As soon as Phoebe and I left Callie’s room, Phoebe started texting. From the look of extreme stress on her face, I guessed it was one of her band people—maybe even that guy Scott.
“Hey,” she asked, as I pressed the down button on the elevator. “Can I meet you at the crepe place after you drop off the forms? Brian said he’d meet me for a few minutes.”
Oh, so not Scott. Brian, her best friend.
“Sure,” I said.
The elevator arrived, and the doors opened to reveal two guys—a Gandalf and a skinny guy holding a mounted jackalope—eyeing each other distrustfully.
We rode in silence until the third floor, where Jackalope Guy stepped off. As soon as he was out of earshot, Phoebe whispered, “Fly, you fool!”
Gandalf, of course, cracked up.
When we reached the convention center, I wished her luck with her friend, then headed off to the A-wing, Creativity Corner form in hand. There was no line at registration, so I stepped right up to the desk, where a bored-looking, pink-haired woman was doing something on her phone.
“Um, ’scuse me,” I said.
She jumped, startled, but then gave me a huge smile once she’d recovered. “Hey, look! A real live human to talk to! You looking for an agent pitch session slot? We’ve only got one left.”
I smiled to myself, remembering Callie’s interview with Ms. Scherer, and how that awful-sounding guy had interrupted them. “No, actually. Sorry. I’ve got my entry form for the Creativity Corner. Do I give that to you?”
“Indeed you do,” she said, holding out her hand. I handed the paper over, and she skimmed it, muttering to herself. “Names of participants, good … format, oh, interesting … name of— Oh, hey, sweetie. Your entry needs a name.”
I pushed my glasses up my nose, looking down at the empty space on our form. “Um. Well, we don’t have one yet. And it says you have until four o’clock to email audio-format entries …? Right?”
She nodded. “Four o’clock for the actual material, yeah, but they do need a title now. It doesn’t have to be perfect. They’re judging you on the content, not the title.”
“Oh. Okay, hold on.” I pulled out my phone, intending to send an emergency group text … but then I had an idea. It was kind of dumb, but it worked pretty well for the way our story was shaping up so far, and the other girls wouldn’t be mad if I didn’t ask them first, right? No, they weren’t like that. I took the form back from the pink-haired woman, grabbed a pen off the desk, and wrote our title in all caps.
“A Thousand Feels,” she read with a smile. “Very nice. You’re all set! And you have the email address to send your final file, right?”
I nodded. “Thanks!”
And I started to walk away, toward crepes and my friends and another several hours of surprisingly fun editing work. But then I stopped.
The night before last, after Callie had fallen asleep, I’d had an idea for a new story. I’d taken my laptop into her bathroom so my typing wouldn’t wake her up, and I’d kept Ms. Scherer’s advice in mind, and I’d started writing. And I’d continued writing all yesterday morning, instead of going to any of the panels at WTFcon. Now I had five brand-new pages of something I actually really liked, something I actually wanted to continue, and I’d just been told that there was one agent pitch session left, and if that wasn’t the universe trying to tell me something, then I’d eat a taxidermy jackalope.
Heart absolutely pounding, I went right back to the registration desk.
“Sorry, hey, hi,” I said. “Um, how much for that agent thing?”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I was waiting for my turn in the hallway outside room A-21—the very same room where Soleil, on that first panel of hers, had ditched “Carry Me Home” and read one of her solo stories instead.
In my left hand, I clutched the first five pages of my own solo story, which I’d printed from the A-wing’s business center.
My right hand held my phone, which I’d just used to send a text to Callie and Phoebe. I’d apologized for how I was gonna be late, explained why, and said I’d grab our crepes as soon as I was done. Phoebe replied almost immediately with, Don’t worry about the food! I got it! Callie, a few seconds later, added, Good luck!
There were six or seven people waiting in the hallway, and every single one of us perked up when the door to room A-21 opened, and sure enough, out stepped the WTFcon volunteer in charge of keeping the pitch sessions organized.
She squinted at her tablet, then looked up at us. “Karen?” A dark-skinned, spiky-haired girl raised her hand. “Holly Bowen-Davies is ready for you. And … Vanessa?” I raised my hand. My sweaty, shaking hand. “Wendi Scherer’s ready for you.”
