This Is Not the Jess Show

by Anna Carey

  What would I lose?

  Yourself. What you believe. I don’t know.

  “I don’t want to go back,” I said. “I’m here. With you.”

  I don’t know what made me do it, but I pulled the menu away and grabbed his hand, taking it between my own. He looked nervous at first, but then his lips twisted into a smile.

  “What?”

  “I’m just relieved,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  He smiled and rested his forehead against mine for just a second. It was so quick, I wondered if I’d imagined it.

  One of the customers a few tables over stood and turned toward the exit. I slipped my hands away, tucking them under my thighs. Kipps and I leaned toward each other. Then we both pretended to study the menu, keeping our heads down as he passed.

  34

  The food we’d ordered was the only thing keeping us in those seats, that promise of a hot meal. Water. Coke. I kept waiting for someone to turn around and recognize us, or for the Like-Life Productions security team to appear in the doorway. I didn’t want to think about it, but it was possible a surveillance camera had already captured us. It felt like they were everywhere—at the train station, on our train, tucked in the corners of doorways or perched on the edge of houses and lampposts. I adjusted my hat, pulling it down another inch.

  They had three different screens projected on the back wall of the restaurant: two with captions and one with audio that streamed through the entire place. The coverage of the show was relentless. Even as the auditions barreled on, with people twirling color-guard flags and playing the clarinet, another screen aired something called Couch Commentators. Two women in their late twenties drank pink wine as they sat cross-legged on an oversized gray sofa, theorizing on what might have happened in the park, when I’d gone off camera.

  “Oh God, look…”

  Someone changed the screen above the beverage machine to an interview with Tyler. We couldn’t hear the sound without an earpiece, but I followed the captions. It was some kind of talk show, a panel of women grilling him. SO I HAVE TO ASK, one of the hosts said, WHAT DID YOU SAY TO JESS THAT WAS SO DISTURBING SHE NEVER WANTS TO SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN? PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT IT NONSTOP, SAYING YOU CONFESSED SOME HORRIBLE SECRET, AND YOU KNOW, THERE’S A WHOLE CONTINGENT OF PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT YOU WERE ACTUALLY THE ONE TO TELL JESS ABOUT THE SHOW. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY TO THAT?

  Tyler’s expression dimmed, and he put both hands on the table in front of him. I TAKE THIS STUFF TO HEART, he said. NONE OF THAT IS TRUE, OBVIOUSLY, WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN ME AND JESS WAS JUST A MISUNDERSTANDING. SHE WAS REALLY UPSET ABOUT HER SISTER, AND I JUST THINK SHE WASN’T HEARING ME RIGHT. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT SHE THINKS I SAID. I WISH THAT HADN’T BEEN OUR LAST CONVERSATION, BUT IT WAS. He turned and stared straight into the camera, biting his lip like he might cry.

  “He’s so disingenuous,” I said. “It’s infuriating.”

  I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL MYSELF, IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, LET IT GO. SHE WAS MY BEST FRIEND. AND IF SHE NEEDS TO BE WITH PATRICK RIGHT NOW, THEN SHE NEEDS TO BE WITH PATRICK. I DON’T TRUST THE GUY, AT ALL. THE PRODUCERS ARE SAYING THEY HAVE HOT-MIC CONVERSATIONS OF HIM CONVINCING JESS TO LEAVE. AND I’M WORRIED ABOUT HER, I REALLY AM. BUT I CAN’T CONTROL WHAT’S HAPPENING, IT’S BIGGER THAN ME. BIGGER THAN ALL OF US.

  “Enough with the unrequited-love storyline,” I said.

  “That guy is shameless,” Kipps laughed. “The hair and makeup lady told me Roddy—that’s Tyler’s real name—he spent all of ninth and tenth grade sucking up to Chrysalis Remington. He’d find out when she was going to stop by tech support, and then he’d create an excuse to be there. Like, he needed an extra camera placed or his makeup needed a touch-up. He worked on her for two whole years, trying to get her to see him as your love interest.”

  “Sounds like Tyler. He wanted me to pretend like nothing happened, just so he could stay a guest star.”

