Page 149 of Darling Venom
I knew myself well enough to know I didn’t survive books. They tore me to shreds. I’d never met an inanimate object as talented at breaking hearts as a book.
Which was why I delayed starting Darling Venom until Friday night, knowing full-well I’d be a mess of tears and snot by the end of it.
I waited for Leah to leave to her supplemental night class on microblading—not that we were acknowledging each other’s existence at the moment—before I locked myself in my room, blasted a playlist filled with Kellan’s favorite bands (Anti-Flag, Antischism, Anti System, and well, there was a pattern here), and pulled out the manuscript from its hidden spot beneath my bed.
It was thick. Thicker than the page count implied, layered with Post-its in five different colors, time-stamped comments inked beside the text, and so many dog-eared pages, it rendered them useless.
I opened it to a random page. Notes littered the column, addressed to me by name. As if Kellan had gone through the entire manuscript, knowing I would be the one finishing it.
He planned on leaving this to you.
He planned on dying.
From the beginning.
The literal beginning, too, seeing as the first time-stamped comment was dated the day after we met. He’d started this in eighth grade. He might not have finished it then, but the fact that he’d started it so young…
I could only think of a handful of authors I loved who’d written their first books around that age.
S. E. Hinton and The Outsiders.
Matthew Gregory Lewis and The Monk.
Christopher Paolini and Eragon.
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein.
Kellan Marchetti was prodigal, and he’d never let himself shine.
I swallowed thickly, refusing to let what that meant sink in. I needed to be pragmatic about this. To treat it as if I were an agent, and it was a book from an author I represented.
The good news was, it looked fully finished. Three-hundred and forty-six pages, single-spaced. Ready to be edited.
The bad news was, I was familiar with the editing process, but I’d never done it myself.
I flipped to the first page and spotted a note in the margin that said:
DICKS, READ THIS FIRST!
So, I did.
Dicks,
Most of the notes are from me.
The rest are from a pretentious Ivy League dickwad with too much time on his hands and an overly high opinion of himself (read: my future, if I didn’t off myself, so the world dodged a bullet there).
Basically, I spent a shit ton of time and effort applying to Harvard on special concentrations, designing a creative writing curriculum I knew I’d never follow through with, all to get Professor Dickwad to read Darling Venom and tell me I don’t understand loss.
Take from that what you will.
K
P.S. That Asshole found out I got into Harvard and is ten seconds from buying me a brand-new car (probably a Prius because he relishes in my eternal suffering) to make the commute.
The puzzle pieces clicked into place. Kellan needed feedback on his book. He never actually wanted to attend Harvard. Knew he wouldn’t make it that far. I wondered if Tate had any clue what he’d been up to, but it seemed unlikely.
It took me one chapter to realize the book was good.
