A small voice whispers: Easily, that’s how.
We were jogging. We’re both dressed for it; how hard would that be to believe? The steps were icy, it was raining, and Candice wasn’t watching her step. I’d definitely have time to stash the cameras before the EMTs got here. I could dump the whole backpack in the Potomac—or, no, that leaves too much to chance; it’s better that I hide it near Georgetown and retrieve it later. If Candice can’t talk, who’s going to suspect me?
It’s fucked up, yes. But I could survive a murder investigation. I can’t survive what Candice will do to me if she walks out of here alive.
Candice’s thrashes are getting weaker. She’s tiring out. I am, too, but I’m bigger, heavier; all I have to do is exhaust her. I pin her wrists to the ground, drive my knees against her chest. I don’t want to kill her. If I can just keep her still, if I can get the backpack off, then search her for any hidden recording devices—that’d be ideal; that way we can both walk out in one piece. But if not, if things come down to it—
Candice shrieks and spits at my face. “Get off !”
I don’t budge. “Just give it,” I pant. “Give it, and I’ll—”
“You fucking bitch!”
She bites my wrist. Pain shoots up my arm. I jerk back, shocked. She’s drawn blood—Jesus fucking Christ, it’s all over her teeth, all over my arm. Candice thrashes once more. My knees slip off her chest. She breaks loose, coils up, and kicks out at my stomach.
Her foot lands with such force—so much more force than I thought possible from that tiny body. It doesn’t hurt so much as it stuns, knocks the air out of my lungs. I reel backward, arms windmilling for balance, but the ground I thought was behind me is not there.
Just empty air.
Twenty-Four
THE DOCTORS LET ME LEAVE THE HOSPITAL AFTER FOUR DAYS, AFTER my clavicle and ankle have been set and I’ve proven I can hop my way into and out of a car without assistance. It doesn’t seem like I’ll need surgery, but they want me back in two weeks to check that my concussion has resolved itself. The whole thing costs me thousands of dollars even after insurance, though I suppose I should be grateful I got off this easy.
No police were standing over my bedside when I woke up. No investigators, no journalists. I slipped on the ice while jogging, I’m told. An anonymous Good Samaritan found me and called the EMTs using the emergency feature on my phone, but they’d disappeared by the time the ambulance arrived.
Candice has played this perfectly. Any accusation I make will appear utterly groundless. From the outside, we are near strangers to each other. Our last email interaction was years ago. I don’t have her number in my phone. There is no room to suspect foul play, for what motive could there be? It’s been storming for days now; the rain will have washed away all fingerprints, all proof of her cameras. Even if I can somehow prove Candice was at the steps that night, this only turns into a battle of verbal testimony that will cost us both thousands in legal fees. What’s more, I’m sure I’ve left bruises on Candice, too—bruises she’s no doubt embellished and documented by now. There’s no guarantee I’d win.
No. Whatever plays out now will happen in the realm of popular narrative.
I look up Candice’s name during the Uber ride back to my apartment, just as I’ve been doing every few hours since I woke up. It’s only a matter of time, I figured. I’d like to see the news the moment it drops. This time, the headline I’m awaiting tops the search results. An interview has just dropped from the New York Times: “Former Editor Candice Lee on Athena Liu, Juniper Song Hayward, and the Confession of a Lifetime.”
I’m honestly impressed. Putting aside the fact that Candice has managed to retcon her job title from assistant to editor, it’s hard to get a New York Times piece published in just four days, especially one about a literary feud that passed out of the news cycle months ago. Even Adele Sparks-Sato could never get her think pieces published in the NYT; she always had to resort to Vox or Slate or, God help us, Reductress.
But Candice had something no one else had. She had the tapes.
The final paragraph following the interview mentions that Candice is working on a memoir about the whole affair. Of fucking course. She’s only begun drafting it, but “multiple publishers” are reportedly “very interested” in acquiring her manuscript. Eden is listed as one of the publishers who have reached out to Candice’s agent. Daniella herself is quoted in the final lines: “Of course we’d love to work with Ms. Lee. It would be the ideal way to make amends for the part we played in this tragedy, which we deeply regret.”
SO HERE I AM, FINISHED.
I crash through one week, and then another, with painkillers and sleep aids. Consciousness is a burden. I wake up only to eat. I don’t taste the food in my mouth. I subsist entirely on peanut butter sandwiches, and after a few days, I stop bothering with the peanut butter. My hair grows ratty and greasy, but the thought of washing it exhausts me. I push myself through the motions of bare survival, but there is no telos, nothing to look forward to, other than marching down the dreadful progression of linear time. This is, I believe, what Agamben would call “bare life.”
News of my accident must have circulated around the web. Marnie texts me, Wanted to check in. I heard about the accident, are you alright? I take this to be an attempt to assuage her own conscience in case I die. I don’t respond.
Beyond that, not a single other person reaches out. Mom and Rory would drop everything to come to my bedside in an instant, if I told them what happened, but I’d rather shove screwdrivers into my eyeballs than explain it all. My phone chirps one night, but it’s only the DoorDash guy with the toilet paper, and I cry into my pillow, feeling profoundly sorry for myself.
When my painkillers run out and I have to face down the agony of cogitation, I while away the hours scrolling numbly through Twitter. My timeline is full of authors begging for attention as usual. Book deal. Cover reveal. Cover reveal. A starred review. A Goodreads giveaway. A plea for preorders. A romance novel cover featuring two white leads looks too similar to another romance novel cover, and the Twitterati aren’t sure whether to be mad at the authors, the publishers, the art teams, or White Supremacy in General.
It all reeks of desperation, but I can’t look away. It’s the only thing linking me to the only world I have any interest in being a part of.
The solitude wouldn’t bother me so much—I’m used to being alone; I’ve always been alone—if I could write. But I can’t write—not now, not knowing that I probably don’t even have an agent anymore. And what’s an author without an audience?
I’ve wondered, before, how authors who were canceled—and I mean canceled for good reasons, like sexual harassment or using racial slurs—felt after they were iced out of publishing. A few tried to worm their way back in, usually through seedy self-publishing endeavors, or weird cultish workshops. But most just disappeared quietly into the ether, leaving nothing behind but a few tired headlines recapping the drama. I suppose they’re living new lives, in new professions. Maybe they’re working office jobs. Maybe they’re nurses, or teachers, or real estate agents, or full-time parents. I wonder how they feel whenever they walk past a bookstore, whether they get a gnawing desire in their gut for the fairyland that cast them out.