And right now, at this moment in this universe, I’ve been mistaken for her.
I remember what Jessica Stone said in the bathroom. The snarl on her lips.
Save Amara? She can’t save anyone. There was no love in her voice for the character she’d played, or for the fans who loved her. She’s better off dead.
“Jess?” the moderator says, and both Jessica Stone and I turn our gaze to Felix Flores, an internet-famous foodie and founder of the podcast SCIFI BYTES. He’s looking at me. Only me. I don’t think anyone notices the real Jess in the crowd. “Do you wanna take this question? Spoilers for all of you who haven’t seen Starfield yet! How did you feel when your character, Princess Amara, died?”
I blink and my eyes dart to the fan who asked the question. He’s tall and gangly, but I can’t really make him out, blinded by the stage lights.
Darien hesitates beside me, looking from the moderator to me and then back to the moderator. He begins to lean in to the microphone, but then so do I.
I don’t know why. I shouldn’t.
Maybe because Jessica Stone is in the crowd, and I’m up here…
…something just shifts.
She’s better off dead. Her voice echoes in my head and I can’t stand it. My lanyard is laden with the burden of fifteen #SaveAmara pins and I think of those fifty thousand signatures from the petition demanding to bring her back from the dead.
The podcaster—and everyone else—is urging me to answer the question. I know exactly how Jessica Stone would feel. I hate it.
I take a breath, trying to remember the tone and crisp lilt of her soft Southern accent. “I was heartbroken.”
In the crowd, Jessica Stone’s face hardens.
Felix barks a laugh. “That we were—”
I cut him off. I’m not done. “She never should have died. She should have lived. She deserved to live.”
The fan who asked the question stares at me, mouth agape, as if that was the most insane response I could’ve ever given to that question. It’s no secret that Jessica Stone hates Starfield. That she can’t wait to get out of the franchise. Like Robert Pattinson in his Twilight days, Jessica degrades the franchise every chance she gets.
But not now.
Not here.
I shoot a look at Jessica, who is glaring up at me with all the hatred in her bones. Good. Because Princess Amara is better off alive.
And I’m going to make sure everyone knows it.
I AM GOING TO KILL HER. I don’t even know her name but I don’t need her name to put her in an unmarked grave. I am going to chop her up into so many pieces that when alien archeologists find her bones in a thousand years they won’t even realize that she was once human.
That is how hard I am going to kill her.
Spinning on my heels, my phone clenched in a death grip, I march out before anyone has even risen from their seats. I duck around the six-armed Zorine without so much as a second glance. She tries to say something to me, but I don’t hear her.
All I’m seeing is red. I am livid.
“Wow, I thought Jess was super fake, but she was so cool on that panel,” says a girl behind me as the ballroom empties. “And how she relates to Amara? I really hope they save her.”
“Me too! I live-streamed the whole thing,” replies her friend. “My comments section was going nuts.”
I glance up at the two girls. They look like high school sophomores, neither one cosplaying anyone other than their nerdy selves—all faded jeans and tees with cute sayings or pictures of male figure skaters clutched in an embrace.
“She’s so cool.”
“Super!”
I turn away as they pass, but they don’t even blink. They don’t realize that I’m the real Jessica Stone. They just saw my doppelgänger on stage, so why would they even think it was me?
I’m…invisible?
To everyone?
I don’t like this. I can’t like this.
Breaking off from the crowd, I follow the signs to the backstage area. There’s a volunteer guarding it, of course, but when I rush up and tell her someone’s getting sick around the corner, she darts off to help and I slip into the hallway where the panelists had exited.
My anger is morphing into some sort of confused panic. The girls’ conversation echoes in my head. How cool Jessica Stone was. How they related to the way that imposter felt about Princess Amara. They had to be joking, right?
Why don’t they like me?
Starfield has only been out for a month, and I’ve gained close to a million followers because of it—which should be great, right? You want to be famous on social. But while Dare’s touted for being one of the best character revivals of the decade, and Starfield as one of the best remakes in recent years, I am—
My phone vibrates again. And again. My assistant, Ethan, had said I should take the apps off, but then I’d be worrying what people are saying while I’m not looking. I’d be worried about what they could say.
My agent swore that playing Princess Amara would put me on the radar. It would make me a household name, like Jennifer Lawrence after The Hunger Games or Emma Watson after Harry Potter. Well, it put me on the radar, all right. But Starfield wasn’t a book series; it was an old sci-fi TV show. And that attracted a different kind of crowd. What my agent should have said was that Starfield would make me a household name like Kelly Marie Tran, or Daisy Ridley, or Leslie Jones, actresses whose biggest stories are not about their performances but about the trolls who chased them off the internet.
And now the trolls have set their sights on me.
Darien sort of got the same blowback when he was announced to play Federation Prince Carmindor—which is how he met his girlfriend, btw—but it died off as the fandom embraced him. Now they write love letters about his inky-black eyelashes and immaculate abs while I get entire dissertations on how the small mole on the left side of my mouth has ruined the beauty of Princess Amara.
So although I don’t know what I’ll say or how I’ll say it, I know I can’t let that girl wreck my image any more.
She played you better than you do, whispers a little voice in my head. The fans like her better. Maybe she should just b—
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
A boisterous laugh stops me dead.
I’d recognize it anywhere: Calvin. The panel must be coming this way, and that means my impersonator is, too. I glance around, nowhere to go. I curse. If they find me here with my “twin,” I don’t know what the director will do.
Will I be in breach of contract? There were too many witnesses for it not to make media rounds. Oh, that cannot happen.
I can see the headlines now:
jessica stone faking it.
doppelgänger plays jessica stone better than jessica stone.
I wince as the Starfield cast comes around the corner. Calvin, Dare, her—
But no director. Amon must be doing damage control after that disastrous panel. He’ll scold me later, I just know it.
Dare is the first to see me; our eyes connect. It only takes a split second for him to slip an arm around Calvin’s and Felix’s shoulders to steer them in the opposite direction.
“You know, I think this is a shortcut,” he says smoothly.
Bless Darien Freeman. Bless his tight jeans and his curly hair and his insufferable smile. Bless everything about that Hufflepuff.