The Pros of Cons by Alison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar, Michelle Schusterman (12)

“I can’t believe it,” said Soleil, clutching at her short purple skirt as she leaned against the wall. A few feet away, literary agent Wendi Scherer emerged from the same room Soleil and I had just left. Soleil glared as she walked by, and raised her voice a little: “I can’t believe she didn’t like it.”

Wendi Scherer kept walking, eventually disappearing into the crowd. I don’t think she noticed us there at all.

“Well, she didn’t exactly say that,” I said, leaning against the wall beside Soleil. “She just said it wasn’t marketable.”

Soleil sniffed. “She said it was derivative. Derivative means bad. Bad means she didn’t like it.”

“Nooo,” I said. “Derivative means it reminds her of something else. Which is probably fair, since you literally submitted the first chapter of ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ with the character names changed. So if she’s a Wonderlandia fan, which she said she was, then obviously—”

“So you hated it, too?” said Soleil, her voice suddenly small.

I laughed at that, because what? She knew I loved her writing.

“Fine, whatever,” she said. “I knew doing the workshop was a bad idea.”

It had actually been Soleil’s idea for us to submit our stories to the writing workshop, but this seemed like a bad time to point that out, so I just shrugged and said, “I thought it was fun. I learned a lot.”

“Learned a lot about what?” Soleil said flatly. “Stuff like how I’m a terrible writer?”

“No, god, no,” I said. “I mean all the stuff she said about my chapter.”

The workshop had been an hour and a half long, and they’d capped registration at ten people. Everyone had sent in either a short story or the first chapter of a novel for Ms. Scherer to read and critique, and today we’d all gone over her critiques as a class. The eight minutes we’d spent on my chapter had gone by so quickly, and I tried to remember everything she’d said about it.

Soleil raised an eyebrow, clearly impatient for me to keep talking.

“You know,” I said. “That thing she said about how the seed of my entire book should be present in the first chapter. Remember? She said all my dialogue was great, but it needed to be aiming for something instead of just meandering around.”

“Oh, come on, Nessie. I gave you that note like two months ago. Tenth chapter of ‘Carry Me Home.’ Remember your first draft of that? Five and Seven were just talking in circles for three pages, and nothing actually happened.”

I stared at her. I mean, sure, she’d definitely said that to me—and she’d definitely been right, which was why I’d changed it—but the context had been completely different. That had been a downtime-after-a-fight-scene chapter in a fanfic. This was supposed to be the first chapter in a completely original book.

Soleil rolled her eyes. “But hey, I guess if Super Awesome Famous Agent Wendi Scherer says it, then suddenly it’s worth listening to. Especially since she thought your characters were soooooo original and soooooo unique and whatever.”

“She didn’t say that,” I said. “She said they were interesting. That was literally all she said—you know, before she started drilling me on what the plot of my book was. And hey, at least you didn’t have to admit that you didn’t actually know what your plot was.”

“I guess,” she said sullenly.

“Come on, Soleil. It was just a workshop. The whole point was for her to tell us what was wrong with our chapters.”

A moment passed. As Soleil took long, deep breaths beside me, I watched the crowd—some costumed, most not. Two guys passed by, dressed like Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from the BBC Sherlock series, and they were holding hands.

“Look.” I nudged Soleil as I nodded at the couple. “So adorable, right? And the one guy kind of even looks like Benedict Cumberbatch.”

She squinted at him. “No, he doesn’t. His face isn’t weird enough.” A pause, as she watched them disappear into A-17. “Definitely adorable, though.”

I let out a quiet breath. Her bad mood was ebbing away. This was good.

“Hey, sorry for snapping at you,” she said after another moment. “I’m … I don’t know. Not used to people being so harsh about my writing.”

“Sure you are,” I said. “StraightFlush, remember?”

“Ha!” she said. “Well, that was different. That dude was just being … well, you know. A dude.”

“True enough,” I said. “And hey, she wasn’t that harsh. She pointed out the stuff in your story that she liked. There was a lot of it.”

Soleil nodded slowly. “She did like my plot.”

“See?” I said. “You’re good at plot, and I’m good at dialogue. We were destined to be co-writers.”

Soleil smiled and looped her arm through mine, hugging me close, which, yay. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. And anyway, who cares if our stuff is derivative, right?”

