Summer was teaching me a lot of things lately.

For instance, sweating was my not-so-well-hidden superpower. And the world's best anti-humidity serums couldn't battle the frizz out of my hair.

It was the most unbearable season despite the misleading popularity and the advertising tricks. Why, exactly, had I decided to take five classes in the middle of it?

Someone should have told me not to. I probably wouldn't have listened, but still.

Most importantly, summer revealed people's true colors. Especially when the A.C. stopped working in the middle of the day. The most reserved student of the class had already snapped at the guy in the seat next to him twice. And Mr. Crawford's usual, poorly-restrained irritation had reached an all-time high.

I was not unaffected. At this nagging temperature, the smallest of sounds was too loud. Only self-control kept me from walking over to the guy whose music I could hear through his headphones from the back of the room, and I would've asked him to stop being an idiot.

The heat seemed to make it more obvious how much smaller this room was compared to all the others at Duke. There were only ten other students, but we were all wordlessly competing for space and air. No wonder Mr. Crawford was always in such a bad mood.

The sound of something breaking above my head startled me. I looked up to find Mr. Crawford scowling at me and holding a pencil snapped in half.

He had done this often enough that I no longer wondered if it hurt his palms. My habit of choosing the front row made me his preferred target.

"Well?" he asked.

I offered a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry. Did you say something?"

"As I was saying, are you ready to share what you've been working on, Kelly?"

This brought my attention back to today's assignment. I knew without glancing at what I'd been writing that I didn't have anything substantial to share. I hated Workshop Friday. My classmates' generic compliments and clever-sounding feedback were the last things I needed.

I shook my head and avoided his eyes until he moved on to someone else.

I stared at the open document in front of me, but I saw everything except the words I had just typed. I knew they didn't make any sense, but I couldn't muster the strength to erase them.

The only thing I could focus on was the cursor jumping around on the screen as I frantically slid my finger across the touchpad of my laptop.

I took a deep breath, focused on the screen, and let out my hundredth sigh of the day.

I massaged my temples, remembering how some guy earlier that morning knocked my coffee out of my hand. He had shouted an apology over his shoulder as he kept on running to wherever he had to be.

I remembered staring at the warm drink splashed on the ground with regret, wondering how I would survive Mr. Crawford's class without it.

Regardless of what it looked like, I was definitely not anxious. I didn't know what that word meant. I had everything under control.

Tucking my feet beneath me was pointless. No position would ever feel comfortable on this creaky, unforgiving chair.

I stayed still to avoid disrupting my classmates' inspiration flow. It felt much safer to remain invisible.

Soon, everyone started packing up. I closed my laptop and lingered in my seat, waiting for everyone else to leave.

When I stood, Mr. Crawford glanced at me, somewhat annoyed.

"Ms. Rivers," he said with a sigh. "You're still here."

I assumed it was obvious why I had lingered behind. It was for the same reason I had been visiting his office so often that past month. Yet another negative feedback on one of my most recent submissions.

But this one hit harder because I had actually tried.

"I don't understand." I lifted the sheet of paper covered in red marks to his eye level as if it was a warrant I had urgently requested from a skeptical judge.

Mr. Crawford never graded his assignments with a normal rubric. Instead, he covered every blank spot on my sheets with his finely printed, handwritten feedback. His handwriting reflected everything else about him with painful accuracy—from his neat clothes to the tidy bottom of his desk's drawer.

He looked at the paper for too brief a moment to have read all the notes he had written.

Making no attempt at subtlety, Mr. Crawford glanced at his watch.

"What's wrong with this one?" I asked.

I knew this one was my best work yet. I had spent days working out the intricacies of the characters. I believed it was my most beautiful prose yet.

"It's not—" he paused, waving his hands around in front of him, as to stimulate the right words—"real. While reading this, do you know what I was thinking about?"

Mr. Crawford was known for overusing rhetorical questions, but I offered an answer, anyway. "Such impressive writing! I've never read anything quite like it?"

He did not seem to spare a thought at my attempt at humor, "You know what I say to all of my freshmen every day?" He held up a hand to stop me from suggesting an answer the second I opened my mouth. "If I stop reading to congratulate your vocabulary, then something's not right. I do not care about your ability to use 'aplomb' in a sentence. If I wanted to read words, I'd pick up my dictionary."

I knew better than to make another attempt at speaking. His brown eyes narrowed, appearing much darker. They always did whenever he got invested in condemning a particular junior just trying to get through college to a lifetime of Fiction-Writing failure.

"But, here's the thing, Kelly. That's what I tell my freshmen. So, why do I still have to tell you that your stories lack heart?"

