Day 1: What just happened

Greetings, friends! Because of my clinical case of FOMO, I will be writing whatever number of words I want to as part of a novel, every day in July. Today, I somehow wrote 556 words. None are good. All are a tribute to Sam and her genus novel.

The story of Cora’s name was a funny one. Truth be told, Cora wasn’t her legal name at all. It was actually Colm—the Irish boy’s name that’s pronounced like “column,” for some reason. Few people outside of Ireland are aware of this, however, so Colm is usually pronounced like “comb,” with some extra “L” in it. 
 
Few people outside of Ireland, maybe. But a lot of people in Stratford, Ontario, where Cora was from, knew exactly how to pronounce the name Colm. That was because sightings of Colm Feore, the fifteen-year veteran of the Statford Festival who is also known for his Gemini-winning turn as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the miniseries Trudeau (2002), were once incredibly common in the small Ontario town whose identity centred around the playwright William Shakespeare. One day, while Cora’s mother was ambling around the grocery store wondering if she was pregnant, she spotted local celebrity Colm Feore skulking around the onions and garlic. 
 
Unfortunately for Cora, her mom was correct. She was pregnant—with Cora. Even more unfortunate was that her mom had vowed on the spot to name her child, who she was convinced was a son, after the Canadian icon due to her belief that seeing him in the grocery store that day was fate. Most unfortunate of all was that the common mispronunciation of Colm rhymed with her last name, Reaume: not a smart pairing at all. 
 
Cora being a girl did not dissuade her mother from naming her after the Bon Cop, Bad Cop artiste. “Nothing that a strongly worded gender pronouns statement can’t fix,” Cora had always said. She went by the name Cora not because she didn’t want to have a boy’s name, but mostly because no one pronounces her name right and she didn’t want to called “comb,” with some extra “L” in it.  
 
While getting dressed for work, Cora “Colm” Reaume was wading through a strangely long article in the New York Times about “The Art of the Roll”—how to perfectly roll one’s pants at the hem. The direction was clear as to the perfect length of a rolled pant: two inches above the ankle. How to get there was the problem. Three different experts explained their three different techniques, in lengthy text that would have been much better suited to a quick how-to video clip. The end of the article chilled her to the bone: it invited readers to “Ask yourself ‘How would Johnny Depp roll up the bottom of his pants?’”
 
The entire article was clearly nonsense. How could she take advice from anyone who thinks she should take advice from Johnny Depp?
 
While swiftly navigating away from the excessively lengthy New York Times article, Cora came across something that sparked her interest: an article about a support group for celebrities enmeshed in feuds, started by the unlikely hero James van der Beek.
 
“We basically take the question, ‘What would Johnny Depp not do?’ as our starting point.” van der Beek explained. “It’s helped us a lot.”
 
Cora squinted her eyes and nodded, feeling like the knowledge she had just gained about the Celebrity Feud Support Group had successfully chased away the unpleasant odour left behind by the previous article. 
 
“Some things are best left behind,” she said to herself, taking a sip out of her morning piquette.