Bookish and the Beast

by Ashley Poston

  And then another voice cuts through the cacophony of questions. “Vance!”

  I raise my gaze toward the crowd, the flashing cameras and bulbous lenses, to the girl pushing her way through the crowd. She gets elbowed by a paparazzo and shoves them back with equal vigor.

  “Vance!”

  She catches my gaze, and her face breaks open with relief. But only for a moment—a breath—before it fills with dread. Because she must see it now, the mask. The one I’ve worn for so long it’s become the face everyone sees.

  I’m no one I recognize, and for a few weeks, that was nice.

  Her lips move in a question. “Vance?” I can’t hear her anymore over the other questions, the people vying for my attention, and when I blink she’s just another face in the crowd.

  That’s all she should’ve been to begin with.

  I take one look at them, the briefest glance, before I say, “Piss off,” and slam the door in their faces.

  PART FOUR

  HERO

  Her name is Amara Avanrose, and she is the princess of the Noxian Empire. She has lived through the Starless Wars, the coups to overthrow her father from his throne, the brief tète-à-tètes with Prince Carmindor. She has survived ship scrimmages, assassination plots, imploding stars.

  But she isn’t sure she is going to survive this.

  He wraps his arms around her legs and presses his face into her middle. “I must not lose you. I cannot. It will tear me asunder, ah’blena.”

  “It will not,” she replies, cupping Ambrose’s face in her hands. He turns his gaze up to her, and she memorizes the cut of his cheekbones, the glow of his white-blond hair, the way he looks at her with those eyes, so sky-blue they make her want to fly.

  “I have made so many mistakes,” he whispers, closing his eyes. “Oh, Sol curse me, conscript me, make me forget.”

  “Then you’ll forget me, too.” She runs her thumb across his cheek. “Sometimes the universe deals us fates that make us happy, but sometimes it simply deals us fates that make us. I love you, Ambrose, but you need to love yourself first.”

  Then she lets go of his face and steps out of his embrace, and even though she knows he wants to hold on, he lets her slide out of his arms, and then she turns away from him, and leaves him kneeling in the empty room of the Starless Throne.

  I DIDN’T DO IT.

  I keep mouthing those words as I stare up at the poster of General Sond on my bedroom ceiling. I didn’t do it. I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter, because he thinks I did leak the video. He thinks I’m that kind of person—the nerve of him! It’s almost enough for me to hate him. Him, and this stupid sleepy town, and Homecoming—I hate all of it. I don’t see why it even matters. Why any of it matters.

  I don’t know what I’m hoping for—that Vance appears at my door? That he smiles at me with that kind of smile he keeps tucked away so no one can see, and tells me what the hell happened? That yesterday was just a terrible fever dream and that he knows I didn’t do it, that we’ll figure it out? Or did he close the door because it was the other way around—that now that someone shined a light on his little vacation here in nowhere, he wants nothing to do with me?

  Was that all I was—just a vacation? That’s depressing. And sad. And it makes me feel so terribly small.

  I roll over in bed when I hear my phone buzz, and I check it even though I know who it’s going to be. Today is the day of the Homecoming Dance, after all.

  ANNIE (2:13 PM)

  —hey, talk to us?

  QUINN (2:15 PM)

  —Please?

  I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to admit that I was a fool, and that I screwed up. That when he looked at me in the sea of paparazzi, the Vance I had come to know—the one who kissed me in the library, who drove me home and let me read to him all my favorite passages and called me weird with that secret sort of smile—that Vance disappeared in the blink of an eye, and the one I had met at the beginning comes back, his lips set into a thin line, his blue eyes distant, his face impassive—like a curse returning.

  He looked at me like he didn’t even know me.

  And that hurt the most.

  I know I’m fooling myself, but for a moment it felt like I was living some unimaginable story, some impossible fairy tale. It was kind of impossible, wasn’t it? A girl from the middle of nowhere meeting the guy she fell in love with at a comic-con, only to find out that he was a jerk of an actor, and yet…

  And yet.

  Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Though even as I tell myself that, it feels like a part of me has broken.

  I can never sit on the barstool in the kitchen again as Elias cooks dinner. I can never walk into the library again. I can never run my fingers along the aged spines of hundreds of books. I can never look up the expanse of stairs to the second floor. I can never see Vance at the top of them again. I can never pet Sansa again. I can never read The Starless Throne while lounging on a pool chair in the backyard, or read it to him, or have him read Sond’s lines in that distinctly silky voice.

  I can never, never, never again.

  One moment it was all there, at the tip of my fingertips, part of my life in a way nothing has ever been before, and the next—gone.

  All of it, gone.

  I hug my pillow to my chest and try to keep the well of sadness inside me, but I can’t. This doesn’t hurt as much as losing Mom. Nothing will ever hurt that much, but it hurts all the same. Tears spill down my cheeks, and I bury my head into my pillow.

  You knew it wouldn’t last, I think. It should’ve never happened to begin with.

  A part of me wishes I could go back to who I was before the library, before the rainstorm, before the kiss, before all of it. I wish I could dig up the starstruck love I had for that boy in that midnight mask, when the world was simple and straightforward. I was happier with the stranger in my head, instead of Vance. Because knowing the real one stings too much. Knowing that he could have been someone different, that for a moment he seemed like he wanted to be someone better.

  I would much rather have been in love with the phantom in my head.

  Afternoon light spills into the room, and it reminds me of all the afternoons I spent in that library, sunlight falling through the windows, shining off the dust particles in the air like flecks of stars. Dad won’t be home for another few hours, and I don’t have leftover food to heat up that Elias gave me, and I don’t have a book I snuck out of the library to read underneath my covers.

  I just have me.

  As I roll over in my bed again, I hear a strange sound. It’s music, blasting from—from the parking lot? No, not just music…

  “LOOK TO THE STARS! LOOK TO THE STARS AND SEE! FIND OUT WHERE YOU BELONG! AND FIGHT FOR IT, FIGHT FOR IT, FIGHT FOR LOVE IN A STARFIELD, A STARFIELD, A STARFIELD OF LIGHT.”

  …The theme song to Starfield?

  I sit up and hesitantly approach my window. Other people are coming out onto their balconies and peeking out of their apartments toward the blaring music in the lot beneath us. And there Quinn and Annie stand with a boom box pointed at my apartment.

  I quickly abandon my window and head for the door, stumbling into my shoes as I leave the apartment, and come up to the railing on the side. I try to push away the tears flooding my eyes, but I can’t seem to, and the next I know they’ve abandoned the boom box and both of them are wrapping their arms around me.

  So tightly, I’m not scared of rattling apart anymore. I come undone in their arms, and I know they’ll be there to keep me in one piece.

  THE LIBRARY IS EMPTY WITHOUT HER.

  I should feel angry, but I don’t. I just feel…hollow.

  Our bags are packed. We’re just waiting for the car now. Everything else in this house—the smaller things, the TV, the gaming console, Elias’s cooking supplies—will be boxed up by a moving compa
ny and shipped back to LA within the next few days.

  My fingers find the part of the bookshelf where The Starless Throne should be, but I know Rosie still has it with her.

  We all occupy space for such a short period of time, even though sometimes it feels like eternity. We’re here, and then gone, and our stuff stays behind. The things that we used, the things that we loved, the things that we treasured, and adored, and despised. Those trinkets exist far longer than we do, and I’ve always imagined them as that—just things. To be bought, sold, gathered.

  But things, it seems, can persevere. Small things. Treasured things. A favorite book, an old battered album, a DVD of an old sci-fi TV series passed from father to daughter. They can cast a spell to ensure that people you’ve never met will miss you when you’re gone.

  I’ve never met Rosie’s mother, but when I run my fingers along the spines of her collection, I miss her.