Heart. To his credit, he had been repeating that very thing to me since my very first writing class. But the exact, operationalized meaning of "heart" still eluded me.

As if a fiction piece that would soon be scrutinized by inconsiderate eyes was a safe place to wear my heart. I'd much rather keep me inside my chest where it should be, and I was wary of any advice that promoted alternatives.

"What's the practical way to do that?" Even before I asked, I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with his answer.

"Isn't the magic in that there's no particular method to go about it?" Magic? Why couldn't I have a normal professor? "That will set your work apart from everyone else's," he went on. "That's all I ever ask from my students. If you want concise rubrics and step-by-step methods, might I suggest a major in the sciences?"

He was not the first to recommend a change in major. My counselor had, my best friend had, and with more persistence than the other two, my mother had.

If anything, their doubts fueled my resolve, reinforcing my mindset that giving up was not an option.

"Have you noticed any progress?" I asked. "Is this even the kind of thing I can work on?"

"You're approaching this the wrong way. Your emphasis on 'working on it' is part of the problem," Mr. Crawford said, pacing the floor. "Don't polish the surface. Those are just the symptoms. Find the underlying issue."

He came to an unexpected stop in front of his desk and faced me. His eyebrows furrowed above his steely, intimidating gray eyes.

"Kelly, I've been meaning to talk to you about this. I'm sure you know the dean keeps a very close eye on this writing program. Mrs. Thompson means to keep the standard high and wants to see high-quality work. She has asked for a portfolio of my students' best work." He paused. "I believe she will make some cuts after this semester."

Something in my stomach dropped. "I see."

Mr. Crawford pulled a business card from his pocket. He stared at it for a moment, his eyebrows pulled together, before handing it to me.

The name Alec Whitman was bolded in the center, right under the name of his publishing company: "Triple W."

"Alec is an old friend of mine," he explained. "I was planning on referring some students to him for internships when he mentioned that his brother's currently working with his company. So, I called in a favor. Do you remember Miles Whitman?"

My ears all but pricked up at the name.

"The writer?" I asked, to which he nodded.

Mr. Crawford had assigned Whitman's book as required reading, last semester, and pulled a few strings to get our copies signed.

I didn't usually care for literary fiction, but the very first paragraph of the novel had pulled me in. I didn't want to skip a word.

Right under the title and above his signature, Miles Whitman had scribbled 'Giving up is not an option'. In a moment of weakness, I had covered a page with these words, repeated over and over until the letters overlapped and the words faded under all the black ink.

It worked. Every time I glanced at that page, my doubt disappeared.

"I asked if Miles Whitman would be open to mentoring an amateur writer who interns with Triple W, and apparently, he has some free time," Mr. Crawford said.

My eyes widened when I realized where this was heading.

"Are you saying—?"

He cut me off. "I think this would be a great opportunity for you, Kelly, if you're interested."

Suspicion soon replaced my surprise. "Wait. Did my mother call you again?"

His silence gave me the answer I was dreading.

"Sorry about that," I said.

"No matter."

I winced, picturing her shrill voice yelling about giving me more opportunities. Mom had never been particularly tactful. She took the fact that she wasn't allowed to discuss my records with my professors as an invitation to bug them about everything else.

The whole point of cutting contact with my parents was so they could no longer meddle in my life, waiting for any chance to buy me new opportunities. Had it been for any other reason, I could have hugged Mr. Crawford, but right now, I only felt shame.

Mr. Crawford sat behind his desk when he noticed I was still not moving toward the door. He took a sip from his bottle, then stared in horror at the droplet on his table.

He pulled open a desk drawer and took out a paper napkin without even looking down, knowing the precise location of every item. He wiped the spot with great and unnecessary agility.

I looked down at the paper ridden with red marks in one hand and the business card in the other.

"Would you..." I paused, "Would you even have considered me if my mom didn't call?"

There was a slight twitch to Mr. Crawford's left eye as he spoke. "Look, Kelly, this is an opportunity, not a guarantee. You are certainly allowed to ignore it if you're not ready." His eyes zeroed in on me. "Or if you're scared."

I didn't have a choice. I could not be cut from the program. Miles Whitman was my last hope.

Before I could reply and pester him for details about Triple W, the door creaked open.

A freckled guy who looked pained at the mere thought of intruding walked in, hesitation marring his every step.

"I'm sorry to interrupt. I have an appointment but I can, uh, come back later." A slight pause marked every sentence, as though he wanted to end them with a question mark, but had learned that feigned confidence was his best bet to survive the battlefield that college would be.

"Ah, Mr. Davis," Mr. Crawford greeted him, and I recognized the relief in his tone. "Kelly, I'm sure I will see you soon."

