Chapter 5
The shower is amazing.
The sweat and dirt from my travels sloughs off my skin under the hot water and steam. After, I wrap myself up in a cozy white towel and flop on to the bed that is now mine, the contents of my duffel bag already strewn across the room.
How long does this gig last anyway? I wonder, looking at my belongings.
Viv said it would be a contract position that would likely go by a monthly basis, but she never gave me an estimate or a number.
I open my phone’s Notes app and begin to list all the things I’ll need to get taken care of back home at my apartment, and all the supplies I’ll need for my stay on Empress.
Fiona gave me the Wi-Fi password before leading me down to my room, and now I am getting a stream of notifications as my phone comes back online.
I shoot off a message to my sister, giving her an update on the new job and Empress.
She replies surprisingly fast:
Are you serious? I follow that Viv girl! I need details later.
My chest warms. Maybe this job will allow Emily and I to get closer too.
She’s younger than me, but she’s already found her soulmate, settled down, and started a family.
Of course, that kind of trajectory is typical in Wisconsin, where half the state marries after they graduate, but it’s caused a disconnect between us. Our lives are very different.
A notification appears at the top of my screen—Instagram. What a surprise. Reluctantly, I open the app.
It’s been hard to run my account since Sage’s death.
To be honest, it was hard to run the page before that too.
Once I found out about A Song of Scales and Salt, I was too demoralized to post as often as I used to.
But @ChaptersWithCharlie was functioning enough to get me a job on Empress, so maybe I shouldn’t complain about how much it annoys me.
It’s also been keeping me afloat—a few sponsored posts I lined up right before Sage’s death gave me the funds to get to Florida and feed myself, which isn’t nothing.
When my former best friend died, I couldn’t go back to my job at the coffee shop.
We spent so much time together there. We talked about books and writing and our publishing dreams while sitting at the espresso bar.
I quit over email, fingers heavy as I typed out the message on my phone.
Not long after that, I got fired from my nanny position when I forgot to pick up Ellie from preschool.
It was for the best. The little girl had noticed my mood change, kept asking me why my face was so sad.
I didn’t know how to tell her that my friend drowned after hitting a bunch of bestseller lists.
The only stream of revenue that stayed in my life was @ChaptersWithCharlie. And even though I hated it because it reminded me of everything I had lost, its pocket change kept me alive until I had the wherewithal to start a real job search.
But if I get one more DM or comment asking me to review A Song of Scales and Salt, I am going to tear my skin off.
I finish “liking” and responding to people’s comments on my latest post—a short video of me flipping through the hot new thriller all the celebrities are apparently raving about—and throw my phone on the bedspread.
I do this because I have to, not because I like it.
It’s draining to adopt a persona so different from who I am in real life—the bookstagrammer I pretend to be is cheery, friendly, and positive, not anxious and sarcastic.
I’ll have to find a way to hide my disconnect from @ChaptersWithCharlie when I’m around the other girls.
I need this—the money—and I also need the content.
Working on Empress will create an influx of followers, which means more partnerships, more money, more connections.
Maybe I can leverage this for a better job, and retire @ChaptersWithCharlie for good.
I could get a real marketing job, perhaps.
Or be a social media coordinator for a company that washes cars or sells birdseed.
Anything that gets me away from my past life and lets me forget what happened.
It’s difficult staying in bookish spaces when I can’t write anymore.
“Ashley, wait!” The voice comes from the hallway outside my room, muffled and faint.
I sit up, perking toward the closed door. With the towel still clutched around my chest, I quietly ease from the bed and creep over, pressing an ear against the seam between door and frame.
Footsteps, pattering past my room. The hiss of an inhale. Then momentary silence.
“I’m sorry I’m not jumping for joy.” I can barely make out the voices through the ambient hum of the yacht, but it sounds like they’re farther down the hall, near the billiards room.
“She seems nice,” the first voice says.
I can’t help it. Softly, gently, like I’m trying not to wake a sleeping baby, I twist the handle and let the door to my cabin crack open a centimeter.
A glance at the sliver of hallway tells me that whoever is talking isn’t in front of my room, so hopefully they won’t notice that my door is ajar.
And now I can hear the speakers much better.
“It’s too soon. And what was that outfit? I don’t think she’s a good fit.”
It’s the twins, I realize. And they’re talking about me.
