28
T he first day of February was bright and freezing.
Green Hills looked barren, the ugliness of its gnarled branches and dead leaves comforting in their completeness, a fitting backdrop for MC’s mood.
The buzz of her reconciliation with Gabby and her brief exchange with Nora had died within hours, leaving her feeling somehow worse than ever in the weeks that followed.
Like all the personal growth in the world couldn’t outweigh how much of her life she’d torpedoed.
It wasn’t that she missed her own ignorance, exactly; it was that she had no idea what to do with wisdom except to mope around with it.
Even taking a bigger role in Explorations as the full-time spring semester advisor had provided no relief.
Which was why she was currently staring out the window, wondering if it was crazy to have started researching a teaching degree, as her students threw around half-hearted critiques of Patrick’s cryptic prose poem, which was either an experiment in absurdism or the product of a truly deranged mind.
At four-thirty on the dot, she said, “Any other comments on An Elegy for Darby’s Subaru Forester ?”
“Um, no,” said Sheila. “But I have another question.”
MC spread her hands. “Fire away.”
“You wrote that article about S. K. Smith on Jawbreaker, right?”
Part of her had suspected this was coming, but she had hoped that her students were less online than she was. “I did.”
Everyone twitched in their seats, grinning or biting their lips.
“S. K. Smith being the woman you brought here once,” Ben said, “to talk to us about magazine design.”
MC rubbed her forehead. There was no use denying it. “That would be Nora.”
“So...” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Are you getting back together?”
“As I said in the article, we were just acquaintances.”
“Everyone’s shipping you guys,” said Patrick.
“Listen, I should never have agreed to write that piece, okay? It was a weird experience, and I’m looking forward to the whole thing blowing over.”
Everyone was silent. Then Sheila said, “Is she incredibly pissed at you?”
“Yes,” MC said.
“Can she take retribution in any way?” Ben said. “Legally?”
“I don’t know. If so, she’s welcome to.”
Heather scoffed. “I’m sure she’d be relieved to know she has your permission.”
“Can we get off this topic?” MC muttered.
Patrick spread his hands, like a lawyer presenting a case. “Before break, you brought up the issue of anonymous submissions. You were in favor of letting authors keep their privacy.”
“I was guiding the discussion. I don’t think it’s as simple as choosing a side.”
“You definitely chose a side,” Sheila said. “Also, can I record this?”
MC was mortified. “Absolutely not.”
“Did you really think,” Patrick went on, “you could respect her privacy while publishing an article like that?”
“I was na?ve,” she grumbled, though what she’d been na?ve about was a little more complicated than she cared to explain.
Ben steepled his fingers under his chin. “Do we think there’s any way to get her back here?”
“That would be so sick,” Sheila said. “By the way, if I can’t take video, can I at least use these quotes from you and do a post? A lot of my followers are expecting updates.”
“No.” MC frowned. “Let’s not make this worse. Also, this is a high school literary magazine. It’s supposed to be a safe space.”
A silence settled over the room.
“What if,” Ben said, “we told S. K. Smith you’d sit out if she came to a meeting?”
“She’s not going to come,” Patrick said. “Whether MC is here or not, S. K. Smith doesn’t want attention. She was uncomfortable just being in the room last time, and none of us had any idea who she was.”
“Why,” MC said, more than a little exasperated, “do you want her to come to another meeting, exactly?”
Sheila frowned. “To talk about being a famous author.” She looked to Heather. “You’re always at the library. Can you get her to come back?”
Heather shrugged. “I can’t make any guarantees.”
“But you’ll try?”
Heather looked around the room at the dozen eager yet skeptical faces. MC remembered the interest between her and Sheila, the way Nora had played wingwoman on Halloween. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, practically cracking her knuckles.
MC wished her luck.
After she’d shrugged on her messenger bag and said goodbye, she found herself skipping the main office, where Conrad had said he’d be done with his school board meeting by five. She walked out the front doors. Across the traffic circle. Past the athletic fields.
Toward the library.
She’d kept away from the building out of respect.
But after allowing her students to scheme up ways to invite Nora back to Explorations , she felt she owed Nora a heads-up.
Reassurance that it was fine to decline, even though she knew Nora needed no such thing.
Really, she was just tired of waiting, tired of silence, tired of feeling as brittle as the dead trees looming over the sidewalk.
