Donna would, quite simply, shit a brick when she found out. Never quite believing that it would ever actually happen, Clare hadn’t told Donna she’d finally landed an acceptance. She would show her tonight, the proof in her hands. All four of them would drink a good ten-dollar bottle of wine to celebrate. She would run down to their usual corner liquor store as soon as she had digested this realization for herself.

She perched on the edge of their ripped and badly beaten couch. Someone, probably Flynn, had left their dirty plate and silverware on the coffee table. She reached for the knife, slid it through the envelope’s top crease, and pulled two copies out along with a handwritten note from the editor.

Congratulations, Clare! Your first story. I’m confident it will eventually be only one of many! I will forever get to brag that I found you first. You have a beautiful and raw talent, and I hope to one day have the opportunity to work with you again.

Sincerely, Emma

She placed the letter carefully to the side and considered whether or not she should have it framed, decided that was silly, but then changed her mind yet again. She would want to remember this day, this feeling, this utter and complete sense of accomplishment in the very likely event that she never received a letter like this one again.

The leading story in this month’s issue was something about fame and fantasy, the cost of it. It was written by the daughter of the famous psychologist Erik Erickson. Clare would read it—she would read everything in this issue, even every single advertisement. She wanted to digest every page of this magazine that had done something for her, to her—even if she wasn’t exactly sure what that something was yet. The cover for this issue was a cartoon of three famous men drawn large in a too-small boat. Clare pushed past this to the table of contents page. There near the bottom, second from the last, was her title: Lost on the North Platte, Clare Collins.

She turned to page sixty-two and spread the periodical open to her story, printed, being sold—being read. A sense of exposure, a raw vulnerability swept through her on a wave of embarrassment. She was grateful that she would never know what other people thought of her story after having read it. She considered not showing Donna after all, hiding this likely accident of luck from her. She was Clare’s harshest critic.

“You need to toughen up,” Donna would say, often smiling while tossing Clare’s red-soaked pages back at her. “Do you think an editor is going to write you a love note? Should either one of us ever get published it will be after nearly drowning in a sea of red ink.”