Under his breath, Langdon sneers, “Now there’s a surprise.”

I whip my head to him. “Excuse me?” I ask, my heart beating so hard I’m shaking. “Isn’t this an adaptation of the book? I edited that scene for weeks to get it right.”

A sarcastic smile curls Langdon’s mouth. “You’re how old?” he asks, leaning forward with his elbows planted on the table.

I sit up.

The panel shows a girl with a barrel of propane, holding a match.

“Twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three, and you wrote a book, and some people liked it, and now you understand Hollywood.” He flicks his fingers in front of him, leaning back in his chair. “I’m not sure why I’m even here, then.”

My blood turns to steam. He just said what?

“I guess I’m not, either,” I finally manage, voice shaking. “You’re forty-five with only one screenplay adapted for a major film studio and it grossed less than eleven million. Our budget is ten times that.”

Langdon draws a deep breath, and it makes him look like a dragon preparing to exhale fire. “My focus has been indie films, giving me a niche perspective that allows me to—”

Austin tries to laugh, but it comes out as a shrill burst. “Langdon, stop it. Don’t be a diva. Lola is just telling us how she feels. This is all new to her.” He turns to me, placating. “Some of this—and I know it will be hard—will just have to be you, trusting us. Trusting me. Trusting Langdon. Trusting the process. Do you think you can do that?” He’s already nodding, already smiling as if I’ve agreed.

I stare at him, stunned.

“Great,” he proclaims. “We’ll tweak the opening just a tiny tiny bit, and then boom! Your world will unfold on the screen!”

THE REST OF the meeting is equally abysmal. Langdon eventually gets over his tantrum, but my story is hacked apart, reorganized. Dialogue I love is lost, scenes I would never have thought to include in the book somehow make it into the script. It’s not that I’m particularly precious about my work, but so many of their changes simply don’t make sense. And we have to do it all again tomorrow. And the day after that.

I order room service and get into my pajamas before eight o’clock. Erik called during our brief lunch break and has set up a call for us on Friday afternoon, during my drive home to San Diego. At the very least he didn’t sound like he wanted to murder me, but I know when I get home I’m going to have to dive into the writing cave.

My phone rests in the middle of the fluffy bed, black and lifeless. I want to call Oliver, to beg him to ramble and pull me out of this frozen frenzy, but every breath I take only makes it halfway down my windpipe before it seems to push back out.

I want him here. I have a to-do list five miles long but I feel restless in the room alone. It seems crazy, like needing him this way is too much too soon. I spent most of the day wishing I were back in San Diego, rather than at the table working through the script.

But I don’t want to talk to Oliver on the phone because I feel inarticulate in my panic about him and me, about the book, about the movie, about everything . . . and I don’t want to text him, either, because it’s trite to put this enormity in a tiny digital box. I miss him in this weird, frantic way. I want to drive home tonight to be with him. I need him in the hotel room with me and I know, without having to weigh the pros and cons for him, that he would drive up here in a heartbeat if I asked. He would calm me down, make me laugh, tease my insanity into something else. A fluffy toy to prop at the end of a pen. A bright pink plastic slinky. Something disposable and silly.

But if he came up here, he would be on the road alone, late. People are drunk. People are reckless. People text and drive and San Diego is over a hundred and thirty miles away.

My phone vibrates with a text and I look down to see his name on the screen. How did it all go?

Picking up my phone, I start to type about ten different replies but find myself deleting each one. Finally dropping it back on the bed, I turn on the television, get into the shower. I pull out a notepad and spend the next few hours sketching some of the worst things I’ve ever done and then drop the pad on the bed. Was Razor Fish a fluke? I started it when I was fifteen, and it took me three years to finish, two more to edit, and another two to get published. How did I ever expect to write the follow-up in a matter of months while touring, working on the film, falling in love?

The panel shows a monster, eating the furniture.

I’m exhausted but my brain won’t stop. I dig into my bag, find a sleeping pill. It stares at me, tiny and white and challenging.

I don’t even feel it slide down my throat.

The world narrows from a wide white space to the tiny spot of focus in front of me: my hand holding a pen. The line elongates, dragging off the margin, and my eyelids are heavy trees falling over in the woods.

AUSTIN MEETS ME outside the building again the next morning, handing me a huge cup of coffee. “Figured you might need it, eh?” he asks, sipping his little espresso.

I smile, thanking him as I take it. My thoughts reel: Is he saying today is going to be longer and harder than yesterday? Or is he saying he thinks I need to be more focused and got me a coffee to help?

I follow him to the elevators, listening to him have a short, bursty conversation on his cell. He hangs up just as we get into the car and press into a cluster of people.

“I want you to know that Langdon really does get the spirit of your story,” Austin says, too loud in such a crowded space.

“I’m sure.” I want to talk to Austin about this, of course—as well as make sure we’ll be able to wrap this up in time for me to get home and back to work—but I really don’t want to do it in the middle of a crowded elevator.

“And I get that the age thing is a sticking point to you—”

“It is,” I say quietly.

“But Langdon has the film sensibility to know what will work and what won’t. We aren’t going to draw in the male audience we need with a fifteen-year-old female protagonist.”

I can tell everyone around us is listening in, waiting to see how I reply.

“Well, that’s a shame,” I say, and someone behind me snorts. I can’t tell from the sound whether it’s supportive or derisive. “Though Natalie Portman was only twelve in The Professional, and a lot of Razor and Quinn’s relationship dynamics are based on that.”

The doors open on our floor.

“Well, there was certainly discussion about the sexual dynamics there, too,” he points out.

I open my mouth to give him my opinion—that it’s about damaged people finding connection, and it’s never implied to be a sexual relationship between Mathilde and Léon—when the doors open and Austin steps out of the lift.

“Sex sells,” he says over his shoulder. “It’s not an idiom for nothing.”

“Wolverine, too,” I call out, loud enough that I know he hears me even if he’s charging ahead of me and thumbing through emails on his phone. “He mentors younger girls but never lets it get creepy.”

Austin ignores this, and we walk down toward the same conference room we were in yesterday. I see through the glass door that Langdon is already there, sitting and laughing easily with another man—slightly older than Langdon, but fit, with graying hair at his temples and thick tortoise-shell frames.

“Oh, good, they’re both here,” Austin says, pushing the door open with a flattened palm. “Lola, this is Gregory Saint Jude.”

The man stands and turns, looking at me with guarded eyes.

“Our director,” Austin adds.

I reach out to shake the man’s hand. He’s shorter than I am but greets me with a firm handshake, a friendly nod, and then sits back down beside Langdon.