She was hoping to duck in unnoticed, signal to Nora at the reference desk, and talk privately in a study room or something.
But when she arrived at the front stairs, she saw a little group blocking the doors.
It consisted of only three people, but they were decked out with huge homemade signs.
The signs featured a red circle with a diagonal red line across a blown-up printout of the Girl Next Door cover.
Underneath the printout was the slogan STOP GROOMING KIDS!
The protestors weren’t shouting, but they stared at MC with dead-eyed intensity as she walked up the stairs.
Just as she was about to excuse herself past them, Lois burst through the doors.
“Get a job!” she barked at the protestors. Her glasses were pushed up in her hair and the sleeves of her cardigan were rolled up, like she was more than ready for things to turn physical.
“Get perverts out of our libraries!” a woman shouted back.
MC saw Nora behind Lois, trying to grab her elbow. But Lois was just getting started.
“You people make me sick. I know you’re lonely and sad, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But your hate has real consequences for young people in this country!”
“Stop grooming kids!” a man chanted.
The group joined in.
“Stop grooming kids! Stop grooming kids!”
They angled their signs at Lois, waving them in her face.
“Can you give her some room, please?” MC said, walking between the protestors and Lois. She deliberately did not make eye contact with Nora.
One of the protestors bopped Lois with a sign.
Maybe by accident.
Maybe not.
“You think you can intimidate me?” Lois growled, hiking up her slacks.
“You really need to step back,” MC said to the protestors, trying to get them away.
“You step back, groomer!”
“I called the police,” Maureen said, poking her head out to assess the commotion.
“I don’t need the police,” Lois snapped.
What happened next was too confusing to feel dramatic. All MC knew was that one of the signs bonked Lois in the head again, and MC had had enough. So she grabbed the handle of the sign and yanked.
The protestors closed in around MC. The tug-of-war intensified. Lois was in the mix somewhere, swearing. MC didn’t want to let go of the sign. She knew she should—her peacemaking tendencies practically required her to.
But she didn’t.
Someone elbowed her in the eye.
In pain and surprise, she let go of the sign. Lois threw herself at the protestors. Maureen and some library patrons rushed in, including the video game–console guy. Everything became a weird melee.
There was a lone siren, a flash of red and blue.
A single cop car from the Green Hills PD rolled into the parking lot.
A megaphone squeaked on. “Break it up,” said a bored voice.
The protestors backed off, yelling about groomers and waving their signs again. MC touched her eye and felt swelling around her cheekbone.
“You’re legitimately a hazard to yourself,” Nora said. MC had momentarily forgotten she was there. Her hand was on MC’s arm. She looked mad, and shaken up, and also like she was about to laugh. “You need to put some ice on that.”
“I’m okay,” MC said, feeling incredibly relieved that Nora was speaking to her again.
“Come on,” Lois said, “let’s get you inside.” As they walked, Lois patted MC’s shoulder. “Good work, by the way.”
MC was glad for the warmth. Not just of Lois’s gesture, but the literal heat in the library. The confrontation had given her a spike of adrenaline, making her temporarily immune to the winter weather. But now she realized her hands had gone numb. Her back was clammy with cold sweat.
“There’s ice in the break room,” Nora said, steering MC down a back hallway.
MC tried not to linger on the giant display they passed in front of the circulation desk. It said GET COZY WITH THESE DIVERSE READS and featured Girl Next Door front and center.
“I got a life-size cardboard cutout of her,” Lois said, pointing at Nora. “But she threw it in the dumpster.”
Before Nora had a chance to comment on this, Lois was pulled aside by Maureen.
The break room was small and windowless, with a cooler, a fridge, a sink, and a little table surrounded by folding chairs. MC sat in one and stared at a bowl of Sweet’N Low packets. Someone had brought in a zucchini loaf. It looked extremely moist.
“I know you hate me,” MC said. “But the second you’re ready to let me make it up to you, that’s all I want to do.”
Nora filled a plastic bag with ice from the freezer. “There’s no way to make it up to me.”
“That you can think of right now.”
“This isn’t an actual rom-com, MC. There’s no winning me back.” Nora wrapped the plastic bag in a dish towel and handed it to her. “After you’re done with this, I need you to leave.”
“Some part of you must’ve known your identity would come out eventually.”
