“No, but I’ll take your word that it happened.”
“Yeah, so, it’s kind of like that. He just texted the wrong number—I think he was looking for my dad because I inherited his phone. But then we just…I don’t know, we just kept talking and—”
“So you legit don’t know him,” she interrupts.
“I do know him.”
“Have you talked, though?”
I hold up my brick phone. “How do you think we’re communicating? Smoke signals?”
She waves away my sarcasm. “No, I mean actually talked. Like,” she holds her hand up like a phone, “here’s my number, call me maybe talked.”
I squirm. “Not exactly.”
Sage rolls her eyes. “Elle! He could be a sixty-year-old with a collection of American Girl Dolls in his basement for all you know.”
“He isn’t!” I cry. “He’s our age. And besides, I like texting him. It feels more, I don’t know, You’ve Got Mail-y.”
Sage stares at me quizzically, like I’m a Nox who’s just pledged allegiance to the Federation. “But haven’t you, like, wondered?”
I can’t meet her gaze because the truth is, I have wondered. What he sounds like, how he sounds, whether his words are laced with an accent or a lisp, deep or light or reedy or full.
I shrug. “He’s never given me any clues that he wants to talk. What if he doesn’t feel comfortable talking? Or he’s nervous about having a stutter or something?”
“What if he’s waiting for you to call first?” she argues.
“Maybe. But I mean…I don’t even know his real name.”
She sits up. Squints. Scrutinizes me. I’m about to add that I at least know he isn’t bald when she grabs my phone and in two quick steps reaches the other side of the room.
“Hey, give it back!”
She puts up a finger and lifts the phone to her ear. “Give me a sec.”
Panic surges in my chest. “What are you doing?”
“Calling him—”
“STOP!”
I move so fast I don’t even realize that I’m yanking the phone out of her hand until I’ve already done it. We both hear the ringing stop. Carmindor answers the phone.
“Hello?”
It’s soft. Deep. Male.
I slam END so fast I think I fracture my thumb. I shove my phone into my pocket so deep she’ll never be able to get it. I glare at her. “Happy now?”
Sage falls back on her beanbag, laughing. “Oh my god, you were ninja fast!”
“Not funny!”
“You know I had to.” She sits up on her elbows and tilts her head. “He sounds nice, Elle.”
I sit down beside her. “Yeah?”
“Yep. Certifiably not ax murder-y.” She shrugs. “At least I think so.”
“Well, thank god.” I swallow the lump in my throat. I’m not sure how I’m going to explain this to Carmindor. He did sound nice. Sweet. A voice I could listen to for hours. But would he ever want to listen to me?
I glance down at my phone and suddenly my blood runs cold. “Oh my god,” I whisper and jerk up to my feet. “Oh shit.”
Sage glances over at me. “What?”
“It’s ten after nine.” My hands start to shake. I stuff the cosplay uniform into my duffel bag and loop it over my shoulder. “I’m so late—so late. Can you take me halfway home?”
Sage shambles to her feet and salutes. “I’ll get you home faster than Greased Lightning.”
With heart pounding, I fly up the stairs after her. We’ve worked too hard. The con is tomorrow. I can’t ruin this now.
LAST TAKE, I THINK. DON’T RUIN IT.
“And…action!” the director yells. The set plunges into deathly silence. The crew looks on. Then we’re moving like a machine: graceful, precise, well rehearsed, in the moment. The green screen fades, the boom disappears, the camera becomes a thought in the back of my mind.
I step into Carmindor at the helm of his ship, the good Prospero. I’m here, in command of my crew. And shit is about to go down.
“Forty-two clicks to the left,” I bark to Euci, “and ignite!”
“Aye!” Calvin replies at the head of the bridge, his fingers twitching just enough to ease the ship to the left. And in that moment, he’s not the jerk B-lister with a perpetual chip on his shoulder but the Federation’s best pilot, my best friend, and navigator of the Prospero. Three Nox ships are coming in from our starboard, and we have thirty percent power left. There’s no one else I’d trust to get us out of this mess.
