8:43 a.m. Can’t they leave any sooner? Just once. Just once be out of the house by 9 a.m.
They’re upstairs, but Chloe’s nasally voice can be heard clear as a bell. “But, Mom, Darien Freeman’s going to be on TV this morning! I will not miss that.”
My heart sinks. If Chloe commandeers the TV, there’s no way I’ll get to watch Hello, America.
“We can be a few minutes late,” echoes Calliope. Cal sides with Chloe on everything. They’re the same age as I am—rising seniors—but we might as well be on different planets. Chloe and Calliope are starters on the varsity tennis team. Organizers of the homecoming committee. Prom leaders. And they don’t mind using their popularity to remind everyone at school that I’m practically dirt. That without their family, I’d be an orphan.
Thanks. Like I could forget that.
“We can’t miss this,” Chloe says. “We have to watch it and vlog about it or everyone else will get their reactions up before us. And that would kill us, Mom. It would kill us.”
“Sweeties, I’m paying Mr. Craig a handsome tuition to teach you girls tennis. I am not wasting your varsity positions next year for a television program!” Catherine descends the stairs and reenters the kitchen, rustling through her purse. “Danielle, have you seen my cell phone?”
I reach over the counter to unhook it from the wall charger. “Here it is.”
“Now why did you put it there?” She takes the phone from me without a second glance and begins scrolling through her Facebook feed. “Oh,” she adds, “and remember, tomorrow is—”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.” Like I’d forget the day my own father died. “Should I get orchids this year or—”
“Girls!” Catherine yells, checking her watch. “Get down here now!”
“Fine!” They trample down the stairs in their tennis whites and grab their smoothies from the counter. The twins are the spitting image of Catherine. Light hair, hazel eyes, pouty heartbreaker lips. Chloe and my stepmom are cut from the same cloth, but Cal’s cut a little different, a little quieter. I think that’s because she takes after her own dad, who ran off when the girls were young and married the daughter of some Atlantic City casino owner.
Right now, they both have their blonde hair pulled back into tight ponytails, and they’d be impossible to tell apart if you didn’t know Calliope always matches her earrings to her purple glasses, and Chloe has a new nail color every day—today, a sweet summer blue. Sometimes evil comes in disguise.
“This isn’t fair! Why doesn’t Elle have to go to these stupid lessons?” Chloe whines.
“Girls.” My stepmother tsks, putting on a patient smile. “Elle has to make do with the talents she does have.”
I try to ignore her as I grab my house keys from the bowl in the foyer and put them in my satchel, pretending like I’m getting ready for work. Sometimes I think Catherine just forgets I’m in the room.
“You’re going to ruin our career,” Chloe accuses, sucking on her green smoothie. “We need to be on top of this.”
“Everyone else will be tweeting about it,” Calliope adds.
“Ever since we got a hundred thousand views because of our Seaside Cove makeup tutorial, people expect us to be on our game!”
“GIRLS!” Catherine jabs a pink nail toward the door. “Four hundred dollar lessons. NOW!”
Calliope rolls her eyes, grabs her purse from the rack in the foyer, and storms out the door to the red Miata (another “necessity” for Catherine’s “image”). Catherine glares at the remaining twin. If there is one thing Chloe can’t stand up to, it’s her mother’s disapproval. She grabs her purse too—the exact same as Cal has, except pink—and stomps out after her sister. I don’t envy that ride to practice.
My stepmom gives one last victory fluff to her hair in the foyer mirror. “Are you sure you don’t want me to put in a good word for you at the club, Danielle? I’m sure they’d take you back even after your…incident…last year. You’ve learned, haven’t you?”
To never trust a guy again? Sure. I pull on a polite smile. “No, thanks.”
“It’s the best place for someone like you, you know.” She shakes her head. “You’ll see I’m right in the end.”
With that, she closes the door.
I wait until the Miata pulls out of the driveway before I dart into the living room and turn on the TV. 8:57. Perfect. The food truck’s supposed to pick me up at ten to head to the RiverDogs baseball game across town, so I have plenty of time. For the next hour, I will be basking in perhaps the biggest news in Starfield history.
This moment to end all moments—or maybe begin them. A new Starfield for a new generation. I like the possibility in that.
Grabbing the remote from the coffee table, I sit down cross-legged in front of the 54-inch TV. The black screen flickers, and anticipation blooms in my chest. I wish Dad could be here to see this. I wish he could be sitting beside me. He’d be just as excited—no, he’d be more excited. But the reality is, I don’t really have anyone to fangirl about this with. About who will finally don the Federation starwings and follow in the legendary footsteps of David Singh, the original Prince Carmindor. I’ve been blogging about it for months in my little corner of the world, but no one really reads it. Rebelgunner is therapeutic, more like a journal. The closest I have to friends is the online Stargunner community, where everyone’s been speculating about the casting: maybe the guy from the latest Spider-Man movie? Or maybe that cute Bollywood star who’s in all the Tumblr GIFsets? Whoever it is, they’d better not whitewash my prince.
On the TV, Hello, America is wrapping up a segment about pets doing goofy things on the internet. The host beams, and then the camera cuts to the audience. It’s full of girls—lots of girls—and all of them are cheering. Holding signs. Wearing T-shirts with the same name scribbled across them. A name that makes the anticipation in my chest grow cold and drop like an atomic bomb into my stomach.
Darien Freeman.
The girls throw up their hands for the camera, screaming his name. One person’s name. Some look like they’re literally going to swoon.
I don’t swoon.
My excitement makes a U-turn into dread.
No—no, this can’t be right. I must have the wrong channel.
I jab the remote INFO button. Hello, America, the caption states, and I want nothing more than for the Black Nebula to swallow me whole.
What are the odds? What are the odds of him being on the same morning talk show? What are the odds of him being the guest appearance on the show that will announce the Starfield cast?
But the host is smiling, and says a few choice words, and suddenly all my fears come to light.
The Starfield logo blazes across the screen behind her. This moment has become a train wreck I can’t look away from. It’s my entire fandom crashing into a burning, bubbling pit of despair.
No. No, it’s not him. It can’t be him.
Darien Freeman is not my Federation Prince Carmindor.
THE CROWD IS FULL OF MONSTERS.
Okay, not actual monsters. But you try flying to New York City on a red-eye, subsisting on nothing but burnt coffee and half a grapefruit, sitting for thirty minutes in a makeup chair just so your stylist can get your curly hair just right (for God’s sake, man, it’s hair), in designer jeans that are pinching you in places that aren’t even awake this early while you’re trying to remember the answers to all the questions the cohosts are going to ask you—all on three hours of sleep, three—and then being excited to see a crowd of fans.