Chapter 6 #2
I don’t question it. Desperate to get a moment of quiet to corral my spiraling thoughts, I follow Rachel back to the staircase, letting her lead me down into the belly of the yacht.
It’s blissfully quiet on the lower level.
I expect her to take me to the billiards room, but she opens the door to her bedroom instead and guides me inside.
The only difference between our quarters is that Rachel’s headboard is an ornately carved piece of black wood.
And Rachel’s space is highly personalized—there is a stack of cookbooks on her end table, a yoga mat and a pair of yoga blocks in one corner, and a collage of photos—Rachel with members of her family—stuck to the wall closest to the bathroom.
“Go on, sit,” Rachel offers, nodding to her perfectly made bed.
I perch daintily on the edge of her comforter and breathe deeply. “Thanks.”
Up close and away from her sister and the others, Rachel looks different. More relaxed, more approachable. There’s an ease in her eyes, and her shoulders have dropped a whole two inches away from her ears.
She asks, “What happened? Overwhelmed by the party? I know it was a surprise.”
“Uh, yeah.” I look down at the pale gray carpet, try to memorize the crisscrossing white lines that form a pattern upon it.
The bed sinks slightly as Rachel sits next to me. “Okay, now tell me the truth.”
I glance at her. “I don’t know how much Viv has told you.”
To her credit, Rachel understands right away what I’m asking and doesn’t bother beating around the bush. “Yes, she told us your friend died. And that you need the money because you lost your job.”
“Jobs, plural,” I correct her. “Sage’s death fucked me up pretty bad.”
Rachel folds into herself, hugging her torso. “I’m sorry. It’s so hard to lose someone. Especially a friend.”
“It was a…complicated relationship.” I chew my lip, not sure if I want to elaborate.
The only person who knows the truth about what happened with Sage is Emily. And I only felt comfortable telling my sister because I knew she didn’t really understand or care about the world of book publishing, despite our mother’s love of novels.
Writing was Mom’s dream when she was younger.
But then she got pregnant with me her first year of college and her plans changed—she knew she needed a reliable job, one that could actually bring money in.
She switched her major to premed and set her sights on anesthesiology.
But apparently, she and her boyfriend hadn’t learned their lesson, because a little over a year later, Emily came along.
If I was the reason Mom didn’t become an author, Emily was the reason Mom didn’t get her romantic fairy-tale ending. Our “father” drew the line at a second baby. The man who helped create us said he was moving to California, and our mother never heard from him again.
Our grandparents helped raise us while Mom finished school.
By the time we entered high school, Mom was working as an anesthesiologist. She had the career she needed for her family, but not the career she originally wanted.
I think she always secretly hoped one of us would become an author, but Emily never showed any interest, which left me.
“You have such a vivid imagination,” my mother said after I described my imaginary friend, a massive pink spider that lived on the ceiling of our bathroom. Ani, as I called her, would talk to me when I took baths. “It’s going to make you an excellent author.”
Ani the Spider lasted longer than most children’s imaginary friends. It wasn’t until I was eleven that Ani finally faded away.
“Don’t worry,” Mom told me when I cried over my spider’s disappearance. “You’ll see things again. When you write.”
She always gave me money for books, was thrilled when I announced I wanted to major in English at UW–Milwaukee, and frequently texted me about what she was reading before she passed away.
I always wanted to make her proud. After she died, I imagined dedicating my debut novel to her. Now I’m glad my mother wasn’t around to see what happened with Sage and me. It would have broken her heart.
“What happened right now at the party?” Rachel asks, pulling my attention back to her. “When you came up to me, you looked like you had seen a ghost.”
I run my fingers through my short hair, heaving out a sigh. “I started thinking about her. Sage. She would have loved this. She is—was—a social butterfly.”
Sage would have forced me to have fun at this party, and I would have thanked her for it.
She was like a rock—Sage prided herself on being grounded, able to compartmentalize, independent enough to not need any “emotional coddling” like I did.
But also like a rock, Sage could be stern and cold—if you tripped on her and fell, well, that’s not the rock’s fault.
You should have been watching your feet.
Rachel doesn’t offer advice or pat my hand or do any of the other condescending things people have done since Sage’s death. She says, “I get it. It’s rough.”
I don’t want to think about Sage anymore. I don’t want to talk about her. It’s too much in too short a time span. I cast around the room for a change of subject, eyes landing on the yoga accessories. “Are those Ashley’s?”
Rachel glances over, a wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “No, they’re mine. We both love yoga. Before Empress, we shared an account. But when Viv recruited us, she said we’d do better separately, as different niches. That way we could cross-post.”
“So you were studying nutrition?” I ask, eager to know about everyone’s past so I can forget my own.
Rachel looks slightly uncomfortable. “Not exactly. I was a five-hundred-hour certified yoga teacher.”
“Wait. What? So why is Ashley the yoga influencer?”
Rachel’s frown grows more pronounced. “Viv thought she had a more ‘interesting’ look. Ashley is also incredibly flexible. She can get into poses like King Dancer and King Pigeon easily, while my body is a little tighter. I focused more on accessible practices. Chair yoga, wall yoga, that kind of thing. Ashley’s poses got more attention online. ”
“So Ashley’s an instructor too?” I scanned the girls’ accounts before my shower.
Nothing intense, no real deep dives, but Ashley markets herself as a Vinyasa yoga teacher.
She even teaches expensive virtual classes once a week that she films on the main deck, offering her students envious views of her luxury lifestyle and the tropical background.
