Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
S
tupid key.
Stupid lock.
After thirty seconds of jiggling, wiggling, and profanity-shouting, the door flung open.
“ROOMIE! How’ve you been? The weather is so nice today!”
“Hey. Sorry for all my racket. Had trouble with the key again.” I moved past Beth and plopped down on the couch.
“Two things, Roomie. One, we’re backpack twins! I can’t believe we have the same one! Let me guess, Amazon’s top choice for back-to-school? Gray JanSport for the win! A school classic, like good old-fashioned Coca-Cola, am I right?”
When I didn’t reply and got up from the couch, she followed me all the way to my room. “Second thing, your friend is here. Mia, the Awkwafina look-alike. And I’m not saying that because I don’t know what I’m talking about, she dead-on looks like my girl Nora.”
It was true, Mia was mistaken for Awkwafina all the time. She loved it, or hated it, depending on her mood.
“Mia’s here?” I pulled out the free ASA T-shirt from my backpack and handed it to Beth. “Here, you can have this.”
She unrolled the tee and then hugged it to her body. “I appreciate your generosity. Thank you.”
What she didn’t know yet was that I had a nearly identical shirt that I slept in, albeit rattier and worn in the ringed collar, left over from my college days. It was one of my few mementos from that era. My heart swelled with pride knowing that my T-shirt design had lasted so many years and the logo was still used by the organization.
Beth asked, “Do you think having the same backpack is like a personality test? Because it combines a lot of things, like color affinity, price sensitivity, and other attributes. Personally, I think if anything, it means we’re a lot alike and meant to be BFFs.”
I shrugged. “Or it could simply mean that Amazon served us the same ad that we both clicked on, right?”
She tilted her head. “But that also would mean that we had a similar profile for the Amazon algorithms to say, ‘Aha! These people are likely to click on this because we have a shit ton of data on them and they basically have the same tastes.’”
Beth had a point. Damn, she was right about how algorithms work. I bought my backpack a few weeks ago, so we weren’t even sharing the same IP address, therefore I couldn’t explain it with that. Beth was smart and insightful for such a young person. Who knew, she could possibly be my white soul sister backpack twin. A shiver traveled down
my spine as I literally shuddered at the notion that boisterous Beth was more like me than I had thought. She veered away to the bathroom as I turned the doorknob to my room. Mia sat cross-legged on my bed, drinking a White Claw. “How was school, dear? Did you make any new friends?”
I groaned. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I need that drink.”
She handed it to me. “You hate White Claw. That bad, eh? Now I’m curious.”
“I saw Jake.” I took a swig and burped, remembering why I hated the Claw.
Her jaw hung open. “What? How? Did you kick him where it counts? Did he not finish his degree either?”
I coughed on my next sip. “No, I took the high road and didn’t punch him in the nuts. Not finishing college is uniquely my failure. But yeah, I saw him, and somehow restrained myself from ball kicking.”
“So . . . what’s he look like now? Hot or not? Swipe left or right?”
My memories flashed from earlier that day. His handsome face. Muscular chest. Sardonic smile. That hair I badly wanted to tangle my fingers in, and those ripped arms pushing against the fabric of his T-shirt.
“Your scrunched face suggests he’s either super attractive or the exact opposite. I’m guessing . . . hot . . . or you would be in a much better mood. Did you catch up with him? Why is he on campus?”
“He’s my TA,” I squeaked.
She yelped. “For your TikTok class?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s called Building a Global Audience and Influencer Culture, thank you very much, and I told my mom I’d take this course to help my career. But the Jake class is for the new STEM requirement for liberal arts majors, and if I pass, it happens to complete my degree. He’s the TA for the computer science class, and getting a PhD, if you can believe it. I actually saw him at the market the other day but didn’t realize it was him.”
“Holy shit.” She fell back into a cushion. “That’s a lot to take in.” She grabbed the White Claw can from me and chugged. “Random question, does he dress like a grown-up now? He wore sleeveless shirts and basketball shorts year-round. I can’t picture him in khakis, or whatever wannabe professors wear.”
A laugh burst out of me. “He’s going with a half glow up. He wears regular adult clothing on top, but still rocks his shorts on the bottom.”
She grinned. “Good for him.”
“I’m hoping he’ll ignore me and not acknowledge that I’m in his class. But I might drop it anyway. I think it’s going to be hard.” I sighed.
“Taking a CS class
does
sound hard, but I know you’ll do well in your courses. You know what they say about graduating, right? Cs get degrees. So don’t stress yourself out. I know how you can get, overworking and winding yourself into a tight ball of worry, and you need to make sure you keep things in check, per your therapist’s orders.”
