Page 30 of Script Swap (The Last Picks #11)

“Maybe for that book. Write another.”

“But I can’t. I could barely write this one. And there’s no guarantee that the next one is going to be any better.”

“So?”

“So, the same thing will happen. I’ll write it. I’ll spend years of my life invested in it. And then I’ll send it out, and it’ll get rejected, and I’ll be right back where I started: facing the fact that I’m not a good writer, and that I’m a failure, and that I’m wasting my time.”

“I have quite a few paintings that haven’t sold.

Would you say they’re not any good?” I opened my mouth, but Fox said, “A better question: I understand that there are any number of famous books that were rejected by publishing houses before finally finding an audience. Would you say those authors were failures? That they weren’t any good? ”

“No, but that’s because they did find an audience.”

“What about books that aren’t published during an author’s lifetime?”

“I don’t know.”

“Writers who lived their whole lives thinking they were failures, only for someone to discover their work after they died? Were they not talented? Were they wasting their time? Emily Dickinson springs to mind. The one who wrote that Pulitzer Prize-winner, the book about the hot dogs. And I’m sure there are others. ”

“Okay, but that’s—”

“Yes or no, Dash.”

“No, but that’s not helpful. I mean, what’s your point? That maybe I’ll be famous after I die? That’s not super encouraging.”

“I’m not trying to be encouraging. I’m trying to show you that having a book be published—having a book be a success—involves a great many factors, most of which are outside your control, and few of which have any actual connection to the quality of the book itself.”

“Yeah, I know that. But—”

I barely managed to stop myself in time.

Fox, however, quirked a tiny smile. “But it’s different for you?

Unlike the rest of the world, you are special.

These agents or publishers or whoever looked at your work, they had some unique, specific insight into how terrible you are as a writer, and that’s why they passed on it—not because they had offered to represent something similar, or not because they didn’t know how to sell it, or not because they had indigestion after a bad lunch. ”

What was I supposed to say to that?

Teenage Dash chose that moment to stick his head out and offer a sullen “I don’t know.”

Fox actually laughed. “I’m not saying that rejections aren’t tough on the ego. But Dash, is that why you started writing? To have your ego stroked?”

“No. Obviously.”

“Then why? Writing is hard. All art is hard, but writing is particularly difficult. You’ve spent, as you put it, your whole life trying to become a writer.

Is it because your parents forced you to?

Because you’re desperate to please them?

Because you have no mind of your own, and you’re incapable of making decisions for yourself because you’re an overgrown man-child without a spine? ”

“No,” I said tightly. “Thank you for asking.”

“Then why?” Fox asked again.

It was a hard question. Not because I didn’t know, but because it was difficult to put into words.

(Yes, I’m aware of the irony.) “I don’t know.

At first, it was because I loved stories.

I loved reading them. I wanted to tell them.

I got to go on these awesome adventures with my friends, and when the books stopped, I wanted more.

I knew what would happen next, and so I’d write another adventure.

Then, it was other characters—my own. It was fun, writing about the exciting stuff happening to them, getting to—” I stopped because I’d never thought about it until now, when the words came to me.

“Getting to live their lives. Other lives. Getting to live their adventures with them. And then it became more than that. I don’t even know how, but it did.

It was where I could work out my loneliness, and figure out why I felt different from everyone around me.

Some of that was me being a moody teenager—”

“Egad,” Fox murmured.

A smile touched my lips. “—and some of it was more. Being gay. Realizing that my parents weren’t like other people.

Stories had always been a safe space. But they became something more.

A place for me to think. To come to know myself a little better.

To be myself. Or to become myself. I don’t know if that makes any sense. ”

“Of course it does.” Fox was silent for a moment. “I remember you were particularly enthusiastic about your invention of cozy noir.”

“Yeah, well, look how that turned out.”

“Dashiell, I’ve shown a surprising amount of forbearance today, but I do have a hat pin somewhere in this van. Don’t make me use it.”

A little laugh slipped out of me, and somehow, the words came more easily.

