This Is Not the Jess Show

by Anna Carey

  It was almost enough to get me to turn back.

  But when my mom jumped down from the SL4500 production van, she held up both hands and waved to the gathering crowd. There were a few thousand people assembled along the sidewalks and on a set of risers in the center median. Policemen were already there, with metal barricades that sectioned off the crowd.

  She didn’t stop there. My mom and dad walked out to talk to their fans. My mom leaned over, scribbling on something, and it took me a moment to realize she was giving out autographs. Hats, tee shirts, and posters—she scrawled her name across all of it. Someone stretched out their arm and she signed that, too. My dad posed with a group of elderly women in tee shirts that had a picture of his face and read WE SWOON FOR CARTER BOON.

  When we finally reached the highway ramp, there was no sign of Sara and her mom. We stood on a narrow strip of land, pretending to wait for the light. A few cars raced past. The brown, brittle grass was hard beneath our feet.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  Kipps felt around his pockets, forgetting he didn’t have any way to know.

  “Mims should have left by now,” I said. “Where’s the next video?”

  “She’ll post it,” he said. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Where is it, then?” I asked. I moved to the left, trying to get a glimpse of another screen.

  “Maybe she’s waiting until she’s a block or two away.”

  But the footage had already switched over. There was a shot of Mims running down the street, her own one-person marathon, making her way to Times Square. People high-fived her and chanted, “Jess! Jess!” as she passed.

  She had bigger eyes and a narrower face, and she was much skinnier than I was. But no one in the crowd seemed to notice or care.

  “Everyone thinks she’s me,” I said.

  “That’s great,” Kipps said. “Wasn’t that the plan? She distracts everyone so we can get away?”

  “It’s only great if she plays that second video,” I said.

  The second video I’d recorded was a direct address to the audience. Mims was supposed to play it as she got close to Times Square. It was a three-minute video where I stared into the camera and told the audience how they were all complicit in my parents’ lies. Every single person who’d tuned in, watching me crawl, then walk, then talk. Watching me flirt with Tyler and kiss Tyler. Watching me watch my sister die.

  I told them I’d lied—that I’d never go back to Swickley, that I would never again allow myself to be used like that. My life didn’t exist for their entertainment. I wanted bigger things for myself, and they weren’t entitled to any of it. They never had been, and they never would be. Kipps thought the recorded lecture was vicious, but good. Really good.

  “It’s only great if everyone realizes she’s not me,” I said. “It was supposed to be a middle finger to the producers, the audience, to my parents. All of them.”

  As Mims approached Times Square she reached a barricade. Chrysalis Remington cut across the median and walked toward her. She was flanked on either side by two security guards in Like-Life Productions polos, holsters on their hips.

  “Chrysalis is going to realize,” I said. “It’s game over. She hasn’t even played the second video and it’s already over.”

  A third security guard, a short, plump woman with dirty-blond hair, rushed in and pulled back a section of the barrier to let Mims inside. The camera was so far away I could barely make out the girl’s features. They never zoomed in, even as Chrysalis and Mims came together and Chrysalis reached out her hand for Mims to take. Chrysalis leaned over and started whispering into Mims’s ear, and that was it. They just kept walking. Chrysalis was taking her to see my parents.

  “Are you kidding?” Kipps said. “There’s no way she thinks it’s you. She’s, like, two inches from her face.”

  “Yeah, she didn’t notice that I shrunk an inch? We don’t even have the same color eyes.”

  But they were walking and talking. Chrysalis even laughed when Mims said something. She fucking laughed.

  “I think this is Sara, she’s here,” Kipps said from somewhere behind me. “Forget it, Jess. Forget them.”

  I took a few steps back, turning toward the highway. A shimmery red NextGen Cloud raced towards us going eighty miles per hour. It stopped in seconds, just a few feet from where we stood. I looked back one last time, hoping that maybe she’d still do it. Maybe Mims would still play the video. But Chrysalis had an arm around her now. Mims wasn’t even holding her device. The last thing I heard was the dull roar of mass applause, spreading out over the city.

