Page 15 of Bad Words

“No.”

“You don’t think they’d want to hear ab—”

“Not really, no.” I went back to my phone as Jacob and Cassie exchanged a glance in my peripheral vision.

Then my timeline reloaded. At the top, the algorithm suggested a post by Parker Navarro.

@ParkerNavarroWrites: Wow. Thank you so much, everybody, for your kind messages. I’m trying to reply to everyone, but it’s been an intense day, to say the least—in the best possible way. I couldn’t have anticipated that The Video, haha, would resonate with so many of my fellow authors and

“Jesus Christ,” I said, slapping my phone down on the island. “He’s loving this.” I stood up and strode to the world map mounted on Jacob and Cassie’s travel wall. I seized the cherry-red head of an unevenly positioned pin and pushed it harder into Île de Ngor. “This whole circus act! He’s lapping it up.”

I stormed back to the island, grabbed my phone again, and tapped through to Navarro’s profile, seething. The man was truly everything that was wrong with publishing. Bad books. Big ego. That obnoxious, brooding profile picture, like he was auditioning to be on the cover of Vogue.

Even more infuriating was the stream of fawning replies to every one of his paragraph-long posts. Everyone who’s ever created something knows how you feel, Parker! Who needs a bunch of elitist tastemakers telling us what to read?

Even as I stared into the abyss that was Navarro’s profile, a button reading 1 New Post appeared at the top of his feed. I hit the button, and the post materialized:

@ParkerNavarroWrites: Curious how the Selina Chans of the world would feel if their hypothetical future novels were subjected to unrelenting, worldwide mockery?

I’d always assumed that “seeing red” was a rank cliché, but now it actually happened: a livid crimson flash over my vision.

My heart pounding in my throat, I began to type.

@ParkerNavarroWrites: Curious how the Selina Chans of the world would feel if their hypothetical future novels were subjected to unrelenting, worldwide mockery?

2,187 likes 85 reposts

@SelinaChan: @ParkerNavarroWrites I have no desire to write a book, and it’s childish to expect critics to “graduate” to fiction writing, as though the only way to love something is to imitate it. Hope that helps.

1,899 likes 59 reposts

@ParkerNavarroWrites: @SelinaChan Amazing! You’d think someone whose career is built on reading comprehension would understand that I wasn’t trying to imagine some hideous alternate universe where you try—doubtless, with all the empathy and delicacy of an electric chair—to write a novel. My point is that a career critic, someone who’s never put artistic work into the world, can’t imagine the vulnerability involved.

2,487 likes 44 reposts

@SelinaChan: @ParkerNavarroWrites And it will be so brave of you to make yourself vulnerable once you’ve hounded the world’s critics into silence.

2,287 likes 33 reposts

@ParkerNavarroWrites: @SelinaChan I’ve never asked for anyone to be hounded into silence! You’re acting like it’s unreasonable to ask that human beings—and, maybe overgenerously, I’m including you in this category—show a little consideration toward their fellow human beings, even when they’re expressing disappointment that they didn’t like a book. I’m sure that must be hard for you.

1,922 likes 39 reposts

@SelinaChan: @ParkerNavarroWrites Out of curiosity, are you physically capable of writing three sentences in a row without using an em dash?

3,133 likes 194 reposts

Chapter FiveParker

Teeth clenched, I paced from my kitchen to my front window and back, into and out of the cloud of steam rising from the stockpot on the stove, trying to think of some way to express how much I hated her, but in a way that would sound vengeful and righteous and not just vaguely pathetic.

I stopped in front of the TV, my vision clear with rage, as though I’d just put in eyedrops. I typed, Out of curiosity, are YOU capable of feeling any emotion besides sneering self-satisf

A red number 1 popped up over my messages tab at the bottom of the screen. I forcibly unclenched my jaw, deleted my response, and tapped into my inbox. An author named Jenny House had sent me a message:

Hi Parker! My name’s Jenny. You probably don’t know me, but I have a few books out from Penguin. Selina Chan wrote a soulless pan of my last book, too. I’m glad somebody’s standing up to that vulture and her pretentious cult of readers who seem to hate all books!

I settled at our dining table, the fist in my gut loosening for the first time in hours.