I rack my brain, trying to picture their accounts in my head. Ashley, the one with plastic surgery, does yoga. And Rachel does…wellness? No, nutrition!
“Come on, don’t be that way, Ashley,” Rachel admonishes her twin.
“There’s something fake about her,” Ashley insists, then lowers her voice as if Rachel has given her a warning look. “Did you look at her page? How she sounds in her videos and captions doesn’t match with the girl we just met.”
“So? She’s probably nervous.”
“Did you see that video she posted last week? You can’t tell me that’s the same person as the awkward chick who looked at all of us like we were zoo animals earlier,” Ashley whispers, the sizzle of her voice carrying down the hall to my door.
I know what video she’s talking about. It’s me, posing with a debut rom-com, smiling, dressed in an outfit that exactly matches the bright, colorful cover.
In the video, I confidently give the book five stars, even reading the FMC’s monologue about online dating out loud like I’m auditioning to be the audiobook narrator.
In reality, I found the characters too treacly sweet and the dialogue clunky.
But it’s easy to lie online. Especially when you’re pretending to be someone else. Someone you used to be very close to.
Nevertheless, Ashley’s words sting my cheeks. I shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but it’s too late to stop now. It’s like picking off a scab—it hurts, but I have to see what’s underneath.
“Stop it, Ashley,” Rachel murmurs. “I hate when you do this.”
A pause. “Do what?”
“You know what. Pretend to be ruder than you are.”
Ashley scoffs. “This is who I am. Not everyone is as sweet and pure as you.”
“Ashley,” Rachel says, her voice weary.
“What?” Ashley continues. “We might be twins, but that doesn’t mean we have the same personality.” Then softer, so low I almost can’t hear her, she adds, “We can’t.”
The hallway is silent for so long I begin to think the twins have left, but finally Rachel’s voice comes again. “Give her a chance. We all have to work together.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess we do.” Ashley’s response sounds weighted and resigned.
There’s a flutter of creaks and clicks from the hallway as the twins disperse into their separate rooms, and I silently close my own door, backpedaling to collapse back down on the bed.
So Ashley already doesn’t like me. I’m not really surprised.
I don’t fit in here, with these glamorous, gorgeous influencers.
What’s worse is that she’s already pinpointed me as inauthentic, even from our brief introduction.
If she can see through me that easily, why can’t the others?
Why did Viv even hire me? Maybe everyone will brush it off as first-day jitters, but I have to convincingly adopt my bookstagram persona fast if I want to make it here.
Plinking drips of water interrupt my train of thought. They are steady, rhythmic. Coming from the bathroom. I slowly sit up again, the towel damp around my body.
I must have left the shower on. Sighing, I ease to my feet and step from the soft carpet to the slick tile, spotted with puddles.
The foggy glass door of the shower swings open, but when I touch the handle, it’s already twisted all the way to the right. No water falling to the floor here. The dripping isn’t coming from the faucet of the sink either.
Pausing in the center of the small bathroom, I cock my head, listening.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Where’s it coming from?” I say out loud, spinning around the bathroom, looking for sources of the leak.
There’s nothing.
I suddenly feel exposed, in nothing but a towel, even though the door to my room is shut and locked. A shiver caresses my skin, spitting goose bumps along my forearms. The drips begin to come faster, a frantic energy to their melody now.
A pipe. That must be it. One of the pipes is leaking. I’ll tell Viv, and it’ll get fixed.
I turn away from the shower stall, glancing at the mirror, which is clouded by steam.
I don’t want to linger, looking at the hint of my reflection; I don’t want to be reminded of the incident in the bathroom before.
But as my eyes glide across the misty surface, a dark shape lurches up behind me like a whale breaching in fog.
The drips stop. The scent of salt overpowers the tiny space, invading my senses.
The fibers of the towel dig into my palms as I clutch it tightly around my body.
I whirl around, but the shower is empty, its door is closed.
When I glance back at the mirror, the reflective surface is becoming clearer as the steam slowly dissipates from the room.
My cheeks are stained pink, and my pixie cut is a damp, tousled mess. But there’s nothing else.
No shape. No face. No dripping. It no longer smells like salt, only perfumed soap and lotion.
“It’s fine,” I insist, nodding to my reflection. “Everything is going to be fine.”