  39

  Sara looked more like herself than she ever had inside the set. Her skin had this dewy glow to it, and she’d styled her long black hair in a cool braid that ran down the side of head, then tied around a bun in the back. Her mom, Charli Dean, was wearing a neon-blue tracksuit with little rhinestones. Her hair was blonder than it ever was before and still styled from the special the night before, though it was frizzy after a night’s sleep.

  “Sweet ride,” I said, climbing into the back seat.

  “We got a really good severance package.” Sara laughed.

  From where I was sitting I couldn’t hug her, not really, so I gave her my hand and she held it tight. Her eyes were watery, and she swiped at them, trying to stop the tears.

  “Jess, you know my mom, Charli…” Sara trailed off. She rolled her eyes. Then mouthed the words I’ll tell you later.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Charli said, her long pink fingernails rapping on the wheel. “I’m sure you hate me almost as much as Sara does right now. That’s okay, I can take it. I made my choices and I’ll own up to them.”

  “I don’t hate you,” I said. It was true. I didn’t know why Charli had lied to us for all those years, but she was here now, wasn’t she? That counted for something.

  “Can you guys talk once we’re moving? We’ve got to go.” Sara checked the rearview for oncoming cars. “We shouldn’t draw attention.”

  We were about to close the door when I realized Kipps hadn’t climbed in. He was still standing beside the car, his right hand clasped around his left shoulder.

  “Kipps, come on,” I said. “What, do you need a formal invitation?”

  He looked from Charli to Sara, then rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Seriously, Kipps,” Sara said. “Now’s not the time to be shy. Get in.”

  But it was Charli who took it a step further.

  “Jess is our family, whether she wants us or not,” she said. “So you’re our family now. Who cares about those idiots.”

  She waved her hand, which glittered with gold rings. She was gesturing to the screen on the dashboard. I hadn’t noticed at first, but they’d been watching the footage of Mims as she reached Times Square. Mims ran up the last block and right into my mother’s arms. I waited, counting down the seconds it would take before my mom realized it wasn’t me. She was holding a Jess imposter. My mom pulled back and stroked Mims’s hair, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. If there was a moment of hesitation, or worry, her face never revealed it. Instead she whispered something into Mims’s ear, then sandwiched Mims right between her and my dad, leaning down so their foreheads touched. They were clutching her so tight it was impossible to get a good angle on her. They cut to one of the plasticized hosts from before.

  “A family reunited,” she said. “It’s going to be a long road back to normal for them, I’m sure. But Jessica Flynn is on her way home. She’s safe.”

  Charli turned the screen off. I stared at it for a minute before I finally registered it was dark. That was it. It was over.

  Why hadn’t I realized? The show would go on without me. Maybe they would dye Mims’s hair a shade lighter, like mine, or close the gap between her teeth so we had the same smile. But it would just go on.

  Part of me e
xpected it from Chrysalis. The success of the show had hinged on me coming back. To the creator who’d built the franchise, I guess it didn’t matter what version of me did, as long as the show could continue, along with the constant revenue stream. But my parents? How far gone were they, how desperate to hold on to what they had, that they’d accept someone who wasn’t me? I tried to tell myself they were just performing for the cameras, that they’d still be working behind the scenes to get me back. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t what it seemed.

  But a sick, quaking feeling overtook me. The show, their brands, that stupid ’90s design book and Helene’s memoir, my dad’s workout videos—it all meant more to them than I did. Even now, after I’d left, they were still choosing the show over me. They would always choose the show.

  “Come on, Kipps,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Kipps slid in beside me. Then we were off, speeding north, the city slipping past outside our windows. Charli was almost as bad a driver as I was. She swerved in and out of lanes, cars blaring their horns in her wake. When the buildings around us turned to warehouses, then unbroken stretches of trees, she went twice as fast, until the road opened up and we were free.

  “We bought a place up north, outside the city,” Sara explained. “You’re going to love it. You walk out the door and it’s ocean for miles.”

  “Very few people,” Charli agreed. “Very quiet.”

