“Similarity”
I look up and see
nothing and everything
the dark, a spark, a great game
of freeze tag playing out against
the sky like light against
the inside of my eyes
and I feel lucky
to know we are both made
of stardust.
Poem by Oswald Jackson Jr. (15), published in North Dallas High’s literary journal, Highlights
Chapter Three
SIENNA TRIES, SHE REALLY DOES.
But after two hours in the yellow room with Malcolm and seven of his half-baked ideas, she feels like she’s inching closer to a cliff, and more than ready to jump. Instead, she paces the room, carving a straight line back and forth, as if trying to cut through the noise, while Malcolm sits in the desk chair, swiveling in a way that drives her mad as he spits out every solve that comes to mind, as if she hasn’t already thought of them, the difference being she knew right away that none of them would work, and he seems convinced that they will.
“That doesn’t even make sense!” she snaps when he suggests a Scooby Doo–level misdirect.
“It could work, if—”
“No,” she says, “it’s banal. It’s exactly what everyone will expect.”
“At least it’s in keeping with the series! Did you stop to think that maybe that’s why we’re here? Because our books keep to the formula? Because the formula works?”
“If that was evenremotelytrue, we’d be a whole lot richer by now, don’t you think?”
The arrow hits its mark.
When she met Malcolm Buchanan, he was young (well, younger than he is now) and hungry. He came from the kind of family that measured its history in generations, and it was impressed upon him from an early age that he and his brother Hamish had a legacy to uphold, one that included private schools and Oxbridge and twin careers in finance, their lives paved as neatly as a road. Hamish had done his part, and Malcolm hadn’t—he’d gone off and gotten a degree inliterature, declared himself an artist, which was apparently tantamount to treason. He’d hardly been disowned, but the full extent of his family’s disapproval had been communicated to him, and the family money had been cut to a trickle in a misbegotten attempt to force him to get a “real” job. Things between Malcolm and his parents had been frosty ever since.
“Sod them,” he’d said, recounting the story to Sienna over drinks on their first date. “They want a legacy? I’ll have a legacy. A whole catalog of work. Enough to merit its own shelf in every bookshop.”
Sienna had loved the boldness of it, been seduced by his hunger, his drive. He had that defiant gleam she’d always been drawn to. The light of a person ready to carry their own torch.
A famous crime writer.
He managed half, landing a book deal with a small press before his thirtieth birthday, which was something, of course. He sent a copy to his father, to show off the family name in print, but the old man wasn’t impressed. Apparently, Buchanan was a name to be whispered in the boardrooms and gentleman’s clubs of the City of London, not plastered across the front of a potboiler. Malcolm published four more books, none of them bestsellers, but still sales were pretty decent. Well received, and so was he, an absolute charmer, with energy to fill a room. But then the press folded, and it wasn’t Malcolm’s fault, but it put his ledger in the red, marked him as someone who didn’t earn out. And it was a slow slide down a steep hill after that.
It’s hard to start fresh once the shine has worn off.
But then Sienna came along—Sienna, with a fresh take and a good eye for story—and they were good together. His brass and her brain, his big swings and her tight prose.
In some ways,Penn Stonelywas a victory. Certainly a step up from the small press to a larger imprint in Manhattan, even if the publisher wasn’t exactly a household name.
But in others, well, his father was right. He hasn’t lived up to the family name. Hamish Buchanan now lives in London and has three homes and four cars, one of which is a Bentley, while they have one tiny apartment, twice mortgaged, and no car, because “it doesn’t make sense to have one in the city.”
Not that Sienna cared. She didn’t want houses. She didn’t want cars. She wanted towrite, and she knew, if they worked hard enough, they would get there. She was in it for the long haul. She thought he was too, but somewhere along the way, as the road went up instead of down, Malcolm got tired of climbing, and his ambition weakened, too much water over too little tea.
