Chapter 7
Sage and I had a ritual.
It started in college—we were both at UW–Milwaukee, taking creative writing classes and dreaming of being authors.
We sat next to each other in Classic American Literature in sophomore year and clicked immediately.
She was petite, toothy, with a short dark bob and a wardrobe that encompassed her energy: vibrant yellows, curious oranges, and outspoken reds.
Sage latched on to me, seeing someone who was shy and tentative about making friends.
We became a pair, our different personalities meshing due to our similar interests.
Sage was a welcome relief after an aborted friendship with my freshmen roommate, Yonica.
Yonica was clingy, possessive, and when she saw me branching out and making friends with other people on our hall, she accused me of ditching her.
I’d try to include her, unsure of what I was doing wrong, but it was like she only wanted to be friends with me.
Then, in our second semester, Yonica joined a sorority and told me I could no longer hang out with her.
I didn’t fight the rift that formed, but I did cut tiny, barely noticeable holes in all of Yonica’s dresses before she moved out.
Sage was different: self-possessed, creative, charming. There were others, at school. Boys and girls I’d make out with, date for a little bit, try to befriend. But everything always boiled back down to Sage. She was a star I circled around, and in return, she lit me up.
“We’ll be bestselling authors, someday, you wait,” she’d say. “I can feel it.”
When we moved in together senior year, we’d take out Sage’s boat, which was a gift from her father, floating down the river to Lake Michigan.
We’d anchor the boat before the breakwater and take out our notebooks and laptops, peeling off our clothes and slathering sunscreen on our bodies.
Sage would devilishly pull out cheap boxed wine and we’d reward ourselves for outlining our novels with pulls directly from the spout.
We’d bounce ideas off each other, read dialogue out loud to see if it flowed well.
We swapped work, critiqued each other, started and stopped a handful of different novels.
When we were satisfied, we’d jump into the freezing water, splashing, swimming around the boat. Those days, it was like we really were mermaids.
Sage and I were both searching for the “spark”—the book that could be a debut.
My spark came from one of those invigorating days on Sage’s boat.
We were out at dusk, the light slipping away, the other boats mostly gone.
A violent splash drew my attention to the bow, and I turned in time to see a massive, scaled tail thrash on the surface and then vanish.
“Sturgeon,” Sage insisted. “Do you know how big those things can get?”
I knew she was right, but I couldn’t help imagining a mermaid.
A creature with an iron-colored tail and dark eyes, beautiful and haunting.
I could almost see it, twisting under the waves.
The idea built from there, solidifying and stretching until I sensed its bones—a book.
A story. My debut. Finally, I had my spark. I had something real to work on.
When we graduated, Sage and I kept living together—me making ends meet with multiple jobs, Sage “furthering her studies” and researching grad schools, bankrolled by her father.
But one day every week, we’d take out the boat to talk about our work.
When the frigid winter would arrive, we’d stay up well into the night at the apartment instead, talking through our stories with cabernet-stained lips.
My idea—a retelling of the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades except with mermaids—had taken hold of me, but I was struggling to start writing.
There were notes, quotes, lines, and plot beats scribbled in my trusty Moleskine, a present from Sage.
But I couldn’t quite figure out where I wanted the story to start, and I was holding off on drafting until I wrote a clearer outline.
Sage was, I thought, being helpful. She put aside her own project, a state fair–themed rom-com, to help me talk it through.
We’d discuss the unfurling of the romantic relationship between Paia, the Persephone stand-in, and Hender, the Hades love interest; the aesthetic of the murky, silty Underworld of the mermaids; the pivotal point of the story where Hender releases Paia back to the mortal world only for her to drown trying to return to him.
Sage knew my story as well as I did. And I suppose she didn’t want to wait for me to write it. She knew a potential payday when she saw one.
What I didn’t realize until it was too late was that while I was at work, struggling to find any free time to write, Sage was back at the apartment, supported by Daddy’s credit card, writing down everything we had talked about the night before. Writing my book.
With no real job to get in her way, Sage was able to write the first draft in a month.
From there, things happened quickly. Sage didn’t share any of this with me in real time, of course.
I read about it later in a high-profile interview she did with a national outlet.
Sage knew better than to clue me in on her subterfuge.
She kept it quiet, tight to her chest. She let me blather on about a book that was already written while she was fielding ten offers of representation from agents after only a few weeks of querying.
When her chosen powerhouse agent sold A Song of Scales and Salt at auction a month later, Sage said nothing. She waited until the deal announcement was live to pull me aside one night after I returned to the apartment from nannying.
