"I'm not a terrorist," Mariah snapped. "You just want to feel me up. Perv."

The airport security guard held the metal detector wand up in front of her, his mouth tightening like line of wire. "Miss. I need you to be cooperative."

"Whatever, Mr. McFeeley, I'm sorry your wife isn't spreading it at home," she sneered, stretching her arms in a T-shape. "Shouldn't you be off hunting for Osama bin Laden? I'm sorry that black lipstick freaks your fuck out, but then again, you do live in Dayton, your world must be small and shitty."

Another guard sniffed at her Tupperware, looking at the yellow mass that was heaped in the plastic container. "What is this?"

"A bomb," Mariah said, rolling her eyes. "It's mashed bananas, mall cop." She flapped her arms. "Hello? Can we get to the strip search? I gotta get to North Carolina like yesterday."

The guards stared at her. "Miss, you need to come with us," the first said while the second stared at the container with apprehension.

"What the hell!" she exploded, fighting off the man's arm looping with hers. "I need to get to Durham, I have to get to I See Dead People, get off me!'

"Miss, please don't make us—" the second began.

Mariah wheeled her head to glare at him. "What? Taze me, bro? When did I hit my head and wake up in Stalinist Russia? Can't you take a joke? Please, please, I have to get to her, you don't get how hard it will be if I don't!"

"Miss," they repeated, trying to grab her thrashing arms.

"You can't do that to Wally! You can't! You have to let me save her, Wally needs me to!" she screamed. "I can save her, let me go!"
They pushed her to the ground, rough hands jerking her arms back. When she began to cry, her tears were a tarry black, streaking down her face in train tracks, miserable and thick. "I can save her," she whispered into the ground.

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Author's Note

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Uh, hi.

Oh my God, Onlylivingboy, what the hell is going on? Months between updates when you promised you'd be constant? Not emailing chapters of Meant to Be, like you promised? NOT REPLYING TO REVIEWERS? NOT REPLYING TO PMs OR EMAIL AT ALL? Dude! What's with the irresponsibility, is this how you roll now?

No, I swear. I have a good reason.

Yeah, right. LIES, you bake me a cake of LIES!

Okay, wow, my internal monologue obviously is the Miranda here, huh? Also: hungry. Well. Um. So here's the thing. Meant to Be was plagiarized, and it's kinda depressed the hell outta me.

You totally suck, and—jigga wha?

Yup. In a real live, Go Buy It on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble book. Plagiarized. Repeated images, a character…thankfully no witches, if that subplot had been janked, I would have gone against my initial instinct (curl up and cry) and screamed bloody murder on every BSC board out there. I know some people hate my stuff, but I'd hope that all of us who read and write fanfic would be just gobsmacked and we could all throw shit at…something. I don't know what, but at least we all could have been angry together. I mean, yeah, it's fanfic, but it's our writing, and it's precious and valuable and I know we all love what we do here. All of us have created tiny universes with our writing—in mine, there are ghosts and magic and Logan's not a dick—and we love our universes as much as we love the books we extrapolate them from. The idea of someone bogarting our universe is…a really big profanity, but I'll use the more sanitized, "crappy" and "stunning" and "really sad" for now.

Wait, let's get angry now! Hell, let's file suit! My dad/mom/boyfriend/aunt/hairdresser is a lawyer!

Yeah. So am I.

Wow. Really?! You curse a lot. And say "for reals."

You don't have to be mature to be a lawyer; in fact, it helps if you're a soulless git. I was a child advocate, so cursing was a bonus. Anyway, I wanted to be a writer, that's why I changed careers during my quarterlife crisis…and the career I've always wanted—"real live writer" suddenly…is a bit shitty, isn't it. When somebody else publishes and gets reviews in big glossy magazines…and they're using stuff that I wrote first.

I hope you're reading this, Plagiarizer, and I hope you feel guilty.

Oh, what am I saying: you're probably checking the Amazon ranking of your book and giggling merrily.

What's the book. I'LL KILL IT!

