“DARIEN!”
It’s my father. My throat tightens.
“Old man!” I try for a joke because he hasn’t let me call him “Dad” in three years. To protect my image, he said. I also try to sound like I’m happy to see him, which is the even bigger joke. “Finally managed to hobble out of L.A.?”
His face falls, looking tense and unfriendly under the low-watt institutional-like lighting, and he drops his outstretched arms. At this point I’m sure he’s more plastic than person, but most people who hate wrinkles become Daleks over time, anyway. “What’re you doing without Gail? I knew I should’ve gotten you a bodyguard.”
“She’s in there,” I say, jabbing my thumb toward the door, “and I don’t need a bodyguard. My fans are…well, passionate, but—”
“What if someone was coming down the hallway that wasn’t me? You can’t just go anywhere anymore. It’s too risky. You know this,” he stresses, “especially now that you’ll be Prince, uh…” He waves a hand around.
“Carmindor.”
“Exactly!” Mark smirks. “The lead guy. Everybody wants a piece. You’re valuable now. You’re a million-dollar man.”
“I’d have taken the part for free,” I mutter.
Mark snaps his fingers in my face. “Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that.” He looks left and right down the hall, as if he’s worried someone might have overheard me daring to express enthusiasm for my part. “What’re you doing out here, anyway?”
I hesitate. I have to just lay it out for him—no ExcelsiCon. No way. Because instead of wandering the aisles and waiting for autographs, it’ll be photos. Aching, smiling muscles. Flash blindness. Carpal Tunnel. Fake friends pretending they know me. And dredging up bad memories. That’s not what I want from a con.
“Well…,” I begin. “I kinda want to talk to you about the—”
“Where’s Gail?”
Once again I thumb toward the door.
He mutters something under his breath and adjusts his cufflinks. “I’m not paying her for panic attacks.”
“She’s had a long day.”
“I’ve had a long day. You’ve had a long day. And it isn’t even Monday.”
“Actually it is—”
“The press junkets after filming are supposed to be the tough-as-balls part, not this,” he goes on. “This was supposed to be easy.”
“It was pretty easy for Fishmouth to get onstage,” I point out. “Actually, I want to talk to you about—”
“Can it wait?” he interrupts, pulling out his phone. It dings again. Either an email or a text, I don’t know. “I’m gonna handle this. Why don’t you go get some lunch, yeah? We can talk about it later, promise.”
My shoulders slump. Whatever the opposite of promise-sworn is, that’s Mark. Later is never going to come. “Yeah.”
“Good. Oh—and Darien?”
“Yeah?”
“Diet. Don’t forget. I think the third floor has a cafeteria.”
I make a face. “Cafeteria food? That’s cardboard, bro.”
“Bro, get a salad.”
I purse my lips. With my new workout regimen and my personal trainer (who reminds me of Wolverine with the personality of a wet cat…so basically just Wolverine), I’ve existed on protein shakes and rabbit food. And chicken. So much chicken I could sprout feathers. And it’s not even seasoned. All to keep me looking like the however many million dollars my body’s apparently worth.
David Singh—the original Federation Prince—never had to worry about crunches, or cardio, or airbrushing, or fangirl ambushes on live TV. The original Starfield show barely made the ratings, and yet it somehow inspired a cult following. He got fans for his work, for inspiring people to think bigger than the Earth and ignite the stars.
I get fans for my abs.
If I were David Singh, if I were really Carmindor, I’d tell Mark to shove off. Diplomatically, of course. And he’d listen, and I’d go get a burger down at Shake Shack.
But I’m not Carmindor. Not in this universe, anyway.
—
THE CAFETERIA ON THE THIRD FLOOR is worse than cardboard. It’s an entire table of absolute gluttony and sin. Because doughnuts. Nothing but doughnuts. Doughnuts as far as the eye can see. And sitting to the side, like an emo kid in a high school cafeteria, is one sad and lonely fruit cup.
“It’s you and me, buddy.” I take the fruit cup and find a table.
