The querying process can’t start in earnest until the manuscript is finished. And sending out queries is the tip of the iceberg. The process of signing with an agent is an arduous slog through rejections, manuscript requests, feedback, soft rejections packaged as a suggestion to revise and resubmit, more rejections, and maybe—maybe—an elusive offer from an agent willing to take a chance on you. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the process of submitting the book to publishers.
There’s a reason that selling my book is the third and most far-reaching bullet on the Be Yourself List. It’s like shooting an arrow at a moving target while riding a horse. Backwards. But the only thing worse than a trail of literary agent rejection is never sending my queries out in the first place.
In the daunting face of querying, my attention veers. I somehow end up on my go-to dating app, Found. There’s a few mediocre candidates before the app begins showing me the good profiles. A queue of handsome, friendly faces sparkle at me from my screen. I consider sending a message. What would it say?Hi, are you interested in a mentally ill girl in menopause?I imagine another interaction like Steve’s and reliving my diagnosis by sharing it with a stranger. Having to explain what DMX means. What triple positive breast cancer is. Why I don’t drink.
“Like, I didn’t know when I asked her, you know?” A voice interrupts the quiet jazz of the coffee shop. I glance up and see a tall, delicately curved blonde in a white sundress clacking her Tory Burch slides toward the register.
Somehow, it’s Penelope.
There’s a Yiddish word for the serendipity of meeting your soulmate: beshert. Meant to be. Pre-ordained, despite the fact that the marriage was arranged by two fathers looking to exchange goats. I know it’s meant for romantic relationships, but doesn’t modern feminism dictate that friendships with other women are by and large more important than romantic relationships? It’s friendships—not relationships—that grant access to the most transcendent capital on the market: belonging and acceptance.
This is a second chance. This is beshert. I need to swallow my fear and go talk to her.Four months to turn this around.
Penelope continues talking while she’s in line, balancing the phone on her shoulder and rifling through her rattan tote. “Ugh, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I need to tell her, but it’s kind of awkward, and I don’t want her to?—”
I tap her on the shoulder.
Her eyebrows jolt up. “Ruby!” She murmurs into her phone, “I just ran into someone, I’ll call you back later,” before hanging up and dropping it into her purse. Her long arm wraps around me in a side hug that feels dangerously camp counselor-esque.
“How was the rest of your night?” I ask, sneaking glances at my table to make sure no one steals my stuff.
Pen flips her hair behind her shoulder, letting out a self-effacing laugh. “You know, crazy, the usual.” She shakes her head. “Wedding season.”
“Totally.” I nod. My wedding season consists of just two weddings, one of them Penelope’s.
“I’m glad I ran into you,” she says, serious. “I really do want to hear how you’re doing.”
“I’m good!” I rush out. “Doing great.”
“So you’re like…done? With treatment?”
I hold myself. “I’m done with chemo and immunotherapy. And, uh, surgery,” I try to explain. “I have to do hormonal therapy for five years, but it’s more preventative.”
Pen’s forehead wrinkles, getting lost in what I’m saying and whether she should be expressing joy or pity.
“But enough about me! How’s wedding planning going?”
“It’s going,” Pen says through a tight smile. There’s something flickering beneath the surface. I wait a second, hoping she might open up more. The man in front of her appears to be ordering ten coffees, which is taking a while. Pen sighs. “It’s about to get a lot crazier because I just found out I’ll be doing a European book tour for this new collection.”
I met Penelope in the Lakeview Writers Group, and upon discovering we were the only girls who attended the meetings regularly, decided we should be friends. Pen insisted on starting a weekly pilgrimage with our laptops to happy hour at a Spanish restaurant called Ba-Ba-Reeba. Sangrias and Syntax, she called it. We typed across the table from each other for hours, our lips turning red from the sangria, giggling over how outlandish the scenes became by the bottom third of the pitcher.
Penelope struck gold posting small, snippet-like poems on her Instagram. She was working on a historical romance novel that I thought would be her ticket to traditional publishing. In her spare time, she posted these poems that always felt half-baked and ephemeral, and not necessarily in an e.e. cummings way, but her audience glommed onto them. One day, she posted the perfectly framed image: elegant, romantic cursive, an iced coffee with dappled sunlight refracting through the glass, casting the poem in an immortally aesthetic glow. Her posts consistently got a few hundred likes, but this one wentviral. A million views viral. And then adreamagent found it—Alice Sutherland. They call her Queen Midas. I’m sure you can guess why. Penelope had barely heard of her when she asked Pen to submit a query. WhenPen told me, I forwarded all the research I had on Alice. She was actually at the top ofmylist of agents.
Things changed for Penelope pretty quickly after that. She shelved the historical romance draft and veered full speed into poetry, securing a book deal for an original collection six months later. And now, she’s publishing her second book. The envy is a sharp lurch somewhere between my ribs. If I hadn’t been diagnosed, maybe I’d already have an agent and a book deal and an upcoming tour, too.
Penelope waits, and my envious glitch abruptly ends. “That’s great! Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She reaches out to squeeze my arm. “Yes, it’s really big that they’re investing in it. Only problem is that the timing is right before the wedding.” She blows out a breath. “Not that I’m complaining.” Her hand drifts over her heart. “I’m beyond grateful that so many European readers were interested. I wouldn’t be here without them.” Her hand drops. “But I already had the U.S. tour for a month, and now I have the European tour right after it.”
I recall the embossed gold foil on the Save the Date sitting on my fridge. Some part of me that has maintained self-preservation and a little bit of a fight punches her way to the surface.This is our chance!she says. “I–I could help you,” I stutter out. “I mean, if you need anything. I’m here.”
Pen’s lips draw down in a pout. “You are so sweet, Rubes.”
I smile. “Of course. Truly, any time you need help, I’m your girl.”
“Thanks, babe.” She scrunches her nose. “My bridesmaids are actual lifesavers. I think they will just have to help a girl out.”
The dismissal stings. At my last birthday party, if someone had told me that Penelope was getting married and I wasn’t a bridesmaid, I would have laughed them out of the booth.