Karen and I exchanged tight smiles, and we followed the volunteer into A-21. The room was totally different from the last time I’d been here. All the audience chairs had disappeared, leaving a space that was empty except for four desks, one in each corner. Behind each desk was a professional-looking person. Two of them were talking to people already, and the other two were just sitting there, waiting.
“Karen, Holly’s over there,” said the volunteer. “And Vanessa, there’s Wendi.”
Yup, there was Wendi. Sitting behind a desk, perfectly coiffed and super professional and so intimidating that I came pretty close to turning and running out the door and out of the convention center and out of Florida altogether. But I took a deep breath. I tucked my phone into my pocket, clutched my five pages, and started walking toward her.
“Hi there,” said Ms. Scherer, as soon as I got close enough. She gestured toward the folding chair that faced her. “Have a seat. Hey, weren’t you in my workshop the other day?”
I nodded as I sat. “I’m, ah, Vanessa.”
“And I’m Wendi,” she said in the same friendly teacher voice she’d used at the workshop. “Nice to see you again.”
I nodded and nodded. Then stopped nodding, because I should probably actually say something, because that was the whole point of this, right? Me saying things?
I put my pages on the desk and rubbed my hands on my denim-covered thighs to get some of the sweat off and took a deep breath and tried to get my thoughts in order.
Ms. Scherer—or Wendi, apparently—glanced down at my pages. Her eyes moved, like she was reading. “Is this the same story we talked about in the workshop, Vanessa?”
I nodded—then made myself stop. “No.”
“All right,” she said. “I ask because I remember you saying that you hadn’t written anything beyond the first chapter. And it’s not usually a good idea to try to find an agent for a book before it’s finished.”
“I know,” I said truthfully. She’d said the same thing in the workshop. “And I’m not actually, uh. I don’t want an agent. I mean not yet. Not right now. Um.”
She raised her eyebrows. “In that case, I should probably ask why you signed up for one of my pitch sessions. Since the whole point of pitching your book is, well, trying to find an agent.”
For some reason, the fact that she was kind of sarcastic made me like her more. I started talking.
“Okay, so yeah, I know that’s the point of this—pitching and stuff—but I actually wanted to talk about what you said in the workshop.” She frowned politely, tilting her head a little to the side. “You gave me notes. You said my dialogue was good but it needed to point toward something. And you said the seeds of my book needed to be in the first chapter. And I said I didn’t know how to do that because I didn’t know what the rest of the book was about yet, so you had the whole class talk about stuff I could pull from the dialogue and make into a story.”
Wendi nodded. “Did any of the class’s ideas resonate with you?”
“Some,” I said. “But I’ll be honest: Most of what, um, resonated with me was how I had this huge fight with my roommate later that day, and it made me think about … about … I dunno, people’s personalities? And character motivations, and getting inside other people’s heads, and … and I’m not sure how to describe it. But I wrote it down.” I put my fingertips on my five pages and pushed them a few inches toward her. “I know this probably sucks, because it’s just a first draft and I haven’t even looked it over or anything, but that’s because I wasn’t even planning on coming here today. I literally just signed up twenty minutes ago. But, see … um, I took your notes. I made the dialogue point toward something. And I … um, I wanted to see if you think I’m doing it right.”
Wendi glanced at her watch, and then, apparently satisfied, picked up my pages. “Well, let’s take a look, shall we?”
I tried not to be nervous—which was really hard, since she was reading my pages right in front of me. This was so different from posting a chapter online and waiting for the comments to start rolling in. Different and mildly terrifying. But also sort of awesome? Maybe?
I looked at the other agents, who were deep in conversation with the people who’d signed up for their pitch sessions, and I looked at the volunteer, fiddling with her tablet over by the door, and then I looked at the empty stage, where Soleil had read “I Knew You Were Trouble” to a packed room.
She’d been nervous, too.
I’d remembered that, the night after she’d kicked me out. How nervous she’d been, how well she’d hidden it. It had made me wonder, in retrospect, what else she’d been nervous about. That was the main reason why I’d picked her as the viewpoint character in my new story, instead of myself. Well, a fictionalized version of her. But still.