There’s a few other people eating breakfast—doughnuts, to be exact—but I bypass them all to the far corner of the cafeteria. It overlooks Rockefeller Center. The blue and silver Starfield crowd has almost dissipated. It’s hard to think they all came for me. Me. My stomach twists, and it has nothing to do with the fruit cup.
I give a pineapple chunk a poke. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a guy walking toward me. The one who until a moment ago was eating a heavenly looking chocolate-sprinkled doughnut. He’s older than I am, with thick-rimmed glasses and a sweat mustache.
“Hey,” he says. “You’re Darien Freeman.”
People say this to you all the time when you’re famous. What do they expect me to say back—Yeah, you caught me. Instead, I just stick out a hand to shake. “Hi there. Nice to meet you.”
He doesn’t take my hand. “Great show today.”
I know sarcasm when I hear it. “Thanks, man,” I reply, giving him a tight-lipped smile.
“Me and some of my PA buddies were just talking about it.” He leans in a little closer. “Can I ask you a question? Just between us.”
I don’t like where this is going, but there’s no way for me to say no, is there? And Gail isn’t here to distract him while I make a break for the door. I shift uncomfortably. “Uh, sure.”
“Do you actually know anything about Starfield?”
My eyebrows shoot up.
“Because you might have all those Seaside fans fooled, but they wouldn’t know a decent TV show if it hit them upside the head. I bet you couldn’t even tell Carmindor from Captain Kirk.”
It’s not a question. He just assumes.
“You know, there’s a lot of us who actually love Starfield. It’s not a fad. Or a cash cow. It’s not just a chance for you to get your face on a billboard. It matters to people. So don’t ruin it, dude.” He starts to walk away, then stops and half-turns back to me. “Oh, and just so you know, I’m not the only one who thinks it. You’re a joke.”
“I’ve never been good at jokes.” I try to crack a smile. “I’m not that funny.”
He doesn’t smile back. “Starfield isn’t a game to us. We’re a family, not a franchise. Just look online.”
Then he stalks away before I can even formulate a polite, movie-star-worthy reply.
I clench my fork. I want to grab him by his starched shirt collar, turn him around, and shove the promise-sworn salute—pointer and pinky fingers out, middle two together, thumb down—into his eye sockets. And while I have his attention I want to lay down in excruciating detail the synopsis of all fifty-four episodes I watched religiously as a nobody teenager in the suburbs of L.A. From the Nox King to Princess Amara to every moon orbiting Galactic Six and every dwarf planet from the Helix Nebula to Andromeda. I want to tell him what that ending monologue meant to me. What it meant to see someone who looked like me in command of the Prospero. I want to cut out my fanboy heart and show him that it bleeds like every other Stargunner’s. I want to tell him that the Federation Prince Carmindor saved my life.
But I don’t. Because Mark is in the back of my head saying, Don’t lose your cool. Follow the director. Cash the check. Be a star. And more than anything: Don’t become a headline.
“Just look online,” the so-called “true fan” had said. I push aside my depressing fruit cup and pull out my phone so I can search for whatever he was talking about. Did some A-lister tweet about me? Or did one of the gossip websites put something out already?
It doesn’t take long. A few searches through Starfield-related hashtags and I’ve found i
t. A blog post, linked to by one of the bigger social media outlets, entitled “FAN-TASTIC OR FAN-SERVICE?”
Against my better judgment, I open the link.
The choice of teen heartthrob Darien Freeman as the noble Carmindor can only be seen as a slight against the true Starfield fans.
It has over a thousand retweets. Hundreds of comments. Great.
I copy the link to the post and begin to text it to Gail, ready to point out that this is why I shouldn’t go to a con. The fans will eat me alive. But then I pause. Mark’s with Gail, and if he hears that there’s bad press—even if it’s just a blogger—he’ll probably put me under 24–7 surveillance. And force me to go to the con. And if that con is full of people like Mr. True Fan here and whoever writes this Rebelgunner blog, well, then, I’m screwed. It’ll be humiliating. Worse than any dunk tank. But if Gail can’t get me out of it, and Mark won’t…
What would Carmindor do?
