it off, and now they’re speed-reading.’ She guffaws. She is giddy, in her own way. ‘You there? Your book is going to be bound and sold, Camila. We’re in an auction. Start practicing your signature.’
‘Everything okay?’ Lucille says when I came out.
‘Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.’ I love her and I love that office and I love that phone.
I float like a balloon back to the classroom. Everyone is writing. I mouth an apology to Victor Silva who raises his middle finger very slightly at me from his desk in front. I return to my mother’s bathroom, the Pantene shampoo, the green velour bathrobe she left behind and that I wore until my father told me not to.
Victor asks us to find the moments of heat in the writing we have done, has us circle and isolate those words, and with them we write a poem. We read them out loud. There’s one about an ashtray, a sequined dress, flour on a kitchen floor. Victor says something about each one. The feeling in the room is beautiful, wide open.
The hallway is crowded when we change to the next session. The boy ahead of me has on a green-and-white athletic jacket. TREVOR HILLS it says across his back.
In the workshop with the Irish essayist, I sit next to our librarian.
‘Trevor Hills? Are they here?’
She nods.
‘With their teachers?’
‘Usually one or two come along from each school.’
My heart is pounding Silas, Silas, Silas.
The Irish essayist has us close our eyes and listen to the words she says without trying to control our thoughts.
I keep mine open a crack, to scan the packed room. He’s not here.
‘A rainy day,’ she says.
My mother and me running from the Mustang to the house.
‘The sound of a musical instrument.’
Caleb playing the guitar.
‘An act of love.’
My father cleaning my golf clubs in the kitchen sink.
She has us write about one of these moments that come up unbidden, unforced. I’m writing about the golf clubs when Lucille taps me on the shoulder.
‘Line 1’ it says on her blue Post-it.
On the way back to the office I find out she’s worked here fourteen years and her son is in my ninth-grade class.
Jennifer tells me about a new round of offers. ‘Let me ask you,’ she says. ‘Is there a line you want to cross? A number you need to get to? You mentioned you have some outstanding student loans.’ Did I? ‘Give me your wildest dream number.’
There is a calculator on the desk. I punch in a year’s rent for that top-floor apartment with the window seat and bookshelves and add my debt. I tell her the number. We are not even close.
I head back to the essay class, but the halls are packed and it’s over. The one I want to go to next is on the second floor. The stairwell is jammed, and I move up slowly.
‘I guess you didn’t bomb the interview after all.’
I look up. Silas is on the landing in a tie. People are pushing past us. I climb a few steps closer.
‘They’ll come to their senses soon,’ I say.
‘I liked what you said this morning,’ he says. ‘About writing. Good for them to hear those things.’
His fingers are on the railing a few inches above mine. My legs start to wobble. ‘Do you want to eat lunch with me?’ I say.
He looks like he’s going to say no. ‘I don’t have a lot of friends yet.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Please?’
He grimaces. ‘All right.’
‘I’ll wait for you at the big doors.’
He nods and drops past me.
Lunch is back in the gym, bag lunches at round tables. The room is thundering with talk. I stand in the doorway as kids stream past, waiting for Silas. But it’s Lucille who comes first.
‘I told her you were probably at lunch, but she said it was urgent.’
She’s irked, understandably, so I explain about the book and the agent on the way back to the office, and she gives me a hug and hurries me to the phone.
Three editors are still in the auction. Jennifer thinks I should talk to them. I try to tell her I’ll be free in an hour, but she says they’re in their offices now. They’ve canceled their lunch plans to talk to me.
I hang up and Lucille is through the glass, asking me with her arms what happened. ‘I have to talk to editors!’
She does a dance in her office chair, and I do one in mine.
I call each of them. I talk to the