And that’s when her colors disappeared. I’ve never told anyone this, but when I was very little I could sometimes see a cloud of colors swirling around my mother’s head. I used to think it was magic. The colors sparkled like fairy dust and coated everything that Mom passed or touched. I’m older now, so I know it had nothing to do with magic. It was just some sort of hallucination, a misfiring of a neuron—or maybe a sign that I had a “genetic predisposition” to craziness.
I stood in the doorway to the hospital’s library. A lone figure in a terry cloth periwinkle bathrobe and matching slippers slept in the corner armchair, her blond hair fanning over her shoulders. Her hands folded in her lap, her head slumped, her breathing steady and peaceful.
Remember not to talk about anything stressful. Stress would work against us at this point.
I walked ghostlike into the library, then gently slid a fallen slipper back onto my mother’s foot. The only hope I had was that the new medication would start to work. I would do whatever the doctor wanted. I would protect my mother from the truth, and keep her calm so that she could get better.
The letter from Heartstrings Publishers would stay in the backpack. The overdue bill from Harmony Hospital wouldn’t be mentioned. I’d have to deal with these problems on my own.
I took the bag of blueberry bagels from my backpack and set it beside a reading lamp. Then I sat on the floor at her feet and looked up at her oval face. I wanted to tell her about Skateboard Guy, wanted to tell her how cute he was and how he’d asked me to go to the movies. Wanted to ask her if I was pretty enough for him and hear her say that I was beautiful, inside and out.
A lifetime ago I would have been comforted by the sparkles that danced around my mother’s head. But now all that surrounded us were bookshelves crammed with books that neither of us wanted to read.
What is more terrifying—the things we imagine or the things that are real?
“How’d it go?” Reverend Ruttles asked when we got home late that afternoon. He stood in the foyer, leaning on his cane.
As I searched for my key, Mrs. Bobot and the reverend spoke in hushed tones. “The doctor thinks the new medicine might work, but it needs time,” Mrs. Bobot said. “But we got some terrible news.” She told him about the conversation in the patient accounts office.
“Alice?” Reverend Ruttles took out his wallet. “Let me give you some money. I don’t have enough to cover your mother’s hospital bill, but you’ll never go without. Not with us around.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Bobot said.
“I’m okay. Really. There’s plenty for food and bills. There’s just not enough for the hospital.”
“Can you believe the cost of health care?” Mrs. Bobot folded her arms. “It’s an outrage.”
“Why don’t we go to the bank tomorrow and help Alice apply for a loan?” the reverend suggested. That sounded like a great idea, and for a moment everyone’s mood lightened.
“No, that’s not going to work,” Mrs. Bobot said, shattering the mood. “Alice is a minor. And Belinda can’t sign for the loan.”
“I could sign for her,” I said, as innocently as possible. As if the idea of forging my mother’s signature was brand new.
Revered Ruttles shook his head. “That wouldn’t be right. That would be breaking the law.”
“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Mrs. Bobot said. “They require a notary public for a loan. Your mother would have to be there in person.”
Reverend Ruttles and Mrs. Bobot exchanged a fretful look. Then Mrs. Bobot took both of my hands. “Why don’t you spend the night with me, like you used to? We’ll pull out the sofa. There’s always a nice breeze in my living room.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’d rather sleep in my own bed.” I might have spent the night at Mrs. Bobot’s if Realm hadn’t been around. Her moodiness was the last thing I wanted to deal with.
“It’s not healthy for you to spend so much time alone. We should do something fun,” Mrs. Bobot suggested. “How about we go to the lake for a swim? It’ll be good to get away from all this hot cement. We’ll pack a picnic. Spend the day.”
The lake did sound nice. Something to do that was summery. After Mrs. Bobot and the reverend ran through a list of doctor’s appointments and church committee meetings, they agreed on Saturday. “Don’t you worry, Alice,” Mrs. Bobot said. “We will never allow your mother to go to a public hospital. It simply will not happen. She’s sure to get better, I just know it.” Then we all hugged and said good night.
