surely that was enough for him. And as weird as it sounds, I trust John.
Okay, trust is not the right word.
I know him, I guess. People like him. All of us who stayed permanent foster kids, who met at
group homes or shelters. John might follow me and maybe even call one of these days, making
insinuations, but he’s not going to turn me over to the cops.
Or at least, I don’t think he will.
Being Mrs. Rochester feels like another brick in the wall between me and threats like that, like
maybe John wouldn’t even attempt it if he thought it would involve Eddie.
So that’s the plan. The new plan.
It’s not enough to live with Eddie. Being the girlfriend is not the way in. I have to be the wife.
Which means I have to be the fiancée first.
So, for the next few days, I study Eddie. I don’t know what the signs are that a man is thinking of
proposing to you—I’ve actually never known anyone who got engaged. People I’ve met are either
firmly single or already married, and not for the first time in my life, I wish I had an actual friend.
Someone to talk to, just one person who knew the whole truth about everything.
But I’ve only got me.
About a week after the committee meeting, Eddie comes home from work a little early and asks if I
want to take Adele to the Cahaba River Walk.
It’s a park not too far from us, and one of the places he brought me when we first started dating. I
like the quiet of it, the meandering trail along the water, the shade of the trees, and as soon as he
suggests it, my spirits lift.
It’s a place he knows I like. It’s special to us because we’ve been there before.
And he never comes home early.
The idea that maybe I won’t have to do anything at all to get him to propose is dizzying, and when
we get out of the car, I’m practically bouncing on the balls of my feet.
Laughing, Eddie takes my hand as Adele runs ahead of us, barking at squirrels. “You seem happy,”
he says, and I lean over to kiss his cheek.
“I am,” I reply.
And I really am. Right until Eddie settles us both on a bench by the river and pulls out his phone.
“Sorry,” he says as Adele flops at our feet, panting. “I just have a few emails to send, and I need
to get them out before the end of the day.”
So much for our nice afternoon in the park. I sit there, sweating and fuming, while he types and a
couple of guys kayak on the river.
There are also people walking, and as two women move past us in their workout shorts and fitted
tops, I see their eyes slide to Eddie, see one of them, a brunette with the same shiny hair and tiny
waist as Bea, look over to me like she’s thinking, Huh. Wonder what that’s about.
My face is warm from more than the heat now, and I sit there, wondering, too. What the fuck is
this about?
Eddie is still on his phone, and I decide to go for subtle.
“I need a manicure,” I say on a sigh, wiggling my fingers in front of my face. “When I was at
Emily’s the other day, all I could see were everybody’s perfect nails. Well, perfect nails and a metric
fuckton of jewelry. I’d be nervous wearing more than one ring.”
Okay, so that last little bit was maybe not as subtle as I could have been, but desperate times and
all.
Eddie snorts at that, but doesn’t look up. “Bea always thought it was tacky how much jewelry they
all wore. Especially when they’re mostly just staying home all day.”
“Okay, well, I don’t have to be dripping in diamonds, but I should probably take better care of my
nails.”
Still looking at his phone, Eddie catches my hand, absently bringing my fingers to his lips.
I want him to say something about not minding my nails like that or not noticing, but instead he
says, “The place in the village is supposed to be good.”
Nodding, I take my hand back, twisting my fingers in the hem of my shirt. “Is that where Bea
went?” I ask, and finally, I have his attention.
He looks up from the screen, blinking, before saying, “As far as I know, yeah. All the girls in the
neighborhood go there.”
“Women,” I say, and when he screws up his face, I sit up a little taller. “Just … they’re all in their
thirties at least. They’re not girls.”
His face clears, and he gives me a smile I haven’t seen before.
It’s not the sexy grin, or that delighted quirk of lips I get when I’ve said something that charms
him. It’s … indulgent.
Slightly paternalistic.
It irritates me.
“Right, sorry,” he says, turning back to his phone. “Women.”
“Look, I get that you’re older than me, and have, like, seen more of the world or whatever, but you
don’t have to patronize me.” The words are out before I can stop them, before I can remember to be
the Jane he wants, not the Jane I actually am.
Then again, I’m remembering, he sometimes likes the Jane I actually am.
He lowers his phone and gives his full attention to me. “I’m being a dick, aren’t I?”
“Little bit, yeah.”
There’s his real smile now, and he takes my hand again, squeezing it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m
just swamped. But I wanted to spend time with you today, and to get you out of the house for a little
bit. You’ve seemed out of sorts the past week or so.”
Ever since John.
I sit there, my mind working, wondering what I can say, how much I can share. There’s an opening
here, an opportunity, one of those chances to mix a little lie in with some actual truth, and it occurs to
me that it might get me what I want a lot faster than dropping hints about fingers and rings.
“I guess I’m just wondering where all this is going,” I say, and he frowns, that crease deepening
between his eyebrows. On the river, one of the kayakers calls to the other, and another pair of women
jog by, glancing down at me and Eddie.
“It’s not that I don’t love living with you,” I go on. “I do. I really do. But when you’ve been a
charity case for most of your life, you start to really resent that feeling.”
Eddie puts his phone down now and sits up straighter, his hands clasped between his knees.
“What does that mean?”
I keep my own eyes trained on the river in front of me, on the families pushing strollers around the
trail. The one couple with their arms around each other’s waists.
“You saw where I used to live. You know what my life was like before I met you. I don’t … I
don’t belong here.”
He snorts at that. “Okay, again, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”
Now I turn toward him, pushing my sunglasses up on my head. “It means that I’m not Emily or
Campbell or—”
“I don’t want you to be any of them,” he says, taking my hand. “I love you because you’re not
them. Because you’re not…” He trails off, and I see his throat move as he swallows.
He wants to say because you’re not Bea. I know it, and he knows I know if the way he suddenly
looks away is any indication. But for the first time, I’m left wondering what that means. He had
obviously adored her, so why is being different from her such a bonus to him?
“I’m sorry.” Eddie squeezes my fingers. “I’m sorry if I haven’t made it clear how much I want you
here. How much I need you and how, yes, you do belong here.”
Turning to look at me, he ducks his head so that our foreheads nearly touch, his lips almost
brushing mine. “I am fucking in love with you, Jane,” he murmurs, the words sending an electric spark
down my spine, his breath warm on my face. “That’s all that matters. None of this shit with the
neighborhood, with Emily, any of that. That’s all just noise. This.” He lifts our joined hands between
us, squeezing again. “This is real. This is what matters.”
Eddie kisses my knuckles, and I wait, practically holding my breath because if ever there were a
moment to propose, it’s now, here in the park at sunset, him looking at me like that, me not even
having to fake the wide-eyed swoony thing. How did I not realize sooner that I wanted this?
But then he drops our hands and turns away, sighing. “I’ll try not to be gone so much, though,
okay? I’ll let Caitlyn handle more things at Southern Manors. Running two businesses is too much, but
I can’t really give up either of them right now. You understand that, right?”