“Yes. Yeah, cozy noir is a great example. I was so…so upset by what had happened to Vivienne and her brother and everyone else in that group of people. How hurt they’d been.

And how that hurt had carried across decades.

And how everything I’d thought about justice didn’t seem to apply, but that was okay, because I thought, maybe, I’d come to understand it a little better.

And when I wrote, it came out even more clearly.

How we’re all connected. What justice means when we’re a community.

” I cleared my throat. “That’s what I was trying to do with A Work in Progress, anyway, and you can see how that worked out. ”

“If writing that book was so important for you—if it did what you say it did, and it gave you a time and a place to think these things, to learn something about yourself, to make something beautiful and, for a short while, get to live there—then why does it matter if nobody wanted to publish it?”

“Well, I’ve got this crazy thing about money.”

“That’s not why you’re upset. Why are you letting these rejections upset you so much?”

“I worked hard on it. I love that book.”

Fox shook their head. “Why do you care so much that the book got rejected?”

“Because it sucks, getting rejected. It hurts.”

“Of course it does, but not like this. Why, Dash?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Why?”

“Stop doing that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“I want you to tell me the truth! I want you to say why you care so much that your book got rejected!”

“Because if I fail, everyone will know I don’t deserve to be loved!”

My shout seemed to hang in the air. My eyes welled with tears, and I looked down at the flannel I was twisting between my hands, the pile of wet T-shirts beneath me, and the scratched-up floor of the van.

The engine rumbled. Warm air hissed in the vents.

The faint smell of motor oil and Dragon Musk and wet pavement mingled.

“Dash,” Fox said quietly.

I shook my head.

To my surprise, Fox pulled me into an embrace. I started to cry—only a little—but I got myself under control when they released me.

“I don’t know why I said that,” I said, the words directed at the pile of sodden clothing beneath me. “I don’t—I mean, I know that’s not—” I blew out a breath. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Fox nodded. “May I share something with you?”

“Do you know what would be helpful, actually? If you ran me over. I’ll lie down in the middle of the road; you can’t miss.”

Fox’s silence had a disturbingly Indira-like quality of disapproval. After a moment, I nodded.

“You may find this hard to believe,” Fox said, “but when I was growing up, I wanted to be an actor.”

“Why would I find that hard to believe? You literally wear a Phantom of the Opera cape at least once a week.”

“I wouldn’t say—”

“You like to fling it over your shoulder when you’re in a huff.”

“I’m never ‘in a huff.’”

“Like when Aric wouldn’t give you a piece of his cruller.”

“He’d already had two! And for that matter—”

“Oh, and you wore the mask that one time because you had a pimple—”

“I did not have a blemish! And will you stop talking?” They added an aggrieved, “Please?”

I mimed zipping my lips.

(At this point, Fox was clearly in a huff—if they’d been wearing their cape, they would have been whipping it around fast enough to take somebody’s eye out.)

Somehow, though, they managed to sound only slightly strained when they said, “As I was saying, I wanted to be an actor. It only made sense. My father, as you have seen, has a histrionic bent—”

“Are we calling it a bent? That seems like an invitation to way too many jokes—oh my God, no more commentary, I promise.” And I mimed zipping my lips again, to be safe.

After a beat—to let me know of their displeasure—Fox continued, “And I grew up in a theater, and—” Their voice became softer. “And I loved it.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I was terrible at it, for one thing,” Fox said, in a tone that somehow suggested this was my fault.

“And that was a great disappointment. For me. And for my father. More for him, I think, in the long run, because he did hope that I’d be what he wished he had been—which, I think, is what most fathers want for their children.

But it was a disappointment for me, as well.

I’d grown up among actors. I idolized actors.

I found them interesting and witty and—and alive.

And I wanted so desperately to be alive, because they would come and perform over the summer, bright and attractive and vital, and then they would leave.

And I would be here, stuck with people who did not understand me and, for the most part, did not like me. ”

“Fox,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”