“No.” Rachel glances around, lowers her voice.
“She’s…she’s not even certified. She was a bottle girl at a club before we were hired for Empress.
She would go to all my yoga classes, but she didn’t teach herself.
We were doing social media together on the side—a twin account.
Partner yoga, wellness tips, stuff like that.
Just having fun, at first. But then our mom got sick and got slammed with a huge medical bill.
We had to help pay for it. It would have taken forever if we didn’t end up here.
Empress pays so well; it changed our lives. ”
“Wow,” I murmur. “I’m sorry about your mother, but…” I don’t finish my sentence.
Ashley isn’t qualified to teach? This is fairly egregious, and Ashley’s followers would likely riot if they knew. So why is Rachel telling me this so openly and casually?
Rachel examines my expression and, once again, displays a remarkably quick assessment of whatever my face must be conveying. “All the other girls know. You’re going to be one of us. You deserve to know too. We all have our secrets. Social media is mostly fake. Right?”
I squirm internally, thinking of the conversation I overheard earlier. She has no idea how much I’m half-assing it, even if Ashley suspects. How much I dislike what we do. “Then why do we do it? If it’s all fake?”
Rachel smiles. It’s soft and sardonic. “Well, for one, because people need entertainment. Hating influencers is super popular right now. I’d say about sixty percent of our followers, both our personal ones and the ones on Empress’s page, are hate-following.
They love ragging on us for ‘doing nothing all day’ and assume we’re scam artists.
But secondly, this is a job. A real one.
Whether or not people like it. We put a lot of effort into our posts, our captions, our stories.
We have to market ourselves, market Royal Yachts.
We’re salespeople, photographers, editors, actors.
If you’re influencing right, you’re doing a full-time job.
And we deserve to be paid for that. You’re not the only one who needs money, Charlie.
All the girls here need to be here, for one reason or another. ”
I shift on the bed so I can face Rachel.
She’s right. Maybe I’m not the only one who joined Empress out of desperation.
Sure, influencing can be fun; I have a stack of advance reader copies waiting for me on my bedside table back home, and I get free book boxes and autographed novels all the time.
But it’s also work—a job I’ve struggled to do with any competency since this summer.
My eyes drift over Rachel’s shoulder, almost magnetized by an unseen force.
As if thinking obliquely about it has summoned it into existence, I spot the book on Rachel’s nightstand.
It’s half-hidden by the cookbooks, only noticeable from the bed.
This copy is a special edition—blue sprayed edges with delicate paintings of mermaids twirling through water.
The gilded cover glints in the light, the scales unmistakable.
My stomach sinks.
Rachel tilts her head, noticing my torn attention. She follows my eyes, turning around. “Oh,” she says, cheeks flushing. “Yeah. I don’t usually read romantasies, but something about this one pulled me in.”
“It’s a Greek myth retelling, you know.” My words are bitter and sharp; they cut my tongue on their way out. “Persephone and Hades, except Persephone is a mortal woman and Hades is a merman who turns her into one of his people.”
Rachel nods. “It was like everyone was getting sick of Greek myths and romantasies, until this book came along and blew people out of the water. Literally, I guess.”
“Sure,” I deadpan. “People love it.”
Rachel faces me again, raising her brows. “Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t reviewed ASOSAS. I checked out your page and couldn’t find it there. That book is everywhere. Especially because of the tragedy. So awful.”
A Song of Scales and Salt would have been a success anyway.
It hit the bestseller lists right before Sage’s death, after all.
But the fact that Sage drowned, just like her protagonist, catapulted the novel into legendary status.
The fervor around the book didn’t die with her.
In fact, it sold even more. People are ghoulish; those who were disinterested before suddenly had to get their hands on the dead girl’s book.
In the novel, the drowned protagonist comes back to life, held by the strong arms of her lover. Only what happened to Sage was real and permanent. There was no hot merman god to give her a second chance.
Yet A Song of Scales and Salt is moving forward without its author.
The promised sequels are in flux, but there’s been chatter online that the publisher is looking into hiring a ghostwriter or IP author to finish the series under Sage’s branding.
Even so, the book itself is selling like crazy.
It was optioned for film before it even came out.
It’s been translated into fifteen languages and counting.
I grit my teeth, jaw clenching as tears pool. Looking down, I lace my fingers together and will the waterworks away, taking steady breaths.
Rachel notices. “What? Charlie? You okay?” I can almost hear the gears in her mind turning as she puts two and two together. “Wait… Did you say your friend’s name was…”
Something is poisoning my insides, spreading farther and farther throughout my body. It’s gotten worse since seeing that damn book in the coffee shop. Maybe I’ll feel better if I spit it out. Maybe I should be honest like Rachel was with me.
“Yeah. Sage is the Sage.” It slips out before I can second-guess myself and decide that this is a terrible idea. “As in Sage Tartnet. The author of A Song of Scales and Salt.”
“Wait, really?” Rachel’s eyes widen.
“Yeah.” I nod, ignoring the frothing gorge in my gut. “She wrote a bestselling book about mermaids being the denizens of the underworld, and then she fucking drowned.”
“Lord,” Rachel says, inching closer. “I had no idea. Charlie, I’m sorry.”
“It gets worse,” I warn her, fiddling with my fingers.
“How?”
My tears evaporate as I meet Rachel’s gaze. It’s been so long since I’ve told someone the truth that at first, I think it won’t come. Only my sister knows the full story. But then the back of my throat unlocks and words tumble forward, picking up momentum:
“It was my idea. Sage stole my book.”