Chapter 1

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***

“Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine,” I said out loud. 

Louise glanced up at me from across the glossy wooden table. The library was painfully, agonizingly, you-can-hear-a-pencil-drop quiet. We had been studying here for maybe four hours. That was three hours in silence too many for me. I was incurably extroverted, which meant I was bursting to speak.

“What?” she whispered.

“It’s a poem. Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine by Daljit Nagra.” 

A librarian in my peripheral vision shushed us.

“What about it?” 

I reached across the table and laced our fingers together. My brown skin contrasted the sickly Victorian child whiteness of her skin. 

“You’re white,” I whispered back, slowly and pointedly, as if that weren’t obvious. “Do you feel targeted by the poem?” 

Louise yanked her fingers back and fought off a grin. “Kaalia, I swear to God you can’t go one day without reminding me of how white I am. It’s always, You’re the same colour as A4 printer paper or you look so Aryan today. I’m going to kill you.” 

“Kill me?” I gasped. “Just like your colonizer ancestors.” 

Louise started laughing. The same librarian growled at us to be quiet. 

My phone lit up with an email notification as I struggled, coughing slightly, to contain my giggles. CONGRATULATIONS . . . 

Sent by Bloom Press.

My smile vanished immediately. Louise noticed. “Kaal? What’s wrong? Kaalia?” 

The librarian said something angrily, maybe a threat to kick us out, but blood rushed to my head and white noise drowned out everything.

I frantically clicked on the email notification and waited for it to bring me to the app. Please, please, please. I stopped breathing altogether. Either I got the job or I didn’t. If I didn’t, I would never want to breathe again anyway. I had been called high-strung and hypertension-tense in the past.

The email loaded. 

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR JOB OFFER FROM BLOOM PRESS. 

There was no way. Maybe my brain had lost too much oxygen already? I forced myself to inhale and exhale. The words became blurry and then resolidified. They were still the same. I scrolled down.

WE ARE THRILLED TO HAVE YOU JOIN THE TEAM AS AN ASSISTANT EDITOR. PLEASE ACCEPT THE OFFER WITHIN 72 HOURS. 

And, below: 

Please reach out to Roman Alvarez at [email protected] if you have any questions. 

With shaking hands, I showed Louise the email. 

“Bloom Press?” Louise shrieked. “Wait, Roman Alvarez? The CEO and Chief Editor of Bloom Press? Are you working under her?” 

The librarian appeared in front of our table and asked us to leave.

“Directly under her,” I said, as I slung my purse over my shoulder. I didn’t bother lowering my voice.

I’d applied to the position two months ago. I’d gone through four rigorous interviews, but I hadn’t heard back in almost three weeks. I told pretty much everyone I hadn’t gotten the job, but secretly I still hoped. Well, my burgeoning manifestation skills had paid off. 

Louise raised an eyebrow suggestively. “Like, under under her?” 

“Louise, she’s like 6 years older than us and she’s going to be my boss.” 

As we passed through the doors, a second librarian glared at us. She shook her head menacingly, looking down at the clipboard clutched in her veined hands, as if she had written our names and crossed them out with thick, angry, black Sharpie, Burn Book style. It seemed we’d gotten ourselves on the bad side of the Beinecke library. This would have bothered me in my first year of grad school, or maybe even last year, but it was April of my final year. All I had to do now was defend my dissertation. Then I would finally be done with Yale University.

As much as I loved it, I was ready to go. I wanted to finally take a step back from academic work and be what I’d wanted to be as a child: an editor. Or, specifically, an Editor in Chief. Like Roman Alvarez.

“That’s never stopped you before,” Louise said. 

“What?”

“All your celebrity crushes are older women. Viola Davis, Salma Hayek, Lupita Nyong’o . . . and what’s that Bollywood actress’s name again?” 

I flapped my hand, still clutching my phone with the email open. I was scared that if I swiped out of it, it would disappear. We were walking on the sidewalk now, students hurrying past us. Spring leaves had begun blossoming on the trees, but the weather was still chilly. Remnants of the harsh winter. 

“Stop! It’s not like that. Someone could hear and I could get fired or something!” 

Louise lit up. “Aishwarya Bachchan. That’s the one.” 

“Louise,” I groaned. 

“What? I interned at Bloom. I brought Roman Alvarez her caramel cortado every morning. Do you even know what she looks like? Did you meet her in the interviews?” 

“No, but I feel like I’ve seen Google images of her before?”