You really are Miranda, aren't you! No, I'm not saying. Why? Because I don't have enough evidence to file suit…but I also don't have as much evidence as Sarah Dessen did against the girl who janked so much of her writing in "How Opal Mehta…" Yall, getting sued is not in my To Do list, so…who knows. Maybe you read something that had a girl who got a gift of a necklace with seven stones and went, "Didn't…Logan give a necklace like that to Mary Anne? Huh." Yeah. Huh. You would have said "Huh" several times during that book. Incredibly well-written book, that's the saddest part. I learned a lot about how to pull in my overwriting by reading that.

You still suck, you evil stealing stealer-monkey.

So that's why you didn't send out the revised chapters of MtB.

Bingo. What if that author said that he (or she) would read? It's sad. I have so many incredible, breathtakingly kind and sweet and amazing people who said they'd want to read…and I'm so scared that that stealer-monkey is hiding in there. It's why replying to reviews has been hard, because…I just don't want to come back to this site, even though…it makes me so happy to upload stories. To write…blarg, now I'm getting a bit teary. It's just been shitty to write lately. My beloved book…can I ever get it published now, now that someone else has taken some of my favorite images and moments? Fuck, really crying now. Thanks for ruining everything. You fail at life, Stealer. What next, you're the one who shot JFK?

I'm totally watching "Dying to Dance," starring Robin from General Hospital. This movie is so cheese, I'm feeling better. Oh, look at that collage of bad body image! Dude, where is Scorpio Daddy to give that girl a damn Twinkie! And—score! The Gauntlet is on soon! Here comes the healing.

(Okay. Better now.)

Are you going to finish Give Me Time? Cause if I don't find out if Mary Anne is really gonna die, I'm coming to find you and kicking your ass. I know you're somewhere in Kentucky or something!

Ohio, actually, which is just south of Death. Get me. Outta here. London, call me home…

Yeah, I'm gonna finish it. I wrote the epilogue first…after Meant to Be, the ending was so vague (ie, Mary Anne will totally die soon, right?), that I personally had to know how the story ended. So I wrote this epilogue…and then the chapter before it…and then the prologue. This fanfic has been 10 Lessons in How Not to Plot for me, and I'm sorry that yall have had to learn with me at times (whoa, yeah, how many times can girlfriend not die! What's with Mallory popping up and then adiosing! When will Claudia show because I totally hinted that she and Allison Ritz share an artist's studio! And yes, Allison is dating that Ethan, so hello, payoff please?).

But yes, I will totally finish it. Just, uh…give me time? Ha ha? No, seriously, I think I can get us to where we gotta be for the last chapter and the eppy in…five, six chapters. Long chapters, and they might be…differently focused? As in…here's one from Stacey! Here's one from Dawn! Here's one from Barbara, all of that, woo!

I want to give Mary Anne her ending. I want to give her and her boy some peace.

(Yeah. That was what it sounded like, if you got my drift.)

I wish you had said something sooner. I'm sorry I said you sucked.

Eh. I kinda do. When I'm upset, I withdraw from people. It's my M.O. Nobody knows about this…not even my closest friends, either here in fanfic land, in rpg land, or…in real life. Uh…surprise, guys, this is what happened.

I'm sorry that yall got the blunt end of it; I really prided myself on being honest and communicative with yall, and I totally ratted on you with this. I just…really really passionately hope that none of you ever get plagiarized. We all have different views of the BSC-verse (…Logan a dick? Come on yall! And for reals, if anyone was gonna go bananas and rebel like Hot Topic was for grade schoolers, it was Claudia. And Mallory would so equate sex with love. And—yeah, see what I mean? This is what makes fanfic awesome), but it's ours and it deserves to be ours and not stolen.

It's just embarrassing, and I'm sad about it. So I kept it secret. I'm sorry to you.

Are you still going to try to get Meant to Be published?

Yeah. I am. I think I'm working out of the plagiarism depression and then the depressive aftershock that hit last month. (Oh, and my grandma died, but she was so old and sick, that was different.) I had an agent that I hated, so I just parted ways with him (him—yeah, I need a chick agent, kids), so I'm back revising for a while before I shop it out again. Just…let's hope nobody rejects me by saying, "Sorry, it reminds me too much of [insert Stealer-Monkey's book here." But again! I have a witch! And ghosts! Beat that with a shitstick, ass Monkey!

Cursing again.

Oops. Sorry.

Don't be sorry. Just go write me more of this story and of MtB.

Deal.

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Love,

OLB