21
M C hung around the house until Saturday night, hoping Nora might’ve been bluffing about not speaking to each other ever again. But her texts went unanswered. And Gabby and Conrad were too distracted by their own problems to pay MC much mind.
Right back to where they’d all started.
That night she took a train back to the city, staring out windows, waiting on platforms. Back at her apartment, neither a Rebecca Sloane novel nor a Matrix rewatch was enough to spare her from the heavy mood that’d followed her back to the place she’d thought she belonged.
Joe wasn’t expecting her in Brooklyn until the next day, but she almost texted him about getting some dumplings, or a beer, or even just taking a walk along the frigid sidewalks as drunken couples spilled out of foggy-windowed bars.
She kept pulling out her phone, then putting it away again. She wasn’t in the mood to be seen.
She took a shower and let herself get a little weepy.
Grow up, MC.
Why couldn’t she seem to do that?
Sunday morning, bleary-eyed but feeling a little less dire, she used the one weapon she had against Joe descending on her apartment demanding she rehash every moment of her Thanksgiving: She told him she needed to write.
It was just an excuse, at first. She planned to take another crying shower, go out for Chinese, and chip away at a batch of marketing emails for some startup that claimed to have created a software that would allow local governments to mobilize Big Data to solve climate change.
But when she settled in at Yang Garden II with her laptop and some wonton soup, she opened the notes document she’d sent to Joe for the A-team meeting instead and read it from start to finish.
They weren’t half bad, her little observations of Nora’s character, the way she was and wasn’t like Nicole Penny.
No simple heart of gold, but an unexpected warmth under the prickly conversation.
An empathy that came from seeing people clearly, rather than a sentimental sappiness.
But the focus on Nora, she realized now, was unfair.
To both of them.
Because this wasn’t just Nora’s story, and never had been.
She inhaled her soup, jotted a few additional notes, then headed home to finish the marketing emails.
On Monday, she walked up the stairs to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at nine in the morning and shuffled in with the waiting crowd.
Past the Art Deco fortress exterior, on the other side of the tall, gold-embossed gates overlooking Grand Army Plaza, was the usual overheated, vaguely burnt smell of all public libraries in winter.
The sun shone through the tall glass windows in the study wings, shafts of illuminated dust teeming over the long tables.
She settled in by the religious books, where the people who were not of entirely sound mind were at least dependably quiet, lost in the study of various apocalypses.
On her way in, she’d taken a stroll through the fiction section, finding a well-worn copy of Girl Next Door face out on the shelves.
Now she laid it down on the table, her computer open but set to the side, a coffee steaming by her right hand. She switched her phone off.
And turned to the first page.
She’d read so many excerpts of Nora’s book over the past few months.
But her anxiety over consuming it from start to finish—as if sustained attention would be more painful than sporadic glimpses—hadn’t allowed her to appreciate the storytelling.
She already knew the writing was good. But there was also the larger structure to admire, the alternating sections a masterful build of high drama and humor.
It was so utterly Nora, confident on the surface and pensive, even tentative, underneath.
MC drank it in greedily, desperate for the connection now that all channels of communication had closed between them.
After she finished it, she read it again.
She showed up at the library, day after day, then week after week, sitting in the same chair with the same materials.
Sometimes a man would be talking furiously to himself in a British accent.
Sometimes a woman with very large holes in the back of her pants would ask MC what her shoe size was, apropos of nothing.
Sometimes teenagers would rip through the stacks, throwing their backpacks at each other as a beleaguered woman with a pink mohawk tried to chase them down, high-tops scuffing along the floor.
And sometimes someone who looked around MC’s age would sit at the other end of her table, canvas jacket zipped all the way up, crying quietly into her hands.
At some point, MC pushed a Snickers bar toward the girl, who continued to cry, but dutifully ate the treat.
Even when MC had to break focus and scamper for the bathroom, or step outside to wolf down a PB yes, they’d rode the same bus in middle school, though Nora had always sat up front, alone, with wraparound headphones firmly in place—but mostly what she ended up writing was a reflection on herself as someone else had invented her.
The total strangeness of being made fiction, and the even stranger truth that this probably happened all the time, not just in secretly semi-autobiographical books.
It was what anyone did when they were fascinated at a distance, making the object of desire both more coherent and less human than anyone really was.
It wasn’t as salacious as the usual Jawbreaker feature, but MC hoped that what she’d exposed of herself would make up for what she couldn’t uncover about Nora.
The best part was how easy it ended up being to protect their identities after all. She just had to follow Nora’s lead.
She finished the draft a week before Christmas—byline: Michaela Carson—and sent it over to Joe.
He replied within the hour.
brO.
She assumed this was positive. Her assumption was confirmed, several minutes later, when he demanded they gather for a toast that night, the two of them and Sheena and Jerome, to whom he’d forwarded the piece, at their favorite dive bar.
MC felt like she had no choice but to accept. To face her first audience and get used to the fact that she was about to do something totally insane.
When she stepped out of the subway a few hours later, a full-blown snowstorm was underway.