After approximately twelve lifetimes had passed, Wendi put my pages down. She was smiling.
“This,” she said, “is a huge improvement.”
I let out a long, long breath, and then I let myself smile, too. “Really?”
“Really,” she said. “Your workshop chapter was lovely. I told you that, and I meant it. But that felt like a slice of life, and nothing else. Two friends talking about a boy they both like. So what? Why should I care what happens next, right?”
I nodded. She’d said the same thing in the actual workshop.
“But this?” she said, pressing her index finger right into the middle of my new first paragraph. “This feels like the beginning of something. You’ve created tension in the difference between what your narrator is thinking and what she’s saying out loud to her friend. She’s got an agenda. She wants to present herself a certain way—a way that matches the online image she’s created—and she’s terrified of being found out, right?”
I nodded. Yeah, that was right—in the story, at least. In real life, I’d probably never know for sure what Soleil had been thinking when she’d first met me. But here, on paper, where I had the freedom to take what I knew, change it as I saw fit, fill in the blanks with whatever I wanted …
“And at the end of the chapter,” Wendi went on, “when her friend catches her in a lie, she completely freezes up. Her reaction seems disproportionately large, given how small her lie was—but it seems to me that you might have done that on purpose. Did you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Because it’s the tip of the iceberg, you know? First it’s that one little lie, then it’s a bigger one, then an even bigger one, and on and on and on.”
“So what’s your narrator hiding?” asked Wendi. “What’s the big secret that she doesn’t want her friend finding out?”
“I’m … um, see, I don’t think she has one.”
Wendi did that politely confused head-tilt thing again.
“Okay, no, I swear this makes sense,” I said. “See, she wants to be interesting and mysterious. She wants people to think she’s got some big secret. But she doesn’t. She’s just totally normal. She goes to school, she’s got a boyfriend, she likes shopping and clothes and books. She’s just this really average person. And she hates being average.”
Wendi pursed her lips. “Interesting. And what about her friend? Does she stay in the story long enough to figure out what’s going on?” I nodded. “What will she do?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “But I think I’ll figure it out as I go along.”
“I think that’s a good idea.” Wendi reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a business card. “And when you have a complete manuscript, I’d love to read it.”
My cheeks blazed. I took the business card. My palms were sweating again. “Um. Sure, yeah. Okay. Thanks.”
“I think our time’s up,” Wendi said, nodding to someone behind me. The volunteer, probably. “But one more question. You never told us your narrator’s name. Was that also intentional?”
“Oh,” I said. “No, it wasn’t. But I think she lies about that, too. She doesn’t like people knowing her real name, so she uses her online name.”
“And what’s that?” asked Wendi.
I smiled. “Luna.”
The volunteer came over to get me, and I left A-21 with my heart racing and Wendi’s business card clutched in my hand. Outside, more people had joined the small crowd waiting for their pitch sessions—and right there among them, in jeans and a T-shirt that said Burdened With Glorious Purpose in neon-green letters, was Merry.
I hadn’t seen them since the interview yesterday afternoon, when they’d confessed to having a crush on me. As in, an actual crush. On me. And now there they were, sitting on the floor with one of the girls I’d met at Soleil’s panel, looking all … all cute.
“What if I suck?” said Merry’s friend. Trish? No. Tiff. That was it. “What if I totally freeze up and forget what my book’s even about?”
Merry laughed. Even their laugh was cute. “Come on, you’ve worked on that thing for two years. You won’t forget. You’ll be great.”
Cute and supportive of their friends. Arg, arg, arg.
“Can I run my pitch by you one more time?” said Tiff.
“Go for it,” said Merry.
So Tiff started talking. Part of me wanted to wait around until Tiff went inside, so I could have a few minutes alone with Merry and ask them if they’d really meant it, about crushing on me, but the very thought of it put a knot of nervousness in my stomach that, combined with the nervousness that still lingered from talking to Wendi, was way, way too much to handle. I could talk to Merry later, when I’d had a chance to calm down.
And besides, I had to get back to Callie’s room so we could finish our podcast.