The Other Black Girl(51)

“Okay, tell me: Did Vera send you The Lie yet?”

Hazel didn’t ask as though she was trying to taunt Nella. There seemed to be genuine concern in the way she crunched on her corn chips, wide-eyed. But the question stung so much that she almost lied and said that Vera had sent the manuscript.

Nella took a deep breath. No, she decided, Hazel wasn’t the problem here. Vera had to be trying to pit them against one another to keep Nella on her toes.

“Vera hasn’t sent it to me yet,” she admitted. “Would you mind maybe…?”

“For sure!” Hazel hurried back to her station. “I’m sure it just, like, slipped her mind. She has a lot going on.”

Nella listened to Hazel’s fingers rap her keyboard, feeling more than a little infantilized. Vera had never shared manuscripts with any other assistants before; in fact, she’d been one of the more private editors at Wagner. She rarely discussed books she was thinking about going after so early on in the process—not until she’d had enough time to decide how she felt about them.

It was odd to Nella, then, that she’d sent the Leslie Howard pages to a shiny new employee. It didn’t seem right. Not unless Vera had been purposely trying to ostracize Nella. Not unless she was still pissed about the Colin thing.

“Just sent it!” Hazel wheeled her chair around so that she was directly facing Nella.

“Thanks.” Nella checked the clock on her computer to see how much time she had before she could make an exit of her own. “Got it.”

When she looked over at Hazel a few moments later, she still had her chair turned toward Nella and was waiting, patiently.

“Hey. Thought you might want to hear this.”

“What?”

“While I was in there, Vera mentioned Needles and Pins to me.”

Nella cringed.

“You know I haven’t read a word of it,” Hazel continued, “but I tried to back you up on the Shartricia thing as much as I could.”

“Oh. You did? Thanks.” Nella turned her chair just a bit, so she wasn’t completely closed off by her cubicle wall. “And what did Vera say?”

“Well, she thanked me for weighing in. Then she emailed me the draft.”

“Really?”

“Yep. For a second opinion, I guess.”

“Hm.” On one hand, it was irritating that Vera hadn’t trusted Nella’s judgment. But on the other hand, didn’t it also mean that Vera did care, a tiny bit, about what Nella had said? Maybe Vera had reread the book and was second-guessing it. “Nice. Doesn’t Maisy care that you’re doing all this other stuff for another editor, though? I remember her getting super possessive of her last assistant.”

Hazel shrugged. “Maisy has been busy with personal things, I think. I’m not really sure what. But she’s been checked out and has pretty much left me to my own devices. I think Richard asked Vera to give me some things to do so I wouldn’t get bored. I’m still new here, so I guess they don’t think I can keep myself occupied.”

“Ah.” Nella realized for the first time how quiet it had been in their area for the last few days. Maisy had exploded into the office earlier, but had mysteriously departed no more than fifteen minutes later, a bundle of more bags than usual stuffed under her arms, her lips pursed even more tightly than usual. “I guess I didn’t notice.”

“Yeah. Since I have more time, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to read Colin’s shitty novel. And really,” Hazel said, lowering her voice, “having two negative Shartricia reviews from two Black girls could do wonders. Not that your opinion isn’t legit, of course, because it totally is, but… the more reads, the better. Right?”

Nella nodded, her make-believe glass wall sliding away as quickly as she’d put it up. “Totally.”

She’d been happy to go along with this narrative for the rest of the afternoon until she printed The Lie, gathered all of her things, and made her way to the train, ready to leave Manhattan after what felt like days. The freshly printed five-hundred-page manuscript pulled hard at her left shoulder as she went down into the depths of the subway, but she didn’t mind. It felt like a purposeful weight, like a full bag of groceries bought for a newly cleaned-out fridge. This tote bag held sustenance. She would gobble up the Leslie Howard text immediately and wow Vera with feedback she hadn’t even asked for. Simple as that.

Except, it wasn’t. Because as Nella stood on the train platform, resolved and ready to begin the next day on a fresh foot, she reached into her bag to pull out the manuscript—and instead pulled out an envelope she didn’t remember putting there.

An envelope with her name on it. Her name, again written in all caps. Her name, again written in purple pen.

How did that saying go? There’s always something. She wasn’t sure if it was a saying as much as it was a fact of life, like gravity or indigestion. The phrase was one her father had often said, especially over the last few months, since he’d finally bought a house in Chicago after renting a place not far from her grandmother’s senior care center for nearly four years. Just the week before, Nella’s father had described to her in great detail how he’d just finally gotten the hole in the roof fixed when he realized that the pipe connected to the washing machine had decided to air out its grievances, too. “That’s the thing when you buy a house,” he’d sighed into the phone, more to himself than to her. “There’s always something.”