“IT’S HIM! IT’S DARIEN!” another girl screams.
They have their phones out, flashes sparking in the dusk as if they want to catch the whole moment on fire. And everyone—from the PAs to the cameramen to frakking Jessica Stone—is staring at them.
“Your adoring fans?” Jess asks.
“I…um. Yeah.” I rake a hand through my hair. “I should get Gail on it, or my, uh, my Lonny.” I cringe again. “I mean, bodyguard.”
A couple of the PAs are pointing at the crowd and snickering.
“Wow.” Jessica shakes her head. “Makes me glad I didn’t take that Vampire Diaries part.”
Right. Because she’s a real actor and I’m just the dude from the soap opera.
“They’re just fans,” I say. “Don’t you ever fangirl?”
“Of course,” she replies, folding her arms over her chest. She juts her chin toward the fans. “But I’ve never stalked anyone.”
“It’s part of fan culture,” I say, trying not to remember the other side of fan culture that is Fishmouth. Fans like that are one in a million. But the memory of that girl charging me creates a sick, sinking feeling in my gut. “They’re monsters, but they’re my monsters.”
Jess lifts an eyebrow. “Monsters?”
I spread my arms. “Come to rejoice at the great church of Darien Freeman.”
Her perplexed look slowly devolves into a deviously white smile. She gives me a bracing pat on the shoulder. “Then we should go see your congregation.”
“What? Oh, no, I don’t think Mark would…”
“Who’s Mark?”
“My—” I stop. There’s no way I’m going to say dad, and manager isn’t much better. He would not approve of me doing this without Lonny. Which makes it enticing. “No one. Never mind. C’mon, let’s do it.”
We barely make it to the barrier. I give the crowd Sebastian’s (my character’s) bro nod. The girls go nuts. One shoves a picture into my hands—it’s of me shirtless, pulled from the Teen Vogue photo shoot last year.
“Hi!” I say, faking enthusiasm as I take her Sharpie and sign it. “How did you guys find me so fast?” I try to make it a joke, which is the best way to frame a serious question.
“The footage,” the guy beside her says. Tall, gelled hair. “It was awesome!”
“I can’t believe they put it on Twitter,” squeals another.
“Oh my god that scene today was amazing. I loved the kiss!”
I pause mid-autograph (I’ve already signed three photos and an arm). The kiss today? Footage?
I glance over at Jess, whose big white smile has faltered. She’s thinking the same thing as I am: we have a snake in the water. A leak. Even an actor from a dumb teenage soap opera knows that’s not good.
“Jess, what’s it like kissing Darien? Isn’t he amazing?” interrupts a girl in pigtails. I hand back her notebook.
Jess laughs. “He’s a terrible kisser!”
“Hey,” I say. “I am not.”
“Oh, did I hurt your feelings?”
“Positively shattered.”
“They’re so cute together!” someone cries. Cameras flash.
Jess wraps her arm around mine and tugs me toward the costume trailer. I give a guy back his Sharpie, having half-signed his T-shirt. “Well, you guys are awesome, but we should really get going. Dare?”
“Yeah. Hey, it was nice meeting you all!” I say to the group, waving and smiling like we’re both in a beauty pageant. I don’t think I exhale until we get to the trailer. My jacket sticks to my shoulders when I shrug it off.
“You’re way too nice, you know.” Jess comes out from behind one of the racks, now wearing into street clothes and pulling her hair into a high ponytail. “You can’t waste more than two minutes on stuff like that. Tops.”
“Nah,” I say with a shrug. “They’re nice people.” Sometimes, anyway. I step out of my pants, hop into my gym shorts, and pull a hoodie over my head. “Hey, do you think it’s someone working for the movie? Who ratted the footage, I mean.”
Jess shrugs. “It could be a PA—and if it is, they’re going to get a piece of my mind. Trust nobody around here, Dare. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date.”
“A date?” I say. “With…?”
She blinks, twice. “Like I said. Trust nobody.”
Then she leaves in a twirl of dark hair and cherry blossom perfume.
“She’s a firecracker, that one,” says Nicky the wardrobe manager, clicking his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
“Tell me about it,” I reply, unable to wash her cherry kiss from my lips. I fish into my gym shorts pocket for my phone.
A glowing blue message is waiting for me.
Unknown 6:06 PM
—It’s Elle.
—Just Elle.
—Elle.
A name—her name. Elle. A nickname? Short for a horrendously long name? Eleanor? Janelle? Elle…izabeth? There’s a whole universe of possibility in it.
Elle.
I add her name to my contacts, able to put a pin into the idea of her and keep it steady because now I know her name. I didn’t think a name could do that: turn a wispy idea of a person into, well, a person.
Suddenly I’m wondering what someone named Elle looks like. Blonde hair, brown? Pale skin or dark? Large eyes, but what color? Are her teeth straight or does she have a cute overbite? When she smiles, is it crooked? Is she tall? Short? Curvy or skinny?
Elle.
“What’re you smiling at?” Nicky asks loudly.
“Oh—nothing. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I reply, swiping off the lock screen and exiting the trailer.
The girls begin screaming my name, but it’s not my name that I’m thinking about anymore.
REBELGUNNER’S AT FORTY-THREE THOUSAND FOLLOWERS and counting.
I’m working on a post instead of working on my cosplay because no matter how many YouTube tutorials I watch, I’m still terrified of slicing through Dad’s costume. But I have nineteen days. In the meantime, there’s Starfield news—movie news—and all forty-three thousand of my followers are waiting for me to pass judgment.
I add a link to a video of the now notorious leaked kissing scene from the reboot next to what I think is its TV show parallel. Episode 33, “A Nox to Remember.” It looked like the ballroom scene. The one before Princess Amara’s coronation, when the Nox attacked. But I can’t be sure.
I rewind the video and replay it. Darien Freeman holding Jessica Stone’s face, his mouth moving in words I can’t make out and then drawing, slowly, into a kiss—before the camera shakes and cuts away.
Yeah, definitely episode 33. You can tell by the balustrades in the background. The ash on the ballroom floor.
“One thing’s for sure,” I write in closing, “Darien Freeman’s Carmindor uniform is the wrong color blue.”
Then I hit POST. 11:34 p.m.