Chapter 23
Maggie points to herself in the bathroom mirror.
“Prove yourself. That’s what greatness requires. You want to be great, don’t you?”
She puts on another coat of City Dawn and nods briskly at her reflection.
Did it hurt, hearing her idea come out of Ingrid’s mouth and not hearing her name associated anywhere near it?
Of course it did. She’s never been snubbed so cleanly of a contribution before.
But she can’t let that tiny fact distract her from the whopper of good news—Ingrid wants to option her book!
Maggie grabs her jacket, delicately draping it over her shoulder, just like Ingrid always wears hers, and struts out the door to go meet her writer friends from college. Finally, she’s on the same level as them!
—
In the cab ride over to the bar, she FaceTimes Mom. She shows her parents the Chrysler Building as her taxi edges toward the East Village.
“Look! Do you see it?” she asks.
“Yes! Yes! We see! How was your meeting?” Mom asks, looking up from her soft noodles. Maggie’s glad she’s eating again. The first of the extraction surgeries had gone well.
“It was amazing,” Maggie says. “They absolutely loved my ideas!”
“What ideas?” Dad asks, ironing his janitor uniform.
“Just uh…some marketing stuff,” Maggie says.
She feels less bad lying now that Ingrid’s confirmed her book is good.
It’s going to be a thing; she can feel it!
With Ingrid’s option interest, she bets the literary agents will change their tune!
The thought bubbles up…Should she send out a few new queries with this updated information?
She’s temporarily distracted by the sight of a young Chinese girl, about twelve or thirteen, walking through Murray Hill with her mom. She suddenly remembers why she called her parents. “Oh hey, by the way, do you guys still have any of my old journals from when I was a kid?”
“You mean those old cheetah-spotted ones? Think we threw them all away when we move to LA.”
“Oh.”
“What you need those for?”
“It’s…for my book,” Maggie musters up the courage to say.
There’s silence on the other line.
“I thought you were writing thriller about blackjack,” Mom finally says.
“Well, I don’t know. Vegas in general. What it was like growing up there, I guess.”
“What about it?” Mom puts the phone up to her eyeball.
“Anyway, just look for them, will you?” Maggie quickly gets off with her parents.
She doesn’t know why it’s so much harder to talk to her parents about what happened when she was a kid than to Ingrid on the plane.
They still don’t know what happened at Vivian’s.
They just thought she had a fight with Charlotte that Christmas and didn’t want to go back.
As the years passed, Maggie’s questions multiplied.
Why did they let her go to a stranger’s house?
What did they think was happening at Vivian’s?
Every time, though, guilt or fear prevented her from asking. She didn’t want to hurt her mom. Nor did she need her mom to remind her of all the shit that was going on in her own life at the time. When your parents have sacrificed as much as hers have, do you still get to ask questions?
—
“Maggie!” Danielle, her friend who took the Narrating Change seminar with her, greets her when she walks into the bar.
Danielle’s debut novel, set in the Caribbean about a Black music prodigy, had sold virtually overnight to Penguin in a six-house auction, but as Danielle leans in for a hug, her long knotless braids framing her warm brown cheeks, she has zero airs about her. “It’s so good to see you!”
“You, too!” Maggie says, hugging her back.
She turns and hugs the others. There’s Liz, whose collection of essays is coming out with HarperCollins in the spring; Ava, who, last Maggie heard, had just landed a major agent; and Aleena, a journalist who didn’t even need an agent—just sold her nonfiction book on proposal.
There’s so much literary success at the table, it almost chokes Maggie.
“So what are you in town for?” Danielle asks, gesturing for the waitress to bring them a margarita pitcher and some chips and guac. “Did you land an agent? Are we celebrating?”
“Not yet.” Maggie shrinks a little at the admission. “I mean, I have a novella that I’m turning into a novel. I’m really excited about it. In fact, I just heard that a producer’s interested in optioning it.”
“Get out!” Danielle erupts. “Who’s the producer?”
“Ingrid Parker.”
“The Ingrid Parker?!” Ava asks. Maggie grins, taking a sip from her margarita. Ava springs forward, and her gold hoop earrings dangle against her dark curls. “And you still don’t have an agent?”
Maggie feels the impatience twitching in her fingertips. “Not yet, but—”
“Girl, you need to query with that ASAP.”
“You think I should?” Maggie asks.
“Absolutely!” they bark at her.
“It’s not, like, for sure yet,” Maggie admits, biting her lower lip.
“Still, interest is interest. It’ll get their attention!” Liz tells her.
“OK, we need to educate you on the reality of the publishing industry,” Danielle says. “This whole industry is built on the potential of hype. That’s how it works. Did you know that ninety-six percent of books sell less than a thousand copies?”
Maggie laughs. She’s joking, right? That can’t be true. But everyone around the table nods, dead serious.
“Fifty percent of books sell fewer than twelve copies. We found out that fascinating detail in the Simon & Schuster–Penguin Random House DOJ trial,” Danielle adds.
“That’s like you put a copy of your book in everyone’s gift bag at a birthday party.
And that’s it. Your reach as an author starts and ends at that table. ”
Maggie’s mouth forms an O.
“How does the industry survive, then?” Maggie asks. “What about all those six-figure deals that you read about?”
“It survives on the very few books that break out every year,” Liz says. “The lucky ones.”
“And the only way to blow up is through TikTok, which we can’t control,” Danielle says, sticking out her thumb, counting the ways on her fingers. “Or if it’s a celebrity book club pick.”
“Which, again, you have no control over,” Ava adds.
“Or if it gets optioned and becomes a movie.” Aleena grabs her and grins. Maggie chuckles at her over-the-top enthusiasm. “Don’t you see? You’ve got to use that to land the agent. Now!”
Maggie feels the intoxicating effect of what if take her over as she glances down at her phone.
Are they right? Is she stupid to sit on this interest?
What would Ingrid want her to do? Her face tenses when she thinks back to how Ingrid abruptly changed the subject on the plane when she brought up literary agents.
OK, so Ingrid probably wouldn’t want her to query. But what does she want to do?
“Shouldn’t I try to expand it into a novel first? With Ingrid?” Maggie asks.
“Your new agent will want to be part of that process, I’m sure.” Danielle picks up her drink and offers sincerely, “All I’m saying is, if I were you, I wouldn’t wait. You don’t know when this option interest will disappear. It’s hard enough breaking into this industry as a woman of color as it is.”
Maggie nods, appreciating her friend’s words. It never occurred to her that Ingrid might go back on what she said, but you never know. She glances over at her phone again.
Maybe it’s the strong margarita or the power of being surrounded by women who all shot their shot or the fact that she just successfully convinced an author and a studio to make a freaking movie based on her idea, but that night, Maggie chooses herself over the story. She chooses now over patience.