by Anita Oh
Audrey looked at Thorne in his flowing wig and false eyelashes and wondered if he’d be able to do that.
He gave the producer a curt nod.
“Okay,” said the producer. “Let’s roll out.”
They started filming in front of the stadium. There were a few people out, even though it was early, but they were mostly joggers and dog walkers and didn’t seem all that interested. The merchandise stand wasn’t even open yet. Audrey thought there were a lot of crew members, considering it was only supposed to be a low-budget web show, but as she’d never made any TV before, she couldn’t really judge. For each two-person team, there were two camera people, someone for sound, someone for lighting, a director, a producer, a hair and makeup person, and about three people whose job she didn’t know. She thought surely it would be obvious that when they’d been fleeing from the concert the night before, they hadn’t had a massive crew with them, but nobody else had questioned it, so she kept quiet.
The four of them stood outside the main entrance of the stadium while the crew got all their equipment in place and the hair and makeup people touched them up. Koko and Peg chatted excitedly, and the makeup girl had to keep telling Koko to stand still, but Thorne’s hands were trembling as he read over the production notes. Audrey realized that maybe he wasn’t grumpy after all. Maybe he was just nervous.
“Sorry you’re stuck with me,” she said, feeling awkward, though it needed to be said.
“Huh?” he said, barely taking his eyes off the paper.
“I’m not good at this,” she said.
He shrugged. “Neither am I. I’m fine if there’s a script and I know exactly what to do, but I’ve always had trouble thinking off the cuff. I’m not sure why they organized the teams like this, honestly. The two smart ones…” He nodded toward Koko and Peg. “Versus…” He waved a hand between the two of them.
Given the circumstances, Audrey couldn’t be offended that he thought of her as not smart, but she was surprised he thought of himself that way. He always seemed so switched on, but she supposed there was a difference between being good at your job and being clever.
“Versus the two good dancers?” Audrey said.
Thorne grinned at her, a full beam that blinded her for a moment and shorted out her brain, so she didn’t notice that the director was calling for them to take their places until Koko elbowed her in the side.
When the cameras started rolling, Thorne immediately appeared full of confidence, even though his hands were still shaking.
“Good morning, Supernova fans!” he said, smiling into the camera. It wasn’t a full-wattage smile, but something more personal, more comfortable. It didn’t seem like he’d have any problem pulling off the princelike image, even when he looked more like a princess. “We’re really excited about the first episode of Super Explosive Treasure Hunt, but, you guys…” He turned to face the three of them. “Why are we dressed like this?”
“At least you get to show your face on TV,” Peg said, his voice muffled behind the mask. “It could be anyone behind here.”
“You are a very hot girl,” Koko said in her Japanese accent.
“This catsuit isn’t practical,” Audrey told them, wiggling around to try to get comfortable.
Thorne turned back to the camera. “Every week in Super Explosive Treasure Hunt, we’ll take on a new challenge that will help us learn and grow as people,” he read from the cue card. His voice sounded a little stilted.
“I think we’re fine as we are though,” Koko said, pouting.
“This week, we’ll divide into two teams and race to retrieve a special item from backstage at the Tempest concert. Whoever retrieves the item and brings it to the checkpoint first wins a special prize.”
“What is the item?” Audrey asked, at the same time that Peg said, “What’s the prize?”
The director called cut. “Take it again from just after Koko says you’re fine. Audrey, you ask your question first, then Pegasus.”
Audrey knew she’d be bad at this. The others seemed to know instinctively when someone else was going to talk, but she had no sense of that kind of thing.
“The teams don’t know what the special item is, only that we’ll know it when we see it,” Thorne said. “And the prize is… a surPRIZE… are you guys kidding?”
Audrey expected the director to call cut again, but he just laughed and signaled for them to keep rolling.
“A surPRIZE?” Thorne shook his head.
Peg slipped the clown mask off his face. “How are we supposed to be motivated when we don’t even know what the prize is?”
More of the crew laughed. Apparently, they liked the “talking to someone off-camera” thing.
“So, we don’t know what we’re doing or why we’re doing it,” said Thorne. “But we’re going to be awesome at it anyway!”
“Yeah!” said Peg and Koko.
“Yeah!” said Audrey.
“Okay, Supernova, let’s explode!” Thorne said.
The director called cut, and the crew moved to film them coin-flipping to figure out their “random” teams, then half the crew went off with Peg and Koko, who had to enter the stadium at a different point.
First, the director wanted to film them walking around the outside of the stadium, talking about their plan of attack. Both Audrey and Thorne nodded, and they started filming. Audrey walked along beside Thorne, waiting for him to start speaking, only he didn’t. Audrey opened her mouth to say something — anything; she didn’t know what — but before she could get a word out, the director called cut.
“What’s with you two? Just talk about getting into the stadium and how you’re going to beat the other two. It doesn’t have to be specific. You’re not going to get any air time if you don’t talk, and it’s Thorne that people want to see. Okay, let’s back up and start again.”
Audrey looked at Thorne helplessly as the crew got ready. She had no idea what to talk about.
