The Detour (19 page)

“Maybe,” said Mom. “What are his parents' names?”

I shrugged. “We don't talk about his parents.”

Dad wrote the name down. “So we have a name, no neighborhood or parents. What about school?”

I shook my head. “I don't know.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other.

I slammed my hand on the counter. “Stop it!”

Mom said, “You just don't seem to know very much about this boy.”

“I know what I need to know! He is a great listener, and he's there for me, and we have a lot in common, and he loves me! Those are the things that matter! The rest is just details, for God's sake!” I took a breath and sat down on a stool. “Please, just help me find him.”

Dad nodded. “We will. Okay? We will. But it may take a day or so. Okay?”

I breathed out. “Okay.”

Mom said, “Just take some time. Relax while your dad figures it out. Can you do that?”

I nodded.

“Now, are you hungry?” she asked.

I nodded. “Starved.”

After a lunch of Cobb salad and a mint Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich, I retreated to my room. I wanted to tell Mom and Dad I'd decided to put off college, at least for the time being. But since I already had them on edge about Rory—not to mention the whole
Today
show/J. M. Cutler fiasco—I figured it would be better to wait on that part.

And there was something else I wanted to know more about. What happened at boot camp that made Peg hate me?

I went into my closet and dug out a box of papers. I tended to lack organizational skills, and sort of just shoved everything together. There was no chance of anything getting lost that way because I knew exactly where it was, but putting my finger on a specific paper was tough. With my one good hand, I dragged the box out of the closet and over to my bed. I sat down on the carpet, my back against the bed, and began to pull stuff out. The first pile of paper was a draft of
The Caul and the Coven
.

I began to skim it.

I remembered when I began the story. Mom and I were on the flight home from the novelist boot camp in Los Angeles. I was excited as well as anxious. I knew I wanted to start writing, but I was so scared about what would happen if I didn't succeed. But, of course, the excitement overcame the anxiety, and I started writing an idea that popped into my head.

By the time we landed at the airport in Redmond, just north of Bend, I had a brief outline written.

I set that draft on the floor and pulled out another manuscript. It took me six months of revisions to get the story right. And then another month for Billy to agree to represent me. I set that manuscript aside, as well as the next two I dug out. And then, there it was: the red folder like Peg's.

I hadn't looked at it for years.

I set it in my lap and opened it up. The photograph was at the top, and I put that aside without looking at it. Next were the marked-up pages of my manuscript critiqued by the other participants. I scanned my story. God, it was so lame. Some dumb thing I'd submitted about a boy falling in love with a girl vampire. I had tried to put a spin on
Twilight
, switch the roles. I shook my head as I paged through the seven copies of it, the ones the other participants had written on. How had I gone from something so stupid to something so brilliant in a matter of hours? I mean, my idea for
The Caul and the Coven
was so commercial and so
right.

Fate, I guessed. I was meant to write that story.

I stared at my toes for a moment. When did the exact idea strike me? We were seated in first class on the flight home, I knew that. Mom had a glass of wine, I had a ginger ale, and we shared a boxed meal of crackers and cheese and dried fruit. I shrugged.

Well, it had been nearly four years.

I paged through a few more of my manuscript pages and stopped. A note in my handwriting was on someone else's manuscript page. Weird, because I gave all the other people their manuscripts back. My note read:
Make this into twin sisters (maybe living in Portland?) and have the mother be trapped in books instead of jewelry? Could be sooooo cool …

I quickly skimmed the pages. Twins, a boy and a girl, live with their grandmother in Salem, Massachusetts. In the attic, they discover their mother trapped inside a pendant and decide to go on a journey to collect the matching pendants in order to set her free. At the end of the pages was a note from the author:
Thanks so much for reading my pages! I hope you liked them.
☺
JMC

JMC. Judith Margaret Cutler
?

I froze. Peg.

I had gotten my inspiration from her manuscript. I had forgotten her, but she had remembered me. And she knew I'd taken her idea, not the other way around.

The papers fell out of my hand, drifting to the floor.

I'd taken Peg's idea, changed a few things, and made it my own. Was it close enough to Peg's to be stealing? Would anyone think that?

I grabbed my laptop off my bed and went to Goodreads, quickly typing in
The Quest for the Coven by J. M. Cutler
.

I scrolled down the reviews. Most had two stars, maybe three, no real love for the book. I sucked in my breath. Someone had written:
Such a total rip-off of
The Caul and the Coven.
All she did was change a few things. Livvy Flynn should file a lawsuit.

My heart pounded. “Holy crap.” No wonder Peg was pissed at me. I had turned Peg's idea into a worldwide success.

I shook my head. No.
No!

One of the first things I learned about publishing was that beginning writers always wondered whether they should get a copyright before they sent their stories in to publishers. But ideas can't be copyrighted. A girl falls in love with a vampire. Anyone in the world could write a story with that premise.

Peg's idea: A brother and sister go looking for their lost mother, who is trapped inside an object.

I shook my head. I didn't do anything wrong.

So maybe Peg's story excerpt had given me an idea, but how much was in those few pages? Certainly not the whole three-book series. Other than the basic premise of two children going on a quest to free their mother, the rest was all from my imagination: all the subplots and romances and dangerous creatures. I had made up the other 99.9 percent of the story; anyone with a brain would agree with that.

Plus, my book had come out before Peg's. So the only people who knew would be me and Peg and … the other people in our critique group at the boot camp. But would they remember? I couldn't recall a single premise of anyone else's story. I hadn't even remembered Peg's.

And writing was so self-centered: Everyone would have left there the same way I had, ready to start my own story, not giving a crap about anyone I had just met.

