by Whitney G.
I started reading chapter one and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
This was my fucking book. This was my fucking story.
Every word from my novel had been lifted and repurposed, masked under a more refined and rigid prose. Yet still, the blatant plagiarism shone through the ink.
I flipped through the entire book, recognizing sentence structures and words I’d already written months before. As tears of anger fell down my face, I forced myself to actually read every word of the article in The Times, to see if she would, at the very least, credit me for her stolen work.
“I have a friend who works in the airline industry,” she was quoted two paragraphs in. “I managed to snag a short two-month stint as a flight attendant and I’m excited to share this story with my readers.”
When asked for the inspiration behind her story, she said, “Well, I’ve always wanted to write what I would enjoy reading. I was on a plane one day and I saw this flight attendant who looked like she had a story to tell. All of a sudden, I wanted to be in her shoes, know about her life, so I took that moment and decided to craft something semi fictional, but very meta-world.”
At the bottom of the interview, there were a few lightning-round questions. One in particular stood out: “Did you read any books about flight attendants, aviation, or pilots while working on your novel?’
“Not at all,” she’d answered. “I’ve actually never read any book regarding the airline industry. I crafted the story first and then I consulted a few experts for technicalities. I try my best to never, ever, read any other author’s work while I write.”
Her lies cut deep, but the bolded line at the bottom of the article struck me the hardest: “For inquiries and further information about The Mile High Club Unveiled, contact the author’s agent: Kennedy B.”
I’d never known heartbreak before that moment, never knew what it felt like to feel as if my heart had been yanked from my chest and stomped on repeatedly. I tried not to cry too loudly, but the thought of holding back tears only made me cry more.
Not only did Brooke’s book come out a full three months before mine, it shot up the bestsellers’ charts. And it stayed there. For weeks. Her book was on the tip of every reputable critic’s tongue, and publishers were clamoring for more stories ‘just like it.’ However, when my book finally debuted, it was cruelly dismissed as a “knock off,” and the critics labeled it as “Nowhere near as good as its predecessor,” and “For a debut, Ms. G. should know better than to so obviously copy her superior.”
I never opened a single envelope from my publisher after that. I tossed them all to the side in various corners of my apartment—keeping them as close and distant reminders of a tarnished dream. I stopped answering Kennedy’s phone calls and emails—the few that came anyway, and as much as it hurt me financially, I returned my twenty-five thousand-dollar advance for the sequel to the publisher.
I was too hurt to write anything else for them again.
What I did write was my first official column for The Times: “How It Feels When a Bitch-Ass Bestselling Author Steals from a Debut Author and How My Agent—Kennedy B. of Bronson and E. Literary Asshole Associates Backstabbed the Shit Out of Me.” I wasn’t classy or careful about it at all. I listed names, dates, and gave dead proof that almost every word in her book was a variation of mine.
Since I was on amazing terms with the logistics team, and never had any prior problems, the article made it all the way to the layout department before my slander was detected.
The next time I came into work, I was fired. Then banned.
Then erased as if I’d never worked there.
The same month I lost my dream-internship at The New York Times, I received an email from Elite Airways. I’d passed the final round of pre-screening but it would take a while before they would be able to fly me to Dallas for the full eight-week training session. And even then, they admitted that their newly hired attendants could remain on reserve from anywhere for four months to four years.
I still had my part time job as a gate agent—which I had to keep, and there was a massive condominium complex I’d once done an exclusive exposé about. It was a beautiful, state-of-the-art building, full of million dollar homes, and from what I remembered in my report, it had a very high demand for “domestic engineers” and hired a new one every week.
Desperate, I figured I’d give that job a temporary try. And above all else, I would stop writing for a while.
I had to.
I MET KENNEDY AT ANDREW’S Coffee on Fifth Avenue, spotted her as soon as I stepped inside.
A beautiful Asian woman with long black hair, she still looked as friendly and approachable as she did when I first met her years ago.
“Hey,” she said, smiling as I sat across from her. “Do you still take hazelnut and Splenda in your coffee?”
“You actually remember something about me?” I rolled my eyes. “Shocking.”
“So, you don’t take that anymore?”
I stared at her.
She pushed a cup of coffee toward me and smiled again. “How have you been? It’s been a long time since we last spoke. I’m actually surprised you answered my phone call.”
“No shit.”
“Um...” She sipped her tea, having the audacity to look confused. “Did I catch you on a bad day? Is something wrong?”
“Yes.” I gritted my teeth. “Yes, you did catch me on a bad day and yes, something is wrong—something is very wrong.”
“Would you like to meet me some other day, then?”
“I don’t want to meet you after today at all.” I tried to hold back and stay calm, but I couldn’t. “You are the worst fucking literary agent ever,” I said. “The fact that you still have my number is appalling and I hope the reason you’re here is because you’ve lost every client you’ve ever had.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well, that sucks for them.” I crossed my arms. “Have you changed your process about signing new people now or is it the same? Lure them in with a debut book they didn’t write, slap their name on it, and voila! Instant fame and undeserved success.”