  “There’s a rumor that you hitting him with that ball in fourth grade wasn’t an accident,” Kipps went on. “One of my friends was there and he swears Roddy ran as fast as he could into the ball. He just wanted to interact with you.”

  I didn’t want to think about it. It was bad enough that Tyler—Roddy—had been scheming for the last few years…even the way we’d met had been staged?

  “Do you know he’s been auctioning off your half-eaten food online?” Kipps continued. “Old Snapple cans, chewed-up gum tucked in a crumpled receipt, sandwich crusts. They haven’t been able to prove it’s him, but everyone knows. It’s so obvious.”

  “No, stop.” I covered my ears with my hands. I shook my head back and forth, wishing I could unhear it. “That’s revolting.”

  I turned just as the food runner approached, dropping a tray in the center of our table. He had another tray balanced on his forearm. He said nothing, just threw down some extra ketchup packets and darted across the café.

  “You sure we’re not going to get in trouble?” I asked. As hungry as I was, I didn’t want to touch anything until I knew it was safe.

  “I did it a bunch of times when I lived outside the set,” Kipps said, and took a bite of his burger. “Especially when it’s busy like this. We’ll just leave without closing out the check. They won’t notice until it’s too late.”

  “It just feels…wrong.”

  “We already broke into someone house. We stole a car.” His eyes went wide as he popped another french fry into his mouth. “A car, Jess. And now you’re having a moral crisis?”

  “I see your point,” I said.

  Kipps was already halfway through his fries. He was methodical about the ketchup, emptying the packets like toothpaste tubes, rolling the ends until every last drop was added to the fries. I glanced across the café just as the food runner disappeared into the kitchen. The burger smelled so good, and as I picked it up my mouth puckered, saliva bursting at the back of my throat. The patty was a thin, dry thing, but the taste of the bread and cheese and pickles brought me back to life. I couldn’t get it down fast enough.

  “No one has let go of their device,” Kipps said. “Even for a minute. There’s no way anyone will lend us their phone until after the auditions are over.”

  “Who knows when that’ll be, though.”

  Tyler’s interview had ended, and now the screens were showing a remote interview with Kristen and Amber, who were recording from Kristen’s bed. It was strange, seeing the room I’d been in hundreds of times before, with its blue-checked comforter and the In Living Color and Clueless posters on the wall. Kristen never got rid of her collection of troll dolls, and the small army was lined up on the shelf behind them, a rainbow of tufted fur.

  Someone yelled for the staff to turn the sound on. The auditions went silent, and suddenly Amber’s voice cut across the room.

  “These past two days have been tough,” she said.

  It’s been tough? I wanted to say. Did you and Kristen almost die when your car skidded into a lake? Did you walk a mile in soaking-wet clothes, in fifty-degree weather?

  A talk-show host appeared on the split screen. “We all saw you go into the park after her, and the harrowing scene that unfolded as she fled the set. What was going through your head in that moment? Can you tell us a little about what happened between you two, what that conversation was like?”

  “It was really hard. One of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had,” Amber said. “She was really confused, and obviously just devastated about Sara. I was trying to calm her down but she seemed really off.”

  “We’ve both spent a lot of time going through things she said, things she did, wondering if there were warning signs.” Kristen was wearing a pair of overalls she’d borrowed from me last month and never given back. It was the ultimate Fuck You.

  “You must’ve heard the fan theories.” The host leaned forward as she said it. “People are talking
about that scene in the locker room, when you dropped your phone. Some people think it was more than a mistake, that maybe you were trying to tell Jess something was wrong. Warn her about the show.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous,” Amber shot back. “I would never violate my contract. People say a lot of strange things and you can’t believe it all. As much as I care about Jess—and we both really do care about her—I’d never do that.”

  “It would be understandable, really,” the host went on, “if the guilt got—”

  “Next question,” Kristen laughed. “Seriously.”

  “I don’t have to tell you this,” the host said. “But there are people who are critical of you both since you took on roles as producers last season. They called it a conflict of interest, that you’d be both her best friends and producers on the show. And there are, of course, people who think Chrysalis took the Sara storyline too far by killing her off, that it was cruel. Maybe even abusive. What do you say to that? Does that concern you at all?”

