The phone goes silent again until I hear a different voice. Amina has passed the phone to my editor. “Mars! How are you?” Whitney asks.
“Who is it?” I rasp, the words lodged in my throat.
It can’t be. They wouldn’t.
“West Emerson.”
I’m in free fall, my feet tracing steps from pure muscle memory. “They can’t.”
“I can get you out of it,” Whitney says quickly.
“Gethimout of it,” I snap.
“I’ll see what I can do. Talk soon.” The line goes dead, and it’s just as well, because I’m speechless. My brain is a swirling haze of anger, but my feet are still carrying me toward a shaded bench, down a path I walked a thousand times as an undergrad. It’s my favorite place on campus, maybe my favorite spot in all of Tucson. Half ofTorchedwas written on this bench, and I need to get to it so I can fume in peace. This is my first event in years, and I’ll light myself on fire before I bow out in favor of the guy who almost nuked my career. I turn the corner behind the languages building and stop short.
A man is reading in the shade of a large palm tree. He looks up, and for the second time today, I’m staring directly into those multicolored Fox Caldwell eyes. Only this time, they belong to their inspiration and the person I hate most in this world.
West Emerson.
2
13 Years Ago
Freshman Year, First Semester
I didn’t payattention to West Emerson until he forced me to. I was sitting outside the Modern Languages building after Intro to Creative Writing the first time we met. I’d stumbled on this small niche of trees and benches when I got turned around trying to find the exit during the first week of school, and now I slip out the back after every class and kill time until my late geology lab kills me. (There’s a special place in hell for the person who invented five p.m. labs.)
I’m usually alone out here. The campus starts to empty in the late afternoon, and this spot is off the beaten path, away from the student union and any of the good food or smoking hangouts. Today, though, a boy in eyeliner stands under drooping palm fronds and motions for me to take off my headphones.
“Mind if I sit?” He points to the bench across from mine.
I slide one side of my headphones off and crane my neck to look up at him. “Go for it.” I put my headphones back on and type another sentence, but in my periphery, I see his mouth move again. I pause my music. “Sorry, what?”
“You’re in Bachmann’s class, right?”
He has straight dark hair that’s falling in his eyes, a hoodie, and a spiral notebook I remember him using to take notes in class while the rest of us use laptops. He’s interrupting my writing, but I grin at the excuse to talk about my favorite thing. “Yes! Dr.B’s a genius.”
He makes ahuhsound like he’s never considered it. “The egg thing is weird, though.”
“What egg thing?”
“The loose egg he carries in his pocket?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The egg he eats every day during our writing warm-up.”
“Why would he carry a loose egg in his pocket?”
He holds his hands out. “You’re the one who said he’s a genius.”
I wonder if maybe he’s high and decide to keep the conversation moving. “I love the writing prompts, don’t you? Not the two-sentence horror stories, though.” I shudder. I’mterriblewith scary stories. I’ve read Stephen King’s memoir,On Writing, three times, but I dipped out ofCujothree pages in.
My classmate laughs. At me, possibly. “You’re going to enter his competition, aren’t you?”
At the end of his first lesson, Dr.Bachmann announced that every fall he holds a short story competition among his freshman classes. The finalists are picked by him, and the winner is decided by popular vote. The prize is a spot in his creative writing workshop in the spring—a class otherwise off-limits to first-year students. Obviously, I’m entering.
“What gave me away?”