She sighed. “I had no idea that Brooke was going to be influenced by your book, Gillian.”
“Influenced? Influenced? Oh, now that’s grand. Is that what they’re calling plagiarism these days?”
“I’ve apologized to you, countless times.” She looked sincere. “I had no idea, and when I found out—”
“You didn’t even tell me!”
The café was suddenly silent and everyone was staring at me, but I didn’t care.
“You didn’t even tell me, Kennedy.” I shook my head.
“Because I wanted to avoid you behaving like this.”
“Yeah, well. As always, great planning on your part. Whose book ideas is she stealing now? I’ve seen only the greatest of deals for her in Publishers Weekly—movies, foreign, audio. Must be nice.”
“Gillian...”
“I even saw her at a signing overseas where she apparently still doesn’t seem to read other authors’ books while she writes.” I leaned back in my chair. “Oh, and it was just last week when I read that she’s getting a very nice promotional tour for her latest release as well. Which client of yours did she steal that book from?”
She sighed. “Are you going to let me talk, Gillian? Or are you going to sit there and treat me like shit all day?”
“I’m going to sit here and treat you like shit all day,” I said, sounding a lot more like Jake than myself. “You signed the author who clearly stole—not influenced, my first book. You failed to tell me about it when it first happened, stopped reaching out to me, and now you want to call me out of the blue and sit down with me for a cordial conversation? Do you honestly expect me to let you?”
“Enough!” She cut me off, her face beet red. “Enough, Gillian. Don’t you think I was hurt, too? Don’t you think I cried about it as well?”
“The tears must’ve dried up pretty fast
, since you signed her to your agency.”
“I did not.” She glared at me. “That was a misprint. My partner signed her, but she was new at the time and she had no idea about what she’d done until after the contracts were signed. I would never have done that to you.
“But ignoring me for all these years and sending me generic holiday greetings was okay?’
“You either have a very distorted memory of what happened or you sincerely want to hate me,” she said. “I emailed you all the time. You stopped answering me. I called you every day for months and you didn’t pick up once, so of course, I stopped. You needed time to get over it, I figured, but I never stopped fighting for you, Gillian.” She looked genuinely hurt. “I’ve sold the rights to your first book in several countries. I’ve sent excerpts of it to magazines whenever I thought it would be a good fit, and I still have your unclaimed royalty checks in my desk drawer. I’ve mailed you the notices repeatedly, but you haven’t answered one in years.
I stared at her.
“I told you from the very beginning that I would never quit on you, that I believed in you, no matter what, and I do not deserve to be talked to like that. Ever. How would you feel if that pilot you’re dating talked to you that way?”
“Upset. Wait...” I paused. “How do you know about him?”
“Good question.” She smiled and pulled a folder from her bag. “That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about today. But first, I want you to look at this.” She slid the folder to me. “It’s a book deal. North American rights only, so you would retain all foreign rights and you’d be able to sell those as you want.”
I stared at the file, not wanting to open it. The state of publishing was even worse today than it was back then. No one new received more than a couple thousand for an advance these days.
“What’s the advance this time?” I asked. “Seven dollars?”
“Close.” She sipped her tea. “Seven figures.”
“What?”
“See for yourself.”
I immediately flipped the folder open and read the top sheet.
There it was in black and white: A two million dollar offer for North American rights to some book I’d never written or even mentioned.
“What the hell is Turbulence?” I asked.
“Your blog posts.” She smiled. “I’ve been following you from the beginning. You’ve got about one hundred thousand words of material to work with already.”
What the ... “You’re KayTROLL?”
“Yes, very nice to ‘meet’ you in person. Well, again. Now, if you’re interested in taking this deal, you’ll have to change the—”
“No, no. no.” I interrupted her. “That was you leaving all those rude-ass comments all this time? Following my sex-life? Saying things that you knew would hurt my feelings?”
“First of all, you decided to blog about your sex life. I didn’t force you. Second, are you really going to sit there and talk to me about hurting someone’s feelings?”
“You once wrote “You’re a slut,” in the comments.”
“No,” she said, smiling. “I said that you were ‘behaving’ slutty—which you were. Big difference.”
“You said I needed to grow the fuck up.”
“You did.” She smiled again. “And from what I’ve been reading over the past few years, you have. But if we’re going to discuss things we’ve both said, didn’t you once call me a “Backstabbing Bitch,” amongst other things, on your blog? And also, for your never published Times article?”
I sighed.
“I think we can both be mature and throw the mean comments under the bridge now. Don’t you think?”
“Yes...”