“Our stuff?” I said. It was only her story that had been called derivative. Not mine.

“Yeah! Who cares, if we’re just gonna be writing fanfic anyway? Fanfic is inherently derivative. And it’s not like either of us actually wants to write a whole original book and get published for real.”

“We don’t?” I said, looking sideways at her. Because the thing was, I did want to write original stuff. I liked creating characters, and I liked building worlds from scratch, and I liked the idea of seeing my name—my real name, not my screen name—on the spine of a book one day. That was the main reason I’d agreed to submit a chapter to Ms. Scherer’s workshop.

“God, no,” said Soleil. “I mean, have you read those FicForAll threads where people post about trying to get published? You have to write to, like, five hundred agents. And once you get an agent, which, okay, odds are you won’t, then your book gets sent to another five hundred editors. They always say no. Writing original stuff is like ninety-nine percent rejection.”

“True,” I said, even though I kind of didn’t mind all that stuff. Sure, it would probably suck a little, but it would be worth it in the end, right?

“Fanfic is so much better,” she said, nodding to herself. “You post whatever you want, and everyone loves it. And if they don’t love it? Screw them.”

“Definitely. Screw them.”

What I didn’t say was, why did it have to be fanfic or original writing? Why couldn’t a person just, you know, write both?

What I did say: “Hey, the karaoke thingie starts in half an hour. Want to go make sure we get a good spot?”

“You mean the Extravaganza?” said Soleil, making jazz hands that were probably supposed to be ironic. “Yeah, I guess. I just … ugh.”

“What?”

She slumped against the wall again. “I’m not sure I’m in a ‘Defying Gravity’ kind of place right now. You know. Emotionally.”

“Oh, sure you are,” I said. “I mean, the whole song’s about Elphaba saying ‘screw you’ to the Wizard, right? So imagine you’re singing to that agent instead.”

“Deriiiivative,” sang Soleil, to the same tune as “unliiiiimited” in the song. I cracked right up, and she grinned and continued: “You called my stuff deriiiivative.”

“Ooh, you have a great voice!” said someone off to my left, startling me out of my laughter. It was Danielle from lunch earlier today, with Marziya and Aimee not far behind her and, oh god, I was so not in the mood for the Fangirl Trio right now.

“Aw, thanks!” said Soleil, instantly snapping back into social-butterfly mode. She pushed herself off the wall and hugged each of them in turn.

“Are you going to the Karaoke Extravaganza?” asked Danielle.

“Like we’d miss it,” said Soleil. “We’re doing ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked. I’m Elphaba, and Nessie here is my Glinda. How about you?”

“The three of us are entering together, actually,” said Danielle, gesturing at her friends. “And guess what we’re singing?”

Before Soleil could answer, Marziya said, “Taylor Swift! ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’! And we’re gonna dedicate it to you!”

The namesake of her most famous story, sung by her very own fans, dedicated to her. Soleil looked about five seconds away from melting out of sheer happiness and, yeah, let’s be real, I should have guessed that all it would take to improve her mood was a shower of compliments.

“What are you guys doing afterward?” Danielle went on, as our group of five began moving toward the escalator.

“Actually,” I said, “tonight Soleil and I were going to work on our project for the Creativity Corner.”

“Ooh, lucky,” said Marziya. “I wanted to enter that, but we forgot to sign up in time. Now there aren’t any slots left. And I had this great idea for a multi-fandom painting, see, because all three of us are artists—”

“Oh my god!” said Soleil, almost slipping in her excitement as she stepped onto the escalator. “I have the best idea. What if you guys joined our project?”

I frowned. The Fangirl Trio girls were nice and all, but this project was supposed to be just Soleil and me. “Wait a sec—”

“We’ll need backup dancers, right, Nessie?” she continued. “And you’ve already registered, but nobody’s asked how many people are in our group.”

“But …”

“But what?” said Soleil, eyes alight as she looked … not at me. At the person next to me. Danielle.

“That’s an awesome idea,” said Danielle.

But it was supposed to be the two of us, I thought. Nobody else.

Although, yeah, that was before last night and The Kiss. Had I really screwed things up so badly between us that Soleil didn’t want to be alone with me anymore?

“Then it’s settled,” said Soleil. “You lovely ladies are with us. Come on, let’s sing some karaoke!”

