My eyes slowly adjust as I gaze over a sea of anxious fans, panic prickling at my skin.
“I’m Jess—Jessica Stone,” says a girl on the stage, but it isn’t me.
This isn’t happening.
This is impossible.
I stare at the girl sitting between Dare and Calvin. There, in my chair. Behind my name tag. She’s exactly where I’m supposed to be. Where I need to be. But instead I’m in the audience, mute and invisible, and all the lights are on her.
And to my mounting horror, no one seems to realize that she isn’t me.
I MUST BE DREAMING.
That’s all there is to it. I’m dreaming, and in like three seconds everyone’s going to turn into Daleks and ANNIHILATE me and I’ll have to run away with sexy David Tennant and help fight the Borg in a netherverse and duel against Sith Lords bent on conquering the empire, only to fall to the hands of the Nox King and—
Whoa, I’m getting ahead of myself. How did I even get here? On a Starfield panel when I am most definitely, one hundred and ten percent not Jessica Stone? Well, lucky for you, I can totally, absolutely explain this.
Yep. I can definitely explain this.
I can…mostly explain this?
Okay, you got me. I can basically explain only ten percent of this and none of it is my fault.
Well, maybe a little of it.
Oh, starflame, I’m dead.
Dead dead.
Like, I-am-masquerading-as-a-famous-actress-and-will-be-found-out dead.
I stare out at the crowd in the largest room of the entire con. There must be three thousand pairs of eyes staring back at me. It’s standing room only. I can tell by the constant murmur—when you go to enough cons and sit through enough panels, you just know. You know that there are six thousand eyes staring at you like you’re some god of fame and fandom. The audience is shifting in their chairs, the smell of the con so strong and distinct, it reminds me of a thirteen-year-old boy’s bedroom.
I should know—thirteen was a rough year for my brother Milo. You never forget that smell.
Just like you never forget the sight of this stage from the audience. It’s fifty feet long, set up with a white table draped in a cloth bearing the ExcelsiCon logo. There are three microphones for the five people on the panel, and paper nameplates at each chair identifying each star. (Although how can you not know who they are?)
No one notices that I’m not the girl whose name is on the card in front of me. They don’t realize that I am not Jessica Stone. At least not yet. Because as the actors of Starfield—the same Starfield I saw fourteen times in theaters this summer (a fact I wear as a badge of honor)—go down the line introducing themselves, none of them calls me out.
They don’t notice.
I mean, I do get the occasional “You know who you look like?” from strangers who feel the need to tell me that I look like Jessica Stone. And since Starfield came out, I’ve been stopped in Starbucks more times than I’m comfortable with. Which, come to think of it, is probably one of the major reasons I dyed my hair last weekend and basically killed my entire bathroom with neon pink. But you can’t see my hair under my black space queen beanie—the same one Jessica Stone had on in the bathroom when I met her—and with the way the stage lights are shining down so harshly, I probably look more like Jessica Stone than usual.
Oh, starflame, they actually think I’m Jessica Stone.
Cool, cool, coolcoolcool. Just roll with it, Imogen Ada Lovelace, drama is your favorite class in high school. Improv it.
Darien Freeman—ohmygod, the Darien Freeman, Federation Prince Carmindor, the love of my Tumblr life—leans into the mic we share (WE. ARE. SHARING. A. MICROPHONE.) and introduces himself, “I’m Darien Freeman.”
Oh my God he’s Darien Freeman.
…I know he is.
BUT STILL.
Cool, cool. Keep calm.
I thought today was just going to be a normal day. Just another Thursday at ExcelsiCon, helping my moms in their booth while drooling over the best cosplay. You know, the usual con stuff.
I think everything started going wrong when I decided to go to the hidden bathroom, the one on the second floor of the showroom’s hotel, the Marriott, a really magnificent building in the middle of downtown Atlanta. Pockets of vendors are spread out over the four hotels that make up the convention center, all connected by sidewalks and skybridges. My moms just happened to get a booth in the biggest showroom in the main hotel (they should, they’ve been going long enough). That’s how I know about the off-limits restroom. Technically it’s reserved for special guests, but there’s never any signs, so it really doesn’t count as breaking a rule. Anyway, I’d done my business and exited the stall to wash my hands, humming the Starfield theme that Milo got stuck in my head earlier, when I saw her:
Princess Amara.
I mean, Jessica Stone.
She was just standing there, and for a second I thought her eyes looked a little red, as if she’d been crying. Which was odd, because I really never imagined Jessica Stone crying about anything. Her life is perfect.
When she saw me, she looked away and began rummaging in her purse for her signature rosy lipstick. I guess I felt sorry for her—I don’t know—so I unpinned one of the buttons on my lanyard and held it out to her.
“Hi. I’m sorry for bothering you but I’m a really big fan,” I said, which was one hundred and twenty percent true. “And I just wanted to tell you that I loved the way you portrayed Princess Amara. It really, you know, struck a chord. So, thank you.”
I put the button in her hand: #SaveAmara.
It’s from the initiative I’d started to bring Princess Amara back for the Starfield sequel.
She looked down and she just…got really angry. “Save Amara?” She shoved the pin back into my hand. “She can’t save anyone—much less herself. She’s better off dead.”
Then she turned and retreated into a stall.
Honestly, I was too stunned to talk. I just pinned the button back onto my lanyard, checked my reflection in the mirror, and walked out.
I didn’t know what to think. Maybe I thought she’d take the pin. Slip it among the dregs of her Prada bag and leave, forgetting it until years later.
Instead, I tried to act as if her reaction wasn’t rude, or mean, or that I wasn’t beginning to feel just a little bit angry too.
I’d just pulled down my beanie when I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Jess?” a volunteer said, looking at me. “It’s almost time.”
“No, I’m not—” I pointed back to the bathroom just as the volunteer’s earpiece started to chatter. Panicking, she did the one thing that volunteers were absolutely not supposed to do.
She grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down the hallway…
And now here I am.
On the Starfield panel in front of three thousand people, standing room only. Displaced like a Yu-Gi-Oh! card in a Pokémon deck. Like a Nox in the Federation Court.
Like Princess Amara on the starship Prospero.
And I am in really, really, really big trouble.
Through one of the side doors slips a girl wearing a suede jacket and a black space queen beanie. The same beanie I have on. It feels a little like looking into one of those fun-house mirrors. You know it’s you looking back, but it’s slightly distorted. I mean, not in that wonky super-tall or super-wide way—it’s just that something’s off and you aren’t quite sure what, and only you can tell. She and I have the same wide eyes and heart-shaped face, the same build, and I know she sees the same thing: a girl who looks a little too much like her, as if plucked from some impossible universe.