Impostor Syndrome
Page 37
A knot inside my chest loosened a little, and I felt myself smile.
“I do now,” I said.
• • •
I went back into therapy at the end of March. Not the whole full-on DBT thing again, just weekly therapy with Dr. Davis to try to sort through some of what I’d realized during my trial. I told her they were dreams I’d had, which wasn’t exactly a lie.
Things started settling into order after that. Phil got promoted to regional manager, leapfrogging right back over Tjuan, who didn’t want the job. Phil helped find me a decent lawyer who argued me down to a pretty negligible fine for obstruction of justice. But of course Phil then took both the fine and the lawyer’s fee out of the bonus that Alvin had paid me for my help in restructuring the Arcadia Project, netting me a grand total of eight dollars for the whole ordeal. Somehow, that seemed about right. Thanks for leading the revolution; here’s eight bucks.
Alvin himself was too busy to answer most of my admittedly frivolous texts, but progress toward a new international structure seemed to be going more smoothly than we could have hoped, to judge by the messages he did send. Nayantara from New Delhi got voted in to come to L.A.; she was set to arrive once we’d finished making part of Valiant Studios into a Project office. Alvin said he was pleased; Nayantara had always been a shoo-in to be next in line after Belinda, and she and Belinda had always hated each other’s guts. An ideal candidate, in other words.
Claybriar and Dawnrowan didn’t exactly have a wedding ceremony, but they did start shacking up together at Skyhollow Estate. I never quite got up the guts to ask, but I figured they and the duke probably just shared one big, very sticky bed.
And of course Naderi’s show got a massive ratings boost from all the infamy surrounding its briefly fugitive supervising producer. Tjuan, of course, refused all interviews, without exception, but Inaya and Naderi basked in the media attention and rolled around in giant stacks of money. Money coming into Valiant was money coming into the Arcadia Project, so everything was good.
Almost everything.
To be honest, some of the magic walked out of my life when Caryl left, and even keeping busy wasn’t always enough to distract me from the loss. The ache of grief was like the graffiti in the upstairs hall, poorly covered over and mostly ignored. It took way too long for me to stop pulling out my phone to text her, to stop wondering if the tires I heard pulling into the driveway belonged to her SUV. I sent messages to Shock asking about her, but he only ever said that she was fine, and that she loved me.
It felt unkind to him to keep asking. So I stopped.
Things hurt, and you keep living. You keep going, not just because there’s no other decent choice, but because honestly? You never know. Caryl didn’t even walk into my life until I’d already tried once to end it. So I knew for a fact that sometimes the movie keeps going, even after you think the credits have rolled.
And sometimes it doesn’t keep going. You don’t get hints about that, either. Life doesn’t fit the Hollywood formula; there are no act breaks to orient you, no running times printed helpfully on the back of the box. So you do your best to line up each shot, each frame. You make sure that if this shot ends up being the last, it’s damn well going to be bold or bittersweet or beautiful enough to go out on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is, in a sense, a continuation of my words at the end of Phantom Pains—which themselves were a continuation of my words at the end of Borderline. I continue to thank all of those people; those words remain in my heart just as they do in libraries: an enduring testament to my gratitude. Here, I’ll add what applies uniquely to this book and no other.
This book was written under trying circumstances. There were times when I worried I might be incapable of finishing at all. Even more than Borderline and Phantom Pains, Impostor Syndrome owes its existence to the support of others. I must thank Wren Wallis in a new way, because she is what glued me together during its final birthing pains. I must thank my editor Navah Wolfe in a new way, because she took on the role of friend as well as editor. I must thank my agent Russell Galen in a new way, because he revealed reserves of compassion that I’d always suspected were there, but had not yet fully witnessed.
I’d also like to add another list of names, similar to the one in Borderline. People whose support allowed this book (and me) to keep going, even during the worst, whether they knew it or not. These are newer friends and supporters who didn’t get named in previous acknowledgments but who have since then (on a particular crucial occasion or repeatedly) given more than I ever would have asked. I know I’ll forget many of you, but let me at the very least thank Daniel Barker, John Bates, Ryan Boyd, Didi Chanoach, Amal El-Mohtar, Jack Gregory, Charlaine Harris, Blair Imani, Derek Kunsken, Ellen Kushner, Yanni Kuznia, Marissa Lingen, Ken Liu, Katie O’Vary, Shaelyn Pham, Logan Rose, Michael Damian Thomas, John Trager, and Christina Vasilevski.
Thank you also to my daughters, old enough now to read “Mishell Baker” on the spines of books and express a pride so visceral and luminous that it at times stood in for the absence of my own.
My gratitude to you, as well, reader, for staying with me. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you from time to time, but I hope you understand, overall, what I’m trying to communicate. I hope you understand that dragging ourselves through occasional misery is worth it, because we never know what gleaming and magical thing may be waiting on the far side.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author photograph by Vanie Poyey
MISHELL BAKER is the author of the Nebula and World Fantasy Award finalist Borderline, and Phantom Pains, the first two books in the Arcadia Project series. She is a 2009 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and her short stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Electric Velocipede. She has a website at mishellbaker.com and frequently tweets about writing, parenthood, mental health, and assorted geekery at @mishellbaker. When she’s not attending conventions or going on wild research adventures, she lives with her husband and children in Los Angeles.
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ALSO BY MISHELL BAKER
The Arcadia Project
Borderline
Phantom Pains
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Text copyright © 2018 by Mishell Baker
Jacket illustrations copyright © 2018 by Jill Wachter
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Baker, Mishell, author.
Title: Impostor syndrome / Mishell Baker.
Description: First Saga Press paperback edition. | New York : Saga Press, 2018. | Series: The Arcadia project ; 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019627 | ISBN 9781481451949 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9781481480185 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481451956 (eBook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.A58665 I47 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019627