I thump my phone against the table, annoyed. He wouldn’t blame others for his problems, that’s for sure. He’d take things into his own hands. Maybe I can call ExcelsiCon instead. Pose as my own assistant. I’m an actor, aren’t I? I can speak with the con director and get this whole ordeal sorted out. Googling ExcelsiCon, I start scrolling through their website again. I try the number for the corporate event management company, but I get lost in a phone tree. I need a human being. After even more scrolling, I find the con’s About Us page, which doesn’t have phone numbers but does have the name of the guy who founded it. One quick white pages search later and I’ve got his info.
Score.
I clear my throat, punch in the number, and listen to it ring. Maybe the fans don’t think I’m anything more than “a brainless soap actor with more hair gel than talent,” as that blog post so eloquently put it, but I am an actor—so I’d better get to acting.
SAGE PARKED US IN THE VERY CORNER of the public parking lot, the one surefire way around Isle of Palm’s “no food truck” ordinance. Despite the crowd at the beach, it’s a pretty slow day. June in Charleston is sticky and heavy, like the syrup at Waffle House. Not even the beach breeze dents the humidity, so no one wants to move. Tourists just lie on the sand like slabs of meat, grilling in the sun.
I chew on the end of my pen, staring down at my journal. Beside me, Sage is doodling something in her notebook, her pencil making soft tch-tch-tches across the page.
I peek over. It’s an illustration of a girl—no, she’s faceless; it’s an illustration of a dress.
“Wow, that’s a nice drawing,” I say. Sage looks up, her dark-stenciled eyebrows drawn tight. “Not that I’m surprised,” I quickly add, feeling my ears burn red. “What I mean is that I didn’t know you could draw that well—no, I mean, just, I can’t draw, so…”
Another brilliant conversation between coworkers. I swear, I try to be friendly to everyone—except the twins and their country club friends—but I suck at being social. I think one thing and my mouth says something completely different, like I’m possessed. By a whole lot of stupid.
After a long moment, Sage goes back to her sketchbook, etching a long line down the curve of the dress.
“Who do you think did the pumpkin on the side of the truck?” she asks without looking up. I begin to answer when she cuts me off. “Spoiler: it was me.” Then she nudges her head toward a customer coming up to the truck. “Your turn.”
I sigh, closing my journal, and turn to the order window. The guy’s young and tall, his shaggy hair in such bad need of a trim that it’s begun to curl around his ears.
He recognizes me at the same time. “Oh. Hey. Elle.”
I purse my lips. “James.”
The back of my neck prickles with sweat, and a little panic. James Collins is one of the twins’ country club cronies. Relatedly, he’s the reason I’m sworn off trusting boys—ever. Maybe it was my fault for assuming that someone like James would ever be interested in me, but I’m not the one who filmed our ill-fated country club rendezvous and sent the YouTube link to the entire school. No, that would be my charming twin step-vloggers. You know, because they weren’t already making my life miserable enough. And James was all just part of their plan.
He’s in dark blue swim trunks and a T-shirt that reads I’D RATHER BE ON PROSPERO with the silhouette of the starship Prospero whirling around the last word, warping into light speed.
I clear my throat, pointing to his shirt. “I hear the observation deck is nice this time of year.”
“Huh?” He glances from me to Sage, but she isn’t even paying attention. Then he looks down to his shirt. “Oh, this? It’s my brother’s old shirt. He’s into that dumb nerd stuff.”
“Dumb,” I echo, and for a moment I want to shove a cold and soulless vegan fritter down his throat. Dumb. He’s totally lying. He didn’t call it dumb last summer. “What’s so dumb about—”
Sage kicks me beneath the counter.
I shoot her a glare. She returns it under glittery fake eyelashes. I turn back to him.
“What would you like?” I say between a tight-lipped smile.
“He wants the chimichangas,” Sage says, putting down her sketchbook. “Don’t you?”
“Uh…” James looks like what he wants, even more than vegan food, is just to get away from the crazy Starfield girl and her colorful, piercing-covered companion. “Sure.”