The apartment’s walls pressed in on me the minute I stepped inside. I hurried to the living room window and flung it open.
One of the reasons my mother bought the old four-unit building was because it looked out onto Cal Anderson Park. From the living room window I could see the park’s focal point, a conical fountain made from stacked stones. My mother used to sit next to that fountain. Running water has a way of soothing the mind.
Twilight had settled and the park’s lampposts glowed like liquid amber. Dog walkers strolled the gravel trails. A man with a guitar sat on a bench, strumming. A couple walked past, hand in hand, whispering secrets. Too often that summer I’d stood at that window, watching the evenings pass by. The lies that protected my mother had locked me up in solitary confinement. What am I doing? I thought. Sitting around every night, hanging out with old people. I should have gone to the movies with him. Just one night. Just one movie.
As I leaned against the sill, Dr. Diesel’s words echoed in my head. Be hopeful, Alice. He was right. I needed to stick all my problems into Mrs. Bobot’s stew pot and add a great big helping of hope. Because who really knows? Tomorrow could bring good news from Harmony Hospital that Mom was better. Or good news from New York that Heartstrings Publishers had burned down, along with the copies of all its contracts.
Tomorrow could bring anything.
But if tomorrow failed me and brought the same old stuff, then I’d have to figure out a way to make the hospital and the publisher happy.
Be hopeful, Alice.
I made my morning call to Harmony Hospital. Nothing had changed, except that the nurse forwarded me to the patient billing department and I got an “official” verbal notice from some guy that we had ten days to pay the bill. I told him about the October royalty check, but he didn’t care. He repeated the official notice and told me that Harmony Hospital was not a charity organization. I squeezed the phone, trying to channel all my anger into that cellular signal so it would overload on the other end and the man’s head would explode.
Cereal and a reality show followed. Today’s sweet sixteen was throwing a fit because her father wouldn’t buy her an elephant, which she wanted to ride to her party. He tried to convince her that they had no place to keep the elephant, but she had her head wedged so far up her butt, she didn’t hear him. I was beginning to suspect that the show was rigged. These people couldn’t actually exist, could they?
As I dumped my bowl into the sink, Realm pounded on the door. “Alice!”
When I opened the door, she shoved a thick stack of paper at me. “When your mom gets back from wherever she is, overseas or someplace, give that to her. It’s my novel. I finished it yesterday while you guys were gone.”
“Your novel?”
She tugged on her long sleeves until they covered her hands. “It’s not a romance novel but I don’t know any writers other than your mom. So I’m hoping she’ll help me get it published.”
“Sorry,” I said, trying to hand over the stack. “My mom’s too busy to read anything.”
Realm folded her arms and glared. She wasn’t going to budge.
“Look,” I said, “people ask my mom to read things all the time. She almost always turns them down, unless somebody she knows recommends it.”
“Then you read it and recommend it to her,” Realm said.
“What?” The stack was enormous. “I’m not going to read this.”
“Yeah, I think you will.” Realm smirked. “Because that’s
the kind of person you are. You’re nice. So read it, then tell your mom it’s the best thing in the world so she’ll send it to her publisher.”
I’m nice. Nice people get stuck with manila envelopes full of scribblings and stacks of paper to read. Not nice people get elephants for their birthdays. “Fine. I’ll read it,” I lied.
Sure, I could have read it. My social calendar was totally empty. But the shallow truth was, I didn’t want to help Realm get her book published. We’d never gotten along, not even in the old days when she’d still called herself Lily. She’d come to visit her grandmother and we’d all go out for ice cream and then swim at the Edmonds pool. Her visits always made me feel bad about myself because of the things she said.
“You think you’re special just because your mom’s a famous writer.”
“You think you’re better than me because you go to a private boarding school.”
“You think you’re prettier just because I’m fat.”
