This Is Not the Jess Show

by Anna Carey

  “No way. Don’t even tell me,” I said, reaching for it. It was lighter than it would’ve been if it was filled with coins. I popped the rubber plug out and shook the Warheads into my palm. She had three different kinds—watermelon, apple, and blue raspberry.

  “These are my favorite,” I said, holding them up to Kipps. I squeezed a blue raspberry into my mouth and threw him an apple. He’d plopped into the inflatable armchair in the corner. That was one of the differences between this room and mine. I’d always really wanted one of those stupid things, even if they were completely hideous.

  “You think she has an extra device somewhere?” I opened the top drawer of her desk, but it was filled with markers, rubber bands, and other junk. “I saw some guy at the café with two of them. People can have more than one, right?”

  But Kipps didn’t answer me—someone else did.

  “Yeah, I have more than one,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Now will you stop going through my shit?”

  A girl stood in the doorway, holding her device in her hand. She looked a year or two younger than me, but we were the same height, and she was wearing one of my favorite outfits—a black baby-doll tee and plaid skirt. She even had on a pair of boots like mine, with a chunky heel and laces up the front. Her dark brown hair was parted in the same exact place, with the same exact cut. She pinned back her bangs with two snap clips, one on each side.

  “You’re…Jess Flynn?” Her eyes trailed from me to Kipps, who stood when he saw her. “You’re in my room. Jessica Flynn and Patrick Kramer are in my room.”

  She raised her device, about to capture us both on camera.

  “No—please wait,” I said, running toward her. “Don’t livestream this. No one can know we’re here.”

  “But everyone’s looking for you.” She gestured outside. “There are thousands of people on the street, waiting for you. Everyone wants you back.”

  “But we don’t want to go back,” Kipps said.

  The girl narrowed her eyes at him. I noticed she was wearing the same shimmery purple eye shadow I wore, and the same lip gloss I usually carried in my purse. I’d lost it at some point since we left the set.

  “Is it true?” she said, turning back to me. “Did he make you leave? What did he say to you to get you to go?”

  “He didn’t make me leave. We’re friends.”

  I moved closer to Kipps, so our shoulders were almost touching.

  “And we need your help…” I tried to look past her, into the living room. “No one else is here, right? You’re alone?”

  “I live with my aunt and her boyfriend,” she said. “But they’re waiting with some of the crowds on Twenty-fifth, over by Madison Square Park. I just came back to get my jacket.”

  “We need to get in touch with a friend,” I said. “We’re trying to find her.”

  The girl didn’t respond. She kept glancing down at her phone, like she hadn’t quite decided if she was going to record us or not. Outside a quick, cruel ripple of laughter rose up from the street. I imagined them showing old clips of me plucking my mustache, or voting on whether I should get a nose job.

  “They’re going to find you anyway,” she finally said. “Like, I could be the one to tell them where you are, or someone else could, but the security team is already in New York. They got here, like, five minutes ago. Helicopters, vans, production trailers, everything. You don’t really have a lot of options…”

  “And let me guess,” Kipps shot back. “It would be nice to have five hundred thousand dollars.”

  The girl smiled, revealing a small gap between her front teeth.

  “Well, yeah. That too.”

  Our chance was slipping away. Maybe I’d been stupid to think she’d help us. Why would she, when just one video could turn her into a celebrity in her own right? When she could have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in her bank account?

  I pulled my purse in front of me and dug through it.

  “Look…what did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Mims.”

  “Mims, great,” I said, turning over the contents in the bottom of the bag. “I’m sure right now you’re thinking about all the different things you could get with that reward money. Maybe you think they’ll give you a cameo on the show, or you’ll get some great sponsorship deal, blah blah.”

  I finally found the photo booth strip. Sara stared back at me, her brown eyes bright. In the middle picture she was making this face she always did when someone photographed her. Her lips were twisted to the side in a funny smirk. I knew she thought it made her look pretty, but she was already pretty.

  I told myself that it didn’t matter, that it was just a stupid photo booth strip. One of the pictures was smudged now, and it was still warped from when I’d gotten it wet. But I’d carried it with me to the park that day. I’d taken it through the tunnel and out of the set. It had survived the NextGen Cloud and that terrifying moment in the lake. It was hard not to assign meaning to it, as if the photo strip alone had saved Kipps and me—as if this tiny piece of paper had been the thing that helped us get this far.

  “Here,” I said, passing it to her. “You can have this. That’s definitely worth something. I took it from the collage on Sara’s wall.”

  Mims studied it, then handed it back to me.

  “It’s not worth five hundred thousand dollars, that’s for sure.”

  “If everything goes according to our plan, and we’re able to get out of here, then Stuck in the ’90s is over. The show will end, and the value of all the memorabilia will go up. I don’t know how much it’ll be worth, but it’s something.”

  She paused, then tucked the photo strip in the inside pocket of her jacket. “What else you got?” she asked, nodding to my purse.

  I turned to Kipps, seeing if he had anything good. I wasn’t expecting her to ransack us.

