CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Plot Twist of Writers and Main Characters
My laptop screen fizzled blank.
I panicked, slamming on the refresh button a dozen times, but it didn’t change anything. All the words across my document—everything I’d fought hand and foot to try to write over the last few months, were gone.
“Crap,” I muttered.
I closed the laptop in defeat, chewing on my chapped lips in contemplation.
Em must’ve been there. In my apartment.
I took in my surroundings, goosebumps rising along my arms. But other than the bubble of my fish tank filtration system, the hum of my air conditioner, and the wavering flame of the pinyon candle on my kitchen island, I was alone.
Nothing stared back at me other than my grad-school paintings along the beige walls.
But I wasn’t convinced.
“Em?” I called out. “You here?”
My cat Shy chirped back in response from the office, no doubt, sleeping on my husband’s gaming chair again.
I wrinkled my nose, feeling stupid. Of course, I knew better than to think my fictional character would actually appear in my apartment. Stuff like that didn’t happen in the real world.
I combed my fingers through my frizzy curls and let out a deep breath. I had a backup draft saved on the cloud somewhere. I could recover it later once I calmed my nerves and cleared my head. My anxiety had been getting the best of me for the last couple of weeks.
Maybe I needed a higher dosage of my Lexapro.
I peeled myself off my dingy gray sofa, stretching my tight joints.
Whenever I got frustrated with my musings, I found going for a walk for some fresh air was the best method to clear my head.
It was one of the reasons my husband Chase joked I might have been a plant. Not enough sun, and I withered.
Then I saw her.
Our eyes locked, and my heart leapt.
“Em?” I exclaimed.
Her previous rage in my writings had all but dissipated. Pure confusion creased across her face as she gawked at me, like she couldn’t believe she existed.
To be fair, I probably confused the poor character with my dream sequences. But how else was I going to be able to reach her? None of my notes in the subtext or even Faylorn’s death note ever got into her crazy little head.
“Stephanie?” she blinked back her confusion.
“The very one.”
Em’s face twisted into something nasty. “You.”
“Yes, we’ve established it’s me…”
“You told me if I stole my story back, you’d leave me the fuck alone!” Em’s tattered ballgown, bruised legs, muddy bare feet, and dripping hair beneath her lopsided rose crown were rather pathetic. I almost felt bad for nonsense I’d put her through.
Almost.
That inner evil part of me, like any good writer, enjoyed messing with my characters. It helped develop the tension and kept the readers engaged. Or upset. Especially upset if I killed one of their favorites.
Sorry, Faylorn.
“I did,” I sighed, swiping at my tangled curls again. It cooperated about as much as Em did. “And if you really want to try to control it, you can have it.”
Em’s eyebrows flew upwards. “That’s…it?”
“Yeah, girl.” I snort. “I made you a deal, and you managed to outsmart the FOURTH WALL. That’s good enough for me.”
“Do I really matter so little to you?” My Main Character lashed out, stomping over to me, standing on her tiptoes to tower over me with her icy, green glare. I was already a good head taller than her, though. Em had the stereotypical petite heroine build.
Usually, it’s the other way around, and most people are taller than me. I guess I could’ve made a cliché female protagonist myself.
“I never said that.” I hold my hands up in innocence.
“Then why the hell aren’t you fighting for me?”
“I have been fighting for you, Em.”
“Really?” Em dropped flat on her muddy heels again, nostrils flaring. “Because you’ve done nothing but give me hell and the most unoriginal, shitty plotline ever. No matter what I did, you kept making it more cliché.”
“It was fun,” I shrugged.
“Fun?” Em screamed.
“You thought it was fun when you got the multi-bed-cellar the other night,” I went on. “And you made sure to annoy the heck outta Roden and Gair this whole time.”
“I was trying to save myself!” Em let out an exasperated huff. “You’ve ruined my life, and I want it back!”
“Okay, so take it back.” I motioned to my overpriced laptop waiting on the sofa ottoman. “And maybe after a bit of chaos, you’ll realize what I put you through wasn’t half bad.”
“It was the literal fucking worst!”
I managed to roll my eyes. “We’ll see about that.”
Without another word, Em scooped my laptop up. She tucked it under her pasty, dirty arm like it was some sort of book or something.
How I wish it were. That impending, sinking sense of imposter syndrome filled my chest again; that I would never be good enough as a writer to become an author.
That no matter how much I wrote or created or tried to make my voice heard, it would simply disappear into the void.
much like the background characters of Novella.
Not even my poem or my note from Faylorn could convince this wild character that I wasn’t ruining her. I was urging her into challenging the cliché world I’d set her in and make it into something originally glorious. And maybe a little bit funny too. Guess my plotting backfired.
“Don’t try to stop me,” Em threatened.
“I’m not,” I said, arms limp and useless at my sides.
