Haili Blassingame

It was like, we were cutting it really close.

I just had a feeling that there were going to be too many questions if the outcome was different from the novel.

And I didn't want to feel those.

And it sold in like, it sold in a week.

the week before the election to my wonderful editor, Anne Spire at Scribner.

Yes.

All right.

Sometimes we don't tell the story.

Sometimes it tells us.

That was just one of the many ass-backward aphorisms my grandma used to say that I never forgot.

Later, I understood how a saying like that could stick.

How it could haunt.

My grandma's stories never made sense.

The endings were lopped off, plots unfolded backward, characters died then were resurrected.

It used to kill me the way her endings felt like being shoved off a cliff, the way threads got dropped like dirty pennies, the way capital M meaning never materialized.

I wanted Disney Channel.

I wanted rom-coms with Ryan Reynolds.

I can see her now, braiding her white hair on that plastic-covered sofa, trying to teach me a lesson, one I practically ruined myself, trying to relearn years after she died.

No.

If I could send you the first draft, you'd be like, what is this?