The Truth

The award was actually beautiful, which I had not anticipated. I thought it would come as a haphazard, janky unidentifiable figure of concrete that I could use as a mantlepiece to sandwich books, or would arrive simply as a metaphor — a bag of flaming dog shit on my driveway that I’d have to stamp out. But when I opened the box a glint of gold peeked through; underneath layers of pastel tissue paper lay a statue of a well-carved sparkling dunce holding a large pencil. It’d actually fit anywhere in my house as an absurdist art piece, and I might even call it ‘pretty’ with little resistance. But the beauty ended at the plaque, which read America’s Worst Writer 2024, which I knew would be there.

I didn’t want to tell my husband. The award made waves in a particularly small literary circle who cared about words and prize too much — they celebrated when longlists turned into shortlists and who published a pretentious article in Harper’s to make fun of. There were 20 candidates initially that had written a smattering of idiotic work: there was the ill-timed satire on Palestine, a novel that moved the plot only through brunch scenes, a torture fantasy that used real names connected to the author’s personal life, a mean exposé of a childhood bully, who then came out as suffering from suicidal thoughts and OCD symptoms from a broken, relentlessly toxic family dynamic (the bully then went on to get a book deal from the situation), and then, there was my novel — a semi-auto-fictional work about meeting my husband at sixteen years old and him proposing the next day, the meaning of which was not, as the prize’s judges said, ‘Creepy adult male behavior normalized so as to be internalized and waived, even by the smartest of us,’ but actually, ‘When you know, you just know.’

The judge’s comments disturbed me. I have the worst one memorized: Samantha Kristene’s debut novel Perchance is a heart wrenching, emotionally agonizing tale of a timid woman falling prey to forces much bigger and sinister than even she can imagine; one hopes that Christy, its protagonist, eventually wakes up and realizes the situation into which she has been enfolded is one of grooming, subtle domestic abuse, and the suppression of the subconscious, but instead she normalizes patterns of abuse and marries the type of man she has been working her whole life to avoid, on the basis of a ‘spark’ — in doing so, one can only assume that Kristene lacks both the irony to understand the horrid and unfortunate tale she spins, but also the intelligence to pull off a deeply neurotic and sequestered point of view.

I didn’t think my book was that bad. I started writing stories in high school, but all of them meandered and had no meaning; I was writing for the sake of doing it, which gave me practice. I met Joe during a fundraiser I had to do for volunteer hours, raising money for backpack-less kids in Haiti whose arms were tired. He was one of the chefs from a nearby restaurant ladling soup into artisan bowls for rich women, and even though I wasn’t supposed to eat, just move leafy plants from one side of the room to the next, I kept going up to him and asking for more tomato basil. He slipped me his number with a smirk on my fourth bowl, and the action had the essence of wrongness to it — I know I shouldn’t have been hunted by a man many years my senior, but at least I was being hunted in the first place. I could say nothing but yes when he proposed. Something interesting was finally happening to me.

I got material from Joe via feelings I never had before. I started playing with form and craft on the weekends, and eventually, a story unraveled out of me, one from truth but also with small embellishments. A publisher wanted it, and it was released last year. The book didn’t bomb, but it certainly had a particular audience in mind — women who want something to happen to them. I got a fairytale romance (or at least I sold it as such) so it was as much of an inspirational story to women who get no male attention as much as it was a work of fiction. Interviewers said they liked the book, so I felt good, and got to work on a second one, which focused on domestic bliss.

I found out that I was America’s Worst Writer 2024 when Joe’s parents were visiting. We were shopping downtown carrying light clothes in sturdy bags for the upcoming Los Angeles summer. We had just sat down for aperitifs on an outside patio when my phone started buzzing — it was my agent, Kai.

After excusing myself from the table, telling them who was calling, I walked around the building. “What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck?” he yelled in my ear.

“What’s happening?” I asked. It was a nice, cloudless day, and I had the type of lazy giddiness one gets after being in the sun for multiple hours.

“How are you not seeing this? Haven’t you been tagged? Go on Twitter for one second!”
I paused the call to open up the app, and the first thing I saw was an official infographic from the Fiction Board that showed my author photo, cartoon pies being splattered all around and shakily-drawn dicks approaching my smile. Samantha Kristene is America’s Worst Writer of the Year, it read. Most of the comments agreed it was well-deserved, that my novel truly made them sick, although a few said that the Palestine satire was robbed.

I went back on the call. “Oh,” I said.

