CHAPTER ONE
touré
Phones should be banned.
At least when I’m on deadline. The ringing, after a morning where I’ve struggled to focus, jars me from my hard-won concentration and the little I’ve been able to accomplish. I thought I’d silenced that thing, but apparently not.
“Could you answer that?” I yell to my assistant Camille.
The insistent ring of my cell phone from the kitchen is the latest in a long line of distractions I’ve tried to ignore. I need to make more progress on this draft because my editor has been up my ass over this deadline. She’s in thatteeth-gritted smilephase, where she asks for things nicely and at least tries to hide her frustration, but she moved to full snarl with my first book, and it’s not an experience I want to repeat. The problem is that every time I think I know what I’m supposed to be writing, the creative well goes as dry as the war-torn deserts where I earned my reputation as a journalist in the field. Is this the famous sophomore slump? Or just me not figuring my shit out?
That one.
The ringing stops and I shove the call from my mind, flipping through my notes, scouring them for the details I need for the chapter I’m working on. Camille clears her throat, and I glanceup to find her standing in the door of my home office, phone pressed to her chest.
“Yeah? What’s up?” I ask, running a hand down my face and leaning back until my chair creaks.
“Um . . .do you want to take this call?”
“Is that a real question? You’ve worked with me long enough to know the answer is always no.”
Camille grimaces and nods, her pink dreadlocks twisted into a topknot bobbing with the movement.
“She just . . . she says you’ll want to talk to her.”
“Unlikely. Take her number and feel free to lose it until I finish this book.”
I squint at the notes on my desk, trying to decode my own hieroglyphic handwriting. The scribbled phrase could be Arab Spring or . . .I give up. In my defense, these notes were hastily jotted onto a palm-sized notepad. Phone dead, bombs overhead, hidden in a cave with barely any light, I made do.
“Iwasgonna take a message,” Camile says, hesitation in her voice. “but she said before you get rid of me, tell Big Country he can make time for an old friend.”
My head snaps up and I narrow my eyes on her.
“Big Country, huh?” A pleased grin chases my scowl away.
Only one person has ever called me that. I hold out my hand, flicking my fingers for Camille to give me the phone. I look down at the screen to check the call is muted.
“I’m gonna go, but I left lunch on the counter from that Ethiopian place up the street.” Camille crosses her arms over her chest and scolds with a glance. “Actually eat it this time. If I come back tomorrow and it’s still there cold and unopened then I?—”
“I’ll eat. Got it. Go.”
As soon as she turns to leave, I unmute the phone and lean back in my seat.
“Janelle Hopkins, what the hell you want?”
Her rich laughter hasn’t changed in twenty years and the sound of it tugs my mouth into a reluctant one-sided grin.
“So youdoremember the little people.”
“Pfft. Little people, my ass. I heard you running Finley College now, Ms. Vice President of Student Affairs. Congrats on the promotion.”
“Thank you. I assumed you hadn’t given your alma mater a second thought since you left senior year and never looked back.”
“The alumni association would beg to differ. They hit me up on the regular for donations and I never say no.”
“Glad to hear that ‘cause I need a huge favor and I don’t want to hear nothing butyescoming outta that mouth.”
“My wallet is always open.”
