Roll with the Punches Read Online Free Page B
Author: Amy Gettinger
thickened and grayed as James stood and blocked me from getting at Yvette.
"Great minds think alike," Jackie finally said. "They say there are only so many good plots in the world, and we're bound to repeat them. You can still publish it with another—"
Yvette said from the corner, "Not that thing," and she pointed at my leprous manuscript. "It looks like one of Reynard's early drafts. No editor or agent will buy it as original material."
Heat blazed up my face and I pounded the table. "You think I stole my own book," Pound, pound, pound. "From Reynard Jackson? How could I have managed that if his book just came out? This group just said—"
Yvette shrugged. "You've only been with them a few months. You joined with a manuscript. Which you could have updated monthly from someone else's hacked computer. Hackers can do amazing things these days.”
The air got positively viscous. I could hardly breathe.
"Bull hockey!" James slammed his own fist on the table with a wide grin. "Rhonda's impossibly inept with computers. I should know. I've fixed hers enough times. So let's just squelch that whole idea from the start.”
My hero.
Yvette said to him, "Do you have her backup disk with all the drafts on it to convince me it's hers?"
"Convince YOU ?" I bellowed.
Everyone froze as wisps of smoke coiled off my head. They'd all seen my worn-out punching bag at home. I seethed, itching to really bump that pink sweater past the coach's bench into eternity.
My cell phone vibrated in my purse.
After a long moment, I hissed, "Not that it's your business, but my computer crashed in September and soon after, I lost my backup flash drive." I snagged the purse and squeezed past Jackie out the door, glad of a reason for escape.
My father's voice answered as I stomped around Jackie's front yard under a starless sky. "Rhonda? Been trying to find you all day. Had to call your sister in Australia for your phone number. Your mother's in the hospital."
I stopped. "Dad, why? What happened?" My stomach, already tensed up like a basketball, started pounding down court.
"She's at UCI Medical Center. You gotta come help me, Rhonda."
"But what happened, Dad? Dad? Dad?"
The phone went dead and echoes of that stupid song rang in my head.
CHAPTER 4
"Should we call anyone else?" James asked, weaving his Toyota Corolla through traffic between Jackie's house in downtown Orange and the hospital. He had insisted on driving so I could frantically dial my cell phone.
"I'm not sure." I gulped air and finally reached the hospital receptionist, who said Mom was in a regular room, not the ICU. Good. I asked to be connected to her room phone, and the line was busy. Better. My mental pictures of Mom comatose and white changed to pictures of Mom chatting on the phone with a bandaged appendage. I held for the floor nurse.
We turned a corner fast, and there was a gasp behind me. Yvette. Her ride was late. Jackie had gone to Dad's house on Acorn Street in Anaheim to check if Dad was still there, and Marian's fancy new red Corvette held only her and George. So the deluded, insectoid editor now cowered in James's back seat, making little strangled noises every time the car careened around a turn. Now that I knew Mom wasn't dying, I considered asking James to stop at a bookstore on the way to the hospital to prove Yvette wrong about my book. But it could probably wait a day. My mother needed me. So I pretended Yvette was a large pink bug back there and enjoyed her unease.
The hospital receptionist told me the nurse was busy. I should call back in a few minutes.
"Did you call your sister?" James said.
"Monica's off scuba-diving in Australia." I chewed a fingernail. My older sister had left the country a month before to live in Australia with her oceanographer husband and two small children. "She left me her new cell phone, with four messages on it that I have no idea how to retrieve. I need her password." I redialed my parents' house in Anaheim. No
"Great minds think alike," Jackie finally said. "They say there are only so many good plots in the world, and we're bound to repeat them. You can still publish it with another—"
Yvette said from the corner, "Not that thing," and she pointed at my leprous manuscript. "It looks like one of Reynard's early drafts. No editor or agent will buy it as original material."
Heat blazed up my face and I pounded the table. "You think I stole my own book," Pound, pound, pound. "From Reynard Jackson? How could I have managed that if his book just came out? This group just said—"
Yvette shrugged. "You've only been with them a few months. You joined with a manuscript. Which you could have updated monthly from someone else's hacked computer. Hackers can do amazing things these days.”
The air got positively viscous. I could hardly breathe.
"Bull hockey!" James slammed his own fist on the table with a wide grin. "Rhonda's impossibly inept with computers. I should know. I've fixed hers enough times. So let's just squelch that whole idea from the start.”
My hero.
Yvette said to him, "Do you have her backup disk with all the drafts on it to convince me it's hers?"
"Convince YOU ?" I bellowed.
Everyone froze as wisps of smoke coiled off my head. They'd all seen my worn-out punching bag at home. I seethed, itching to really bump that pink sweater past the coach's bench into eternity.
My cell phone vibrated in my purse.
After a long moment, I hissed, "Not that it's your business, but my computer crashed in September and soon after, I lost my backup flash drive." I snagged the purse and squeezed past Jackie out the door, glad of a reason for escape.
My father's voice answered as I stomped around Jackie's front yard under a starless sky. "Rhonda? Been trying to find you all day. Had to call your sister in Australia for your phone number. Your mother's in the hospital."
I stopped. "Dad, why? What happened?" My stomach, already tensed up like a basketball, started pounding down court.
"She's at UCI Medical Center. You gotta come help me, Rhonda."
"But what happened, Dad? Dad? Dad?"
The phone went dead and echoes of that stupid song rang in my head.
CHAPTER 4
"Should we call anyone else?" James asked, weaving his Toyota Corolla through traffic between Jackie's house in downtown Orange and the hospital. He had insisted on driving so I could frantically dial my cell phone.
"I'm not sure." I gulped air and finally reached the hospital receptionist, who said Mom was in a regular room, not the ICU. Good. I asked to be connected to her room phone, and the line was busy. Better. My mental pictures of Mom comatose and white changed to pictures of Mom chatting on the phone with a bandaged appendage. I held for the floor nurse.
We turned a corner fast, and there was a gasp behind me. Yvette. Her ride was late. Jackie had gone to Dad's house on Acorn Street in Anaheim to check if Dad was still there, and Marian's fancy new red Corvette held only her and George. So the deluded, insectoid editor now cowered in James's back seat, making little strangled noises every time the car careened around a turn. Now that I knew Mom wasn't dying, I considered asking James to stop at a bookstore on the way to the hospital to prove Yvette wrong about my book. But it could probably wait a day. My mother needed me. So I pretended Yvette was a large pink bug back there and enjoyed her unease.
The hospital receptionist told me the nurse was busy. I should call back in a few minutes.
"Did you call your sister?" James said.
"Monica's off scuba-diving in Australia." I chewed a fingernail. My older sister had left the country a month before to live in Australia with her oceanographer husband and two small children. "She left me her new cell phone, with four messages on it that I have no idea how to retrieve. I need her password." I redialed my parents' house in Anaheim. No
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