A college-aged girl in the front raised her hand tentatively. Rasul tried to remember her name, then decided not to risk it. “Yes?”
She lowered her hand. “So you want us to write fan fiction?”
Rasul paused. “Huh. I guess I do.”
Another hand went up, this time from the older gentleman named Ron who had taken great pains to talk about his unpublished novel’s hero, who liked to go fishing. “Are you going to do the exercise too?”
Rasul shrugged. “Sure. I’ll do one, then share it. I’m going to type on my laptop, and if you have one you can do the same, but no worries if it’s handwritten. Ready?” He reached for his phone to set a timer, then stopped. “Ah. Anyone have a smartphone with a timer?”
They all did, of course, but Meg took charge and kept the time. Rasul sat down at the desk, pulled out his laptop, and stared at the blinking cursor. The novel that flew into his mind, of course, was the one he’d recently reread, I Capture the Castle.
Well, why not?
He wrote a small scene between Cassandra and Simon, though very quickly it turned into Rasul and Jacob, respectively. Cassandra was trying to be glib and catch Simon’s attention, but Simon kept her politely at arm’s length, despite their obvious attraction. He was getting into a good attempt by Cassandra to lure him out on a walk through the castle when Meg’s phone went off.
The room filled with groans and protests. Most people had barely gotten started, and everyone hated what they’d written. A few of the college-age girls and one of the older women, though, looked quite confident and almost smug.
Rasul let them vent for a minute, nodding. “Sure. It’s tough to write on the spot, and tougher to write with someone else’s characters.” He plugged his laptop into the overhead projector and turned it on. “This is what I did. I worked from I Capture the Castle, though my Cassandra and Simon aren’t terribly accurate. There are elements of them there, but they quickly turned into my own creations.”
“But what is this going to teach us? How are you grading this?” a woman asked. Rasul was fairly sure her name was Tina.
“What it tells me isn’t very important. What it tells you is far more interesting. So that’s your next assignment. Twenty minutes, a quick paragraph about what you learned from this. No wrong answers. ‘I hate fan fiction’ is a valid response, the same as realizing you love it. Just take a moment to examine your work, your reaction to the exercise.”
This time Rasul watched them while they worked. He would have played on his phone, but that was impossible, so he studied his charges instead. He hadn’t been sure how to go about this class exactly. The dean had said it was supposed to be very introductory level and free-form, so he was doing as requested so far. There were so many different ability and experience levels here. He hoped he could do a good job.
Once they finished their exercises, he had them share them, which was fun. They gave a variety of answers and had some lively discussion, and all of a sudden it was time to end the class.
Rasul pointed to the corner of the board. “For Thursday, read the short story I uploaded to Google Classroom. Come ready to discuss it. You have my office hours on my syllabus too, so if you have any questions, let me know.”
They filed out, and several of them came up to tell him how excited they were about the class. The dean stopped by too, and he was smiling.
“You’re off to a great start. Looking forward to seeing what else you do here.” Evan handed Rasul a flyer. “Also, I wanted to officially invite you to the Founder’s Day celebration next weekend.”
Rasul threw away the flyer as soon as the dean was out of sight. He thought about the class all the way back to his apartment, though. It hadn’t been bad. He’d worried somehow his complete lack of ability to do his own work would translate into being a crap teacher, but it seemed like he’d done all right.
He opened his laptop to see if he could work on his novel, but the same heavy, twisted feelings of anger, regret, and terror swamped him immediately.
He shut it and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
JACOB ABSOLUTELY hated chamber of commerce meetings.
He didn’t at all resent the idea of them—he wanted to connect with his community and share new ideas, to find ways to promote other local businesses. Problem was, the meetings were never about that. They were just another chance for Clark and his crew to complain about the internet and be suspicious of anyone under fifty.
Every Copper Point small business could become a member, in theory, but traditionally only businesses of a certain type were welcomed. There had been a small scandal when the Wiccan shop, for example, had joined, and a certain set of members ensured the owner’s membership only lasted a brief time. Jacob had tried to help her, but Clark and company did too good of a job making her feel unwelcome. It was shortly after that Jacob organized Mini Main Street so they could coordinate their plans and counter whatever Clark and company were up to.
Lately the controversy in the chamber had been that the Chinese restaurant owner had joined. The same clutch of members who had turned up their nose at the Wiccan shop owner were now working on Yi Fu Zhang. He was more difficult for the naysayers to take down, though, because in addition to MMS, Zhang had Rebecca Lambert-Diaz and her partner at the law firm, Julian Steele, on his side. It was difficult to say which one of the lawyers was more terrifying.
They were so terrifying, in fact, MMS hadn’t worked up the courage yet to ask them to join even though they desperately wanted them to. But they knew Rebecca better now because they were all on the hospital board together, and Julian had joined GAG, so he wasn’t as scary. Maybe they’d ask them both soon.
Being part of the St. Ann’s Medical Center board and watching that group take on long-established local institutions had given MMS the courage to take on the Main Street cabal. They didn’t have any coordinated attacks planned yet, but they did their best to keep in touch with each other and work behind the scenes and sometimes in front of them to manipulate things to get what they wanted. Jacob always thought of it as “Emma-ing,” but he was the only one in the group who’d read Austen. The other two called it scheming.
Originally Mini Main Street had planned for this chamber meeting expecting they would need to shore up support for Zhang, but it didn’t take a genius to know that given recent events, the focus would be on something different. Or rather, someone.
“I should like to know,” Clark began with a sharp glance at Jacob, “how it’s becoming of a community leader to cavort around a public function and then be written up in gossip columns.”
“He actually just said cavort,” Gus murmured under his breath.
Jacob kicked him gently under the table as he folded his hands together and gave Clark his best and screw you too smile. “I assume you’re talking about me, Les? Yes, I danced at the university gala and did an interview for the Gazette the next day. What of it?”
It pleased him to see how much his use of Clark’s first name bothered him. “It was highly unseemly.”
Rebecca beamed a smile that matched Jacob’s. “I thought it looked like Jacob was having a great time. And I heard the Sunday edition of the Gazette sold out completely, something that hasn’t happened in a while.” She glanced around the table. “Am I misinformed?”