The helm of the Prospero goes quiet as we wait for the three red dots blinking on the screen to fall off, but they keep pursuing us toward the Black Nebula. It looms against us, the size of three suns, swirling, catching, inhaling everything, growing larger with each atom broken down and absorbed. The galaxy’s only hope of stopping it is aboard this ship.
Another torpedo slams into our back hull. Red lights flare across one of the screens. Euci flicks it away.
“Four clicks faster,” I order.
“We’re already shaking apart as it is,” Euci warns. “If we get too close—”
“I said four clicks!” I snap.
He twitches his head slightly—a throwback to the show’s Euci, who always tossed his head to the left whenever he knew Carmindor was wrong but did as his captain commanded.
A boom mic hovers above us, the gaping eye of three lenses staring from just off the bridge. One of them, on a pulley, draws closer.
In front of me the navigation panel glows like an oversized keyboard. Beside me, Princess Amara wrings her hands nervously.
“Ah’blen,” Jess says, and the word fills me with a strange sort of longing. A reminder of Elle. I push it down.
Not now.
“We can do this,” I tell her. “We have to.”
“We’re going to die—we’re all going to die if you get closer.”
Another missile slams into the back of the Prospero, destroying one of the thrusters. The ship careens out of warp-speed. Everyone is thrown forward with the invisible weight of our descent. The princess stumbles against the controls and catches my hand. She squeezes it tight, and our eyes meet.
One second.
Two.
The set is quiet. We’re quiet. The stars, in all their mass and all their time, orbit us. She smiles timidly, and as Carmindor, I know she is the only star in the sky I care about. Red lights flare across all the screens. Warnings boom through the speakers. One more hit and Prospero will be space trash.
“You know what I have to do, ah’blen,” she whispers.
“No, I won’t let you—I can’t let you. There has to be another—”
She kisses my forehead. “I hear the Observation Deck is nice this time of year,” she tells me, and then she slips her hand out of mine and leaves the bridge.
Watching the show, this is where I scream at the TV. Call Carmindor stupid. Because this is where the princess looks back at him, this is where she waits to see if he’ll try to change her mind, waits for him to look back at her. But he doesn’t know that he’s supposed to look at her. He’s trying to decide if his soul could survive killing his entire crew for the sake of the universe. If he’ll be damned in the afterlife. If, in the next universe over, he’ll get another chance.
He looks back a heartbeat too late, and she’s already gone.
I hold on to the scene, looking at the last place I saw her, the last place I’ll ever see her, and then—
“Cut!” yells the AD. “And that’s a wrap!”
Euci—I mean Calvin—pumps his fist into the air as the crew cheers so loud it rumbles the makeshift set. I lean back against the captain’s command module and drop my head back, closing my eyes. I stand amid the triumphant hoots from the crew, the congratulations from the other actors, relishing it all.
You only get one shot, I remind myself, trying to hold on to as much of Carmindor as I can. Just for a little longer.
“You sure had the spirit,” comes Jess’s sweet
honey-and-salt voice. She hops back onto the set and punches me in the shoulder. “You even looked torn when you said ah’blena. Tell me, were you thinking about not seeing me every day anymore or the absolute sadness that we didn’t make out more?”
I slide on a grin, because she doesn’t need to know. “Maybe a little of both.”
“My word, are you making jokes, Darien?” She puts her hand on her chest, aghast. “What a pity! Maybe we could’ve dated for twenty-four days instead of twenty-three.”
“You couldn’t handle one more day of me,” I reply as she leans against the captain’s command module with me. We stare out at the set, at the crew beginning to wrap up the wires, at the secondary unit getting notes on what they still need to film. Our parts are done, for the most part. Our parts are done in this building, at least. After tonight, we’ll leave this lot and never look back.
She knocks her shoulder against mine. “So how does it feel?”
“How does what feel?”
“To be Darien again?”
I tilt my head. “I’m not sure yet. I’d been waiting to feel like Carmindor for so long—waiting for it all to just sort of click—that I didn’t realize I’ve been him all along.”
“Maybe you were Carmindor in another life,” she teases.
“Maybe. But right now I’d rather be Darien.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “Because Darien is not on a diet.” Then I lean into her and whisper, “Baaaaccccccccoooooon.”