“You feel like? Then no, you haven’t seen. You’d remember. She’s so attractive.” Louise’s eyes rolled back, like she was orgasming just from the memory. “She has these, like, perfect, kind of angular eyes? And these super full, luscious lips . . . and her cleavage. And her hips. Oh my God, I know it’s impolite to talk about it, but she is shaped like . . .” She fanned herself. “No, don’t interrupt me, you don’t get it. She has all these gold piercings too. She kind of looks like a young version of Mel from Arcane. I know you had a crush on that character, by the way.” 

I hadn’t been so flustered in years. I didn’t even want to ask how Louise knew what Roman’s cleavage looked like. “For the love of God, we’re 27. You’re too old to be acting like this.”

Louise grinned shamelessly. “You’ll be acting like this too. Just wait till you meet her.”

“No wonder you never got rehired by Bloom. Roman probably noticed you were too busy ogling her to do any work,” I joked. We both knew that wasn’t why—the Bloom four-month internship was an extremely coveted position, one that even I hadn’t succeeded in getting. The chances of getting rehired were pretty much zero. It was open to first and second year grad students, but only those with a perfect GPA dared apply. Unfortunately, being grad students, we all had perfect GPAs.

That was why I couldn’t believe I had been hired now. Permanently. Probably only mystical, otherworldly spirits could save me from swooning on my first day at work.

Bloom was an old but also up-and-coming literary publisher. It had a reputation for printing only the best works. That didn’t just mean plot-wise. It meant decolonial, antiracist, anticapitalist. The best thinkers of our time had been published by Bloom. And that meant the next generation wanted to be published by them too. 

The company was women-owned and run, with half if not the majority being women of colour. Roman Alvarez had made it that way. She’d inherited the company from Dan Weeder, an old white man. Bloom was already wealthy and prestigious before Roman got to the scene, but then she upped everything by a mile. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal—even internationally renowned news outlets wanted to cover her story. As a result, Bloom had so much funding and so many sponsors that it had branched off into separate projects entirely outside of books. One of them was dedicated to the housing crisis. Another was funding underprivileged PhD students in third-world countries. The biggest one was devoted to legal fees for a lawsuit Roman had filed. She’d taken it upon herself to sue billionaires and their child-labour-fueled companies.

Maybe I didn’t know what she looked like. So what? I knew everything about her and I loved her.

“When’s your first day of work?” Louise asked.

“In a month.”

“Well, give that sexy, sexy woman a big smooch for me. A nice and juicy one.”

I batted her away. “I am never going to speak to you again after graduation.” 

“So not true. I’m your favourite white person.” 

“I don’t like any other white people.”

“Exactly.” 

I resolved not to Google any images of Roman. I didn’t need to know what she looked like—it would probably only make me more terrified to start work. In exactly a month from now, I’d walk through the front doors of Bloom and sit in an office designated for me and report right to her. 

Everyone knew Roman was a good person. That wasn’t even a question. 

What I was afraid of was her cold, cruel, unrelenting reputation. I didn’t know what she looked like but I knew the Toronto Star and the Atlantic had respectively called her: “A nightmare of a woman, but undeniably a genius” and “Absolute hell to communicate with—unapproachable, untouchable, maybe even unlovable, yet still a cutting-edge literary force.” 

I’d find out soon enough whether Roman was an unlovable nightmare. But by then, it would probably already be too late. I wanted this job so badly I could taste it on my teeth. I would do whatever it took to keep it. I was never, ever going to quit.

Whether Roman liked it or not, she was going to be my unlovable nightmare.

***

FROM: roman.alvarezbloompress.com

TO: [email protected]

Dear Kaalia,

We’re thrilled to have you join our team. Your dissertation on literary reparations was exactly what we’re looking for: someone who understands that publishing isn’t neutral. It never has been.

Your first day is May 1st. I look forward to working with you.

Best,

Roman Alvarez

***

Hi everyone. I’ve missed you all so much 🙂 I realize it’s been almost a year since I’ve written anything for you guys. I’m in my final year of my English literature degree and I’m writing an Honours thesis! I’m also in the middle of applying to grad schools and scholarships. I also have three jobs. I haven’t really had the time to write, which is why I haven’t wanted to just start something then stop. 

That’s why I’ve prewritten several chapters of this book. I’ll come back and publish a new one every week. I hope you like the story. It’s one of my favourites so far (if not my very favourite…but I guess that will depend on how I end it mwahahaha). 

Love,
Meera (my real name <3)