I’d never thought those things, but Lily always said I did. Then she transformed herself into Realm, cutting her hair, losing the weight, covering up every inch of skin, and refusing to go out for ice cream or to the pool. And her comments got nastier. A bigger, darker cloud settled around her. I had enough dark clouds in my life.
My phone buzzed its 9:30 a.m. alarm. No way was I going to stand at the living room window in my pajamas. That would be just like taping a sign to my chest that says, I’M TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH YOU. But he wouldn’t be looking for me in the foyer window. I could sneak a quick glance.
“My story’s called Death Cat,” Realm said as I turned off the alarm. “It’s about this cat whose owners force her to be in one of those stupid cat shows. You know, where they wear costumes and sleep in decorated cages. Totally humiliating.” She pulled on her sleeves again. “Anyway, after the cat show, the cat kills her owners. Then she decides to kill all the people who organized the cat show. It’s a horror story.”
Holding the stack of papers against my chest, I crossed the foyer and peeked out the window. A sun-drenched sky saturated Cal Anderson Park so that all the colors seemed washed out. Where was he?
Realm stood right behind me. “Horror’s not easy to write, you know. Not like romance. I mean, anyone can write romance. It’s not brain surgery.”
Under normal circumstances I might have snapped at Realm. I might have told her to get lost or I might have shoved her manuscript into her snotty face. Because common courtesy dictates that if you’re asking a writer to help get your book published, you shouldn’t insult that writer’s genre. At the very least, you should proclaim your love for everything that writer has written.
But instead, I stood very still, sensing something on the horizon, the way a hound might stick his nose into the wind and sense an approaching fox. At that moment an idea was born and it flitted before my eyes like a moth outside a window. I turned and looked at Realm. “What did you say?”
“I said horror’s hard to write.”
“No, after that.”
She narrowed her blue eyes. “I said anyone can write romance. It’s a stupid formula. Every story’s the same. Everyone knows that. Anyone can write it. Anyone.”
“Anyone?” I repeated.
A gong sounded. Gonggggg, like a Buddhist monk was standing right behind Realm. “That’s what I said. Anyone.”
“Anyone?” I asked again.
The gong sounded again. Gonggggg, clear and bright.
“Crap, that’s my mother.” Realm reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Then she argued with her mother about something, as her skinny legs carried her back up the stairs.
Forgetting about Skateboard Guy, I rushed into my apartment. Death Cat landed in the junk-mail box as I hurried to my mother’s desk. I grabbed her publishing contract and read it again. The contract stated that the “untitled work in progress” was supposed to be an entirely originally work created by Belinda Amorous, but it didn’t say, exactly, that Belinda couldn’t have someone “help” with the process. Help with the typing, for example, or help with the proofreading. What if, during the typing and proofreading, an entire book should happen to get written? The contract didn’t say anything about that.
Why couldn’t I write Untitled Work in Progress for my mother?
Being the Queen of Romance’s daughter made me the Princess of Romance. I may not have inherited her Nordic bone structure, her sexy figure, or her naturally plump lips, but surely I’d inherited something. And maybe that something was the knack for storytelling. I’d gotten Bs in English. I’d been raised on the romance genre. It was such an obvious answer. And what else was I doing with my summer?
Nothing!
I could devote every minute of every day to the project. It didn’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize winner, just something that Heartstrings Publishers would accept. This could work. It would work. It had to work. The hairs on my arms stood up, electrified by possibility. Like a resolution maker on New Year’s Day, nothing was going to stop me. A goal was set and all that was needed was total commitment. Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll start right away!
I scrambled out of my pajamas, showered, then threw on a pair of shorts and a purple tank top. Then I sat at the computer, my fingers posed on the keyboard, and I sent a letter to Ms. Heartstrings, letting her know that there was no need to contact her lawyers. There would be no need to pay back the one hundred thousand dollars and no need to withhold the royalty checks, because the book would arrive in her office by its August 31 deadline. Then I signed my mother’s name.