She laughs and shoves off the control module, gliding off set. Calvin follows her, giving me a congratulatory slap on the shoulder that almost makes me stumble. Who knows. Maybe now that we’re not filming, we’re bros.
The PAs are passing out champagne as I walk off set; one of them hands me a glass on her rotation around the room. Amon, grinning ear to ear, shushes the crowd and does his little director speech. I listen half-heartedly to most of it, my attention roaming across everyone, familiar and not, the crew, the actors, the assistants, the interns.
Amon turns to me, his glass raised. “And most importantly, to our Carmindor, the infallible genius boy that he is. Long live the Federation Prince! Here’s to the possibility of a sequel!”
At that, I find Jess in the crowd and see that her face is impassive, like stone. But then she raises her cup, slowly, and locks eyes with me. Told you, she mouths and winks.
“Look to the stars!” He begins to chant.
Everyone raises their glasses. “Aim!” they cry.
I swallow, raising my glass. “Ignite!” I add, and we cheer to the twenty-three days of hell and then down our champagne.
Once Donna rubs the makeup off me for the last time, I head to wardrobe, where Nicky is busily hanging all the costumes, treating them as delicately as he did the first day on set.
“Darien! You were perfect.” Nicky shuffles up to begin unbuttoning my jacket, but I hold up my hands.
“Actually…” I scratch the back of my neck. “I know this is weird, but I was wondering…”
“If you could have it,” he fills in. He stops unbuttoning and folds his arms. “You know, just because you wear it, it’s not yours.”
“I know.” My cheeks get hot. “I mean, I heard George Clooney got to keep his Batnipple suit, and Ryan Reynolds got to keep his Deadpool…look, there’s just this event coming up tomorrow, and I don’t have anything to wear. So I guess I was sort of hoping you could let me borrow it at least?”
“And never return it?” Nicky looks stricken. I half-shrug, half-nod, and Nicky rolls his eyes to the ceiling with a sigh.
“I’m not a part of this criminal act at all.” He flaps his hands at me to go change. “I must’ve misplaced your costume. Oh woe is me!” And with a groan, he throws his arm over his eyes in a fake swoon.
I thank him—quietly—and promise to get it back to him in a week.
Gail and Lonny find me as I’m tugging on my shirt. I can’t wait until my clothes start fitting normal again and aren’t uncomfortably tight around the chest. I can’t wait to go back to all the familiar comics T-shirts that don’t fit me at this bulked-out size.
“Well?” Gail says. “How is it? How do you feel?”
“I can eat bacon again!” I yell, throwing up a fist. “All the bacon! Bacon or bust!”
“Yes!” Gail cheers. “After your promo shoots, you absolutely can!”
My cries of glee turn into an actual sob. I quickly shove my face into my arm. Thank god it’s just Gail.
She pats me on the shoulder. “I know,” she says. “But you’ll get to have it soon, and then—”
“No.” I swallow and shake my head, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “It’s not the bacon.” I mean, it is but it’s also not. I’m overcome right now with everything. These last few months leading up to the shoot, the mounting pressure, the twenty-three days of high stress and rabbit food and Elle. All of it. “Why does it have to be so hard?”
“Getting a six pack?”
I give her a feeble smile. “I am more than my body, thank you.”
Gail squeezes my shoulder and even though she’s only a few years older than I am, I feel a burst of kidlike affection, like she’s the cool babysitter who lets me stay up late when Mark’s not around.
“No, I know what you mean,” she says. “You’ve worked hard, Darien. You’ve worked so hard.” She looks at Lonny as if she expects him to add something.
Weirdly, he does. “You have, boss,” he says. “Now let’s get moving.”
Five minutes later I’m out the trailer, costume rolled up in my duffel and headed home. I follow Gail and Lonny out of the lot, where an SUV is parked. Jess rolls down the front passenger window.
“Dare, you coming?” she shouts. “We’re partying!”
“We?” I ask.
The window behind her rolls down. It’s Calvin, and for once he doesn’t look angry at me. “Come on, Carmindor. Don’t wuss out on us now.”
