The Ghostwritten Life

Prologue

I wasn’t invited. Not officially. Not by name. Not by my name, anyway.

But I came dressed like someone who belonged: slippery silk, the color of bruised peaches, and a smile I could weaponize in low lighting. The kind of smile that lands on PR lists, even if your name doesn't.

The room was full of people who had never read a book unless their face was on the cover. It smelled like prosecco and entitlement. I stood under a cluster of glass pendants and watched her tell a story I wrote.

A story she didn’t live. Not really.

She laughed like it was all hers. Every chapter. Every sentence. Every delicate, barbed line I stitched for her, just enough truth to make it believable. Just enough fiction to make it sell.

And when the host said her name, her real name, and called her the voice of a generation, something inside me cracked so quietly I almost missed it.

But then she said thank you. Just that. Thank you.

And I knew I wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

Chapter 1: The Offer

I met her at a coffee shop that didn’t serve milk. Almond, oat, macadamia, hemp, sure. But actual milk? "We don’t carry that," the barista said like I’d just asked for a cigarette and a slap.

I was halfway through pretending to like my five-dollar oat flat white when she slid into the seat across from me. No greeting. Just sunglasses and presence. The kind of entrance that says you should know who I am, even if you don’t follow me.

"I read your piece in that grief anthology," she said. "It was… raw."

I blinked. My name had been buried in the back of that book like a footnote, squeezed between a psychologist and a woman who made a fortune writing about her dead golden retriever.

She took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were glossy, veneers but for the soul. "I’m writing a memoir," she said, leaning in like it was a confession. "Well, not writing exactly. I’m telling. But it needs to sound like I wrote it. You get me?"

I nodded. Of course I got her. I get all of them. The ones who want to be brave without bleeding. The ones who think a ghostwriter is a magic trick that turns trauma into marketability.

"I’m offering ten grand," she said, like that sealed the deal.

I didn’t tell her my rent was late. I didn’t tell her I’d already ghostwritten half a dozen memoirs for washed-up reality stars and one man who used to sell ketamine out of his Tesla. I just said, "Sure."

But I already knew what she wanted. She wanted to sound smart. Vulnerable. Honest-but-relatable. She wanted heartbreak with SEO. Trauma with good lighting. She wanted a voice.

And I gave her mine.

Chapter 2: Voice Notes and Red Flags

The first voice note came at 2:03 a.m.

It was breathy, like she’d been crying, or pretending to. "So when I was fifteen, no, sixteen, I think I had, like, this really toxic thing with my swim coach. But it wasn’t… I mean, it wasn’t abuse abuse, right? It was complicated."

Then a pause. No wrap-up. Just thirty-seven seconds of implication, then static. I replayed it three times. Typed it out. Punctuated where she didn’t.

She sent more the next day. One about her strained relationship with her mother. One about a brand trip to Tulum that ended in a panic attack and a feature in Elle. One about the ex she swore she’d never talk about but definitely wanted immortalized.

Each message was messier than the last. Raw, yes, but also rehearsed. Like she was trying out different versions of herself to see which one tested best in a focus group of one: me.

I asked for journal entries. She sent Instagram captions. I asked for a timeline. She sent a mood board. I asked for the truth. She sent an NDA.

"This is just how the industry works," she texted once. "You fill in the blanks."

And I did. I invented the version of her people would cry over. The trauma arc with perfect structure, the low point just painful enough, the rise just timely enough. I rearranged her anecdotes like furniture in a rental, just enough personality to look lived in, nothing you’d get too attached to.

Then, a week before the manuscript deadline, she sent me another voice note.

No words this time. Just silence. Twenty-two seconds of silence, then a single breath. Sharp. Like someone had just entered the room.

I texted her. No answer. I texted again.

And that’s when I started to realize, some stories aren’t written. They’re weaponized.

To be continued...