She was right, of course. According to my therapist, I needed to try to find balance. My external validation mental model affected my self-esteem, which as of late was in a precarious state thanks to my incapability of meeting my next book deadline and being so wrongfully confident in my Carlthorpe alumna status. I needed to work on getting my life back in order, in as mentally healthy a way as possible.
Mia asked, “So back to Jake, are you two good? Did you make up after . . . you know? I honestly don’t remember how you eventually left things.”
How did we leave things? Badly. That’s how. He quit on me when I needed him the most, and I could never forgive him for that. I never returned his calls or emails when he wanted to apologize later. Maybe I should have responded, because now karma was truly being a supreme bitch. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, which came out as an annoyed sigh.
“So not good.” Mia read me like a book.
“Not good,” I confirmed. “Let’s change the subject and change locations.” We stood and she followed me to the living room.
I asked, “Remind me why you’re here? I thought you were coming here only on weekends.”
“I wanted to be your emotional support animal your first week, and I miss having you around. Also, my apartment is being painted and I didn’t realize how disruptive that could be. There are all these plastic sheets everywhere, like a fucked-up serial killer set up shop. And something else, I
was just about to message you. The O’Hara twins are going to be on CNN tonight.”
Mia grabbed the remote from the coffee table, pressed the Live TV button, and set it back down.
“And why are we watching this? To torture me?” I took the can from her hand again and chugged the rest of the White Claw.
“Other than to hate-watch, we need to do research on your competition and figure out how they’re pitching the book so you can learn from it.”
I leaned forward and pulled a few Ruffles from the nearly empty bag in Mia’s lap. Delicious, but way better with French onion dip, which I’d polished off earlier in the week.
“And what if I still don’t want to watch, even as a learning opportunity?” I asked.
She sighed. “Okay, full confession, I was planning for this to be, like, ten percent learning exercise, the rest . . . a petty bitch snark session. You know, a pick-me-up.”
“Is this really what we’ve come to? Eating chips, drinking White Claw, and making fun of the O’Haras?”
“Yes!” Mia said with zero hesitation. “Especially if they’re being featured on TV using a book concept that’s nearly identical to yours, basically stealing your idea, saying
you
inspired them. And
especially
if one of the coauthors is a mansplainy dude writing about women in the workplace.”
Beth came out of her bedroom and sat on the nearby rocking chair. “I have to agree with Mia, if they really stole your idea, that’s savage.” She smiled at me. “Sorry, I was
eavesdropping. I’m so glad you’re my roomie. I know you’re all famous and all, but I’m relieved you’re, like, a normal person. And so what if you have friends who visit us unannounced.” She looked over at Mia. “I mean that in the best way possible, you’re like the neighborhood stray cat who shows up on the porch. But everyone feeds her, because we all love her and could use her company, because let’s face it, we’re all a little bit lonely sometimes.”
And with that bizarre yet profound comment, she turned up the volume on the remote just as Cameron O’Hara appeared on-screen with the caption “Cameron O’Hara, coauthor of the trailblazing
You Go, Girl!
book, up next” running along the bottom.
My phone buzzed with a notification. It was Amanda, with a late-night friendly reminder about my overdue manuscript. She also attached the original contract, with highlighted excerpts of all the paragraphs related to the deliverable dates cut and pasted in the email, making it painfully clear I had missed the deadline. As I quickly skimmed the document to see if there was any wiggle room with the date, my heart nearly stopped when I came to the indemnities section, which I hadn’t paid attention to before because it hadn’t been a concern . . . until now. Specifically, the part that read in bold:
The Author has not misrepresented academic or other credentials and will not provide any false or materially misleading documents concerning the work . . .
My stomach dropped. “Ohhhhhh shit-shit-shit-shit-fuck.”
Mia grabbed the phone from my hand. Her eyes widened
when she came across the same section. “Ohhhhhh shit-shit-shit-shit-fuck is right. Does your editor know anything about what’s going on with you?”
I shook my head, speechless from this discovery.
She read the email. “Okay, well, it doesn’t look like this Amanda person knows about your situation and isn’t calling you out on this. Maybe no one has to know. Maybe you can lay low and say you’re at some kind of solo writing retreat and unreachable to the outside world. I can update your social media so it says you’re taking a break or something.”
My shoulders sagged. Amanda was a stickler for the rules, and if she found out I never actually graduated from Carlthorpe, the publisher could take back my advance and cancel my contract. It said so in bold Times New Roman twelve-point font. The other big problem, other than the sheer embarrassment of being a career advice expert and not having a Carlthorpe degree to my name, was that I’d used my entire advance to pay for these college classes. If they took that back, I would go into serious debt, and that in turn would affect my credit score, and . . . oh God . . .