“Yeah!” Kai screamed. “Oh! Oh fuck! My career’s over! How could they have chosen yours?”
“I have no clue,” I said. “I really did not expect to win.”

“Me fucking neither! I wouldn’t have signed you if I knew you were awful.”

“But I’m not, though, right?” I asked. “You don’t think I’m that bad?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter what I think!” he yelled. “You’re America’s Worst Writer. That’s all that matters right now.” He hung up.

When I got back to the table, Joe asked me what he was calling about.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “He was just checking on the progress of my next book.”
“That’s wonderful!” Joe’s mother said. “And how is it going?”

I was running through all of the books I had read in the past year that were indisputably worse than mine. There was no way I could have been considered the worst, not when so many people attempt a faux intellectualism to tout thinly-disguised ideas about what they thought about culture, or obfuscated their meanings to appear distant and literary, and all I was doing was writing a fun story.

“It’s going really well,” I said.

_____________________

Thankfully, there were no death threats. On the website was a small reminder: Please do not personally attack any authors for their inclusion, no matter how many times they have been selected. Remember that they are bad writers, not bad people.

I searched my name on Twitter and screenshotted a few posts. samantha kristene didnt deserve to be americas worst writer but her husband definitely should be on a watchlist, one said. i wrote about samantha kristene’s novel and the dissolution of marital bonds as it relates to the online panopticon for @lithub, one said, with a link to an article that started with a quote from a book published in 1847. Samantha Kristene’s book wasn’t even that bad. We should ask ourselves: are we willing to label this book as an atrocity simply because its author is a woman? At first I was happy to see this, but I clicked on the author’s profile, and saw that she was a novelist who had been nominated for the same prize I won, three times before. Her most recent book was a memoir saying female sexual abusers were justified in taking back the power the patriarchy stripped them of.

I closed my computer and called for Joe. He entered the bedroom, two glasses of iced matcha in hand. He handed one to me and I told him to sit. It was too sweet; brown sugar cubes sat at the bottom undissolved, not at all how I like to make it.

“Do you remember what happened when you proposed?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” His head was cocked, like a puppy.

“I mean, I was 16. You were 35. Did anyone think that was weird?”

He thought for a bit. “My father had some questions. But my mother understood. My parents met in elementary school. And my mom was pregnant with me at 18.”

“Okay, that’s good. At least I’m not pregnant.”

“Yeah, definitely. That would be, like, real adult shit. I’m not mature enough for that, yet.”
“I’m not even mature enough to write a good novel.”

“What do you mean?” He asked again.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just some online comments.”

“Whoever they are,” he said, making an angry face, “I’ll beat ‘em up for you. I’ve been going to the gym, babe.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves.

“Yes, you have.”

He flexed his arms. “Feel!”

I felt. “There were just some people that felt maybe I was too young to be dating an older man.”

He put his arms down. “But they don’t know the love that we had.”
“I know.” I said, then shrugged. “I’m not saying I felt that way. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.”
“Don’t listen to people who don’t know what they’re talking about. You know what happens to your brain when you think too much,” he said. 

“I know,” I said. “I’m trying to stop.”

“Good girl,” he said, then kissed my forehead.

_____________________

Weeks went by without me telling Joe what actually happened. I felt like if I didn’t let him know, the award became less real. I kept it in a shoebox under my bed, which he would never look for — only our cat swiped at it sometimes. Eventually, America’s Best Writer 2024 was announced; the worst writer nominees were only the amuse-bouche. It was a woman who was named Kristene Samantha, who, the judges say, wrote a sweeping and powerful account of one woman’s journey to herself and a deeper meaning of feminism and womanhood amid waves of insurgency, depletion and catastrophe; Samantha’s instantly classic work redefines and resculpts a genre that has, by definition and history, excluded women like herself for so many years. I read the last comment many times and pretended that they were talking about me, informally, by using my first name. 

Kristene Samantha gave a speech accepting the award at a gala, saying she couldn’t have written the book without the city of Los Angeles, “Whose sweeping winds and sunny days infuse life within my activities when life’s only entities are my coffee cup and my computer.” She also thanked her husband, Mark, but didn’t say he particularly inspired her with the book. Her eyes got teary when she mentioned her grandmother, “Whose struggles inspire and motivate me daily to become a better person and woman.” She said that when Nonna first immigrated to the United States, she was kicked out of her apartment, job, and was bullied on the streets for being Russian. I thought this was a lie to make her speech more poignant, but I couldn’t prove it. I watched the speech while my laptop sat hot on my chest.

