If Anything Should Happen - Chris Lewis Gibson - Bog

"I just want you to know whatever happens I love you.""Uh... alright," I said, and felt like an ass because in my head I was always waiting for someone to say something like that, and I figured I would have something profound to say back. I was sick of people never having anything real to say, but now I understood why they never did."No, I'm serious," Michael said, "No matter what happens-""Why would anything happen?"Jay was fear prone. The littlest thing could set him off, and here they were, on Friday night, after a long week in the first year at junior college, sitting in the semi darkness of his family's den, and Michael turned and said some shit like that."Nothing," Michael said. "It's just... people should say that. They need to say it."The next day Jay and Michael receive horrifying news that leads them to recall their former years of high school angst and debilitating depression. The news Jay receives at the beginning of "What Didn't Happen" is far less staggering than the news he gets at the end, and so begins the collection of stories called If Anything Should Happen: Now, Then and the Glory to Come. Through twelve stories we meet Russell Lewis, Jill Barnard, Anigel Raez, Brad Long and the other citizens of Geshichte Falls Michigan. Along the way we meet old characters from other stories, like Paul Anderson in When he Remembers Joy, and Noah Riley in The Only Beauty. Jinny, Isaac, and Efrem of Rhodes, Ohio, all known earlier in The Colossus of Rhodes tell a cycle of stories which, in the end, spiral back to Jay and Michael, stumbling out of the darkness of the first story into the revealed light in the last.