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which at first I think is a camera, but when I squint I see it’s a mini tape recorder and the red recording light is on. I laugh because it seems ridiculous to record our graduation ceremony, but then stop laughing when I realize Foster’s taping our conversation.
    “I’m working on my dialogue,” he says.
    I can’t help but have a Harsh Eva reaction: Foster should be working on his dialogue. He should also be working on his plot ideas and his characters and everything else. The problem is that Foster’s a terrible writer precisely because he’s actually a pretty decent writer who refuses to get better by just evolving a little. He always writes about varsity baseball team fights that somehow end in an innocent freshman getting stabbed in the eye, and not only is it like, who cares , but he wastes whatever interesting imagery he might’ve been able to tap into on an unbelievable narrator who ends up blind anyway. Even though Foster’s pretty smart—maybe smarter than me—he just doesn’t get it , and wasn’t it someone important who said, “You’re either born with taste or you’re not”? I like Foster fine, but there’s no teaching him good taste.
    What’s most frustrating of all is that the answer’s right in front of him. Like me, like how I’m right in front of him (or in this case, right behind him).
    For instance, if everyone in his stories just talked like I talk and acted like I how I act, he’d write the best story of his life. If, just once, his protagonist did something natural, like walked out to the parking lot, got in her car, turned on the radio, rolled down the windows, and didn’t even drive anywhere, just put on some lipstick and stared at herself in the rearview mirror, hinting at some kind of emotional epiphany, and then ended it with an ambiguous final line—well, that would be an absolutely legendarily good Foster Hoyt short story.
    “Your dialogue is fine,” I tell him.
    “Come on, dude,” Foster says.
    “What?”
    “I read what you wrote in workshop.”
    “No,” I say, “it’s not like that.”
    “I don’t mind,” he says. “I want the feedback.”
    “Foster.”
    “Seriously, don’t worry about it.”
    I expect Foster to turn back around when there’s a lull in the conversation, or start scanning around me for other less harsh people whose dialogue he can record, but he doesn’t. He just sits there, looking at me, while our class president rambles on about the game Simon Says and how we should all stop listening to Simon and just be ourselves. I want to tell Foster how I’m not this awful person who insults his stories, I’m just a serious girl who’s sort of his rival but only in a healthy, challenging way. Like how if I’m better it makes Foster better, and isn’t that a positive influence? Something about the moment, the finality of high school maybe, makes me feel connected to Foster, and I can’t let this end with him thinking I’m some jerk.
    “You know,” I say, “Roush hated my final story. He ripped it apart.”
    “That’s not true,” Foster says.
    “No, really.”
    “Well, I liked it,” Foster says. “If that matters.”
    “It does,” I say, not lying.
    Foster nods in a sweet way and then his eyes catch someone behind me, and he waves. I make a gesture with my hands like I’m dismissing him, like, “Go ahead, I’m fine,” and he does, and I am.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................

    COURTNEY GOES TO real college parties sometimes. “Classic” college parties, as she calls them.
    An acquaintance or friend of a friend at USC or UCLA will invite her to their dorm room, where the beds have been cleared off and the mini-fridge stocked with wine coolers and soda (which my sister calls “mixers”). The rooms are small, they only hold like twenty people, so eventually everyone spills out into the hall and common area. Apparently there’s