Total pages in book: 9
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
I don’t know who I am anymore. Growing up, I was the smart one, the creative one, the budding writer who was going to grow up and set the literary world on fire. I easily made straight A’s while most of my surrogate cousins had to form study groups to keep their grades up. I got into every undergrad program I applied to and scored a juicy scholarship based on my stellar test scores.
But graduate programs don’t care about good grades or flashy test scores. They care about innovative work, poetry that pushes boundaries, and writers who aren’t afraid to take risks, and they weren’t shy about telling me my portfolio just didn’t fit the bill.
I’m not good enough. I’m derivative and boring.
I’m a greeting card writer trying to be an Emily Bronte and failing miserably.
Hell, it would probably be best if the cats decide to rip my body limb from limb and devour my talentless corpse. At least then my death would be interesting. And if I’m cat food, I won’t have to worry about what I’m going to do with my life now that my dreams have withered on the vine and I’m too mortified to show my face to most of the people who used to be my best friends.
Eric, Leo, and Zen were all there the night I embarrassed myself with Panic, and I’m sure Anya heard the gossip at band practice.
Anya’s never let on that she knows I’m a bad drunk and a generally pathetic loser but she’s a sweetheart. She would never deliberately make another person feel bad, especially not her former best friend.
Growing up, we spent every Friday night sleeping over at her place or mine, whispering late into the night about the bands we loved and dreaming about writing bestselling songs together. She would write the melodies, I’d write the lyrics, and we’d tour the world together when we were grown up. She insisted I could be her band DJ thusly allowing me to be on stage, but safely tucked behind a turntable where no one could see how bad I was at dancing.
Instead, I got in deep with the Journalism Club in high school and she started making music with the boys and the rest is history. We grew apart, Hello Gorgeous blew up, and Anya spent her senior year being homeschooled by a tutor while she was on her first U.S. tour with the band.
But she would still come rescue me now. I know she would.
I should have thought of calling her first, but knowing when to ask for help is one of my many ongoing problems.
I should have left Panic in my rearview years ago, too, but for some reason he’s always there, hovering at the edges of my mind, taunting me with his signature smirk and his husky voice calling me “Frances,” even though no one has ever called me that but him. I still wake from dreams featuring his turquoise eyes boring into mine through the curtain of his hair, my brain returning to that kiss again and again, like a kid picking at a scab.
But I don’t have to be a scab picker anymore.
I’ll call Anya, make her promise not to tell Panic what’s happening, and get her over here to lure the cats over to their food bowls in the laundry room. Then we can lock them into the small space with their water bowls and plush beds, make popcorn, and catch up on all the news from the past five years. We’ve seen each other briefly at holiday parties and such but haven’t had an actual gab session in forever.
We can chat upstairs in the guest bedroom, far from pictures of Panic and the memories of what happened that spring before senior year.
I’m pulling my cell from my coat pocket to text Anya when a deep voice calls from the other side of the frosty window behind me, “Breaking and entering is against the law, kid. If I were you, I’d make a run for the back door before the police get here.”
Stomach sinking, I consider the advice.
Sure, I left my shoes outside in the snow before I climbed through the kitchen window—I didn’t want to break anything on my way in—but running through a blizzard in my socked feet is surely preferable to facing Panic Lawrence Donovan in my current state. I might lose a toe to frostbite, but what’s one toe, more or less, when it comes to salvaging the last vestiges of my pride?
I start to climb off the couch and suddenly all hell breaks loose. Beastly makes a running dive for my calf, Floof Loaf hurls himself off the couch like a big, fluffy cannonball, and I fall into the coffee table with a cry of pain that becomes a scream of terror as I tumble to the floor and my feline assassins pounce on their prey.