I’ll deal with it tonight. I will.
The cafetorium was finally empty. The rest of the cast would already be headed to the opening night party, but not Holden. No cast party, no way. He’d rather die than spend the next few hours glued to the snack table. Don’t mind me. I don’t care if no one bothers to talk to me. I’m cool being alone. Just me and the onion dip, yo.
He couldn’t go home yet, anyway. There were still the unanswered texts on his phone, the unopened card in his backpack. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Shit. He couldn’t put it off any longer. I’ll stop by on the way home. We’ll talk. Make it quick, like pulling off a Band-Aid, right?
Right. He should at least read the card first. It would be a dick move not to—he resolved to read it just as soon as he got to his car.
Holden thought he’d be the last one to leave, but when he stepped out into the parking lot he was surprised to find another car still there. By the light of the streetlamps he recognized the Darwin fish-with-legs sticker on the back bumper, incongruously sandwiched between stickers for Amnesty International and the Police Officers’ Association.
Holden stopped and stared, his car keys dangling from his hand and his heart pounding up near his ears.
Seyah Jackson sat in the driver’s seat, her face lit blue by the glow of the phone she held to her ear. She kept turning the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. Holden stood there like a dumb statue, like a bottle with a face painted on it. After a few more tries she finally gave up and opened the car door. That’s when she spotted Holden standing there in the shadows.
“Wait, stay on with me for a minute,” she said into the phone. “There’s some guy standing here watching me.”
Some guy?
Of course. He must look like a psycho killer standing stock-still in the dark parking lot. Christ, he was straight out of a Japanese horror film.
“Hey, Titania,” he said, stepping into the light of the streetlamp. “It’s me!”
She stopped and squinted at him. “Peaseblossom?”
“Uh, Mustardseed, actually,” he said. “Something wrong with your car?”
She relaxed a little and talked into the phone. “No, it’s one of the fairies. Mustardseed … Yeah, the boy one. Hold on.” She cupped her hand over the phone and said to Holden, “It won’t start.”
Holden knew absolutely nothing about cars, so what he said next was pointless, but it seemed the thing for a guy to do. “You want me to take a look?”
“It’s cool,” she said, still talking into the phone. “Let me call you back.” Then, smiling at Holden, “I think the battery’s dead. I probably left my lights on.”
“I do that all the time.” He’d never done it even once.
“I’m sorry, but I’m totally blanking on your name.”
“Oh, it’s Holden. We ran lines together once on a break. Well, you ran lines, I didn’t really have any in that scene.” Or any at all. The director had cut Holden’s part, which was small to begin with, down to a walk-on role.
“Right, of course. I didn’t want to keep calling you Mustardseed.”
“The name sucks,” said Holden. “Titania’s not bad, though. Shakespeare was better at naming his leads, I guess.”
“I guess. So, do you want me to pop the hood?”
“Huh?”
“You said you could take a look at the engine.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Holden. “Yeah, pop the hood. I’ll look at the engine and see if … You know. What’s up in there.”
Holden lifted the hood as Seyah leaned over his shoulder and used her phone as a flashlight. He tried to keep his eyes on the engine and not stare directly at her from only inches away. Because that would be creepy. Almost as creepy as commenting on how good her shampoo smelled, not too flowery but tart like a freshly sliced lemon.
That would be super creepy.
“Hmm.” Holden touched a few things under the hood. Tapped on a metal thing here, peered interestedly at that other thing there. “I don’t really see anything wrong.” It was technically true.
Seyah sighed. “Yeah, I think it’s the battery. My friends were gonna leave the cast party and come and get me, but you don’t have any jumper cables, do you?”
Holden paused as he pictured the cables his dad made him carry in his trunk. They were still wrapped in the store plastic, ready to use.
The phone vibrated in his pocket. Another text. And a split-second decision.
Yeah, what is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done for love?
“No jumper cables, sorry,” lied Holden. “But if you want, I can give you a ride to the party. I’m headed there anyway.”
• • •
Holden mumbled lame excuses and apologies as he cleared the McDonald’s wrappers and Starbucks cups off the passenger’s seat. As Seyah got in, she sniffed. “Still got that new car smell.”
Holden took a whiff. Stale coffee and day-old hamburger pickles. When he’d parked his car that morning he hadn’t dreamed that he’d be cleaning the seat off for Titania herself, but here he was …
Blowing it. “Oh. Yeah, I’m sorry about the smell. I can run that stuff back inside to the trash if they haven’t locked up yet.”
“No,” said Seyah, smiling. “It’s fine. It was a joke. A shitty joke. You’re giving me a ride and all.”
Holden nodded, relieved. “I’ll crack the windows.”
“Perfect.”
“Buckle up.”
The next few minutes were awkwardly silent as they pulled out of the parking lot, but at least Holden could pretend to be focused on watching the road. When they reached their first stoplight, it got really bad. Nothing to do then but wait for the light to change. Maybe some music? She’d probably hate his playlist, though.
What’s up? I’m Mustardseed and videogame soundtracks are my jam.
Thankfully, Seyah broke the quiet. “So, the party’s at Cleaver’s house, right?”
“Uh, right.” Holden had overheard vague rumblings about it, but he hadn’t been officially invited. Technically, since he was a member of the cast, the invitation to the cast party was kind of automatic, but no one had come up to him specifically and said, “So Holden, we gonna see you at the party?”
“You know how to get there?” asked Seyah. “It’s across town. We can skip a bunch of lights if we take the back roads. I know the way.”