She practically leaped off the escalator. We dashed toward the ballroom, which was already full of people, and made our way toward the front. There was a line of people trying to sign up last-minute, but we moved past them and checked in at the DJ booth. Well, Soleil and Aimee checked in. The rest of us hung back, and I scouted the place for somewhere to stand.

I pointed to a small gap in the crowd. “There’s a spot over there.”

“Marz, can you go stake it out?” said Danielle.

“We can all—” I began, but Danielle grabbed my arm and shushed me. And then waited until Marziya was gone. Pushing up my glasses from where they’d started sliding down my nose, I said, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Danielle licked her lips, looking suddenly nervous. “I, uh … wanted to ask you something. See, I don’t want to do anything if you’re not okay with it, but … um …”

“But what?” I asked.

“Um …” Danielle looked over at the DJ booth, I guess to make sure Soleil and Aimee were still in line. “See, it’s about Soleil. She’s been kind of, you know, flirting with me? Like, all day?”

All my internal organs shriveled up. This could not be happening.

“Uh, really?” I said.

“Really really,” said Danielle. “She keeps, you know, looking at me. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be flirty or not, but then she kind of linked her pinkie with mine at that panel a few hours ago, so I started thinking maybe it was?”

“Oh,” I said faintly. I hadn’t noticed any of that. Sure, I’d noticed Soleil sitting next to Danielle at the panel—Houses, Factions, and Districts: The Perks and Pitfalls of Narrow Self-Definition—and nothing had happened that I could see. But there were those five minutes when I’d run out to find the bathroom, so maybe she’d done the pinkie thing then?

“I mean, thing is,” she said, fiddling nervously with a lock of her black hair, “she’s basically a solid ten on the smartness scale and the hotness scale and the awesomeness scale, and we’re both from New York, and … well, she keeps talking online about how she doesn’t believe in monogamy? But even if she is trying to be flirty, I don’t want to do anything without talking to you first, because … well, you know.”

“I know what?” I said.

Danielle shrugged. “Because you’re her girlfriend. And you seem cool. And I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”

I took a deep breath. And then another. I was not going to cry right before the karaoke competition. I was not, I was not, I was not.

“Why, um. What makes you think I’m her girlfriend?”

Danielle scrunched her eyebrows together. “Uh, everything? Why? Wait, are you guys not together?”

Without meaning to, I reached out and grabbed her arm. “No, I’m serious. You thought we were dating. Why did you think that?”

“Uh,” said Danielle again. “I dunno! I mean, every time you guys join a thread on the FicForAll message board, it’s literally all flirting, all the time. Like, oh, what was that one from last week? When that other girl was like, ‘Come on, ladies, get a room!’ and Soleil was like … wait, what was her reply? Hold on. Let me just find it again …”

She fished her phone out of her purse, tapped the screen a few times, then held it out to me. Sure enough, there was the exchange on FicForAll.

I read it again. Then one more time, just to be sure. Okay, yeah, if I squinted, I could see where Soleil might have been joking. But on the other hand, how could she possibly be surprised that I’d taken her seriously? She’d been saying stuff like that for months. Stuff like I wish you were here so I could kiss you all over your pretty little face and I’m so lucky to have you and … well, and I love you.

I’d told her I loved her, too.

“So, um,” said Danielle slowly. “You’re saying you guys aren’t dating?”

I shook my head, handing her phone back. “No. Just, um, online flirting. In real life we’re just … you know. Friends.”

“So I should totally go for it,” Danielle murmured.

“She’s got a boyfriend,” I said.

Danielle blinked. “Oh. Huh. Is he here, too?”

“No,” I said. “And they’re more monogamous than she wants people to think.”

Danielle frowned, but before she could ask me any more questions, Soleil and Aimee found us again. Aimee and her friends were scheduled to go second, and Soleil and I were fourth. Marziya waved from the spot she’d claimed, right between a group of Slytherin-robed tweens and a group of exceptionally tall hobbits.

The lights dimmed. The DJ welcomed us to the Extravaganza and then called the first contestants up on stage: Todd Something and Noah Something-Else. Cheers erupted as they took the stage—the same two guys I’d seen a little while ago. They were still dressed as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

“Aw, yay!” said Marziya. “I saw those guys last night at the costume contest. They won Best Couple.”

