Leaked. Three tracks: “Dangerous,” “Listen!” and “Mine All Mine.” The three that just happened to be on Ryan’s personal thumb drive.
Jasmine
Skip called an emergency meeting that morning. To this day, I don’t know how much Ryan knew beforehand, but it couldn’t have been everything. Because when he told us which three songs had leaked, her face just crumpled.
Justin
So.
I’m not proud of it. But I’m not going to say I regret it either. I’ve asked everyone to hear me out, and with your permission, Elyse, I’d like for them to finally listen.
Two things happened leading up to the leak. One: After weeks and months of applications, I finally got a job on a medium-budget movie set. They wanted me to be a location scout, and I lied, okay? I told them I had a car. I didn’t think things through, but I knew for afactthat I was not going to let this job pass me by.
I needed money. Badly.
Two: Someone stole my screenplay idea.
I’d sort of been buddies with this hotshot trust fund guy at UCLA. And I’ll name names—it was Austin Proust, the son of director Thomas Proust. He made a big secret of this indie film he was doing and invited everyone in our major to the screening.
What do I see? A poignant story about a goddamn accountant abandoning his family and his careful life to hunt down Mothman.
You just ... you don’t know what that feels like until it happens to you. It was like I was sinking into the floor,throughthe floor. I didn’t know what to do.
So, yeah. Maybe I was already on the defensive when I went to Ryan’s place that week. We were on the couch together watchingTwilight, and she was comforting me. She said, “I always hated Austin Proust. He was an asshole to me at a party once.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He was an asshole to both of us.”
Ryan grinned and leaned her head against mine. She said, “Want me to try to get him blacklisted?”
She was joking, but it was nice to hear. “I wish you would,” I said.
I was feeling pretty good. I thought I might even get to kiss her tonight. Ryan said, “I have something that might cheer you up.” She pulled out her laptop and plugged in a USB drive she had, then opened a track. She smiled at me.
“I finally finished the lyrics,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. I leaned back and listened.
Your hummingbird heart / Always moving, full of art.
First red flag.
I looked at Ryan uncertainly. “That sounds really nice,” I said. “Like my poem, huh?”
And she said, “What poem?”
Second red flag.
“The poem I gave you when I asked you to be my girlfriend, back in middle school.Hummingbird heart.I wrote that.”
“No ...” She looked confused. “Is it that similar? You didn’twriteit ... I mean, I wrote the lyrics because they reminded me of you. But it’s not like—”
And I said, “No, Ryan, I wrote that. I wrote that line.”
I felt all hot inside. First Proust, now this. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I still have my notes about the poem, but I gave the final draft to you. You still have it, right? I’ll show you.”
Her face became closed off, and she leaned away from me on the couch. “No, Justin,” she said. “I’m sorry, but we’ve moved around so much that I think it’s gone. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Well, she did. “Okay, well, those are my words,” I pushed. “Could I ... get a writer’s credit or something?”
