Here Is Another Part of My Not-Done Book

Thank you in advance for someday reading the whole thing

The town library had shelves and shelves of phone books from other places. After a few weeks of looking at them Betsy had all the area codes memorized. If you said the number you could think of the place, Maine was 207, the seven was like a lobster claw, New Hampshire was 603, the zero made her think of the temperature zero, because New Hampshire was cold, Oregon was 503, and five was between 1 and 10, the way Oregon was between Washington and California, three states, that was where they got the three, and the 0 was like the word of - it was the middle state (5) of three. 503. She stared at the number and thought of one day going to Oregon.

One day, when the house was empty, she took as many quarters and dimes as she thought she could take out of every jar without it looking like anyone had touched anything, and when she laid it all out on her bed and counted it, she had $28.

The area code in Albany was 518. This was a weird area code. It was a weird number, the one, coming after the number five, was such a letdown. She decided the whole number was just sad, like how Albany was probably sad for not being New York. She looked up rehab facilities near Albany, New York. There were six of them. She went to Price Chopper while she was…