The glow was back, a warm tingle. I’d never made friends easily, shunned by the cool girls, ignored by the crush-worthy guys. And she’d just invited me to dinner! “I’d like that.”
“Or we can go to Hugh Lane and get pissed.”
“Pissed?” I repeated.
“Langers. Wasted. Drunk. You’ll need it,” she added, “after meeting with The Ward.”
—
I think we’re done. I don’t know why Glenda wants you here.” Maeve Ward was tall and gaunt, her lipstick so dark a red as to appear almost black, her manner both terrifying and perfunctory. “But now that you are, we’ll both have to make the best of it. You’ll pick up the rest at orientation.”
I knew the rules of being in a new place. Don’t talk back to the teacher. Make your bed every day. Double-check that Toni has her lunch money/homework/permission slips. Be tidy, agreeable, and quiet, and maybe you can stay.
But.
“Don’t you want to talk about my writing?”
“You have a three-hour workshop every week to discuss your work with other students. New work,” Dr.Ward emphasized. “I’llbe your instructor this term. I’d encourage you to use your time at Trinity to experiment with different forms. Different genres.”
I swallowed my dismay. I didn’t want to argue. I was an expert in argument avoidance, actually. “Dr.Eastwick said I’d already made a good start on my novel.”
“The thesis you were working on at Kansas.”
“It was part of my application portfolio.” She was supposed to advise me. Mentor me. Hadn’t she read it?
“But essentially the same work you were doing before. I’d question whether that’s where you want to focus your energies now.”
“But I was accepted.”
“Well, if all you aspire to is acceptance...” I winced. Maeve Ward leaned back in her chair. “Fine. Tell me about it.”
I floundered, as usual, when asked to distill all my painstakingly written pages into an elevator pitch. “Well.” I gulped. “It’s sort of autobiographical.”
Nothing about our mother dying, of course. Nothing about Gray, even though he’d encouraged me to set my story—a bleak American Gothic tale about a farmer’s daughter who falls in love with a traveling magician in the 1930s Dust Bowl days—in the world I knew. Consequently, there was a lot of scenery, flat gray Kansas farmland blasted by high winds and choking storms.
“First novels always are.”
“Excuse me?”
“Writers in their twenties invariably feel their lives are more interesting than they really are. Like memoirists in their eighties.”
“Dr.Eastwick said I showed individuality of approach in theme and content.” I’d memorized the compliment.
“It’s possible,” Maeve Ward said in a voice that suggested she didn’t believe it for a minute. “It takes a very special writer to tap immediately into their own authentic voice.”
I sat up straighter, willing her to like me. Wanting her to seeme as one of the special ones. “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “To find my voice.” To become New Dee.
“Is it?”
“Yes. All I need is a fresh start.”
“A clean slate? Or...” She swiveled her chair, facing away from me. “A chance to run away?”
She plucked something from the shelves behind her. My stomach twisted. Even before she turned, I knew.
She placed the book flat on the desk between us. The bright graphic cover stared up at me.Destiny Gayle, a Novel, by Grayson Kettering.
—