  And…and I still have my mother around.

  I’m just too afraid to talk to her, because I know she’s disappointed in me, and I know she knows I can be better than I am. I just never was, and never cared to be, so I got scared. And when my stepfather sent me here, I thought that since she didn’t stop him—she didn’t like me anymore.

  That, perhaps, she’s done with trying to see the good in me.

  Whatever little good she saw to begin with.

  There’s a knock on the library door, and Elias pokes his head in. “The car’ll be here in about an hour. Is everything you’re taking in the hallway, mijo?”

  “Yeah,” I reply softly. “First day of freedom, doesn’t it taste great?”

  “Well, of course, but we don’t have to leave, you know.”

  It seems like an innocent proposition, but I can’t stay here, either. I don’t belong here; I figured out that much yesterday with those cockroaches at my doorstep. Isn’t that the worst kind of twist? Your parents cast you off to some no-name town to get you out of the way for a while, and you end up liking it. Or, at least, not hating it.

  I doubt they expected that twist.

  “I can’t stay here forever,” I reply, and flash him a grin. “Besides, when my stepfather steps down, who’ll be there to inherit Kolossal Pictures? Sansa?”

  At the mention of her name, my dog perks up on the floor and sticks out her tongue. She wags her tail gently, and it thumps on the rug.

  Elias sighs and scrubs her behind the head. “Right. Okay. Just so you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I have to be.

  When he leaves, I sit down in one of the wingback chairs and take out my phone. My mother dominates the missed calls—almost all of them—so it isn’t very hard to find her phone number.

  With a deep breath, I call her.

  The phone rings once—twice—before she answers, honey and light and sweet. “Darling!”

  I don’t realize how good it is to hear her voice until I do, and my throat tightens.

  “Hi, Mum,” I reply softly.

  “Oh, darling, I’m so glad you gave me a ring,” she says. “You know, after I saw what the gossip was about, I was going to ring you again but I figured—well, I’m glad you called. Are you okay? Is Elias feeding you well? How was your birthday yesterday?—”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupt, my voice breaking.

  “Oh, darling, you’ve nothing to apologize for,” she replies, and her voice is understanding and soft, and that’s it. Those are the words I didn’t know I needed to hear, but when I finally do my eyes sting, and I press the palm of my hand into my eye. My breath hitches, and I can’t remember the last time I cried, but it feels like a string inside me has finally come undone, the tension gone. “I love you, darling, and I can’t wait to see you home,” she adds, and I can imagine her sitting at the dining room table at home, twirling a lock of her graying blond hair, a thousand-piece puzzle stretched out in front of her. “Gregory stepped out for a moment, but he would love to talk to you, too—I can ask him to give you a ring after Shabbos?”

  I hesitate, tightening my grip on my phone. “I would like that.”

  “And about this gossip that’s been going around—”

  Before I can gently guide her away from the topic, a familiar voice calls my name—“Vance!”

  At first, I think it’s my imagination, but then when the voice calls—again—

  “Vance!”

  I push myself to my feet. The voice is coming from outside, when normally it’s screaming at me through the headset, telling me to revive her.

  This is new.

  “Can I ring you back?” I asked my mother.

  “Oh, of course! Kisses!”

  “Kisses,” I repeat, and put my phone into my back pocket. Then I go to the window, still hesitant that there might be paparazzi around. At first, I don’t see her—but then I’m not sure how I could miss her. She stands in the middle of the driveway, her hands planted on her hips, pink hair almost neon in the sunlight. She sees me peeking out the window and smiles at me with this sort of eat-shit smile that really itches under my skin, and waves one finger at a time. She’s wearing a purple LOOK TO THE STARS sweatshirt and holey black jeans, and she’s gotten a few new additions in her ears, earrings all sparkling different colors.

  I am baffled at her being here.

  “I-Imogen…?” I ask as I push the window open, thinking this must be some mistake.