Maybe it’s just the exhaustion-induced adrenaline rush, or maybe it’s the thrill of finally having done something, but whatever it is, it’s making me want to celebrate. But I can’t just go anywhere. I glance at Gail and Lonny, my de facto parents. Gail looks instantly worried, but Lonny grabs her shoulder and whispers in her ear.
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll cover for you. Just this once.”
I pump my fist into the air. “Yes!” I kiss her on the cheek. “I love you, Gee.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Dare!” Jess shouts again. “We won’t wait forever!”
“Seriously,” Calvin says. “Put on your big boy pants and hurry up.”
“But remember”—Gail digs into my duffel for a plain black hat and hands it to me—“if you show up on so much as a Snapchat tonight—”
“I know, I know. Mark will kill me.” I pull my hat low over my brow. “I’ll be fine, Gee. You worry too m—”
A ringtone cuts between our conversation like a knife. Gail and I exchange a look, but when she shrugs, saying it isn’t hers, I dig into my hoodie pocket. All of my phone numbers have assigned ringtones, but this one is generic. The only person whom I never assigned a tone to is—
Elle, the caller ID reads.
My heart jumps into my throat.
“C’mon, Your Highness!” Calvin shouts. “Celebration time!”
She’s probably not actually calling me. It’s probably a butt dial or something.
“You gonna answer that?” Gail asks. “Should I?”
It rings for the third time. Fourth.
“C’mooooon,” Jess echoes Calvin. “You’re only young once, Carmindor!”
I hold up a finger and slide my phone unlocked.
“Hello?”
I wait one second. Two. Three. But there’s no one there. And then the line goes dead.
“Huh.” I pull the phone from my ear. CALL ENDING.
“Nothing?” Gail asks.
“I guess not.” I hide my disappointment with a cough. “Well, I promis
e I won’t get into much trouble.”
“Like I haven’t heard that before.” Gail looks unconvinced, still staring at my phone. I tighten my grip on it and instantly feel stupid. Elle obviously doesn’t want to talk right now. Besides, she’ll be there tomorrow. And tonight’s the only tonight I’m going to get.
“Here.” I give the phone to Gail. “So I can’t make any underage drunk dials. Or Snapchats. Just don’t lose it. Or snoop through it,” I add. “Can I go now?”
Gail nods, looking relieved as she pockets my phone. “All right.”
I jog toward the SUV, the night air brisk and vibrant, leaving all the baggage of Starfield behind me, taking only the parts that I want to remember—the fit of a stargun in my grip, the power of standing at the helm of the Prospero, the nights talking with a girl who calls me ah’blen—and leaving the rest of it behind.
SAGE DOESN’T TURN DOWN THE ROAD to my house—the truck’s way too loud. She stops at the entrance to the neighborhood as I loop my duffel over my head. 9:31 p.m. This is going to be one hell of a sprint. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?” she asks.
“Meet you at the bus station? Six a.m.?”
“Six it is!” She leans over and hugs me tightly. I return it.
“Wish me luck!” I cry as I roll onto the pavement.
All the houses are dark with sleep. I cut across lawns. The motion lights pop on as my feet thunder across dew-covered grass, my heart thrumming in my ears. I can’t be late. I can’t.
Turning into our driveway, I realize with a wash of relief that Catherine’s Miata isn’t there. No one is home yet. What’s today? Friday?
Wait. Friday. Shopping day. Holy sweet merciful credit cards, Batman.
I slow down and creep around to the side, hoping I won’t wake Giorgio as I climb up the creaky branches of the Bradford pear by my bedroom window. Halfway up, my foot slips. I curse, grappling onto another limb for support.
I pause, making sure no one heard me, before climbing up the rest of the way. When I slide through my window, my knees go to Jello and I sink to the ground, my heart still thundering in my ears.
I made it.
Relief wells up inside me. I curl my knees to my chest and press my forehead against them, trying to catch my breath. That was incredibly stupid—tonight of all nights. So stupid I’m shaking. Because I’m so close, so close to going to ExcelsiCon. So close to my father I can almost see him, like a figure in the distant dusk.
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