  “You can stay as long as you want.” Sara turned around to look at me, then Kipps. “You both can. We already agreed we’re giving you half of everything we earned on the show. Right, Charli?”

  “I know it doesn’t change anything.” Charli didn’t meet my eyes in the rearview. She gripped the wheel tighter, her head down.

  The mannered part of me almost said thank you, but I stopped myself. It was the least they could do. Now Kipps and I would be able to take that money and do something meaningful with it. We could actually wait out the time until we were eighteen, without struggling. We could decide our own future.

  “I could use somewhere quiet. I think we all could,” I said.

  “It’s just…” Charli bit her lip, and she looked like she was trying to figure out what to say. “When people are desperate, they do desperate things. Sara’s dad died before she was even born. It was a car crash. I didn’t know what…I wasn’t prepared.”

  “Let’s save the whole sad story for later,” Sara said, an edge to her voice. “Jess doesn’t need to hear that right now.”

  “I’m trying to apologize,” Charli shot back, with a similar edge.

  “Then apologize.”

  Charli took a deep breath, then let it out in a giant heaving sigh. When she finally looked up into the rearview, her eyes were watery. “I’m sorry.”

  She was the same person who’d sat at the dining room table and helped me with my math homework, and tucked me into bed when my parents were working late. It had been Lydia, not my mom, who’d picked me up from school when I broke my wrist in gym class. She was always there—even now. She was the one showing up.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  Kipps grabbed my hand and held it for a moment, just to remind me he was there. We stared out the windows. Brown, winter-scorched grass stretched out on either side of us. The few buildings in the distance were falling into disrepair. Whole neighborhoods looked as if they’d been abandoned, and the ones that didn’t were filled with piles of trash and the rusted shells of old cars, smoke rising into the sky from the occasional fire. No one spoke.

  At some point the exhaustion of the past few days overtook me, and I rested my head on Kipps’s good shoulder. My eyes fell closed. I could hear each of his breaths, and then Sara put on music, but I was too tired to ever ask her what it was. The sky went dark. For miles, it felt like we were the only people on the road. Charli said something about a constellation and astrology, and Kipps was polite and launched into this whole thing about being a Taurus.

  I don’t know when I drifted off, but it was easy. Comforting. I’d never felt so safe—not even in Swickley, when I was home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not exist without the support and enthusiasm of several people. First and foremost, to John Cusick, agent extraordinaire, who loved this from its first pages. Thank you for all your insights and encouragement while I was shaping this story—it is so much stronger because you were its first reader. A huge hug and thanks to Alex Arnold, who can talk Bachelor Nation and character development in the same sentence, and who made this book better with all her sharp, creative notes. You really GOT Jess on every level, and I am so grateful. To the entire team at Quirk, but especially Brett Cohen, Jhanteigh Kupihea, Nicole De Jackmo, Moneka Hewlett, Andie Reid, and Jane Morley—you always knew just what this book could be. Thank you for championing the weird and wonderful.

  I’m grateful for my friends and family, who encouraged me during the year it took to write this book, and the two years before that, when I struggled through a manuscript that may never leave my drawer. Much love and thanks to Jenny Han, Jen Smith, and Morgan Matson, for writing retreats and boat rides and heated games of Anagrams. Thank you to Lauren Kate Morphew, Anna Gilbert, Julie Kraut, Nicola Yoon, Brandy Colbert, Robin Benway, Julie Buxbaum, Connie Hsiao, Robin Wasserman, Lauren Strasnick, Maurene Goo, Elissa Sussman, Talia Osteen, and Melva Graham. Love and gratitude to my parents, Tom and Elaine, and to Annie, Jimmy, Kevin, Yas, Doc, and Harry. Most importantly, thank you to Clay, my partner and best friend, who made me laugh, and took me out for deep dish pizza, and has been my cheerleader and confidant every day for the last five years. I love you.

  Josie Simonet

  anna carey

  is the author of Blackbird, Deadfall, and the Eve trilogy. She lives in Los Angeles.

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