“How would you get in?” he asked her. “If we were doing it for real, I mean.”
She shrugged. “Sewers, probably.” You could get anywhere from the sewers, mostly.
“Okay, no.” He shook his head, glancing around as if searching for inspiration. The sunlight hit him in such a way that he seemed to glow from within. Somehow, being dressed as a girl only seemed to highlight his masculinity. His broad shoulders looked more pronounced, his jaw squarer. He was obviously taller because of the shoes.
When Audrey looked away from him, she realized the cameras were filming.
“There’s no way in,” he said. “The security guards won’t let us.”
“Only because you won’t go through the sewers,” she said. They were supposed to be walking, she remembered, so she gave Thorne a nudge and they started walking.
“Just because you’re a feral alley cat, you can’t expect other people to go trudging through the muck,” he said.
“Princess,” she told him. “Princess Thorne, too pretty for the muck.” She laughed, almost forgetting they were on camera.
“Alley cat Audrey, too feral to live with humans.” His eyes went wide for a moment, as if he was worried he’d gone too far, but she just laughed.
Then she spotted something and grabbed him by the arm, pointing. “I have an idea!”
She took off running, dragging him along. She had no idea if the camera people were keeping up, but she didn’t want them to miss their chance. The dry cleaners that the agency used were unloading the racks of costumes from the back of their van. There were canvas covers over the clothes racks to protect them. If they could sneak under those covers, they’d get wheeled right inside the stadium.
“Cut!” the director called as they got close.
Audrey and Thorne stopped running. They’d missed their chance.
“Great idea, Audrey!” said the director. “We just need to get permission for you to do that before we can film it.”
Audrey and Thorne stood around while the director chatted with t
he dry cleaner.
“You did really well then,” Thorne said.
Audrey shrugged. “I tried to forget it was TV,” she said.
He nodded. “Okay, I’ll do that too.” The light of competition flared in his eyes. “Let’s pretend we’re doing this for real.”
Things went a lot easier now that they’d decided to take it seriously. They snuck inside on the costume racks, and once they were out of there, Audrey had a vague idea of where they were.
“The stage is just up there,” she said.
“You want to see?” Thorne asked, already walking toward the stairs.
She climbed up after him and came out in a small sectioned-off area behind the main stage that was full of scaffolding for the staging. Most of the crew didn’t bother climbing up after them, only one camera girl.
The first thing that struck Audrey as they walked out onto the stage was how big it was. Not just the empty stadium, but the stage itself. For a moment, she was overwhelmed with panic at how Supernova could ever be expected to fill that empty space. Thorne walked to the edge of the stage and looked down over the side, but Audrey felt like she was stuck to the spot.
“We’re playing here?” she asked Thorne. “On this stage?”
He turned back and came to stand beside her. “Next month,” he said. His voice was filled with something she’d never heard before. It was more than excitement, more than expectation. She didn’t know what to call it. It was as if his feelings were too large to be contained, as if they were bubbling over.
He stepped out to the side, dragging his other foot beside him. She knew in an instant what he was doing — the choreography for “Super Explosion!”. She laughed and joined in with him. She didn’t need the music; she could hear it in her head, and the rhythmic thumping of their feet on the stage kept the beat for them. The steps weren’t that complicated but they were fun, and it suddenly seemed that maybe it would be possible after all. Maybe, if it was with Thorne, this stadium wouldn’t be so hard to fill.
When they finished, Thorne turned to her, smiling. It was a new smile, one she didn’t have a name for. It wasn’t sunshine or moonlight; it was a whole spectrum. A rainbow. A sunrise.
“You can do this, Audrey,” he told her. “It’s going to be amazing.”
She smiled back at him, and it felt like the first smile of her life.
“Oh em gee, you guys,” said the camera girl, lowering the camera. Audrey had forgotten she was there. “That was great. The fans are going to love it.”
“We’d better get back to it,” Thorne said.
Unfortunately, neither of them had any idea where Tempest’s dressing room might be.
“I thought you’d been here before,” Audrey said, opening a door to check a random room off the corridor they were walking down.
“Fifteen minutes,” one of the crew called.
“There’s a heap of dressing rooms here,” Thorne said. “How am I supposed to know which one? Can’t you just sense Eli Gale through your stupid crush on him or something?”
Audrey stopped walking and glared at him. “Shut up, Thomas Thorne,” she said. She could feel her cheeks heating up. “I don’t have a crush.”
“It’s obvious you do,” he said. “Everybody knows it.”
She wasn’t sure if he really thought that or if he was saying it for the camera, to make light of the rumors. Either way, he shouldn’t say it. “You do. You have a crush. That’s why you’re so mean.”
Before he could answer, they walked around a corner, and their conversation was immediately forgotten. Halfway down the hall, a door was flung open, and Audrey recognized the voices coming from inside the room.
“No, it’s definitely not that,” said Koko. “They said we’d know when we saw it.”
Audrey and Thorne broke into a run, the crew thundering along behind them.
