“Do you actually know anything about Starfield?”
My eyebrows shoot up.
“Because you might have all those Seaside fans fooled, but they wouldn’t know a decent TV show if it hit them upside the head. I bet you couldn’t even tell Carmindor from Captain Kirk.”
It’s not a question. He just assumes.
“You know, there’s a lot of us who actually love Starfield. It’s not a fad. Or a cash cow. It’s not just a chance for you to get your face on a billboard. It matters to people. So don’t ruin it, dude.” He starts to walk away, then stops and half-turns back to me. “Oh, and just so you know, I’m not the only one who thinks it. You’re a joke.”
“I’ve never been good at jokes.” I try to crack a smile. “I’m not that funny.”
He doesn’t smile back. “Starfield isn’t a game to us. We’re a family, not a franchise. Just look online.”
Then he stalks away before I can even formulate a polite, movie-star-worthy reply.
I clench my fork. I want to grab him by his starched shirt collar, turn him around, and shove the promise-sworn salute—pointer and pinky fingers out, middle two together, thumb down—into his eye sockets. And while I have his attention I want to lay down in excruciating detail the synopsis of all fifty-four episodes I watched religiously as a nobody teenager in the suburbs of L.A. From the Nox King to Princess Amara to every moon orbiting Galactic Six and every dwarf planet from the Helix Nebula to Andromeda. I want to tell him what that ending monologue meant to me. What it meant to see someone who looked like me in command of the Prospero. I want to cut out my fanboy heart and show him that it bleeds like every other Stargunner’s. I want to tell him that the Federation Prince Carmindor saved my life.
But I don’t. Because Mark is in the back of my head saying, Don’t lose your cool. Follow the director. Cash the check. Be a star. And more than anything: Don’t become a headline.
“Just look online,” the so-called “true fan” had said. I push aside my depressing fruit cup and pull out my phone so I can search for whatever he was talking about. Did some A-lister tweet about me? Or did one of the gossip websites put something out already?
It doesn’t take long. A few searches through Starfield-related hashtags and I’ve found it. A blog post, linked to by one of the bigger social media outlets, entitled “FAN-TASTIC OR FAN-SERVICE?”
Against my better judgment, I open the link.
The choice of teen heartthrob Darien Freeman as the noble Carmindor can only be seen as a slight against the true Starfield fans.
It has over a thousand retweets. Hundreds of comments. Great.
I copy the link to the post and begin to text it to Gail, ready to point out that this is why I shouldn’t go to a con. The fans will eat me alive. But then I pause. Mark’s with Gail, and if he hears that there’s bad press—even if it’s just a blogger—he’ll probably put me under 24–7 surveillance. And force me to go to the con. And if that con is full of people like Mr. True Fan here and whoever writes this Rebelgunner blog, well, then, I’m screwed. It’ll be humiliating. Worse than any dunk tank. But if Gail can’t get me out of it, and Mark won’t…
What would Carmindor do?
I thump my phone against the table, annoyed. He wouldn’t blame others for his problems, that’s for sure. He’d take things into his own hands. Maybe I can call ExcelsiCon instead. Pose as my own assistant. I’m an actor, aren’t I? I can speak with the con director and get this whole ordeal sorted out. Googling ExcelsiCon, I start scrolling through their website again. I try the number for the corporate event management company, but I get lost in a phone tree. I need a human being. After even more scrolling, I find the con’s About Us page, which doesn’t have phone numbers but does have the name of the guy who founded it. One quick white pages search later and I’ve got his info.
Score.
I clear my throat, punch in the number, and listen to it ring. Maybe the fans don’t think I’m anything more than “a brainless soap actor with more hair gel than talent,” as that blog post so eloquently put it, but I am an actor—so I’d better get to acting.
SAGE PARKED US IN THE VERY CORNER of the public parking lot, the one surefire way around Isle of Palm’s “no food truck” ordinance. Despite the crowd at the beach, it’s a pretty slow day. June in Charleston is sticky and heavy, like the syrup at Waffle House. Not even the beach breeze dents the humidity, so no one wants to move. Tourists just lie on the sand like slabs of meat, grilling in the sun.
I chew on the end of my pen, staring down at my journal. Beside me, Sage is doodling something in her notebook, her pencil making soft tch-tch-tches across the page.
I peek over. It’s an illustration of a girl—no, she’s faceless; it’s an illustration of a dress.
“Wow, that’s a nice drawing,” I say. Sage looks up, her dark-stenciled eyebrows drawn tight. “Not that I’m surprised,” I quickly add, feeling my ears burn red. “What I mean is that I didn’t know you could draw that well—no, I mean, just, I can’t draw, so…”
Another brilliant conversation between coworkers. I swear, I try to be friendly to everyone—except the twins and their country club friends—but I suck at being social. I think one thing and my mouth says something completely different, like I’m possessed. By a whole lot of stupid.
After a long moment, Sage goes back to her sketchbook, etching a long line down the curve of the dress.
“Who do you think did the pumpkin on the side of the truck?” she asks without looking up. I begin to answer when she cuts me off. “Spoiler: it was me.” Then she nudges her head toward a customer coming up to the truck. “Your turn.”
I sigh, closing my journal, and turn to the order window. The guy’s young and tall, his shaggy hair in such bad need of a trim that it’s begun to curl around his ears.
He recognizes me at the same time. “Oh. Hey. Elle.”
I purse my lips. “James.”
The back of my neck prickles with sweat, and a little panic. James Collins is one of the twins’ country club cronies. Relatedly, he’s the reason I’m sworn off trusting boys—ever. Maybe it was my fault for assuming that someone like James would ever be interested in me, but I’m not the one who filmed our ill-fated country club rendezvous and sent the YouTube link to the entire school. No, that would be my charming twin step-vloggers. You know, because they weren’t already making my life miserable enough. And James was all just part of their plan.
He’s in dark blue swim trunks and a T-shirt that reads I’D RATHER BE ON PROSPERO with the silhouette of the starship Prospero whirling around the last word, warping into light speed.
I clear my throat, pointing to his shirt. “I hear the observation deck is nice this time of year.”
“Huh?” He glances from me to Sage, but she isn’t even paying attention. Then he looks down to his shirt. “Oh, this? It’s my brother’s old shirt. He’s into that dumb nerd stuff.”
“Dumb,” I echo, and for a moment I want to shove a cold and soulless vegan fritter down his throat. Dumb. He’s totally lying. He didn’t call it dumb last summer. “What’s so dumb about—”