I found her on Twitter and congratulated her on the award. She wrote back, congratulating me on mine, which led me to think she didn’t read my biography carefully enough. Or maybe she was just being mean. Her profile picture was not writerly — laying on a beach, one hand up to fuss with wavy blonde hair, eyes obscured by sunglasses. She looked like a cool waitress at a green small-plates eatery who vapes during her break, not someone who wrote an award-winning book, or even sat down to read a book, though I wondered if this was an unfeminist thought.

She responded to my praise with all-lowercase sentences, and I wrote back, saying I was also in Los Angeles, and would love to get dinner sometime to talk. I wanted to make a new writer friend. She agreed, but she’d only have time for lunch because she was meeting with a French agent who was turning her novel into a movie. The agent had only teased the movie’s plot at the Cannes Film Festival and he got a 19-minute standing ovation. I said that was okay, that my agent was about to drop me because of my recent award win, haha, for some self-deprecation. She said if she were my agent she’d drop me too and sent me a date and time and location that worked for her without checking if my schedule allowed it.

_____________________

Later that week I was on a patio with America’s Best Writer 2024, who ordered green tea shots and a glass of white wine for the both of us. She looked exactly how she did in photos, and smelled a little like a combination of vanilla and lavender, infused with sea salt from the waves. I kept trying to sniff, inhale more of what made her essence so alluring, but I didn’t want it to seem like I was coked out.

After the waitress left, Kristene said, “Do you want any cocaine?”

I said, “Oh, no thanks.”

She shrugged, then put her little vial away. “No fun.” 

The green tea shots were disgusting, but I slurped it down anyway. She sipped hers. She told the small waitress that she’ll have an egg white omelet without even looking at the menu, so sure of her conviction. The waitress looked disarmed, but started pushing buttons on her little machine. I told her that I’d like the same thing as Kristene. The sun bore down on us, and I wish I’d worn sunglasses, just like hers. The beach was nearby, and I could hear the waves if I really listened, tasted salt in my pores.

“Tough luck on the award,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “That must suck.”

“It’s not great,” I said. “That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you.”

“If you’re looking for writing advice, I don’t have any,” she said. “Honestly. It’s like I go in a fugue state. I didn’t have any luck, but then my somatic therapist recommended microdosing, and all of this creativity just poured out of me. I can’t really remember what the book’s about, to tell you the truth.” 

I didn’t want to tell her I hadn’t read it, that I’d only pored over the judge’s comments and reviews that praised her vocabulary, font choice, and commitment to analyzing tough topics. “Did you read mine?” I asked.

“I actually did,” she said, sipping her wine.

“Oh,” I said. “How did you like it?”

“The wine? It’s so fucking dry. It kind of sucks horse shit, if I’m being honest.”

“No, my—”
“Oh, your book. It was fine, honestly. I didn’t see too much wrong with it. I thought the whole thing was hilarious, personally. It just shows that people hate women more than someone making fun of ethnic cleansing. We shouldn’t even have that prize to begin with, or maybe repurpose it to make it about outrageous fiction. Then people would really be pushing their bounds.”

I nodded.

“I think people just have a very moralistic view of writing,” she continued. “Who cares if a narrator was groomed as a child? The husband was a creepo, but it wasn’t real.”

“Well,” I said. “Dot dot dot.”

“Shit,” she said. “It was a memoir.”

“Not really. It’s just kind of about me. But I don’t think I was groomed.”

“That’s why I stay away from writing about myself. One, it’s not interesting. Two, if I get critiqued on it, it’s too hard to not take it personally. Why do you want someone to know all of the details about your life, anyway?”

“I guess I should have fictionalized it more. But I didn’t know people were going to have such strong opinions about it.”

“People have opinions about a speck of dust that has no effect on their lives. They just see you as someone they think they know since you made the decision to write it down and make it public.”

“I didn’t even do it to get published, I just wanted to write something fun. Going over my marriage was a cute idea. I liked revisiting all of those memories.” I almost teared up, tried to push it down. My wine wasn’t sweet enough. I ripped open a sugar packet from a nearby table and stirred it in with my finger.

“Whenever I start to think that I’m anything like my narrator, I have to change directions. I never want myself near any of my characters. My mind is just a vessel, and I would hate it if any dirt got stuck on a creative idea on its way out. That’s not my job.”

“That seems really hard.”

“Well, it is. That’s why I won.”