In Chapter 14 of “The Beasts of Tarzan,” Tarzan is led through the jungle by Tambudza, an old woman, towards the camp of the Russian, Rokoff. They move slowly due to Tambudza’s age and rheumatism. Meanwhile, Rokoff learns of Tarzan’s approach through messages from M’ganwazam’s runners and prepares to confront him. Rokoff has already faced a tumultuous day; he discovered Jane Clayton, his captive, had escaped and in his fury, alienated his own camp. His reaction to Jane’s escape and his subsequent aggression towards his team lead to his isolation as his companions, fearing both Rokoff’s wrath and Tarzan’s impending vengeance, desert the camp, taking valuable items with them.

Confronted by one of his own men, Rokoff flees into the jungle, just as Tarzan arrives at the deserted camp. Tarzan, missing both Rokoff and Jane, decides to head back to M’ganwazam’s village. Unaware of Jane’s whereabouts, his journey quickly becomes a race to find her before it’s too late.

Jane, surviving alone, recalls Anderssen’s sacrifice for her and reclaims a hidden rifle for protection. As she navigates through the jungle, she encounters a scene that shakes her understanding of the jungle’s hierarchy—a group of apes, a panther, and a man (Tarzan, unknown to her at this moment) peacefully interacting. This encounter highlights Tarzan’s unique position within the animal kingdom and plants seeds of doubt about her perceived reality.

Jane eventually attempts to escape down a river but finds herself momentarily halted by Rokoff, who surprisingly pleads to join her, fearing Tarzan’s animals. As Jane manages to free the boat and escape, Rokoff’s desperation underscores his isolation and the turning of tables—where once he held power over Jane, he now finds himself powerless, his threats empty as Jane sails away, leaving him behind.

This chapter melds suspense and revelation, portraying Tarzan’s relentless pursuit of Jane, Rokoff’s descent into desperation, and Jane’s burgeoning resilience and resourcefulness. The jungle, with its untold dangers and unexpected alliances, serves as a backdrop to this unfolding drama, emphasizing themes of survival, power dynamics, and the unpredictable nature of both human and animal interactions.