Page 23 of Death of the Author

“Oh yeah,” Zelu said, leaning forward. “I’ve spent whole summers there with my siblings. I can speak some very bad Igbo and slightly better Yoruba.”

“Kedu?” he asked.

Zelu blinked, shocked to hear an Igbo word come out of this guy’s mouth. “O dimma,” she slowly answered.What the fuck? This guy learned to say “hi” in Igbo for this!?The suspicion instantly crept back in.

He smirked again, clearly enjoying her obvious confusion. But instead of explaining himself, he moved right on to the next question. “So, you’re the second of six children?”

“Yep. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.”

He laughed, clearly getting the oldBrady Bunchreference.

“But not really,” Zelu clarified. “I’ve never felt overshadowed for being the first middle child. The whole falling-out-of-a-tree-and-snapping-my-spinal-cord thing got me all the attention I could ever want.”

He paused and finally looked up from his notes, eyes flitting over her body before quickly snapping back to the page.

“It’s fine,” Zelu said, used to this reaction. “It happened when I was twelve. It was awful, it scarred the heck out of me... but not so much that I can’t talk about it.” She forced a smile. She hated talking about it and wished she’d never have to talk about it again. But it was always right there, in front of everything she did.

He nodded, tapping his pen once against the paper. “So, when did you start writing?”

Zelu looked up at the ceiling. What a complicated question. “I think I’ve always been a writer. Even when I wasn’t writing. Even when I wanted to be an astronaut.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You wanted to be an astronaut?”

“Yeah. Before I was twelve.” She sighed, rubbing her palms over her arms. “I wanted to research rocks and dirt from other planets, look at comets and asteroids through telescopes, map heavenly bodies, and...” She smiled to herself. “Okay, this is going to sound strange, but I wanted to be the first human to travelintothe sun... and come out, of course. My kid brain was so certain that there were secrets in there, inside the stars.”

“Wow, that’s wild,” he said.

“But I always loved books. My father was an avid reader, still is. Back then, I’d watch him, and before I could even read, I understood how important novels were. So I took pieces of construction paper and scribbled nonsense on the pages, stapled them together, and drew pictures of stars, planets, dogs digging in moon dust, cats dancing on Mars, trees growing in space, and random ladybugs on the covers. Those were the only things I knew how to draw at the time, I guess. I called them ‘space books.’”

He chuckled, scribbling something down. “So, you hold an MFA in literature. I heard you were adjuncting for a while.”

She looked up at him sharply. “Yeah.”

He set his pen down. “Until recently.”

Her back stiffened. How did he even know about that? How was this relevant toRusted Robots? She rubbed her forehead, suddenly back in that fucking department head’s office. She’d thought she was done having to explain this. “Well, y-yeah. Stepping away from teaching gave me the time and space I needed to write.”

“From what Brittany Burke said, it seemed—”

Zelu cut him off, her words coated in acid. “You spoke with her?”

His eyes widened a little. “I did.” He smiled sheepishly. “I was just—”

“Why?”

Zelu had expected to startle him, but his expression settled into something very neutral. “I’m a journalist. Just doing my job, following leads.”

Zelu sucked in a breath and let it out. She could feel the rage rising within her. Was she naive for thinking that, now that everyone wanted to talk aboutRusted Robots, she could leave all that bad stuff behind? If this idiot journalist had spoken to Brittany or her former students, who knew what he’d cram into this story? He would forever immortalize the worst time of her life. Brittany had probably been all too happy to answer every question, at best hoping for adjacent acclaim, at worst hoping to sabotage Zelu’s success before the book ever hit shelves.

“That was a very bad day” was all Zelu managed to say, voice flat as she pushed herself into the back of her chair.

The journalist nodded in agreement. “From what she said, it was pretty, uh, emotional.”

Something was filling up in her ears. Zelu could hear it, like a piano note pitching higher and higher. “The reason I was f— uh, um, uh...”Ting ting ting.Higher higher higher. Fuller, inflating.

Stop.

Everything.

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