There was a bit of crusted vomit on my shirt when she told me.
“You should be happy,” she said, shaking her head at my agog expression. “Come on, Char, you know you were never going to write it. You were going to do what you always do: write fifty pages, decide it’s not working, and move on to the next idea. This way, the story actually gets out there!”
“Are you serious?” I thought she was fucking with me. My best friend did not steal my idea and get a book—my book—published behind my back.
“See, this is why I didn’t tell you! I knew you wouldn’t get it. You wouldn’t be able to be happy for me.”
“How the fuck would I be happy for you, Sage?” I had screamed. “You stole my book!”
“You can’t copyright an idea.” She had the decency to look away, unable to meet my eye. “You can still write your own mermaid myth retelling. Authors writing different iterations of the same story has happened for centuries. Go for it.”
“This was mine. You didn’t tell me because you knew it was wrong. And because you wanted to get there first.”
“It’s not like I stamped my name on your manuscript and sold it! And it was as much mine as it was yours. I helped with a lot of it. All the beats and relationships—that wasn’t only you, you know,” she protested. “I was inspired by you, all right? I’ll thank you in my acknowledgments.”
“Sage, really? You know this is fucked up. Come on. We’re friends.” My voice broke, and I started crying. I knew, then, it was already too late. She had contracts signed. She had money coming in.
Sage watched me shudder, her face tight and pale.
“You know, my publisher is rushing the production schedule. They want to capitalize on the tail end of the romantasy craze. The book will be out this coming summer. I’m going to be really busy to make that timing work.
I think…I think it’d be best if I move out. ”
For a while, I fought back. I cajoled. I threatened legal action.
I compromised. Nothing worked. Finally, after asking Sage if she would consider adding me as a coauthor, she blocked me.
When I tried to message her on social media, begging her to reconsider, to tell the truth and give me at least some of the credit, she blocked me there too.
As the marketing and promo for the book took off, clearly delineating A Song of Scales and Salt as a title the publisher was throwing their money behind and Sage a debut author to “watch out for,” my resolve flatlined.
I moved into survival mode, picking up more shifts at the coffee shop to cover Sage’s absent half of the rent.
I got a new roommate, who lasted four months before she moved out to shack up with her boyfriend instead.
Then I was alone again, struggling to pay my bills.
The whole time I continued to run @ChaptersWithCharlie for one reason only—I wanted to get my hands on an advance copy of A Song of Scales and Salt.
I wanted to see what I was dealing with.
Late last winter, it happened. Of course Sage hadn’t told her publisher about me. Why would she admit she blatantly ripped off my idea? So when I requested a digital ARC, the publisher’s marketing team took one look at my growing bookstagram account and sent me a copy.
It was Sage’s writing, but it was my book. The plot I carefully outlined, the relationships I jotted notes about, even some of the dialogue—it was mine.
I read the whole thing in one night, and when I finished, I vomited into the bathtub.
After, I let depression claim me for a while. I only talked to Emily about it, realizing how few friends I had without Sage in my life.
“Can’t you sue?” my sister asked on the phone, sounding distracted, my nephew squabbling in the background.
“I can’t afford it,” I said miserably. “And I don’t think I have enough evidence. I never wrote a draft. And if I make a public statement, I’m worried Sage and her team of lawyers might come after me for defamation or something. Drag me around the court system, which I also can’t afford.”
“Then I think you need to try to let this go,” Emily said. “Try to move on.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t sleep. I lost my book and my best friend in one fell swoop. Had Sage gotten a huge deal on her own merit, I would have been nagged by a bit of jealousy, but I would have been truly happy for her.
This was different. This crushed me.
I tried one more time, after Sage hit the bestseller lists. The book was out in the world. People loved it. A movie was being made. If there was ever a time for her to right her wrongs, it was now.
I begged her to do the right thing, to come clean.
Even after what she did, I hoped maybe we could be friends again, someday.
We’d been best friends for four years. It was hard to throw that all away, reconcile the girl I was so close to with the one who was stealing my idea and making a fortune off it.
And who knows? Maybe one day she would have told the truth.
I had hope. She knew, deep down, she did something wrong—that’s why she didn’t tell me what she was doing.
The Sage I knew could be callous and selfish, but she was also supportive and optimistic.
I held on to that faith in her, thinking that perhaps despite everything that happened, Sage would eventually make things right.
But she drowned instead, and my hope died with her.