I picked up my laptop where I had abandoned it and waved. I walked out of the classroom and stared at the card again, embarrassed, but excited too.

Gold and silver letters adorned the cardstock, building my hopes for the summer ahead.

The campus wasn't as busy in the summer as it usually was during the other semesters, but people still bumped into me as I left the building.

I fell onto the nearest bench and mindlessly stared at the flowers surrounding it, livening it up to make up for the rust that covered it.

Fear soon replaced my budding excitement. What did Mr. Crawford tell the Whitmans about me? Were they expecting a writing prodigy?

The thought of their expectations troubled me and fueled a desire to run back to Mr. Crawford's classroom for a better explanation of how to make up for what my writing lacked. Would mere desperation cut it?

"I think it's sad that I'm not even surprised you're here on a Friday morning in the summer."

If it had been anyone else, I might have jumped. Ace's gentle voice, however, was warm as honey. He sat next to me, twiddling with the shoulder straps of my backpack and carrying a cup of coffee in his free hand.

Shifting slightly to face him, I gave him the smile I had designed just for him because, right now, a genuine one was out of reach. "What about you? What are you doing here?"

My eyes squinted from the intensity of the sun. It seemed to target me, shining down with the stubbornness of a child who had been double-dog dared to do so. "Do your worst." It certainly delivered.

Ace's new buzz haircut appeared to have white highlights under its unforgiving glow, which didn't look half bad on him. But then again, nothing did. He was insecure about many things, but his looks weren't one of them.

"I'm here with Emma. We've been rehearsing since the doors of the practice rooms opened."

Ace didn't look like he was kidding. He must have really thought that being the audience for his girlfriend's rehearsals counted.

"You mean, Emma's been rehearsing." I didn't know where I found the energy to tease him, but the scowl he sent my way was enough to improve my mood some. "Where is she now?"

"Still in there. I offered to get her some coffee. She looked exhausted." He stood up as if he only just remembered that the coffee was getting cold. "Do you want to come and say hi?"

I was not excited at the idea of walking halfway across campus to the Performance Arts building. Sweat was trickling down my neck, and my shirt was already sticking to my back. Another one of the many perks of summer.

Ace didn't look at all bothered, as if the rays of the sun didn't feel like a blazing fire on his skin. I couldn't be the only one who felt it.

Despite my discomfort, I nodded, agreeing to tag along. Ace and I hadn't chatted much since the end of last semester. We began a walk that would've been considered short any other season but this one.

"I heard about—" He risked a glance at me before continuing— "you know, Thomas." I said nothing. Ace cleared his throat to disperse the tension in the air.  "What did you do to that one?"

"Is that the first thing you say to a girl who just got dumped?"

"Only to a girl who's been dumped more times than I've failed Chemistry."

Like all the other times this had happened since I met Ace, I knew he would want to talk about it. So, the night before, I'd sent him an email with a script of what he was allowed to say.

"Did you not get the message I sent you?" I asked.

We entered the building, and I sighed in relief as cold air enveloped me.

"The last email you sent me was blank."

A display case covered the wall on both sides of the entrance, showing off the trophies and medals that students worked through sweat and blood to win.

"Exactly. What do you think that means?" I saw him glare at me from the corner of my eyes. "But seriously, I'm okay. I sobbed for about two minutes. I ate a bucket of vanilla ice cream and stabbed a couple of his pictures with a fork." I grimaced at the thought of the crumpled and disgusting tissues that were probably still decorating my couch.

I didn't mention that the sobs were mostly just me grumbling in frustration instead of actual tears.

We reached Emma's room, and soothing classical music seeped out from under the door.

The only thing more gorgeous than the melody was Emma's dancing. It demanded our attention. The rose gold dress she wore seemed to act as an extension of her skilled limbs. Not one finger was out of place.

The wet strands of blonde hair that had slipped out of her bun to stick to her face were the only indication that this took any effort.

The percussion instruments swelled to a satisfying climax as Emma's steps quickened, responding to the music and landing on the right beat every single time.

Neither Ace nor I opened the door. We were too afraid to ruin the magic.

Was this it? Was this what Mr. Crawford could not explain in useful words? The intangible enchantment that defined every great tale?

Every effortless jump and spin weaved the pieces together as her heart told the story in a way I had never managed to. This magic always eluded me, despite my best attempts to capture it.

I was growing tired of chasing it. Giving up, however—like Miles Whitman claimed—was not an option.

Not for me.

Disclaimer: I would just like to state again (in case you skipped the Author's Note) that there are a couple of minor inconsistencies because I started editing this story, but I'm not quite done yet.

A/N: Can't believe the first chapter of Booked is finally published.

Thoughts?

I'm really excited to share this story with you!

-D.T. ➷