  “Vance!” she calls, throwing up her arms. “Get your sorry ass out here right now!”

  I stare at her. “How in bloody hell did you even get here? And why?”

  “Long story involving a football game where the mascot turned out to be running for Homecoming Overlord? Anyway—that’s beside the point. The point is, I’m here to punch some sense into you!”

  “…What?”

  She pushes up her sweatshirt’s sleeve to show her bicep and flexes. “You heard me! Get out here right now! You know she didn’t leak that video and you just—just blame her anyway!” she rages, her voice grating into a higher octave. I’d only heard that tone once before when an enemy teammate in a battle royale match had been cheating with a two-second glitch. It’s not the kind of voice you want to hear out of her.

  My confusion becomes a pinpoint of fear. “She…didn’t do it?”

  “No, you big dumb nerf herder, she didn’t,” Imogen replies. “Elle called me and said that one of her contacts at TMZ told her the video came from some guy.”

  Some…guy? Not Rosie? My chest begins to constrict. Because I realize what I’ve done, how massive a mistake I made. And it feels like an anvil pressing against my chest. I can barely breathe. “Oh, shite.”

  “Yeah, so, what are you gonna do about it?”

  What am I going to do about it? What am I going to do—? Anything—everything—to get her back. Because I messed this up. I backslid and I thought the worst of her when I should have known better. When I did know better. And because I miss her. I miss the way she brightens a room like sunshine. I miss how she smiles at every book she touches, like they’re close friends, and I miss the papery smell of her hands, like warm wood and old stories, and—

  Oh.

  This feels like one of those dating sims that I play often, where the game prompts you to make a decision you can’t come back from.

  What will you do?

  I…

  The words slip out of my mouth. “I’m going to go find her, and I’m going to grovel an apology.”

  “Wow, I didn’t expect you to admit that—”

  “Thank God!” Another—male—voice says from the side of the house before the owner of said voice crawls his way out of the bushes with a suit in a black bag. Ethan. Imogen’s boyfriend. He picks the twigs out of his hair and shakes them off the bag.

  I stare at him, not quite believing my eyes. “You too?”

  “L
isten, we’re going to make sure you’re doing this the right way,” he replies, and holds up the suit bag. “We didn’t get a hotel for the night just to watch you go up in smoke.”

  IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that if you are the daughter of a librarian who was also the president of your kindergarten’s PTA, your father will volunteer to be a chaperone to the Homecoming Dance just to destroy any prospects you might have for a good time.

  “Get! Pumped! Get! Pumped!” Dad cheers as he sashays out of his room in a silver sequined jacket that catches the living room lights and throws stars against the walls. “Are you ready to—Rosebud, why aren’t you dressed?”

  Oh, I guess I never gave him the memo.

  I sit on the couch with my two best friends on either side of me and slowly sink into the cushions. I don’t meet his gaze.

  “She won’t come,” Quinn fills in for me.

  Dad gives a start. “But it’s your last Homecoming! You can’t all be sitting it out! You’re going to be crowned, aren’t you, Quinn?”

  Annie throws up her arms. “That’s what I’m saying!”

  “It’s just a crown,” Quinn replies, “and it might not go to me.”

  Dad pouts. “But Vance! You asked him to the—”

  “He’s not going,” I say. If I could melt into the cushions and live among the dropped food crumbs and lost pennies, I would. “Sometimes things just don’t work out.”

  Because sometimes you’re fooled not once, not twice, but three times by a selfish asshole who thinks that you leaked that footage. I wouldn’t even know how to leak it—who would I send the video to? How would I do it? With a sassy subject line reading I REIGNED VANCE IN? It’s ridiculous.

  I thought he knew me—or at least trusted me.

  But apparently not.

  “Oh, Rosebud, I’m so sorry. I would stay home with you, but…I can’t. They’re expecting me to chaperone.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. You can go and tell me how it is,” I reply.