Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 116362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 582(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 582(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
My lip curls. “No.” I shake my head. “He’s not a babe or an anything except a fuckfart.”
“Fuckfart,” she repeats. “New word?”
I sigh. “Yes, but don’t use it, it’s patented. Anyway, I’m paired up with him for the final project in Marie’s class. I have to write a novella with him.”
I expect her to make a face but she’s still smiling. Must be the Percocet cocktail.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” she says, wiggling her fingers, her prismatic gel nails catching the light.
“No,” I admonish her, twisting in my seat to see her better. “It’s not going to be fun, Ana. You know how important this class is to me. He’s some playboy who thinks he’s on an extended vacation. He doesn’t take anything seriously. His email is proof of that, and he’s going to sink my grade. On purpose now.”
She doesn’t look as worried as I feel she should. I mean, she does realize that if I fail, she’ll have to hear about it until she ends up moving in with the Nigerian. “Have you talked to your teacher? Or him?”
“Both. Kind of. I bumped into him on my run, but at the time I hadn’t read his email yet. I was actually nice to him. Nice!”
She turns back to the TV, the adventures of Eduardo the doctor enthralling her once again. “Maybe it’s good. Let you be the bigger character.”
“I don’t want to be the bigger character.”
Ana gives me an earnest look. “Do you want me to deal with him?” she asks in such a measured voice that I move back from her an inch.
“Uh no, that’s okay.” Whether she knows some old Soviet murder technique or just wants to yell at him while shoving her boobs in his face, I say hell no to her involvement.
“Suit yourself,” she says with a shrug.
I head to my room and think about texting Rio, but she’ll just tell me to pull up my big girl panties, put on some gangsta rap, and deal with it. I then think about writing the appropriate rebuttal to Blake, but I stop myself. He’ll get an earful tonight at the library, and if he refuses to apologize or budge an inch, then I’m taking it to Marie with that email as proof.
Emboldened with my new resolve, I shower and get dressed and head to school to catch my back to back classes of Early American Literature and Journalism, even though I can’t concentrate on a goddamn thing. When they’re over, I’ve got two hours before I have to meet with Blake, and there’s really no point in going home and coming back, so I take the time to get to the library early and do some writing of my own, on something that actually counts.
The Land of Tears and Bone is my fantasy novel, the secret pride and joy of my life, and a world where I’d rather spend ninety-nine percent of my days. I say secret because even though my family knows I’m writing it, they don’t ask any questions about it and basically pretend it doesn’t exist. Well, that’s not true. The other day my mother asked if I was still writing about the occult. My mom goes a little nuts with her Christianity and thinks all fantasy novels must be derived from Satan somehow. Yeah, she’s one of those people who thinks Harry Potter should be banned (and not because JKR is a garbage person).
My sister, Dahlia, has a little more interest, but she’s busy living on a farm somewhere in the British Columbian interior, rarely has access to the internet, and she doesn’t have a cell phone for various reasons, some of which I totally get. She’s a bit of a nomad and a hippie, and honestly always has been, but don’t think my parents weren’t disappointed in her when she announced she wasn’t going to university and instead running off with her tree-planting boyfriend I call “El Beardo.” I’m still not sure what his real name is, but he does have one hell of a beard.
It doesn’t really matter in the end. Most people I talk to don’t take writing seriously. If I tell them I’m an aspiring author, they get that “yeah right” look on their face, which is usually followed by “good luck with that.” Then there are the people I went to high school with, the kids I grew up with, family, friends, anyone from that crowd. Writing isn’t seen as something respectable, and that’s something they, and my parents, still firmly believe in. So, when I can, I don’t mention anything about my work-in-progress and I gloss over the creative writing part of my degree.
Thank god for the people in my program because I can talk to any of them about writing and they get it. Maybe our aspirations are all different—Rio thinks it will be a hobby for her and wants to teach English overseas when her degree is over—but our fears are all the same.