“Eh. I guess. It’s not the city,” he said.
“I don’t really like the city,” I admitted.
“No?”
“Especially now. It’s crowded and dirty and everything smells like weed.” Beckett laughed. “It wasn’t always like that, you know. I mean, crowded and dirty, yes. But the weed thing is still pretty new.”
“All true. But there’s culture and art and the literary scene. I mean, New York City is the publishing capital of the world, is it not?”
“I suppose. But you can be a writer anywhere.”
“Amen to that,” he said. “You can even write from your parents’ basement.”
“Is that where you live?”
He laughed. “Not anymore, thank goodness. I used to, though. I got my own place a few years ago.”
“Expensive, Long Island, no?”
Beckett nodded. “Hence the day job.”
“What town are you in?”
“Oceanside. Major upgrade. I went from living in my parents’ basement for free to living in someone else’s basement for money.”
“Adulting is fun,” I laughed. “How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I’m twenty-seven. I know, too old to be slumming it in a basement. But I’ve got big plans.” His eyes sparkled when he said this, and I felt it in the goose bumps that formed on my arms.
“Do tell,” I urged him.
“Well, first I’m going to finish this novel,” he began. “Then I’m going to find an agent, and the agent’s going to sell it for, like, a hundred thousand dollars. I’ll use my advance money to move into the city and before you know it, I’ll become crazy famous.”
“Just like that, huh?” I asked. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that those expectations might have been a touch, um,lofty.
His grin was electric. “Easy peasy.”
Chapter 8
Beckett was wrong. His debut didn’t sell for 100,000 dollars.
It sold for 250,000 dollars.
I only know this because I saw it in Publishers Marketplace in their daily deals e-mail. The news came out on Wednesday, January 4, I remember. We were back from Christmas break—my second Christmas without my mom, I’ll add—and I was happy to be back at school because it provided me with the comfort of a structured routine. It was third period, and I was scarfing down a granola bar because I’d skipped breakfast that morning. The e-mail was inconspicuous, just sitting there among my American Eagle five for ten dollars underwear e-mail, a random Zabar’s fifteen percent-off coupon, and a reminder from my principal about an upcoming faculty meeting. I opened and scanned it quickly, looking for anything pertaining to Cabaret Books or Evan, as had become my habit. I didn’t expect to see it there. In fact, the words were so shocking that I had to read them twice before I could fully understand the weight of their meaning.
“Debut novelist Beckett Nash’sTHE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING, a coming-of-age story about a whirlwind, weeklong love affair on a tropical island that forces a vacationing bachelor to reconsider his entire life path, to Audrey Beringer at Hudson Yards Publishing,in a significant deal, at auction, by Shelby Finn at First Draft Literary Agency.”
A significant deal?I wondered.
I wanted to run down to the music room and wave my cell phone in my mom’s face, howling about how the guy we met in Aruba was going to become a big deal in the literary world.
Obviously, that was not an option.
Instead, I threw the rest of my granola bar in the trash and closed my eyes, trying very hard to tune out the din of nearby classes that were in session and the sound of the toilet flushing in the faculty bathroom. I controlled my breathing while counting to thirty in my head, a practice I learned on TikTok in a grief management tutorial.
Well,I told myself,I guess he did it.
I didn’t really consider the fact that the storyline had changed from what he told me. Beckett said he was writing a family drama, but looking back, I guess I supposed that “coming-of-age” could also be classified as family drama, depending on the supporting characters.