“Well, obviously they did,” said Soleil. “Look at them. What I wouldn’t give to be the meat on that sandwich. Am I right, ladies?”

I wanted to run away, or I wanted to throw up, or maybe I wanted, just a little bit, to punch Soleil right in the mouth. But then the music started.

It was “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. And there, up on stage, were a very dapper Sherlock and an ugly-sweatered John, grinning their faces off as they sang directly to each other.

Within seconds, everyone in the room was screaming their approval like their lives depended on it. And I screamed as loudly as any of them. Partly because it was a great distraction from feeling whatever I’d been feeling a second ago—and partly because these two guys were awesome. Neither of them could really sing, but it didn’t matter. They were having so much fun up there, hips swiveling and hands clawing in motions that I vaguely recognized from the old “Bad Romance” music video. But then—

“Shoot! Nessie!” came Soleil’s frantic voice, right in my ear.

“What?”

“They don’t have the lyrics projected anywhere,” she said, looking kind of terrified. “They’re singing from memory.”

“So?” I said—and then realized what she was getting at. “Ohhh, do you not have ‘Defying Gravity’ memorized?”

“Well, of course not! Every karaoke bar I’ve ever been to, they have a TV or something with all the lyrics.” I raised an eyebrow; this wasn’t a karaoke bar. This was WTFcon. What had she expected? “Arg. Do you have it memorized?”

“Just my own part, but yeah.”

“Arrrrg,” she said again, rubbing her hands on her thighs.

“Walk, walk, fashion baby,” sang John, as Sherlock swung his mic around by the cord and strutted across the stage like it was a catwalk. Aimee, Marziya, and stupid Danielle all howled their appreciation.

“You could pull up the lyrics on your phone?” I suggested.

She made a face. “One hand for my phone, one hand for the mic. I’d look like an idiot up there.”

Something inside me thrilled at the idea of being more prepared for this than she was—but I didn’t show it. With a shrug, I said, “Either that or we drop out. Your call.”

Up on stage, Sherlock was wailing about how he don’t wanna be friends—and then they were on the weird French part of the song.

Soleil clutched her hair like she was about to rip it out by the roots. She looked totally terrified and, once again, totally stressed.

“Here,” I said, “I’ll look up the lyrics, okay?”

She gave me one single, worried nod, and I pulled my phone out of my bag. And turned it on just in time to see the battery run out. Ugh.

“Hey, mine’s dead,” I said. “Can I use yours?”

She rummaged around in her purse, found her phone, entered her password, and handed it to me.

Her texting app was open, but I closed it before I could see anything personal. I was no snoop. Then I tapped her browser open—and immediately recognized the website it was on. A header image that compiled snippets of fan art from at least twenty different fandoms. The words All For Fic & FicForAll superimposed over the image.

And there, right under the header, were the following words:

Welcome back, StraightFlush!

I blinked, and blinked again, but it was still there. Even though it couldn’t be. StraightFlush was the guy—and it had definitely been a guy, right?—who’d attacked Soleil because her writing was “too gay.”

But here was the very same screen name, logged in from Soleil’s phone.

Maybe I was remembering it wrong. Maybe the guy’s name had been StraightFlush with letters or numbers after it, and I was only remembering the main part, and maybe Soleil had registered another version of the same screen name in order to … I dunno. Reclaim it? Or something?

Yeah, maybe that.

Because the alternative was that Soleil herself had been StraightFlush all along. And that wasn’t possible, because it just wasn’t.

“Hey, girlie-girl, any luck with those lyrics?” said Soleil, making me jump.

Up on stage, Dapper Sherlock and Ugly Sweater John were taking a bow and waving at the crowd. As they left the stage, the DJ made some stupid joke about how bad their romance actually was, and then introduced Aimee and her friends, who were no longer standing with us. I hadn’t noticed them leaving.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Just a second. Connection’s slow.”

I did the search and pulled up the lyrics, then handed the phone to Soleil. “Thanks, Nessie. You’re the best.”

“No problem,” I said.

The spotlight shone on Danielle, who was holding the mic to her mouth. “This song,” she said, “is dedicated to our favorite Wonderlandia fanficcer, and the hottest lady in this room. You know who you are.”

The DJ started the song, and Danielle, Aimee, and Marziya began to sing.

Everyone cheered. Beside me, Soleil cheered more loudly than anyone.

This time, I didn’t join in.