Nora had been about to turn for the door but paused. “I never thought the book would get this big.”
MC smiled. “It’s that good.”
“It was published to capitalize on a market trend,” she said coolly. “My editor said as much when she offered me the deal.”
“Lauren Horowitz, right? She introduced herself to me at a New Year’s party. Said she should throw her drink in my face.” That earned a smirk. “How did she find you?”
Nora huffed, like MC was forcing her to answer. “She read my fan fiction.”
“How long have you been doing that?”
“Since high school.”
“Can I ask which fandom?”
“I think you can guess.”
MC lowered the ice, remembering their exchange in the stacks, Nora’s Matrix impression. “Oh my god,” she laughed. “Which pairing?”
“Trinity/Niobe.”
“You know, I might’ve read some of it.” MC made a mental note to find Nora’s online writing at the next possible opportunity. “What made you try something more realistic?”
Nora turned around again. “I refuse to talk to you about this.”
MC practically lunged, blocking the door. “But I’ve spent so much time thinking about it.”
“That’s your problem.”
“I admit that what I did was wrong. But you’re not totally innocent either.
You published a book about some of the roughest parts of my life.
” Nora’s expression softened a little. “And I get that in retrospect it was just typical adolescent crap. But it still felt intense to me.” MC took a breath, all too aware of how close they were standing, how irresistible Nora looked in her big green sweater with its nylon reinforcement at the shoulders and elbows, like she was ex-Marines or something.
“All I’m asking is for you to explain what made you do that. ”
Nora gritted her teeth. “If I tell you, will you actually leave?”
“Yes.”
A pause. “I’d thought about you on and off ever since we graduated.” Nora’s lashes fluttered for a moment. “And then... I saw you.”
“Where?”
“At your brother’s wedding.”
“Why didn’t you come?”
“I didn’t want to. High school sucked for me, even if it was a little less bad by the end.
” She sighed. “But then there you all were, right outside my window. Looking the same as ever. I don’t know, it affected me.
” She pursed her lips. “It felt like nothing had changed. Like no time had passed. I’d hit a dry spell with my writing, so I figured I’d do something different for once. ”
“And people loved it.”
“The response was mixed, actually.”
“Really?”
“Some of my readers preferred girls getting it on in leather bars after a few rounds of Japanese stick fighting.”
“Understandable.”
“Yes.” She drew herself up. “Now get out.”
“Oh, come on,” Lois said, barging through the door. “Just forgive her already.” MC stumbled to the side.
“Lois,” Nora said, “can you not?”
“It was a beautiful article, MC.”
“Thank you,” MC said, still a little stunned.
“Unpretentious,” Lois declared, “yet deeply considered. Even made me laugh a few times.” She flapped a hand. “As Nora well knows, I was opposed to her hiding in the shadows ever since I read the first draft of her manuscript.”
“Which I never should’ve let you do,” Nora said darkly.
“And I never should’ve let her in on my taxes. I’d been thinking about downsizing anyway, but something about the word foreclosure makes people panic.”
MC finally put it together—it was Lois who’d needed the money.
“When I realized that letting Nora help me would get her work out there to a bigger audience, I decided, screw it.” Lois shrugged. “Two birds with one book.”
“Lois,” Nora said, “enough.”
“Oh, shush. I’ve known you since you were a teenager. It always bothered me that the world was missing out on you, and that you were missing out on the world.” Nora glared but said nothing. Lois turned to MC. “I could’ve imagined a more respectful way of going about your work.”
MC bowed her head. “Me too.”
“I still think it was the best possible tribute anyone could’ve made to our Nora.”
She felt a second surge of gratitude to Lois, not just for her praise, but for her devotion.
Nora, unfortunately, seemed to be feeling the opposite. She looked like she couldn’t figure out which one of them to flip off first.
“I should go,” MC said, standing up and handing the ice back to Nora. “I just came here to tell you the Explorations kids really want you to come to another meeting. But it’s more than fair of you to say no.”
“You’re the last person who should be telling me what’s fair.”
“Right. Well, I hope the protestors give up after a few days.”
“It’s none of your business.”
MC bowed her head and left the break room. In front of the library, the protestors were still lurking, but the visit from the cop seemed to have inspired them to take a snack break. They drank from steaming thermoses, glaring at MC as she walked back toward the school.