Tully didn’t look at her agent. She didn’t have to; they’d been dreaming about an offer like this for years. “I say hell, yes. And can I start tomorrow?”

________

In writing, Kate found her voice again. She woke every morning at six and went into the office she’d set up in the spare bedroom. There, she worked diligently to craft and recraft her sentences, polishing each paragraph until it revealed all that she was trying to say. At some point in this first hour Johnny came in to kiss her goodbye, and then she was alone again until Marah woke and her real-life day began.

She had so much confidence when she was in that pseudo-office of hers, with her fingers on the computer’s keyboard. If only she felt so sure of herself now.

She stood in the front of the classroom, with a green blackboard behind her. In the desk/chair sets in front of her, a dozen or so bored-looking kids slumped in their chairs; more than a few appeared to be sleeping. Beside her, the professor—a young guy with long, shaggy hair, wearing Air Jordans and camouflage pants—waited patiently.

Kate took a deep breath and began to read: “The girl in the small room in the ramshackle house was all alone again. Or she thought she was. In this place where the lights didn’t work and the windows were covered in black paper and duct tape, it was hard to tell the truth. Should she take a chance and try to escape? That was the question. The last time she’d tried to run, she’d miscalculated and it had cost her. Unconsciously she rubbed the still-tender area along her jaw . . .”

She lost herself in the words she’d written, in the short story that was hers and hers alone. All too quickly it was over, the last sentence read, and she looked up, expecting to see a new respect in the faces that stared up at her.

No such luck.

“Well,” the professor said, coming forward. “That was entertaining. It seems we have a budding genre writer in our midst. Who has a comment?”

For the next twenty minutes, they dissected Kate’s story, looking for flaws. She listened carefully, refusing to let herself be stung by the criticisms. Who cared that she’d spent almost four weeks on these six pages? What mattered was that she could improve. She could tighten her story and try to master viewpoint and be more careful with her dialogue. By the end of class, instead of feeling wounded or dejected, she felt empowered, as if a heretofore unseen path had just been revealed. She couldn’t wait to get home and try again.

As she packed up her stuff to leave, the professor came over to her, said, “You show real promise, Kate.”

“Thank you.”