A few minutes later, I stepped out of the bathroom, still damp, wearing just a towel. I headed toward the chair where I’d left my clothes. That’s when I noticed it.
The wall.
I froze mid-step.
It wascoveredin paper.
Dozens of sheets of paper, maybe hundreds, pinned in rows like a bizarre art exhibit. I squinted at them, water still dripping off me onto the floor.
“Thank you for your submission...”
“Unfortunately, we are unable to accept...”
It was awallof rejection letters. A sea of polite “no’s.”
And some that were not so polite. One with a handwrittenP.S.:“This gave me flashbacks to high school English. That’s not a compliment.”
A particularly crumpled letter read:“Your protagonist was certainly unique. I hated him immediately.”
I blinked at the wall, unable to stop myself from reading more. There were rejections foreverything.
A story about a cursed lighthouse? Rejected. A submission about a girl who fell in love with a ghost pirate? Hard pass. Something described as“Kafka-esque, but the Russian greats would be rolling in their graves?” Yep, rejected.
It was a staggering collection of failure. I couldn’t tell what type of writing the author specialized in because the genres bounced from romance to dystopian horror to whatever one letter described as“a bold reimagining of ‘Great Expectations’… but with robots? Please don’t contact us again.”
I couldn’t help but stare. The sheervolumeof rejection was almost impressive. Whoever the writer was, they’d tried everything, and the universe just kept sending back a firmno.
The salutations were missing from the rejection letters, leaving me to wonder who had written these doomed manuscripts. Were they Topher’s? He was always full of business plans. But creative writing? Not a chance. My best friend’s idea of a gripping story probably involved a spreadsheet showdown and a shocking twist about market trends.
Maybe they belonged to the housekeeper. Could she secretly moonlight as a novelist?
Or Anna. She had the wit to pull off being a writer. But if they were hers, why would she hang up rejection letters in the pool house?
“WHAT are you doing here?”
I spun around. Anna was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide and accusatory.
My infuriatingly judgmental, very real neighbor, holding a coffee cup in her hand. It was shaking slightly, like she couldn’t decide whether to throw it at me.
What was I doing there? “Uh… showering?” I gestured to the towel like it wasn’t obvious.
Her jaw dropped. “In my shower?”
“I thought this was the pool house,” I shot back defensively, though I wasn’t sure that excuse was helping.
She crossed her arms, her coffee mug wobbling dangerously. “It’snotthe pool house.”
I glanced around, taking in the tiny space. The desk, the wall of rejection letters, the distinctlynon-pool-house vibes, and I blurted, “But it’s too small for someone actually tolivehere.”
Her eyes narrowed into a glare so sharp I almost took a step back. “Well, someonedoeslive here, and you’re dripping all over my floor.”
I glanced down at the puddle forming beneath me and winced. “Right. Sorry about that.”
Her glare could’ve peeled paint. “Get. Out.”
I grabbed my clothes from the chair, backing toward the door like a man escaping an active crime scene. “You’ve got quite the setup here.” I gestured toward the rejection letters. “Are you a writer?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No, I just like collecting rejection letters for fun.”