“Good. Now, back to this deal. In order for it to work, you’d have to turn eighty percent of the blog posts into more of a narrative. You can keep ten to fifteen of your favorite ones and have them printed as is, and you may have to do a few male-point-of-view chapters. It’d have to be super-fast, and you’d have to something unique with the chapter headings to separate the blog posts. Maybe airport gates—A1, A2, et cetera, for chapter headings? It would just have to be something non-chapter like, because they’d like to do an advanced publication for this.”
I leaned back in my chair as she continued.
“You should know that every editor I pitched this to wanted an immediate meeting, and I was as discreet as I could be. Before I could even suggest an auction, Penguin put this deal on the table and their promotional teams are already salivating to go the extra mile. What do you say?”
My mind was still spinning, my heart was still racing. “I need time to think about it.”
“What? Which part exactly needs to be thought about?”
“The part where the guy I fell in love with is in the story, the part where I’ll be putting him and our relationship out for the public. I know we’re over now, but—” I paused. “I’m still in love with him.”
“Understandable.” She nodded, lawyer-like. “You can change his name, distort a few of the facts. The deal is packaged for you to have creative freedom. It’s meta-fiction.”
“I just...” I shut the folder. “I’m honored, Kennedy. But this is way too fast. Thirty minutes ago, I despised you. Fifteen minutes ago, I tolerated you.”
“And now?”
“Now, I regret the way I’ve thought about you all these years.”
“It’s water under the bridge.” She leaned forward, tapping my hand. “Take all the time you need to think about this.”
“Do you really mean that, or does that phrase still mean the same thing as it did years ago?”
“Of course, it does.” She put her hand on her chest, laughing. “You’ve got until the end of the week.”
GATE C40
JAKE
Present Day
Penguin Acquires $2M Rights to Meta-Fiction Account of Elite Airways Stewardess’ Steamy Affair with Pilot
—The New York Times
I STARED AT THE BLACK and bold headline—wanting to believe the words were some type of joke, but the accompanying article held no humor.
Gillian Taylor, formerly published as “Taylor G.” was quoted as saying, “It was a very turbulent affair that occurred between the two of us. And yes, we did risk a lot by being in some of the places we were together. But through the ups and downs, I fell in love with this man and I wouldn’t change anything about the experience for the world. Well, minus our own personal ending in real life, of course.”
When asked if the subject of her novel had any fucking idea about what was happening, any idea about the fact that she was about to tell this story, she gave a short, “No comment.”
I couldn’t even finish reading the article in its entirety, not when I managed to make it through her short bio that detailed her previous time in publishing. Time she didn’t even think to share with me on the night I told her everything.
Everything...
Here I was, once again, reading about someone’s actions in my life via the ink of the press instead of getting the words in person. Once again, I was used and quickly betrayed, and someone I actually loved became another disappointment. Just like everyone else.
GATE C41
GILLIAN
New York (JFK)
I TOOK A CAB TO JAKE’S apartment around three in the morning, my heart unable to stand being ignored by him for another week. As the driver carelessly sped across the city streets, my anxiety rose with every click of the running meter.
“You alright back there?” the driver asked. “You like you’re about to vomit in my car.”
“I’m not going to vomit in your car.”
“You better not.” He eyed me through the rearview mirror. “I’ll have to charge you double for that. No, triple.”
I let out a sigh and kept my head turned toward the window, attempting to focus on the sight of Manhattan instead of my emotions.
When the cab finally pulled up in front of The Madison, I handed the driver a co
uple twenties and rushed right up the steps.
“Wait a minute, Miss.” Jeff held up his hand, not opening the door for me. “How may I help you tonight?”
“I’m here to talk to Jake.”
“I don’t know a Jake.”
“Mr. Weston, Jeff,” I said. “You know who I’m talking about. I need to see him.”
He gave me a sympathetic look and slowly shook his head. “He put you on his ‘Not Welcome’ list.”
“What?”
“You’ve been on it for weeks. I’m not supposed to let you in, and you’re actually banned from the property. Would you like me to arrange another cab for you?”
I was silent. I wasn’t even sure what to say.
Near tears, I took a couple steps back, but Jeff began to open the door for me.
“Hurry up,” he said, looking away and giving me a chance to rush inside.
I headed straight for the elevators, using the key Jake had given me to get up to his floor—hoping like hell it still worked. When the car began to move, I breathed a sigh of relief.
With every floor that passed, I attempted to calm my nerves, but it was no use. By the time I arrived to his level, I was an even bigger mess of emotions.
I walked over to his door and knocked five times.
No answer.
I knocked five more times, a little louder.
No answer.
I kicked at the door a few times—saying his name, and Jake finally answered, wearing nothing but a pair of lounge pants. Looking as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, water from his hair dripped onto his bare chest, and the familiar, intoxicating scent of his body wash wafted toward me.
“Thank you for finally answering the door,” I said, noticing the imprint of his cock through his pants.
