Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [71]
“I’m neurotic.”
“Sure. But only a little. No more than is normal. Did you ever think maybe Zoë’s exorcising her own demons? She’s the one who keeps a daily page quota; she’s the one who runs five miles a day. She’s one of the most compulsive overachievers I’ve ever met. Maybe she sees something of herself in you and maybe she doesn’t like it. I really doubt she meant anything by this. She admires you.”
He picked up a sheet of paper from the floor. “Is this your stuff?”
“My stories. From grad school.” I piled a stack together. “Trash.”
“Why would you say that?”
“No one wants it. One rejection is okay. Twenty is understandable. But when you start counting the failures in months it’s time to get a clue.” I sat in my office chair, took a sheet of paper from the stack and folded it over on itself. “Do you know how many articles Zoë’s printed since she graduated? Five. And every time to a wider audience. I’ve never published a single story.”
“Publication’s overrated, Amy. It’s just words on a page. You should write for yourself, not for the critics.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “It’s different for you. You make something and it can exist on its own and people can take it or leave it. But a story isn’t finished until someone reads it.”
“Why don’t you ‘publish’ it yourself then? Start a blog.”
I pressed the origami I had created onto my knee. “I don’t blog. I write fiction.”
“So make it a fiction blog: one story a week. ” The idea excited him. “Or you could publish serial chapters like they used to do with magazines. You could easily find an audience for that.”
“I’m not interested in propping my work up on my own possibly exaggerated opinion of myself.” I pinched the tip of my paper airplane to a point, flew it at Eli. “Editors exist for a reason.”
He caught the airplane, unfolded it in frustration. “There’s no magic to books, Amy.”
“But there is! I love the idea that someone else could for a moment live in a world I created, make it their own. I might have a mental picture of a character, but everyone else who reads the book will see that character a little different. If I invent and then publish an Annie Smith, I’ve created a hundred or a thousand Annie Smiths, each different from the other imagined, but all of them as real as a real person to the reader who falls in love with the story. How many people talk about Mr. Darcy or Scout or Jo March as real people they’ve known? And isn’t that magic? To make something real out of thin air?”
I was so caught up with my own argument it took me a moment to notice the peculiar way he was looking at me. For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps he found me as exasperating and as fascinating as I found him.
“It’s the only childhood magic I still believe in,” I confessed softly.
“Fine,” he said, but the strain in his voice had gone. He waved the now-crinkled sheet of paper in the air. “Can I have the rest of this one?”
I shrugged. “Take them all.”
To my surprise, he did.
As the morning passed, so did my sense of victimization. What Eli had said made a kind of sense: Zoë was the one who kept a writing schedule and a workout regimen that were nearly militaristic. Even if I tried to stay angry, I found it too exhausting. I had grown up in a home where misunderstandings dissolved into laughter almost of their own accord, my brother too good-natured to fight and my mother too easily distracted to remember an offense.
Zoë was of prouder Appalachian stock, the kind that carried grudges through generations, sparking family feuds fueled by moonshine and loaded hunting rifles.
“I’m going back to Chicago,” she said when she returned to the apartment that night.
“How long will you be gone?” I asked.
She walked right past me, calling for Eli.
He opened the bathroom door. He was toweling his wet hair.
“You can have my room,” she said. “I won’t be needing it for a while.”
“Where are you sleeping?” he asked.
“I’m going back to Chicago. You can sleep on my bed. But”— she pointed at his chest