Was anyone at that workshop aware of my success? Unless they lived under a rock, yes. If anyone had suspected anything, drawn the conclusion about the similarities between the stories, wouldn't they have come forward? Peg herself hadn't even come forward.

I sighed. I no longer had to wonder why Peg had it in for me. And that day when she'd shoved me in the bathroom and Ritchie had found me, Peg had said something like, “This is the one I told you about.”

So Ritchie knew. That was what he meant by backstory.

What happened if this came out?

Would people think she had a good enough reason for kidnapping me? Would they think I deserved it?

Would everyone think I stole her story?

I sucked in a breath.

But Peg was dead.

And my secret was safe.

Still, after a few moments, I made a phone call to a number I never planned to dial.

“Ritchie, here.”

“This is Livvy Flynn.”

A slight pause. “What can I do for you?”

“I didn't say anything to the sheriff about seeing you in the basement.”

“I appreciate that.”

I swallowed. “I don't know what you know about me. And Peg. About when we were at the novelist boot camp in LA.”

“I heard her side of it.”

I said, “I didn't remember until now, but her story idea led me to the inspiration for mine. But I didn't steal her story.”

“I think she knew that. But she had such a hard time.… Tell me, what happened when you wrote your first book?”

I stumbled on my words a bit. “Well, I got an agent, and he sold it at auction—”

“
At auction.
You say it like it's a given. What happened next?”

I wanted to hang up. But I didn't. He knew my secret. “Well, I went on a tour with my mom and a publicist.”

“Again with the givens. Seriously? Let me ask: How much did you get for that first book?”

“The first book or the series?”

“Whichever.”

I wasn't going to tell him I got a hundred and fifty thousand for the three books.
Each
. “About six figures.”

“You know what Peg got for her novel? Go ahead, guess.”

I didn't want to.

“Go ahead. Guess.”

I knew my book deal had been good, better than good. So I tried to guess what a fairly low advance would be. “Um, thirty thousand?”

Ritchie said, “Try ten thousand. And Peg was thrilled. It was her dream come true, to have a book published. She sold her novel three months before you sold yours. To an imprint at your publisher. Did you know that?”

I had no idea. No one ever told me. Maybe that was another reason why Billy had been dead set against a lawsuit. “No.”

“But the news about your deal was everywhere. And apparently, when everyone responded so hugely to the amazing story of a teenage author, Peg's book—considered to be sort of similar to yours—got put on a back burner. Her editor told her they were delaying it for a year or two, to let yours get out there first, and then hers could jump on the coattails.”

I could imagine, like all those
If you loved
The Hunger Games
, you'll love this.
I knew what he would say next and preempted him. “But then all the fans of my book accused her of copying me.”

“They were pretty brutal to her online. You know how she celebrated her book coming out, before all the crap started?

“No.”

“A signing at our local library. Three people came. I was one of them.”

I thought about the book launch my publisher had thrown at Books of Wonder in New York City. Mom had gone to a Starbucks to get ice for my wrist after all the autographs. “I thought, I just thought … I thought everyone got a book tour and a lot of money and…”

He said nothing for a moment. “After I saw you in the basement, Peg explained why she did it. Why she took you. She said it all happened so fast. When the kid ran into the house to tell her about the car accident, she grabbed her phone to call 911. But the kid has made up stories before, so she went to make sure she was telling the truth. But when she saw the personalized license plate lying in the road, she knew it was you.”

“But why?”

Ritchie didn't answer right away. “Peg knew you didn't steal her story, at least not in a way she could prove, and even then it was subjective. There was no way for her to ever show that your entire series came from what you saw at boot camp. But she wanted to try to prove you had stolen it from her. And she thought that maybe if you—”

“Stayed in the basement long enough I'd confess to something I didn't even do?” I shook my head. “But I didn't. Because I didn't do anything other than get an idea from someone else. Happens all the time.”

Ritchie said, “I know Peg.
Knew
Peg.” Silence for a moment. “I think when she saw you there, in your car, she lost it. She thought, here's my chance, my chance to make her pay for taking away the dream.”

“It was my dream, too. Why couldn't I have my dream?”

“Peg was obsessed with you. Read about you on the Internet. She hated that you seemed so … entitled. Like just because you wrote a book, then you should automatically get everything else that goes with it: fame, money, success. I think she was mad that you had no idea that tons of people have books come out every year and never have any of that.”

I didn't say anything for a moment. “Are you going to tell people about this?”

“Not my place. And I think you've suffered enough.”

I breathed out. “I have to go. And … I am sorry about Peg.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Me too.” He hung up.

I went downstairs. Dad and Mom stopped talking the moment I stepped in the room.

“What are you talking about?”

Mom pointed to my carry-on. “Lane County Sheriff's Office dropped off your stuff.”

I sat down. “That wasn't what you were talking about.”

Dad looked at Mom, then back at me. “Liv, I did some checking on the boy in Chicago.”

“Can you please call him Rory?”

“Listen, Liv. I had my tech guy trace his Skype. Which was not entirely legal, I'm sure. But—”

“You found him?” I smiled.

“You're sure he's in Chicago?”

I dropped into a chair across from him. “Of course he's in Chicago. Why would you ask that?”

“He can't be. At least, he's not Skyping from there. His IP didn't trace to Chicago.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“For one thing, it means he hasn't been completely honest with you. Maybe you don't know him as well as you thought. Or…”

“Or what?”

“Or someone was messing with you all along. Sweetheart, we need you to consider the possibility that Rory may be fake.”

I shook my head. “He is real. He
is
real.” Déjà vu. I felt like I'd already had this conversation.

I gasped. I had. With Wesley.

I jumped to my feet and grabbed my carry-on, knocking it to its side. I squatted beside it and quickly unzipped.