Buried in a Book (Novel Idea, #1)
Lucy Arlington
Chapter 1
I THOUGHT I’D BE WRITING ARTICLES ABOUT CHURCH bazaars and Girl Scout cookie sales until I retired, so you can imagine my surprise when, at forty-five years of age, I was handed my very first pink slip.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. I tend to embellish otherwise uninteresting stories. There was no pink slip. In fact, no one gave me anything until I started to cry, and then my editor, who’d been cantankerous and impossible to please since the day I submitted my first article for the Features section, unceremoniously tossed a box of tissues on my lap.
“It’s nothing personal, Wilkins,” he said, squirming un-comfortably in the face of my tears. “Budget cuts across the board. I’ve gotta let a dozen people go today.”
“But what will I do?” I asked. “I’ve given this newspaper twenty years of my life! The Dunston Herald owes me something!”
My editor shrugged. “How about a glowing reference? But only if you leave without pilfering office supplies or lighting a fire in your trash can.”
I rose from my seat. “I’m not that desperate for a box of paper clips, thank you.”
I walked back to my cubicle with as much dignity as I could muster and began to take down the yellowed clippings of my best articles. When I pulled the thumbtacks from the corners of my son’s graduation photo, I was nearly paralyzed by fear. Trey would be a freshman at UNC Wilmington in the fall, and I’d only paid for his first semester. Without my job, how would I cover the cost of another three and a half years of college? And knowing Trey’s subpar work ethic, I’d need funds for five or six years of higher education.
This was not the time to panic. I needed work, and I needed it right away. Surely there was a job out there for an experienced writer. I reached for today’s paper and rapidly flipped to the Classifieds section. It only took a few minutes to realize that unless I was a registered nurse or could drive an eighteen-wheeler, I was out of luck.
Then, an ad I remembered seeing before caught my eye.
Help Wanted: Intern for the Novel Idea Literary Agency. Help us sign the next bestselling author. Read and answer queries, attend conferences, edit manuscripts. Excellent communication skills required. Competitive salary. Suitable candidate must be available to travel. After a successful three-month internship, candidate will be promoted to junior agent.
It sounded perfect. I called, and after a five-minute phone interview with the agency’s terse and commanding president, a Ms. Bentley Burlington-Duke, I was told to report to her office tomorrow, nine o’clock sharp, prepared to put in a full day’s work.
So I walked out of the squat concrete building that housed the Dunston Herald that Thursday afternoon for the last time, not in tears, but smiling like an inmate released from prison. Instead of indulging in a midlife crisis, I was embarking on a new adventure. Who knew what this change of direction could mean? My head was filled with glorious possibilities. Fame, fortune, and romance featured prominently.
If I became a full-fledged literary agent, I would get paid to read! Every day, I’d be the first to sample the work of scores of author hopefuls. I envisioned my name in the acknowledgments section of dozens of fabulous books. This image was quickly replaced by the dedication page in an international bestseller.
To Lila Wilkins. I couldn’t have come this far without you!
Delving deeper into fantasy, I created more interesting dedications, penned by the next John Grisham or Jodi Picoult. To Lila Wilkins, agent and friend. For Lila, with gratitude. Or this one by J.K. Rowling, whom I convinced to write a standalone about Harry Potter’s children: Lovely Lila, you are a treasure!
I should have known that something was amiss. The Novel Idea Literary Agency ran an ad for an intern position every few months, but I was foolish enough to believe the job kept coming open because it had yet to be filled by the right person. I was also foolish enough to believe that person was me.
I was so giddy by the time I got home to the little house I shared with Trey that I wasn’t even annoyed to find the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, potato chip crumbs scattered across the rug and sofa in the living room, and a pair of mud-encrusted socks at the top of the stairs. Trey had left a note saying he’d be out late. He was going to the movies and then to a party at his best friend’s house. He suggested I not wait up for him.