“How do I use this thing?”
“You turn it on.”
Em hesitated, scanning my crowded, dirty apartment that needed to be vacuumed at least a week ago, with how much cat fur floated in the air. “And how do I get back?”
“You’ll have to write your way back.” I move to help her with the laptop, but she stumbles away.
“Hell no.” Em flipped me off, to which I simply rolled my eyes again. She hugged my laptop closer to her chest, leaning away from me. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d remembered to back up my grad-school homework into the cloud as well.
Chase is gonna kill me when I tell him I need a new laptop. I stared back at Em’s glare, trying to figure out what she wanted. It’s hard when I’m not the one typing her life onto the page to know what was going on in her crazy brain.
“Just tell me how it works,” Em said.
“An author being told to tell, not show,” I muttered to myself. “Ironic.”
“How do I work it?” she raised her voice.
“Okay, chill, girl.” I demonstrated with my hands like I was working on an invisible laptop. “Just open it like that… yeah, that’s right. Then you type on the letter keys… you’ll have to learn how to use both hands, but yeah, like that. Okay than you… nope, don’t hit that, it’ll delete Polo.”
Em grunted in frustration, but her eyes continued to widen as she scanned the glowing screen. Thankfully, all my months’ worth of writing reappeared on the digital pages at her fingertips.
“It’s me,” she breathed, after a pause.
I peered over her shoulder at what she read.
One: A Chapter of Sanderson School of Main Characters and Dropouts
Em did not live in a hole in the ground, nor in a massive palace, thank goodness.
“Yeah,” I shifted my weight between my legs, hugging myself. I couldn’t help but smile at her child-like wonder. “That’s you.”
Tears poured from Em’s eyes. Her shaky hands threatened to drop my precious laptop, which would trap her in my apartment until I could get a replacement if she broke it. I had to resist the urge to snatch it back.
“For a story to exist, an author needs a character, and the character needs an author,” I said. “Without you living through your questline, I’d have no story to write. Without me writing out my ideas, you’d have no plotline to experience.”
“So… you had an idea and that’s how I came into being?” Em cocked her head, her initial discomfort softening. “Or did I exist first, then you created my plot as I started to experience it? Or are you just writing out what’s happening as you see it?”
“Maybe all at once?”
“Damn,” Em said.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I laughed.
“And if I use this computer…” Em nods to my laptop, thankfully at least familiar with some technology thanks to the contemporary, sci-fi, and dystopian realms of Novella. “Then I get to control the story, right?”
“Theoretically.”
“I need a yes or no,” Em said. “I can’t have another disappointment after all the hell you’ve put me through. I need to fix this shitty plot.”
“Okay, yes, it should work,” I sigh. “But please, be aware: controlling an entire world and thousands of lives is not easy. Every choice you make is going to affect everyone else, not just yourself.”
“I can manage.”
“Maybe.” I bite my lip. “But if something goes wrong, just bring it back. Please.”
“Like hell I will.
“Look,” I said, offering my hands in a truce. “I want you to know that if it doesn’t work, I can help you undo your mess and fix it. We can try to work through this together, Em. You just have to trust me.”
“I’m done with your shitty games,” she spat at me. “I’m taking this story into my own hands, and I’m writing it how I want.”
I shrugged again, although I don’t mean it.
Everything inside me was yelling and clawing and screaming for me to fight my stubborn Main Character, take the story back from her, then return her to Novella where she should be.
But another part of me wanted to know what chaos she might ensue.
Maybe it would be funnier or better than anything I could write.
After all, Em said it herself, I wasn’t a Great Author, just an unsuccessful writer.
“Suit yourself,” I told her.
Tears continued pouring down Em’s face, like she mentally battled herself as much as I was. “I just wanted to be a Main Character.”
“You are…”
“Not like this.” She shook her head. “Whenever my parents told me about their adventures, I used to imagine that I got to go with them. People would visit us and bring fan art or want to interview Mom and Dad, like they were their favorite characters. I dreamed of the day my own story would start. When someone would come to me and need me, I could get to do what my parents did. I just wanted to physically see my name in a real-life book, so others could read it.”
“I know.” I smiled. “I wrote you. I created you.”
“Maybe.” Em sniffed back her last tears. “But now I’m in charge.”
She started to type on the laptop, angling it away from me so I couldn’t see whatever she wrote into my manuscript. In a swish of blue glow and sugary wind, Em disappeared from my apartment and wrote her way back home into Novella.
I stood there, alone again. Everything I’d written was now out of reach in another dimension.
I could only hope Em would change things for the better. Maybe she would get her dreams granted even if mine never were. Maybe she’d come back, and we could revisit this nonsense.
I mean, what did you expect to happen?
This is Em’s story after all.
And she was going to write it how she fucking wanted.