This is the mantra that lulls me to sleep, with Beckett’s novel,The Beginning of Everything, lying beside me.
Chapter 2
I wake up the next morning with page marks on my face. Mom’s old alarm clock—a relic from the 1980s that I keep because some things you just don’t throw out—buzzes me out of my melatonin-induced coma. I smack the big button on top of it and the machine quiets.
I sit up, stretch, locate the hacky sack in my tangled sheets, and place it safely on the nightstand beside my phone. Next week is the last week of the school year, so I have only one Monday left after this one. I consider my workday. Tenth grade has a test onRomeo and Juliet. My twelfth grade novel-writing elective has a write-in. All in all, it should be an easy day. When I started teaching ten years ago, I quickly realized Mondays would forever suck unless I carefully constructed a schedule that would make them a little more bearable. Especially at the end of the school year, when spring fever turns teenagers into feral wildebeests.
And so, I have done that. This Monday should be no different than any other.
I make the bed and head straight for the bathroom. Shower, teeth, hair, makeup. Brew the coffee, make the oatmeal. My life is an endless loop, an uninspiring reel on repeat.
At 10:20 a.m., the bell rings to signal the start of third period, whichis my prep. Evan knows this, so I am not entirely shocked when the phone rings and I see his name light up my screen.
Because he’s my friend as well as my literary agent, I don’t get the same kind of nervous butterflies I used to get when faced with his name in my inbox or on my phone. That was replaced with kinship about two books ago and more recently has been traded again, this time for some variety of anxiety. Today’s gut instinct is more dread than butterflies. Butterflies are hopeful. Flying around in my belly are the Japanese lantern flies that littered the city not too long ago. An invasive species appropriately matched with my current writerly state. I love him; it’s not that. I just… Iknowhim. Evan’s a fixer.
“Hey, Ev,” I say.
“Mel, sweetie. How are you?”
“Hanging in there. You? How was your weekend?”
“No. No deflecting—although I will share that Oliver and I went out to dinner at Becco and I sat right behind Neil Patrick Harris.”
“For real?”
“Mm hmm. He istall.” He says it as if this is a secret but also as if the adjective “tall” is a filthy word.
Only Evan can make me laugh when I’m in the midst of staving off a full-blown meltdown. “For real?”
“Endless pastaandeye candy?” he asks rhetorically. “Total dream come true. But anyway. You know that’s not why I’m calling.”
I gulp. “Yeah. I know.”
“I’ll ask again. Howareyou?”
“Not great, if I’m being honest.”
“You staying off Goodreads?”
“Nope. I’m a masochist. I check it every night. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Have you seen the latest?”
“Not sure. I think so?”
“They’re saying I plagiarized Beckett Nash’s book.”
“Oh. That. Yeah, I know. You’ve got to stop looking at that swill, though. It’s poison.”
“I can’t help it. I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know?”
“Well, that’s why I’m calling. Me and Jax have been talking about this. We think it’s important to get out ahead of it.”
Jax. As in my editor, Jackie Girardi.“Too late, don’t you think?”
“No way. Never too late. Anyway, we might have done something.”
The lantern flies morph into pterodactyls. Angry, hungry, loud ones. “Go ahead. Spill it.”
“Last week, Jax reached out to his agent.”