Mia looked me straight in the eyes. “Look, it’s only four months. You can come clean and tell your publisher what’s happening, but honestly I think you can manage to not draw attention to yourself in that time, right? Just get through your classes and focus on passing them, turn in some pages and ask for feedback, and stall a bit. If you don’t get your degree, everything you’ve built these years will blow up big-time. No advance, no contract, no career.”
I swallowed hard and nodded. As a PR professional, Mia
was an expert in crisis management. She was right, that focusing on my schoolwork would get me my degree, and then my background check would clear. Leaning back into the couch, I briefly contemplated coming clean to my editor. But the contract I signed was crystal clear, and I’d recently committed a blatant violation by approving my author bio for the publisher’s website.
It was only four months. Then I could tackle all the issues other than the completion of my college degree. Dealing with one problem at a time was a reasonable approach. Maybe I’d get lucky and in four months all these problems would go away.
Beth handed me a fresh can of White Claw. “You’ll probably need that more than me.”
Mia booed when the O’Haras came on-screen for the interview. “They called them
trailblazing
in their introductions. Trailblazing, my ass!”
A perfect distraction to my “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” dilemma. The O’Haras. People like Cameron O’Hara were born to be on national cable news shows. Poised and perfectly groomed, he answered the interviewer’s questions with polish and ease, something I wished came naturally to me. And when asked the question I hoped would stump him, it didn’t. “You want to know why this book is groundbreaking? Well, for one, you get a glimpse into the O’Hara mogul life, which we’ve closed off for the sake of privacy up until now. We rarely even have Warren and Mark over to talk shop. Oh, that’s Warren
Buffett
and Mark
Zuckerberg
, for your viewers. The other way our book is
revolutionary is that we share the perspective of women via my sister’s point of view, and then you have mine, someone who cares deeply about helping people like my sister succeed.”
Mia shouted at the television. “Gross, you just admitted to nepotism, you loser!”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her outburst. “Can we turn this off please? I’ve heard enough, and seeing as how you pounded the bag of chips with both fists so there are merely potato particles now, you may have hit your douche bro limit today.”
We all scrambled to find the remote, which each of us swore we were not in possession of, and my ears perked up at Cameron’s casual mentioning of my name.
“Lily Lee’s book really got our attention, making us realize there are so many people Mary and I can help, and we didn’t know there was a market for it until Lily’s book came along and so many people bought it. We loved her ‘everyday woman’ approach to content, with interviews and surveys of women in middle and upper management, and cute graphics on every page. But we wanted to create motivational books for
serious
women invested in taking their careers to the next level. Not that there’s anything wrong with Lily’s fun approach.” His words made my stomach lurch and drop. My book was frothy and frivolous in his mind, whereas his was a canon masterpiece.
But then his next comments slapped me in the face. “Our book includes sections about prominent thought leaders, written by, well, thought leaders. You want a career guide
written by successful, leading business experts. That’s the main difference between our book and others on the shelves.”
It was clear that by
others
, he meant mine.
Yes . . . in the first book of my series I included surveys and interviews with highlights and sound bites. I added voices other than my own to offer perspective and experiences about management and leadership broader than just mine. And yes, there were graphics and eye-catching designs within the pages, which the publisher thought would draw in a lot of new readers, and they were right. But what Cameron had just said on the evening news in front of millions of viewers was essentially “Lily Lee is a nobody. And she wrote a book for nobodies.”
I shook my head. “That dirty little—”
Beth let out a primal scream into one of her I’
M
100% S
UNSHINE
& C
AFFEINE
cross-stitched throw pillows. Then she lodged all the cushions on the couch at Cameron’s face. “I’m never one to talk trash about a person, but that guy is a huge bona fide butthole. And trust me, coming from me that’s saying something.”
“Bona fide butthole is right.” Mia managed to find the remote under her ass and turned off the television. “Well, if that’s not motivation to get back out in the work world and write your next book, Lily, I don’t know what is. Fuck that guy.”
Yeah. Fuck that guy. “You’re right. If you’ll excuse me, I have a homework set to do tonight and a book to write.”
I thought Jake being my TA would be challenging enough,
but even more problematic would be stepping away from publishing and letting the O’Haras be the loudest career expert voices out there.
No. I couldn’t let that happen. Shutting my bedroom door, I downloaded the CS textbook onto my computer and started the required reading.