Our omelets came with utensils clumsily wrapped in a paper napkin, and without looking at the waitress, Kristene said that the wine was too dry. The waitress offered a solution, but Kristene waved her away. I, however, thanked her.

“Fiction is dangerous,” Kristene said. “You can get yourself into some trouble. My advice to you is to distance yourself from yourself.” She started mashing up the omelet, getting its fillings everywhere. “I guess I do have advice, after all.”

“I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to do that,” I said.

“Well, then,” Kristene said. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be a writer.”

I agreed, maybe I shouldn’t.

_____________________

I started to work on something different, so not-me, with a narrator that wouldn’t do anything I would do. Kristene and I split the check even though her award came with prize money, and afterwards I drove to the beach and swam in the water. I wanted to submerge myself just long enough to infuse my body with the shock of the cold, and when I drove home with my wet jean shorts plastered on, I felt like I had finally lived enough life to write something compelling and perhaps revolutionary.

Because I was not a serial killer, my narrator would be one. And because I was not a man, my narrator would be one, and also because serial killers are usually men. I was a Taurus, he was a Virgo. And he lived in Chicago, and it was cold. This was all just planning — I hadn’t written anything yet. I was driving home, listening to the same song on repeat because I didn’t want to look down at my phone to change it. All of this felt like a good base, something that may not win any prizes, but would definitely spare me humiliation from future awards.

When I got home, Joe was drinking an iced matcha on our dark green couch, reading a book with a colorful cover. To think people would label him as a groomer, or some other kind of mischievous, incorrect threat — it made my blood boil. I told him I was going on a walk to clear my mind and because I had already done a good amount of work.

“Get me a matcha,” he called as I went back outside.

My arm hairs baked in the sun as I walked out of my neighborhood. There was a juice stand nearby I had seen on Instagram that had recently gotten very popular, and a line of about 30 fit, tan young adults holding their phones or talking out loud were waiting for their ginger-infused drinks. Right by the stand there was a column of newspapers and magazines. I asked the nearest person in line if I could squeeze by real quick to grab one. He didn’t look up from his phone, but slackened his body so I could move it out of the way, and I grabbed the one on top, the ink blotty and damp, and I found my face.

It was the Los Angeles Times, and someone had taken a photo of me and Kristene while we were at lunch. SUCK-UP CENTRAL: Writing Award Loser Samantha Kristene Lunches With Bestseller Kristene Samantha — Brainstorming Collaboration?

I drifted away from the line and read the article as I sped-walked down the street to my house. Samantha Kristene, recently named the Worst Writer In America, was out grabbing an omelet with Kristene Samantha, recently named the Best Writer In America, this Thursday in Los Angeles, the author wrote. A reliable source seated next to the pair said they spoke about writing, fiction, and mentioned that Samantha Kristene was incredibly rude to the waitress and drank three glasses of Pinot Grigio while Kristene Samantha behaved and abstained. 

Only half of the article was true, but I could do nothing to refute it — I was in print. They had chosen a very unflattering photo of me, in the middle of getting down my green tea shot, face wrinkled in disgust. Kristene looked like a model, leaning back, almost as if she was posing for the photo. Samantha Kristene’s new novel, Perchance, is a harrowing tale of child molestation and abuse at the hands of her now-husband, Joe Osworth, an actor. She was awarded the title of Worst Writer In America. Kristene Samantha writes triumphant feminist critique and is beautiful.

I walked home in a daze, newspaper tucked under my arm so no one passing by could see I was on it. There was no way I could avoid telling my husband about this now, after he was identified as a sexual predator in the LA Times. I wondered how he’d react, if he’d get more upset at me writing about our history or tabloids misjudging what I wrote. When I turned in the final copy of my book, I felt so secure, but now I wanted to change every single word.

He was taking a nap when I came in. His matcha was reduced to ice with a green tint, paper straw disintegrated. I couldn’t wake him up to tell him what had happened. I decided to use this new energy to work on my next book. Max, the Chicago-based Virgo serial killer, would sway public opinion on my side again. I opened my laptop.

Killjoy

A novel by Samantha Kristene

Chapter 1

I was chopping up a baby when I realized that I had chopped up way more Indian babies than any other race. I thought, Hmm, and then I started to make the chopping more evenly distributed. Getting into the newborn section of the hospital was so easy. All I had to say was that I was a visitor, and then I locked myself in the bathroom reading articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which I thought could have been resolved if someone had brought donuts for both sides and they had just talked it out. I also tweeted that abortion was wrong (because I could chop up more babies if they had not been aborted). When night came and I couldn’t hear anyone else in the building, I got to work.

