Chapter 37
Maggie arrives at Ingrid’s the next day. By now the Botox injection sites on her forehead no longer hurt, but the confusion of having her story ripped from her pages has only swollen. She turns to Ingrid, trying to figure out the best way to bring it up.
“So! Our fourth transfusion,” Ingrid says, smiling. Maggie notes how there are no wrinkles on Ingrid’s skin anywhere. She looks amazing. Jealousy stews inside her. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the money?”
“I was thinking of using it to copyright my words,” Maggie tosses out. She studies Ingrid’s reaction. There’s no sign of recognition. Just a funny look. They wait until Teresa, the nurse, gets the machine going and leaves them.
“Your words are automatically copyrighted, honey,” Ingrid says when it’s just them.
“Really?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow. She quickly corrects her face muscles, remembering Dr. Samuels’s folded paper. Ugh, is this what life’s going to be like from now on? “That’s interesting.”
“Why’s it interesting?”
Maggie comes right out and says it. “Because I saw parts of my story being used to describe Summer Rain over the weekend.”
Silence. Maggie waits, feeling the cold blast of the AC on her bare shoulders. She hadn’t meant to just blurt it out like that, but she hasn’t slept for days, and her soul’s distraught, and her anxiety’s high, and her ex’s book is going to auction, and she just needs to know, is it true?
“Where did you get that?” Ingrid finally says.
“I read it on Instagram…My roommate saw it,” Maggie says, pulling her phone out and showing Ingrid the screenshot of the Story. She hasn’t been able to bring herself to look up the actual gossip account on Instagram or follow it, but she’s pulled up the screenshot more times than she can count.
Ingrid glances at it, then rolls her eyes.
“I hope you know that account’s run by bored caterers from craft services.
And it’s not going to be like you and Vivian at all!
It’s going to be entirely different. We haven’t even decided on a writer yet.
Whoever we go with, they’re going to have a totally different vision.
I was just throwing out possibilities for some type of trauma, because that’s what the studio wanted… ”
As Ingrid tries to justify her action, Maggie can’t move.
Her mind’s unraveling. Ingrid just confirmed she took a part of her story.
Just went and took it. Didn’t even ask. She wants to scream into her fist. Wants to yank the IV out of her arm and run out of there.
Instead, she says as calmly as she can, “But it’s my story. ”
“I know. And you’re going to get to tell it. If anything, this will make it easier for your book when it’s ready.”
“How?” Maggie asks, wanting to laugh. Exactly how does stealing her story make it easier for her?
“If Summer Rain does well, which it will, it’ll make it that much easier to push your movie through when the time comes.
We live in a world of comps, Maggie. Why do you think we have so many remakes?
And movies with similar plots? I mean, just look at the hits of the past hundred years.
There’s The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan. Superbad and Booksmart… ”
As Ingrid starts naming movies, one after another, Maggie tries to figure out what to do.
Should she leave? Get up right now and walk out?
Forget the money, forget the option, and forget Ingrid helping her get an agent?
Just fucking march out and never look back?
Or should she suck it up and get over the fact that this happened to her for the sake of not closing the door on Ingrid and all the great things that she has given her…
and can still give her? As she’s thinking, a third option pops up.
What if she’s the screenwriter for Summer Rain?
Then she can control the whole script and the parts that are based on her life—and it won’t feel like misappropriation.
She’ll be the architect of her own literary destiny.
As the blood courses through them, she starts plotting how to get there.