Gwen grinned. “It sold out in an hour, did I tell you? One of the quickest we’ve had. Do direct them to buy the book at the beginning and the end. So many people forget.”
“Of course.”
“Shall I show you the Gah! stand?”
“The what?”
She led me past a side table dwarfed by the wobbling piles of Stacy’s book. Hulking hot-pink hardbacks towered toward the high ceiling, and, just past it, was a sorrowful-looking table with the Gah! banner above it, loaded with some promotional key rings I doubted anyone wanted.
“That’s your table. It will be nice for you to be able to chat to people afterward.”
“Oh great,” I said, immediately furious at my editor, Derek, for not telling me about this part of the evening. Nobody mentioned me having to loiter around some stand afterward.
Gwen’s phone went and she leaped on it, her eyes wide with relief. “Stacy’s here,” she told me, as if Beyoncé had just arrived. “Quick.”
* * *
“Can you BELIEVE this weather,” Stacy bellowed to everyone, rushing into the green room with her tiny publicist, knowing she didn’t need to introduce herself. “I spent so long getting my hair perfect, and all for what? Oh my God. It makes you want to kill yourself. Whoops. Bad joke. You know me! Hey, do you guys have a phone charger I can use? Cheers.” Stacy snatched a lead from Gwen’s twitching hands, then spied the snacks. “Oh, cakes, yummy. Is this all for me? How sweet.”
We all hovered and watched Stacy eat a cupcake, while I wondered when I should introduce myself. The young influencer had clearly made a “book launch outfit” mood board at some point after googling “what writers look like.” Gone was her usual array of erratic revealing clothing. Instead she’d poured herself into a crisp white shirt with skinny tie, dark blue jeans, heels, and gathered her hair into a professional ponytail, topped off with prescription-free large-rimmed glasses. “Wow. Watermelon too. Oh this is great.” She pulled out her phone. “Look. Everyone outside is so excited.” Stacy fell down a social media rabbit hole, and it was now slightly weird she hadn’t said hello to anyone. I coughed, to alert her publicist, who was also buried in her phone. She looked up, and I saw the obvious effort it took her to pretend enthusiasm for me.
“You must be Fern! Oh my. Lovely to meet you.” She launched herself up and air-kissed me.
“Nice to meet you too. How’s it been going?”
“Oh crazy. Just crazy! We found out today we hit the bestseller list though. After only three days of sales.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“So much thanks to you and Gah! of course.”
“We were so happy to support Stacy.”
Stacy, behind us, held up her phone, and started filming a video to post. “This, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between...is what a green room looks like,” she said, narrating herself without a whiff of self-consciousness. I sucked my stomach in as the lens swept over me, pretending I didn’t know I was being beamed to over four hundred and fifty thousand followers.
“Stacy? Are you free for a second? I’d like you to meet Fern, your amazing chair.”
The influencer stood up to shake hands. “It’s great to meet you.” She smiled with the full wattage, as if I was one of her fans. “Fern, was it?”
Her publicist filled her in. “Fern’s the Mental Health editor of the Gah! website. And she founded the Hold On For Tomorrow project. You know? That blog post that went viral a few years ago, encouraging people to post reasons to stay alive? She started that.”
I watched Stacy’s expression as she realized I was, actually, quite relevant. “Oh my God, of course that was you! I loved that project! I knew I recognized you from somewhere. We must take a photo. Hayley, could you?” She tossed her phone to her publicist and smooshed her face against mine. Awkwardness reigned my body as I tried to pose in a way that didn’t make me look as if I was trying to get down with the youth. I was highly aware of my eye wrinkles compared to Stacy’s smoothly made-up face. One of her many “youth privileges,” like being able to shop at boohoo without looking like mutton, and her instant understanding of TikTok, the gender spectrum, and which brand of oat milk was morally questionable that week. The phone clicked, and Stacy grabbed it back, zooming in on her own face before pocketing it.
“It’s great to meet you too,” I gushed. “I loved the book.”
This was the toll I’d found you must always pay in the publishing industry. You must first lie that you’d read the book the whole way through, and then you lie about having loved it.
Stacy accepted my payment, smiled, and offered up an equally inauthentic response. “Oh, really? Thank you. That means so much coming from you, Fern.”
Me, a woman who needed formal identification less than two minutes ago.
We grinned inanely at one another, our cheeks aching.
“Do you have a few minutes to go through the event?” I asked. “My questions?”
Her nose wrinkled. “Do you mind if we didn’t? I feel like I lose my flow if I know what’s coming up. You know?”
“Oh... Of course.”
Hayley the publicist appeared at my side, while Stacy sat down again and disappeared through the portal of her phone screen. “Stacy’s just so comfortable in front of her followers that it all flows really easily,” she reassured me.
“Of course.”
“Honestly, just let Stacy be Stacy, and it will be amazing.”
“Of course.”
* * *
Of course, the event was the train wreck I knew it was going to be from the moment I’d read her book. Not that anyone else, a) noticed the train wreck, or b) minded it. At least my reputation, and Gah!’s, didn’t appear to be harmed by it. In fact, as Stacy had so kindly tagged me into her socials afterward, I was privy to the hundreds of her fans crying and shaking at the beautiful energy of the inspirational evening. It was the easiest money I’d made in a long while. After we’d been miked up, we emerged in front of hundreds of cheering faces, and, as chair, I had to ask only one question to fill the forty minutes. “So, tell me, Stacy, what led you to write this book?”
Stacy spurted into a manic monologue that was literally impossible to interrupt, even when she started sharing, in explicit detail, the exact methodologies by which she’d considered killing herself when she got “canceled” after a viral YouTube video, and discussing the success rates of each one. I winced and tried to interject as she broke every single Samaritans safeguarding guideline. As I watched this twenty-four-year-old talk about her gritty breakup, half of me wanted to hug her and the other half wanted to throw one mental health book at her that wasn’t her ghostwritten autobiography. Instead, I arranged my face into nothingness and reminded myself this was on Gah!, not me. Eventually, after calling her ex-boyfriend a “carrot cock,” which led to thunderous applause, and some eyebrow raises from stressed-looking parents sitting with their devoted eleven-year-olds—the show was over. Everyone stood and cheered, most of them in tears. I threw my arms in her direction. “Ladies and gentlemen, Stacy Smith,” and they all went crazy. As I mumbled the Samaritans’ help-line number into the microphone, they flung themselves out of their seats to join the queue to get their books signed.