And I pressed “send.”
Immediate regret. My hands flew over my mouth. What had I done? What had I been thinking? I was going to write a romance novel? In my mother’s name? I chewed a fingernail, then another. I paced around the room. A happy voice drifted from the kitchen television. The sweet sixteen, who’d ended up getting everything she wanted, told the viewers that her life was great. I turned off the television and sat back at my mother’s desk. This was no time to freak out. I could do this.
So I opened a new document and stared at the blank screen.
And stared, and stared, and stared.
How do you start a story?
I scanned my mother’s bookshelves. She had dictionaries, thesauruses, memoirs of writers, but she didn’t own a single book on how to write. The romance genre had rules, and though I was fairly sure I knew those rules, a how-to book might keep me from wasting precious time. So, after a check-in call to Mrs. Bobot, I headed for the library.
Despite the smothering heat, pride put a little bounce in my steps. I was doing something. I was gripping the proverbial bull by the horns. The master of my own destiny. No “official notice” or contract deadline was going to bring me down. My sole job had been to take care of things so my mother could recover, and I wasn’t going to fail her. Not even a heat wave could ruin my mood.
I already knew the basics of the romance genre. Rule number one: regardless of the social or political climate, the story is about a man and a woman. Perhaps that will change in the future, but right now, that’s the way it is. Rule number two: there has to be a happily-ever-after. A romance novel does not end with a divorce, or a fatal disease, or the hero and heroine getting murdered by their deranged cat. Rule number three: love conquers all because love is the most powerful force in the universe.
Eighteen minutes after leaving my apartment, I crouched on the industrial carpet of the Capitol Hill library, scanning the lower shelf in the writing section. My finger stopped on a yellow spine. Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies. Who was the dummy—the writer or the reader? Unsure, I grabbed it. Then my finger stopped on Anyone Can Write a Romance Novel. Just as Realm had declared. I grabbed it.
A snarky reviewer once wrote in her review of my mother’s novel Lassoed by Love that romance novels are the cheese puffs of literature—fluffy, artificially colored, and deep-fried for the masses. “What would we do without cheese puffs?” my mother had said after reading the review. �
��Eat rice cakes and saltine crackers? I think not.”
Next I found The Rules of Romance and, in a serendipitous sweep of a nearby table, I also found Write a Romance Novel in One Month. That meant I had an entire extra week. It could be done!
Bursting with empowerment, I carried the books to a window nook and settled onto the cushioned bench. Maybe Rome hadn’t been built in a day, but imagine what the engineers might have achieved if they’d had a book called Anyone Can Build Rome, or Building Rome for Dummies, or Build Rome in One Month.
Each of the writing books began by congratulating me on pursuing my passion to become a published author. And each book overflowed with promises.
If you follow my directions, you will have a completed manuscript to submit to a publishing house by the end of the month.
If you follow my simple steps, you will write a romance novel that readers will adore.
If you follow my advice, all your dreams will come true.
I eagerly flipped through the pages and here’s what I learned. Books that tell you how to write are full of lists. Lots and lots of lists. According to these books, writing is an orderly process that can be mastered with easy, straightforward steps. I hoped this would be the case because it would sure make my life a lot easier.
“Hi, Alice.”
My gaze darted up a plain white T-shirt and rested on a pair of black hipster glasses. I closed the writing book, then flipped it facedown. “Hi.”
Skateboard Guy stood at the end of the window bench. “You look like you’re doing some research.”
“Sort of.” I crossed my arms over the pile of books. “Not really, though. I’m just … hanging out.”
He fiddled with his leather watchband. “Dad said I could come in a little late today so I thought I’d get something to read. I’m Tony, by the way.” He held out his hand. “Tony Lee.”
I held out my hand and his warm fingers pressed against mine. We shook. “I’m Alice Amorous.”
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