  “Uh…I have a fake driver’s license that says Patrick Kramer,” he said, digging into his pockets. “And a sticky Tic Tac. Or it’s an old Tylenol—I’m not really sure.”

  “I’ll pass on the Tic Tac,” Mims said.

  I thumbed through my bag, ignoring the lyric book. It had Sara’s note in it, with the phone number she’d given me. I couldn’t risk letting Mims see it. The other stuff I’d had forever, but I didn’t necessarily want to give it up.

  “I have this Keroppi change purse,” I said, passing it to her. “It still has a bunch of quarters in it. And you can have my wallet, too. That has my learner’s permit and some stupid cards and stuff. I think there’s a gift certificate to Topkapi. And my old YMCA time card.”

  I handed her the entire purse, tucking the lyric book in my jacket pocket when she wasn’t looking. She still didn’t seem satisfied. She kept rooting around the thing, like there might be some other hidden treasure inside, something I hadn’t yet mentioned.

  “Can we use your phone or not?” Kipps finally asked.

  She tossed him her device. He looked at me, then at the phone, the same flat black thing everyone had filmed us with. He clutched it to his heart and closed his eyes for a few seconds, as if it were hugging him back.

  “What was the number?” he whispered.

  As I said it back to him, from memory, he typed it in the device and hit a green button. Then he showed me how to hold it so I could hear it ring. The microphone was somewhere in the bottom of it, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see any of the speakers either.

  I ducked down the hall and found a bathroom, closing the door behind me. It rang four times before someone picked up.

  “Hello?”

  It was Sara’s voice. The sound of it made me laugh, this quick, gasping breath of relief.

  “Oh my God, Jess?” she said. Then she called to someone in the background. “It’s Jess—Jess is on the phone.”

  “I’m okay.” I tried to keep m
y voice even, but it was no use.

  “Jess, I’m so sorry,” she said, and now her voice was quaking too. “For everything. I didn’t know until I knew, and then it was too late. They told me you were, like, method acting or something. That year you went to sleepaway camp, the producers and Charli—Lydia—they took me aside and told me everything. That Charli was my mom. That we’d all been playing this game of pretend. I thought you knew it was a TV show. I always thought you knew.”

  “I definitely did not know.”

  “Yeah, I get that now. Obviously. It’s this whole thing between me and my mom—she didn’t tell me until two weeks ago, until after you started asking about the protesters and the strike. You said that thing about the chanting, and then Amber’s phone falling out of her backpack. I’m still angry with her, it almost…”

  I heard a muffled voice in the background, then Sara started arguing with someone. She must’ve put me on mute because the call dropped out for just a few seconds.

  “Fine, you hid the box and the key fob for me. That was the least you could do, though,” she said to someone in the background. She took a deep breath. “I’m just—I really am so sorry, Jess.”

  I tried to count the tiles behind the sink even though my throat tightened and my eyes squeezed shut, the tears coming on fast. I tried to steady myself but it was no use. I was crying harder than I had in years.

  “I know,” I choked out.

  “I’m coming,” she said. “Are you still near the Rosewood Apartments? Where Kipps was shot? You’re still in the city?”

  “Yeah, we’re safe for now,” I said. “Some girl let us borrow her phone. But I don’t know how to get out of here. The streets are packed. Everywhere we go, people start filming us. There’s a highway close to here, right on the east side.”

  “We’re already on our way. It says we’ll be there in…forty-eight minutes. Can you get to the exit at Twenty-third, the FDR? It’s on a map I’m looking at.”

  “Yeah, if we have to,” I said. “I’ll figure out a way.”

  When I tried to say something else, the words got stuck in my chest. I could barely breathe. I felt like I had a golf ball lodged in the back of my throat and I was sobbing, really sobbing now.

  “Jess?” she said after a minute.

  I made a small, squeaking sound, and she knew that I was still there.

  “I love you,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I don’t know how much time had passed. I was still holding onto the phone, pressing it against my ear, when I realized she was gone.

  Kipps was waiting for me right outside the bathroom. I’d splashed water on my face and managed to turn it into something other than a pink, tear-stained mess, but when I met his eyes it was clear he knew I’d been crying.

  “What happened? You okay?” He said it low, soft, then checked over his shoulder to make sure Mims wasn’t listening.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I have a plan. We’re going to meet Sara in…” I looked down at the phone, which was apparently a watch, too. “Forty-four minutes.”

  “How are we going to get there?” Kipps asked.

  I walked back to Mim’s bedroom—my bedroom—where she was sitting on the bed, flipping through a Delia’s catalog.

  “We already made you rich,” I said. “How would you like it if you were famous, too—if everyone knew your name?”

  “What do you mean?” When her brows drew together, a deep line appeared between them. “Is this a joke?”

  “Here,” I tossed the device to her. “You can start filming now.”

  38

  I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. Mims had dug through her aunt’s closet and given us super serious, corporate looks. I had on a blue pantsuit that was two sizes too big, with a silk scarf tied at the neck. Kipps looked like a psychotherapist in his argyle sweater and slacks. We’d wrapped his arm with a fresh bandage and a plastic bag, so the blood couldn’t seep through. His Sambas were the only giveaway. The men’s shoes Mims had in the apartment were three sizes too big, and Kipps never would’ve been able to run in them.