_____________________

Joe stirred, and I went to his side.

“Hi there,” I said.

I told him we were being targeted for what I did, and he was surprisingly calm. “I’ll just change my name,” he said. “I haven’t been getting that much work anyways. All I want to do is support you and your writing. No one else knows what we’re up to but us, you know?”

I kissed him and let him resume his nap, then realized my phone was buzzing. I had gotten more alerts from my name, and another Los Angeles Times article had appeared: Worst Writer In America’ Samantha Kristene’s New Novel Reportedly Racist, Anti-Abortion, Zionist.

It was on the front page the next day, with my author photo from Perchance that I thought looked sweet and flattering when I had it done. But now, next to horrific claims (that were true), I looked evil, someone with a dark inside who should be avoided. I put on sunglasses and a large hat and walked into the sun to get a raspberry and fig scoop of gelato. Under high-powered fans that chilled the ice cream, an androgynous scooper wore a beanie and a large chain of metal in one ear and asked me if I was “that awful novelist.” I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about, and ran out of the shop, fig chunks dripping onto my arm.

When I got home, I looked up an editor’s number and dialed — I heard a gruff voice say “Hello?”

“Hi, I’m Samantha Kristene, and you guys have been run—”

“Samantha Kristene? Jesus Christ, for real?”

“Yes. I wanted to—”

I heard him say “Fuck, fuck, record this!” to someone nearby. When his voice came closer, it was nicer. “Yes, Miss Kristene?”

“I wanted to get a chance to rebuke some of the claims made about me in your newspaper.”

I told him the ideas I had gotten from Kristene Samantha — that we should be writing fiction that challenges minds, not sappy romances. My new novel, I said, was an exploration of the absence of morality and what happens when we pay attention to the most insidious figures of our culture. I didn’t actually support serial killers, nor the systemic racial underpinnings of unconsciously selecting more Indian babies to chop, nor the conflict in the Middle East, which I knew nothing about, least of which an appropriate resolution. I could hear the editor furiously typing. 

“I recently had a chat with a novelist friend, and she told me to write what I didn’t know, so that’s what I’m trying to do with this new book.” I didn’t press him on how he or one of his writers had gotten access to my first draft, which was severely incomplete, lest he hang up on me after thinking I had turned combative. “I wanted to get into the mind of someone who’s really different from me. It’s an experiment in fiction.”

“And does this have anything to do with your recent achievement of being America’s Worst Writer Of All Time?”

“Well, it was only for the year. And maybe. But really, I just wanted to push myself.”

I hung up feeling proud. I felt I had defended myself successfully and achieved a level of cool that Kristene Samantha had transferred to me during our meeting — I was blasé, a fiction writer who wakes up to get words on a page rather than some moralist hack who writes self-soothing fiction to appeal to middle-aged women. I was tapping into something creative and pure, artistic and earthy. If anything else, it would take away from the conversation of my husband being a sexual predator. Which he maybe was.

_____________________

The next day, the Los Angeles Times front page read, EXCLUSIVE: AMERICA’S WORST WRITER SAMANTHA KRISTENE “DOESN’T CARE” ABOUT WRITING BABY-CHOPPING, RACIST FICTION: “IT’S MY JOB.” I sighed, then went back to the gelato place. The same scooper was there, with one more chain link added to their ear. Their beanie had changed color.

“I know it’s you,” they said, arms crossed. “I just have to say that I have many Indian friends and their community is grieving because of what you wrote. As an ally, I have a moral duty to refuse you your regular scoop of full-fat gelato. Now please leave, or I’ll have security escort you out.”

I left, even though the sign near the door didn’t say they can discriminate against victimized novelists, only people with no needlepoint tattoos. Thankfully, a nearby place sold boba, so I got a milk tea for Joe and an extra large green tea for me fixed with pearls and lychee jelly and mango stars and strawberry jam with cold foam. The cup sweated as I walked home, dripping damp spots on the paper as I read.

Ms. Samantha Kristene allegedly got her horrific ideas from ‘Best American Writer’ Kristene Samantha, who met the disgraced writer for lunch one day, where Ms. Samantha Kristene got belligerently drunk, did not pay for her meal, and harassed her waitress.

“I take no credit for inspiring whatever she perpetrated next,” Ms. Kristene Samantha told the Times. “All I told that awful woman was to write the fiction you were put on this planet to do. To think she went home and wrote… that… it makes me ashamed to have ever spoken to her. I’m donating 100% of my prize money and advance from my next book to the Coalition of Murdered Indian Babies Who Were Murdered in Racist Attacks Because They Were Indian. It’s the least I could do.” 