Her sneakers sank into the powdery drifts, her socks already soaked from the front end of the commute.
But it felt fitting. The frozen toes. The smothering wind.
The punishing hike through Bushwick, which looked abandoned that night.
When she arrived at the bar, an inconspicuous former storefront, she almost expected the bouncer to turn her away on sight.
He checked her ID and waved her inside.
Joe was over by the bar in a maroon fisherman’s sweater, his hair slicked back, his stubble finally trimmed. But the circles under his eyes were dark even in the speakeasy light.
“Haven’t seen you in a minute,” he said.
“Busy saving your ass.”
“I know. I owe you forever.” He laughed, but it sounded forced. “Seth is still holding out on the official go-ahead.”
“Because I didn’t reveal Nora’s dastardly marketing schemes?”
“I think his gripes are more about an article that uses fake names for its author and its subject.”
“He’ll approve it,” Sheena said, sidling up to MC and playing with some tinsel on the bar.
“You killed it, Michaela .” She distracted from the awkwardness by giving MC a hug.
She was wearing a backless green dress with a black collar, a severe style that showed off her glittering skin. She smelled like peppermint.
“Honestly, Seth should be kissing the ground you walk on,” Jerome said, appearing next to Joe and sipping his cosmo. “Your article’s the weirdest, most interesting thing I’ve read in a minute, MC. Almost made me not care who’s really who.”
“The fandom will care,” Joe said. “But they’re just our initial audience.”
“To MC,” Jerome said, lifting his glass. “Our rescuer from irrelevance.”
“And to this whole crew,” Sheena added. “You guys are my favorite people in the world.”
Joe and MC smiled along with them, clinking drinks. But something was off. It was probably just MC. Even with her mission complete, she felt hollow, like hard work meant nothing if you didn’t have the right person to celebrate it with.
She chugged her beer.
“You okay?” Sheena said.
MC blinked. Joe had already turned to talk to Jerome about something else. “Yeah. Fine.” She smiled. “Just tired.”
Sheena gave her a long look. “Seems like this was a pretty emotional assignment for you.”
“It might’ve gotten a little intense for a minute.”
“You’re a little intense.” She touched one of her gold hoop earrings, dipping her face slightly.
“Only sometimes.”
“I hadn’t realized that about you. I mean, I might’ve suspected.”
MC sighed. She should’ve been thrilled at this moment of overt flirtation from someone she’d been vaguely interested in for years, never once thinking she had a shot.
But the only person she seemed to want anymore was Nora.
“Sorry,” she muttered, “I need to use the restroom.”
As she waited in line with a bunch of other twenty-somethings, her phone buzzed.
All I want for Christmas is youuuu...
to be our special guest advisor again tomorrow!!
Last meeting of the semester.
(Kids keep asking about you)
This was the third such string of messages Jae had sent since Thanksgiving break. MC should’ve already told her she wasn’t coming. But she couldn’t bring herself to disappoint yet another person—or, in this case, a whole group of people.
She needed to get it over with. To tell Jae she was done with Explorations , to tell Joe she needed to distance herself from Jawbreaker after he published her article, at least for a little while.
And, since Nora was already finished with her, she needed to be finished with Nora.
And with Green Hills, and all the painful confusion that came with it, which had seemed for a few months to be resolving, only to reveal itself as the same tangled mess all over again.
Writing the article had been cathartic. But now that it was done, her heart was raw all over again.
After she relieved herself, her thumbs were hovering over her phone when Jerome pulled her back to the bar. “Joe wants to make a speech,” he said with a grin.
“A speech?”
Joe had transferred them all to a high-top table in the corner, already holding a shot glass aloft as Jerome and MC rejoined.
“I just wanted to say some shit,” he deadpanned.
“But for real. It’s been a tough year.” His eyes met MC’s for a moment.
“This isn’t an easy industry in the best of times.
When traffic is down, I stress myself out trying to figure out trends or whatever.
But the reason I got into this line of work isn’t to follow the zeitgeist. It’s to publish fucking awesome stories.
” He smiled. “As we close the year out, I think we can all say MC is the one who rose to the occasion this time.”
MC’s stomach dropped as her friends’ faces settled on hers, adoration all around.
“I know we’ve already toasted her once,” Joe added, “but this is personal. MC, you’ve always been a huge force behind everything I do.
You’re the person who not only keeps my spirits up, but advises me, guides me, and challenges me.
You’re loyal as hell, even if you weren’t the best kisser at sixteen”—Jerome and Sheena laughed—“and pretty soon the world is going to see what a genius you are, even if you still refuse to take credit in public.” His smile widened.
“Oh yeah, and Seth just sent the article to legal.”
“Let’s fucking go!” said Jerome.
They toasted, throwing their shots back. The whiskey tasted expensive. The tinsel was gleaming. Sheena was still watching MC over the lip of her glass.
She’d delivered what her best friend in the world needed most. Met expectations, and possibly exceeded them.
Everyone was happy.
She stared down at her phone.
Grow up, MC.
Maybe there were still a few loose ends that needed tying up in that department.
She ducked away from the table and started to type.