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In a sunlit small town, Nora Finch—an unemployed, quick-witted storyteller—accidentally becomes the town’s impromptu walking guide by spinning warm, invented tales. When a short influencer clip goes viral, Nora must face a fact-obsessed historian and a packed Heritage Day showdown.
Nora Finch had not intended to become a professional storyteller. The truth was smaller and more embarrassing: she had intended to be comfortable. By late April her savings had performed the same vanishing trick that a magician called “audiences’ expectations,” and the job board on her phone looked like a graveyard of idealistic listings. Temporary receptionist gigs, seasonal café shifts, even a short-term position tagging library books—everything required a two-week trial or a sunny patience she did not own.
So when the notice popped up—HELP NEEDED FOR HERITAGE WEEK WALKS—Nora did what anyone with a dwindling bank balance and a fondness for dramatic pauses would do: she told herself it was research. The listing said “assist with tours,” which felt perfectly honest. In the privacy of her apartment she folded the word assist into her mouth like a reassurance and typed a brisk yes.
She arrived at the community center in jeans and a cardigan, which she later decided was an excellent costume choice for someone about to impersonate competence. Miles Ortega, who had once patched a broken puppet using nothing but a paperclip and a surplus of optimism, was already there with a duffel of props and a grin that suggested trouble and duct tape in equal measure. "You do know this is supposed to be a volunteer gig, right?" he said. He wore a hat that might have been meant to look like antiquarian respectability, but which mostly looked like an attempt to charm pigeons.
Nora had expected an organizer to be brusque, to hand her a clipboard and point at a tiny square of sidewalk and say “You start there.” Instead the mayor’s assistant buzzed around with ribbons and an actual line of people scheduled for preview walks, and before Nora could recite a careful speech to herself about boundaries, she was handed a badge with the words TEMPORARY GUIDE printed in a cheerful font.
It was the typeface more than the title that did her in. The badge had the reassuring glow of officialdom. It made her posture change.
She read the sign-up sheet. The person who was supposed to lead the first ten o’clock slot had double-booked, the organizer said, and could someone please stand in? There was a pause long enough for Nora to consider the life of honest scarcity and decide that she could not afford it. When she said she would take it, her voice surprised her by being steady. "Absolutely. I can do that."
There are small lies that sit like pebbles and larger ones that roll downhill. Nora intended to carry the pebble. She had forgotten that pebbles, in the presence of a duffel full of theatrical ribbon, will often become rocks.