Koko and Peg had obviously just gotten there and started looking, because one section of the room had been trashed in their search, clothing and books strewn on the floor, furniture askew, while everything was in place in the rest of the room.
“Tempest is going to kill you,” Thorne told them, heading to the opposite corner.
It was a large room, and the others had a head start. Audrey thought they’d be better off approaching the search tactically if they wanted to win.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” she murmured, turning in a slow circle as she surveyed the room, looking for something out of place. It was hard to spot anything with so many crew members in the room. There was a table with food and drinks set out, somebody’s backpack, some furniture.
“Are you going to help me look, or are you going to just stand there?” Thorne asked.
“Just stand here,” Audrey said, cataloguing everything she saw into her memory bank.
A pile of merchandise, an old book with a leather cover, someone’s laptop.
She wondered about the book and took a step toward it. The book had gilded letters on the front and didn’t seem like something that would be useful for concerts. Before she could look at it, Thorne gave a hoot from behind her.
She turned around to see Thorne waving around a small gold trophy and doing a funny little dance.
“No way. That’s not it,” Koko said, her fake accent slipping a little.
“It’s definitely it,” said Thorne. He hooted again. It wasn’t princelike. “Right here, it says: SUPER EXPLOSIVE TREASURE HUNT CHAMPION, and as you will see, on top is a star. This is definitely it.”
As Peg and Koko turned to look at each other, Audrey sensed danger in the air.
“Thorne! Run!” she yelled.
Thorne looked at Audrey, then at the other two. Audrey was closest to the door, but Peg and Koko were closer to Thorne. No way could he make it past them.
“Take it and go!” he yelled, hurling the trophy right at her head. “Don’t worry about me! Save yourself!”
Audrey grabbed the trophy out of the air, and as she turned for the door, she saw Peg vault over the sofa and lunge for Thorne. Koko started toward her, but Audrey was already running out the door.
“But I don’t know where the checkpoint is!” she yelled as she ran.
“Cut!” yelled the director. “That’s great, you guys, really great. Audrey, you can stop running and come back.”
Every instinct in Audrey told her to keep running.
“Audrey, come back!” yelled the director.
She realized she really didn’t know where she was going. She was just running for the sake of it. She stopped, turned and headed back, clutching the trophy tightly.
“We haven’t set up the checkpoint yet,” the director said. “We’ll do that later, when we film the night scenes. Great work, everyone. That’s a wrap for now.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The president was so happy with the footage that the puffs of smoke coming out of her nose turned pink. She seemed especially delighted by the part where Thorne called Audrey an alley cat.
“That’s perfect,” she told them. “That’s exactly the image we need. Much better than what we had. I’ll get Sheela to redesign Audrey’s image based on a more catlike concept.”
Although everyone said that the outcome of the episode wasn’t important, Audrey still wouldn’t let go of the trophy. She’d never won anything before, that she could remember, and even if it had all been staged, it made her feel as if maybe there were things she could do after all.
“They’re cutting together the footage now. It should be up online within the week. We were aiming for a 30-minute show, but there’s probably enough good footage here for a one-hour special.” The president sighed, and more pink smoke unfurled around her. “It’s such a relief to know my judgment wasn’t completely off about you four. Now, tell me about your concert rehearsals.”
The concert rehearsals were intense. As they got closer and closer to the actual concert, Audrey’s muscles never stopped aching. Her coaching had taken a back seat, but she was learning jus
t as much from the rehearsals now that she had to apply the coaching in a practical way. They danced the same choreography over and over, making minor adjustments based on which stage they’d be on, who would be standing where, their costumes, and what song they’d be leading into next. Audrey would just feel as if she had one part right, and then it would be changed.
Her voice was still too weak for a lot of the songs, so most of the lines that she sang solo on the recording were either sung together with one of the others or given to Koko. Audrey didn’t mind. She knew she wasn’t very good, and she preferred to sing as part of the group. There was enough pressure coming from other directions.
The president wanted them all to play instruments for a section of the concert. Peg was a good guitarist — he’d learned from his father since he was a kid. Koko wasn’t bad on drums, and Thorne played keyboards. Audrey’s memory meant she could pick up the basics of playing bass guitar easily enough, but that didn’t mean she could play in time with the others, or play well. And it was one more thing for her to learn.
The closer it got to the concert, the less time Audrey had to worry about not having enough time. The Tempest concerts finished, which meant that Supernova could start rehearsals at the stadium. It was a good thing that Audrey had already gotten to stand on the stage; otherwise, she might have felt overwhelmed the first time she walked out there as part of Supernova. All of the Tempest staging was gone, replaced by what they had discussed during the concert production meetings. It seemed strange that things they had only talked about had somehow become real. It was its own sort of magic. Thorne’s shooting star idea was going to be spectacular.
Even without Audrey, the other three would’ve been more than enough to fill the stadium. She hadn’t needed to worry. As they ran down the walkway from the main stage to the backstage area, the other three jumped around, laughing and waving to their imaginary fans. More than ever, she wondered if there was a place for her there. Why did they even need her? What did she contribute? She knew the president had her reasons, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever figure them out.
