Ha! Way to save your fur from the fire, Mr. Price.
“Yes, please go ahead,” I said into my microphone as, with my other hand, I slid my sunglasses back over my eyes, hoping they’d help me to see the Snappettes and their busy microphone maneuvers—and hide the anger I was still feeling toward Mr. Price. “I promise we’ll be a lot nicer to you than we’ve been to each other so far.”
This got another chuckle from the audience. I caught Will’s eye, and was surprised to see him smile at me. This was his most genuine smile yet—no fake fan-friendliness, just unease. He seemed—well, he seemed almost nice.
“Uh, yeah, hi, my name is Lauren.”
Whoops, yep, there she was. Lauren, right there in the middle of the audience, clutching the handheld mic that Chloe—it certainly looked like Chloe, her short blond bob gleaming in the houselights, which they’d turned up so that we could see who was talking—had handed to her. Today Lauren’s hair was as flat-ironed as ever, and she was wearing an off-the-shoulder boho-chic top. Her friends Jasmine and Cassidy sat on either side of her, giggling and egging her on.
“So I just wanted to thank you both,” Lauren said, in a high-pitched voice that trembled with nervousness. “It’s been really great sitting here and listening to you. I’m an aspiring writer, and, uh, I feel totally inspired and, uh, empowered.”
“Thank you, Lauren,” I said warmly into my mic. I needed to make sure she knew all my antipathy was for Will, not her. “That is so sweet of you.”
“Yes, uh, thank you, Lauren.” Will didn’t appear to have the slightest memory of having met Lauren yesterday. In fact, he kept looking at me and not her, which I found odd.
He glanced away as soon as my gaze met his, however.
“Thanks,” Lauren said. “Well, what I wanted to ask both of you was how do you create such, um, realistic characters? Because both of you are so good at that. Your characters seem like real people. Or cats, in your case, Miss Wright.”
I laughed along with the rest of the audience. Then I looked at Will, who was—again—looking at me. What was his deal?
“Would you like to answer first?” I asked him politely.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Ladies first, please.”
“Fine.” I looked back at Lauren. “I think one reason readers find Kitty Katz realistic even though she’s a cat is that she makes mistakes. She isn’t perfect—or purr-fect, as she likes to say—but in the end, she always tries to do the right thing. I think if you write about characters who are perfect, they have no room to grow or improve during the course of the story, and then what do they learn about themselves? Characters learning new things about themselves is part of what makes the story entertaining. But if the character is already perfect, they have no room to grow. So then you have no story. Do you understand what I mean?”
Lauren nodded eagerly. “I do. That totally makes sense.”
I looked questioningly at Will, and found him still staring at me. Now, this was just getting weird. “Will, do you have anything you’d like to add?”
“Uh, no,” he said. “Just that what Miss Wright said is correct, Lauren. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes. My books are excellent examples of that. Jo mentioned earlier that my female characters find empowerment by being rescued by men, but I’ve never actually seen it that way. I’ve always considered that the male characters in my books, who are very far from perfect, find redemption through the love of smart, beautiful, complicated females … women like Ms. Wright, actually.”
What? Had he just called me … ?
“So, in answer to your question, Lauren, yes, to create realistic characters, make them imperfect—but if you want your readers to like them, also make them sorry for their actions,” he went on. “And perhaps also have your other characters find some way in their hearts to forgive them. Really, if you write stories that are anything like Ms. Wright’s excellent books, you’ll be fine.”
Wait. Will Price had just called my books excellent? And me smart? Complicated? And beautiful?
Was this for the benefit of the audience and cameras, or for real? Maybe it was simply to make up for having stuck his foot in his mouth so badly before. I honestly couldn’t tell.
Still, something in his dark eyes looked sincere.
Could he possibly really mean what he was saying? What—
“Sorry!”
One of the side doors to the auditorium burst open. I tore my gaze away from Will’s face and saw Bernadette come running up the steps along the side of the stage.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m late, everyone!” She waved apologetically at the audience. “Family emergency, but it’s all good now.”
She threw herself, panting, into the seat beside Will. Then she picked up her mic, turned it on, and asked, grinning, “So. What’d I miss?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened.
All I knew for certain was that Will Price had called me smart. Smart, complicated, and beautiful, as well.
People say all sorts of nice things they don’t mean, of course, because they want something from you, or simply to be polite.
This didn’t feel like that, though. It had felt genuine.
More than that, it had felt good. Will had apologized to me again, but this time it was on record, in front of witnesses. Witnesses who could actually hear him—all five hundred of them, even if they may not have understood what he was actually referring to.
He’d admitted he wasn’t perfect. He’d made a mistake, and he was hoping to grow and learn from it, like a character in one of my books.
One of my excellent books.
Of course, he still hadn’t told me why he’d said something so profoundly stupid (and mean) to that reporter. But that didn’t make me feel any less like dashing from the auditorium the second our panel was over and running outside to yell, “Wheeeee!”
But of course I couldn’t do that, because while I wrote children’s books for a living, I was a grown adult, and there was one more panel and two speakers to go, plus our group signing, before the festival broke for lunch.
So instead I whispered, “Is Sophie all right?” as Bernadette and I walked from the stage together after our panel finished.
“She’s fine.” Bernadette beamed. “Didn’t even need stitches, just a bandage and strict orders not to play Horsies in the dining room until the floors are sanded.”
“Great.” The audience was still applauding us as we returned to our seats—or perhaps applauding Garrett and Kellyjean, the next authors coming up to the stage.
“How did it go with him while I was gone?” she asked, nodding back at Will, who was still onstage. He had to moderate the next panel, after all.
“Oh, fine, fine,” I said. I wasn’t going to squeal, “He called me smart! And complicated! And beautiful! And said he likes my books!” because that would be absurd. Instead, I said, “Listen, I need to make a quick call of my own. I’ll be back in a few minutes. All right?”
Bernadette looked surprised. “Of course! Is it your dad? Is everything okay?”