He pays—with his own credit card, of course—takes some chimichangas from Sage, and leaves at warp speed. I sit down on a cooler and open my notebook again, still angry at James, and use that vehemence to draft another scalding blog post about other uses for Darien Freeman’s deceptively perfect body.
Number one: A washboard.
Number two: A skin suit for criminals.
Number three: The mold for real-life Ken dolls.
Number four: Not being Carmindor.
Across the truck, Sage’s pencil makes quick tic-tic-tics across the paper. A leaf of green hair falls into her face and she scoops it back absently.
“That guy seemed like a douche-bro.”
It’s one of the longest sentences she’s ever said to me. I don’t even know how to answer.
“You two have some history?”
When I don’t answer, she shrugs and juts her chin in the direction James left.
“Don’t you go to high school with me? I’m sure you saw the video.”
She just frowns, and from the way she scrunches her pink mouth against the orange ring pierced into her lower lip, I can’t tell if she did see it or not. But if she wants to press the issue, she doesn’t—and I’m glad. Last summer’s better left tossed into the Black Nebula. It’s better off gone.
Thankfully, my phone chooses that exact moment to vibrate on the counter. But when I pick it up, I don’t recognize the number—which doesn’t surprise me. Since I inherited Dad’s phone number, I’ve gotten calls and texts from random people, usually about ExcelsiCon. And usually—actually, every time—I ignore them. They’ll get through to the right person eventually, and it’s best to ignore things you don’t want to remember. It’s not because I don’t want to be reminded of Dad, but because every time I think of ExcelsiCon—of not going—it feels like I’m letting him down.
But as soon as I let it go to voicemail, I feel bad. It’s not this person’s fault ExcelsiCon left Dad’s bio up on the site for so long. They miss him as much as I do. And a part of me, so small I can normally squash it out, thinks that it could be Dad, phoning in from another universe.
So when my phone buzzes again—a text, this time—I pick it up.
Unknown 11:36 AM
—Hi there. Could you take the Federation Prince off your schedule?
—He sincerely apologizes, but something came up.
My annoyance quickly turns to curiosity. It must be one of the dudes on the cosplay panels. After the announcement today, everybody and their mothers will probably be playing Carmindor, so professional cosplays will probably want to cosplay as someone else.
Before I
can even answer, the phone buzzes again.
Unknown 11:39 AM
—Please? He will be very tired. He has a lot of work to do.
Today just wants to give me a face full of Starfield, doesn’t it. I type back a reply before even really thinking about it.
11:40 AM
—Work? Like what? Last I heard, Carmindor doesn’t give excuses.
The number pings me back almost immediately.
Unknown 11:41 AM
—Oh I beg to differ.
—Do I have the right number? For ExcelsiCon?
11:42 AM
—Nope.
—But hey, I can offer you an out-of-this-world deal on vegan chimichangas.
Unknown 11:42 AM
—Sounds galactic. Maybe some other time.
—Do you know who I should contact?
Yes. Maybe.
I could point him in the right direction. I haven’t been in touch with Dad’s colleagues at ExcelsiCon since…well, not in a really long time. But I could probably get in touch with someone. I’ve never offered to before. I never wanted to.
11:43 AM
—Afraid not.
—Maybe it won’t be so bad.
—You know, boldly go.
Unknown 11:43 AM
—Wrong show, but thanks.
—And may the force be with those chimichangas.
“Look, look!” Sage crows. I jerk my head up from my phone. Out in front of us, James rounds out of one of the beachwear shops, pushes a hairy guy in trunks out of the way, and sprints toward the public bathrooms.
Wide-eyed, I stare at Sage. “Did you…”
Sage smiles her demon grin. “Were those the new batch of chimichangas? Or were they chimichangas from last week?” She heaves a big shrug. “Who’s to say? Wibbly wobbly timey space stuff.” She wiggles her fingers, making her many bracelets jangle.
Did my coworker just exact vegan food-poisoning revenge on my behalf? I don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified. My phone vibrates again.
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