  Kristen glanced sideways at Amber, that look I’d seen between them a hundred times before. They were trying to figure out what to say before they said it.

  “We love working on this show,” Kristen said. “One of the reasons I have my podcast network is because I love media, and Like-Life Productions has created some of the most innovative media of this century. All storylines go through Jess’s parents, Helene and Carter, and have to be approved by them. I don’t have to remind you, Helene is an executive producer on the show. So if Jess’s own parents are approving it, I can’t say I have any ethical problems?”

  The host waited a moment to see if Amber would jump in, but she didn’t.

  “So what’s next for you two? Chrysalis seems confident the show will restart soon, that this is just a brief hiatus, but…any updates on your makeup line? Tour dates for the ’90s Life podcast? Any more stand-up specials?”

  I couldn’t follow their responses because a small, persistent voice was in my other ear. When I turned around, Kipps was fiddling with the electronic menu, trying to turn it off. A red light on the top was blinking.

  “What is that?” I whispered. But it only took a few seconds before it repeated.

  “We request that you close out your bill at this time,” the voice said. “Please scan your thumbprint now.”

  “She asked if we wanted anything else, and I said no. But then she keeps telling me to close out the bill. She’s said it twice.” He flipped the thing over, running his fingers along the sides in search of a button, but there wasn’t one. “I haven’t used one of these in years. Most people pay with their thumbprint—it stores your payment info. You just have to press down on the screen.”

  “Can you get it to stop?” I said, as the volume on the device doubled.

  “Um…”

  That was a no.

  “Where I grew up, you had to actually ask to close out the bill, it didn’t just start demanding you pay. It won’t shut up.”

  A high-pitched beeping now accompanied the voice’s instructions. A redhead in the back of the café studied us, then glanced through the window into the kitchen, waiting for the food runner to emerge again. A young mom with two small children turned around, and she smiled when I accidentally made eye contact with her.

  That smile. Like she knew me.

  I’d barely had the thought when she started screaming.

  “Oh my God, oh my God!” She stood, turning to the family eating next to her. Then she pointed right at us. “It’s them! It’s Jess and Patrick Kramer!”

  35

  The woman aimed her device at us like it was a weapon. Within seconds, the rest of the café had craned their necks to see what was happening. Some joined in, holding up their own devices. One boy began frantically typing something into his phone.

  “Does that mean I get the reward money?” the young mother asked, glancing around. “I get the reward money, right?”

  I hadn’t even reached the door when the screens in the back changed over, one by one. Then Kipps and I were right there, in our stolen hats and clothes, beside our table of crumpled napkins and wilting fries. LIVESTREAMING FROM NEW YORK CITY, read a caption below us.

  “Jessica Flynn and Patrick Kramer have been found, safe, in a restaurant in New York,” a voice said. “Members of the Like-Life Productions security team are on their way to retrieve them. We’re livestreaming now, with the help of some of our audience members.”

  I reached the door first and broke off to the right; a crowd had formed at the other corner as they waited for the light to turn green. Kipps ran beside me. We kept our heads down as we took another right, sprinting several blocks before crossing over to a residential street. The apartment buildings towered above us. It wasn’t until we crossed another main street, one called Park Avenue, that I spotted two different screens, animated billboards on the brick facades above us.

  One showed the clip from City Eatery, with Kipps and me ducking out the door. Another was shaky footage of our backs as we ran up the street. Park Avenue was packed with people, and some stopped on the sidewalk to watch the live feed. We pushed into a crowd crossing the street, hiding in the middle of the pack. No one seemed to notice us. Almost everyone was watching their device or one of the screens above.

  I darted ahead of Kipps and turned down another street, trying to find somewhere that wasn’t so busy. But it was impossible to escape the crowds. As we walked farther east I spotted two more billboards up ahead.

  We were halfway down the block when I looked up and saw a girl with pigtails, around eight or nine, leaning out a third-floor window. “That’s them. Mom, they’re coming this way!” she yelled to someone inside.

