“I mean, I will tell them, I guess, but I don’t care that much right now.”

“It could harm your sales, for sure,” he said. “Maybe they won’t want to publish the next one.”

“Okay, I know this is a lot to handle. But, like, you think my publisher is going to be upset that the lady who writes about a diabolical teenage genius girl who causes chaos in her small town is the person responsible for that whole panic?”

“You’re kind of a role model figure—”

“I’m not at all. I am not that famous in any way. Okay, Aaron? Focus. Do you understand? I’m telling you now. Not anyone else. I’m telling you. I should have told you sooner, but I think, a few days from now, maybe, you’ll think about all of this and realize how fucked up it would have been to tell you at literally any point in our relationship, how there was never a good time to tell. Okay? And this is not a good time, either, I get it. But it’s happening, and I’m telling you.”

“But, what exactly are you telling me?”

“Aaron, just, I made it, okay? I really did. I have the original poster, the first one I ever made. And then I made, like, hundreds and hundreds of copies and I put them up and then things got weird and then it was out of my hands.”

“I’ve seen those posters in town,” he said suddenly. “I saw one on the bulletin board at the library. Remember? I told you I’d seen it. And how weird that was?”

“I remember, yeah.”

“Did you put that up?”

“Did I what now?” I asked, stalling. “Put what up?”

“The poster! Did you put that specific poster up on the bulletin board of our local library, Frankie?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I did.”

“So you still do it,” he said. “So you kind of, like, never stopped doing it.”

“I guess not,” I said. “Not as much as before, but, yeah, I still do it.”

“Why?” he asked, almost shouting. “That’s so messed up, Frankie. And . . . and you have that T-shirt and you wear it around the house.”

“Well, Jesus, it’s not like the fucking shirt is evil or anything, Aaron. I didn’t bring some cursed object into the house.”

“You did, though,” he said. “Kind of, you did. You have that poster.”

“Okay, I thought you’d be mad that I hadn’t told you before, but it sounds like you’re mad that the physical object is in our house. Which is very weird.”