  “The wig works,” I said, brushing the black bob into place with my fingers. Mims had worn it for a Halloween costume, playing a superhero named Asteroid Amos, whoever that was. It was simple, but it was a better disguise than anything else.

  “It’s not going to matter what we’re wearing if we get there late,” Kipps said, checking the time on Mims’s device. “We need to go. Like now.”

  I could’ve spent another hour with Mims, running through the videos we’d filmed and when to post each one. I wasn’t inclined to trust her, a random stranger who’d demanded every last personal item I had, but we didn’t have a choice. She agreed to follow our plan. I had to take her at her word.

  “You have to post the first one—”

  “Once you clear the building,” she interrupted. “I know. You told me five times. I’ll go to the roof and wait until I can’t see you anymore. Then I’ll call the news station and upload it.”

  “And then the second video once you’re on your way. Ideally when you’re only a few blocks from Times Square.”

  I’d left all my clothes out on her bed. It didn’t look like much anymore, the denim jacket, baby doll dress, and stretched-out tee shirt. The scuffed Doc Marten boots. But it’s what people would expect I’d be wearing. It was supposed to give us the head start we needed.

  “Jess, let’s go. I’m serious,” Kipps said, grabbing my hand.

  “Don’t worry, I got it,” Mims said before closing the apartment door in my face.

  He reached the stairwell first, and I raced down behind him, hugging the metal banister at each turn. When we got to the bottom, one of the first-floor exits led to a back alley. We hurried down it and turned the corner onto a wide street. I could hear the crowds to the west, along Twenty-third Street.

  Just as the livestreams were used to track us, now I could use them to track the audience. There was an electronic billboard on every other building. Screens everywhere. Some of them had sound, and they showed audience members lined up along the road or watching a line of Like-Life security vans arrive on the north side of the city. There were a few shots from viewing parties around the country, and more of people sharing their personal accounts of what had happened in the café. A particularly rowdy group had assembled in the alley where Kipps had gotten shot. They were drinking and listening to that couple retell the story.

  When we got to the bigger, more exposed intersections we kept our pace steady, and sometimes I fell back so it didn’t look like Kipps and I were together. He was the one who’d found the spot on the map. While Mims and I were preparing our disguises, he’d looked at several overhead shots on her device, then memorized our half-mile route. We’d just passed a church when all the screens changed over, broadcasting the same thing.

  “We have breaking news,” a short, muscular host I didn’t recognize spoke into the camera. The audio was being piped in from so many places there was a faint echo after every word. “Our studio has just been sent a video from an audience member on Twenty-sixth Street. She says she encountered Jessica Flynn and Patrick Kramer just moments ago. Take a look.”

  I knew we needed to keep moving. But I could feel myself slowing, wanting to pause every few steps to watch. One billboard was in clear view to our right as we headed toward the river. There were still dozens of people on the street. Some sat on the curb so they wouldn’t miss anything, while others walked, frantically typing into their devices, looking for updates.

  The video started and there I was, in Mims’s bedroom—our bedroom—facing her device. The shelf and the blue piggy bank were in the background.

  “Hi, I’m Jess Flynn. But everyone already knows that,” I started. “I wanted to address everyone’s concerns about me, and Patrick, and assure everyone I’m safe. Patrick never did anything
to hurt me, and he only tried to help me do what I asked him to. I’m making this video because I want to come back to the set. I want to return to my family, and my friends, and everyone in Swickley. I want to return to you, the audience who’s watched me grow up—who followed my every breath, my every action.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that line. I’d made Mims film it twice because I had such a hard time making it feel believable. But I was happy with the final result—it read as earnest, heartfelt. I seemed real.

  “I want to meet the Like-Life security team in the center of Times Square. I’ll be there at noon,” the video continued. Kipps had stopped next to me. I knew he wasn’t happy about the delay, but he seemed vaguely mesmerized. We had both been worried about how the video had turned out, and if Mims would be able to pull off the plan—the timing and order of everything.

  “I ask for the audience’s help to get home. Please,” I said into the camera. “If you see me making my way through the city, clear a path so I can get through. Don’t stop me and try to get a photo or the perfect shot with me in the background. I miss my parents and I’m ready to be home.”

  The video cut to livestreams across the city. A whole restaurant broke into applause, people cheering and hooting as they raised their glasses in a toast. Some shouts echoed down a nearby street. Some of the people who’d been sitting on the curb had already gotten up and left, heading north.

  Kipps grabbed my hand and we started moving again, this time running. We took a right, moving closer to Twenty-third Street. I could hear the dull rush of the highway up ahead.

  “Just a little farther,” Kipps said, and he squeezed my hand.

  The sound of the broadcast still drifted out of windows, though most people seemed to have left their homes hours ago to be in the middle of the action. The roads were strangely quiet. As we turned down another street I saw my mother’s face on a screen over a drugstore. She and my dad were here, in New York, standing beside one of the Like-Life Productions vans. They were waiting for me.