Ms. Kristene Samantha ended our call tearfully, guilt-ridden for Ms. Samantha Kristene’s contribution to the literary world. As a recently appointed member of the Fiction Board, she says she will have no problem nominating Ms. Samantha Kristene’s to be included, yet again, on the list of America’s Worst Writers due to her upcoming racism serial killer novel. Early reports also say the novel contains references to the Isr*eli-Palestinian war, which the writer describes as “laugh-out-loud funny” and “pretty cool.” Close friends also say she has consistently voted for Nikki Haley in Los Angeles’ primaries. There’s currently a crowdfunding campaign to gift informative books by POC authors to Samantha Kristene, including Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents and Palestine: A Socialist Introduction to educate herself.

People kept screaming at me from across the street as I walked home. At first I tried to pretend they weren’t directed at me, but at a certain point, I just had to keep my head down and adjust my hat so that no one could see my eyes. When I got to our bamboo-covered driveway, I ran home and typed my passcode into our keypad with shaky fingers. I got a call and answered it nervously, remembering scams or streamers who had the SWAT team show up to their house unannounced.

“Hey, Mrs. Samantha Kristene? This is Kari from the blog Our Lives, I was wondering if you wanted to agree to an interview—”

“I’m sorry, I’m not doing any more of those,” I interrupted, and almost hung up.

“No, I swear, it’s not out to get you. I’m on your side. I want to restore your image. I want to hear you.”

_____________________

Kari showed up thirty minutes later in a chunky boot and a greasy mullet. “There was a small crowd outside mad that I was going in, but I assured them I was coming to kill you,” she said with a smirk.

“Oh,” I said, motioning to our living room. “Do you want anything to drink? Joe, this is Kari, she’s going to—”

“Oh, I use they/them pronouns,” Kari said. “And I would love a matcha.”

I stopped in my tracks. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to— please don’t—”

“Don’t worry,” they said with a smile, grabbing my hands. “I’m not one of those crazies. I want to try and understand you.”
I sighed as we sat down, sipping my boba. Joe brought them a matcha and went to the patio.

“So,” they began, “How did you think Perchance would be interpreted?”

I laughed. “Not like this. I just wanted to have some fun.”

Kari laughed too. “Yeah, I guess. So abuse is fun to you?”

My heart stopped.

“And I suppose you wanted to have some fun with Killjoy, too. Your publicist sent me the first few chapters. I just have to say, I think you’re a really repugnant human. You really allowed yourself to be groomed just because of Joe’s finances?”

“What? I didn’t even write that much. And Joe has, like, no money. He’s an actor.”

I could hear chanting outside, growing closer to the house. Ban Sam, they went. I looked to one of our windows and saw a sign plastered against it, blocking out the sun: KEEP BOOKS CLEAN.

“Do you have any idea as to the suffering you’ve caused the world? We are already living in a vicious society. And here you come, validating the bigotry that has been bubbling in people all these years.”

“None of it is real,” I said. “I’m just playing.”

“Some playing,” Kari scoffed. The chanting grew louder now, and people started pounding on the walls. “You don’t even know what words can do. It’s sad.”

“They shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m so small. Why is anyone paying attention?”

“You asked for this,” Kari said, looking me in the eyes. “Tell your pedo husband my matcha was too fucking sweet, by the way.”

_____________________

Joe was outside on the patio in his swimsuit. He was holding an empty glass of matcha reading the Los Angeles Times, fingers placed delicately next to mentions of my name. I looked out at the leaves floating in our pool and the pink donut ring he must’ve just used. My shirt was damp from Kari throwing the dregs of their matcha and ice at me.

“How was the interview?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I’m a good writer.”

“There’s time to figure out what you want to do,” he said. “You’re still so young.”

We looked out at the pool, hearing protestors climbing the leafy walls to try and get onto the patio. The chanting grew. “What’s all this in the Times?” he asked.

I checked the paper as if seeing it for the first time, my name, all these allegations. I shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said, then took off my top and shorts, letting them drop on the hot pavement. The yelling swarmed us; Joe looked around to see where it was coming from. I got in the pool. The palm trees around the yard reached up and over our house, enveloping and warm, filtering the sun. I motioned to him to join me. He got up, put a foot in the water as I released my breath, fell into the pool and let it surround me. We were alone again, in the water, with just our weight.