  We doubled our pace, my legs burning from the effort. We had nowhere to go, but we ran anyway, taking a right and then a left up another residential street. Sometimes I caught glimpses of the screens above. More people had emerged from their apartments. They stood on balconies and leaned out windows, and a few spilled onto the sidewalks. We had to run beside cars to get around them. As we ran past a bar, two drunk guys stumbled out the door and right in front of our path, coming at us like linebackers, ready to take a hit.

  “Give me that five hundo Gs!” one yelled, and the other started laughing.

  Kipps grabbed my hand and we slipped between two parked cars and into the street, dodging a woman on a scooter.

  They were streaming clips of our backs as we disappeared around a corner, and there was a consistent overhead shot from someone filming from a roof. I kept glancing up at the screens, hoping that at some point they’d lose us, but there were too many people with cameras. We were almost never out of view.

  We approached another wide street. We slowed our pace just a little and two men approached us on our right, jogging beside us to get closer shots. For a second I thought they might’ve been sent by the producers, but I didn’t recognize either of them from inside the set. Kipps held up his hand to block their devices.

  “Which way?” he called out.

  “I don’t know. Let’s just keep moving,” I said, but I could feel the panic setting in. We were completely lost inside a vast stretch of stores and apartment buildings, and there was no obvious place to hide.

  I sprinted ahead toward a complex with several apartment buildings. In the center was a stone courtyard with a playground and swings, but no one was there. Most people had gone to the busier streets to look for us. We walked around the back of one of the buildings. The alley was so narrow that the apartments faced in, with no view, and all of the windows were shut. A fire escape hugged the concrete facade and there were three metal doors marked EMERGENCY EXIT on the ground floor. One was propped open, a brick jammed where the door met the frame.

  I waved for Kipps to follow me inside. When I pulled the door open, I didn’t get more than two steps before I came face-to-face with a ruddy-cheeked guy who was
at least a foot taller than me. He had on suit pants and a crisp button-down shirt.

  “I told you, Elsbeth,” he called to someone behind him as he strode into the alley. I backed away and knocked right into Kipps, his toes under my heel. The man used those few seconds to his advantage, stepping around us, closing off our exit.

  A woman with a coiffed blond bob followed him out. She wore an elegant knee-length dress and suede slippers, as if she hadn’t had time to find real shoes. She extended her arm out, holding a device in front of her. “I’ll never doubt you again,” she said, laughing. “Everyone went one way and we went the other. And that made all the difference.”

  “I love that you’re quoting Robert Frost right now. Did we start? Are we starting?” The woman held up a finger, then nodded, and the man stared directly into the camera. “We are holding Jessica Flynn and Patrick Kramer here, in the Rosewood Apartments on Twenty-ninth Street. We’ll await instructions from the producers on what to do with them.”

  As soon as I heard the address my whole body stiffened. Kipps ran his hand through his hair and tugged at the roots, the way he did when he was nervous. They’d told the producers where we were. Our exact location. If we didn’t get out of here soon, we were done.

  “We’ve been fans of the show for years.” Elsbeth glanced at me over the device. She said it almost as an apology, like they couldn’t help themselves. I didn’t get it. They were both dressed nicely, and she had a fat stack of diamond rings on two different fingers. They didn’t seem like they needed the reward money.

  The man stalked forward and positioned himself between Kipps and me. Kipps was taller than him, but it didn’t matter, the man was broad shouldered and muscular. I wasn’t afraid of the couple—they didn’t seem like they’d hurt us. But now that the Like-Life Productions team were on their way, all bets were off. Maybe if I cooperated, I’d be allowed to go back to Swickley, to its manicured lawns and backyards pools, to the beach at Maple Cove and my pleasant, but completely false, existence. But what if I didn’t want to? How far would they go to make me? Would they threaten me, bribe me? One thing was certain: they’d never let Kipps back into the set. Maybe they hadn’t released our hot-mic conversation to the public, but the producers had obviously heard what he’d said to me in the Land Rover; they knew everything that had happened that day. I never would’ve escaped had he not helped me.