“Okay, sounds good.” It actually sounded great, because Holden didn’t have a clue where Cleaver lived.
Seyah navigated while Holden drove, which gave them something to talk about other than the lingering boy smell in his car. Eventually they both started to relax a little, and the talk drifted away from “turn left here” to something closer to a real conversation. At first they focused on the play, the one thing they had in common. Seyah complained about the director, Mr. Solomon, and how he trilled his r’s whenever he gave her a line reading. Together they bitched about the fog machine that made everything smell like ass.
By the time the conversation had gotten around to Holden’s legs, he was feeling pretty good.
“No! You didn’t.” Seyah covered her mouth in mock horror.
“Seriously,” said Holden. “If I didn’t shave them then the hair kept sticking out through the tights! It was gross. I’m telling you, it’s not easy being the only guy fairy in the play.”
“Can I see? C’mon, just a peek.”
“I’m kind of driving.”
“Oh, my God, that’s the best story ever.” Seyah laughed and the sound made Holden feel like Oberon himself, a king for a day. Or at least a car ride.
“We all have our moments,” he said, building up steam. “Andy Phillips scored the winning touchdown against the Tigers. I shaved my legs to play a fairy with no lines in the school play. I’d say we’re in the same league of awesome.”
“I think you just one-upped him. Also, Andy Phillips is a dick.”
“Yeah, okay. But it’s not as awesome as playing Titania. Rocking Titania.
You rocked it.”
Seyah cocked her head at him. “I rocked Shakespeare? Thanks.”
“I’m serious. What’s that line you say when you’ve been given the love potion? You know, after Bottom’s been turned into a donkey.”
“O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!” she said, softly.
He watched her. Holden couldn’t tell for sure in the dark, but Seyah might have been blushing.
“Better keep your eyes on the road, Holden.”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I am.” With both hands on the steering wheel and eyes front, he said, “Onstage you have to say that line to a guy in a donkey mask, and yet I totally believe it. You’re amazing.”
“Try acting opposite Brad Sanders. Believe me, the mask helps.”
“Is that what you want to do when you get out of school? Act?”
Seyah didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know. I love performing, I really do, but it’s a little selfish, isn’t it? My mom’s family’s really conservative—they’re Persian—and they definitely wouldn’t approve. And my dad’s a cop. He says the world needs, like, doctors and social workers and engineers.”
“Your dad’s a cop? That explains the bumper sticker.”
Seyah gave him a dubious look.
“I saw it when we were checking out your engine,” he added quickly.
“Yeah. Well, he’s brutal when I bring guys home. Answers the door in his uniform.”
This was followed by a soft lull in the conversation, but unlike the strained silence from earlier, this one felt natural. It was easy to enjoy the night, the drive together. They’d left the town behind them for a long stretch of twisting country road called Route 30. Holden knew that some kids liked to really open it up on these back roads, but he was in no hurry to get to the party. Seyah would meet up with her friends, and he’d be left loitering alone by the keg. The only boy fairy, the odd man out. No, his plan was to drop her off at the party and then make a quiet exit. Seyah’s friends could take her home from there. Holden had just this one car ride with her and he wanted to make it last. Besides, as his buzzing phone kept reminding him, he had other places he was supposed to be tonight. Someone he needed to see.
A splinter of guilt twisted in his gut, but he might never get this chance again.
Holden took a deep breath. “You know, um, can I tell you something?”
“Sure.”
“I’m not even really that into Shakespeare. This was my first play ever, and the only reason I got the part is because they needed bodies.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. Especially boys. They wanted at least one boy fairy and … Look, I gotta tell you, the whole reason I joined the play was—”
“Sorry, wait a sec.” Seyah reached over and drew her finger along Holden’s neck. Her touch made his hair tingle.
She held her finger up to the glow of the dashboard clock for him to see. Her fingertip was covered in glittery grease paint.
Seyah smiled. “Look! Fairy dust.”
The clock read 9:31.
The glitter paint on her fingertip suddenly sparkled as it caught the light from an oncoming car.
Seyah screamed his name. Holden jerked the wheel, but it was too late. They hit the truck head on.
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Writer Team
Max Gladstone has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia, drank almond milk with monks on Wudang Shan, and wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. Max is also the author of the Craft Sequence of books about undead gods and skeletal law wizards—Full Fathom Five, Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, and Last First Snow. Max fools everyone by actually writing novels in the coffee shops of Davis Square in Somerville, MA. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect. He tweets as @maxgladstone.
Before joining the Bookburners team, Margaret Dunlap wrote for ABC Family’s cult-hit The Middleman in addition to working on SyFy’s Eureka. Most recently, she was a writer and co-executive producer of the Emmy-winning transmedia series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and co-created its sequel Welcome to Sanditon. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Shimmer Magazine. Margaret lives in Los Angeles where she taunts the rest of the team with local weather reports and waits for the earthquake that will finally turn Burbank into oceanfront property. She tweets as @spyscribe.
Brian Francis Slattery is the author of Spaceman Blues, Liberation, Lost Everything, and The Family Hightower. Lost Everything won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2012. He’s the arts and culture editor for the New Haven Independent, an editor for the New Haven Review, and a freelance editor for a few not-so-secret public policy think tanks. He also plays music constantly with a few different groups in several different genres. He has settled with his family just outside of New Haven, CT, and admits that elevation above sea level was one of the factors he took into account. For one week out of every year, he enjoys living completely without electricity.
Andrea Phillips is an award-winning transmedia writer, game designer and author. Her debut novel is Revision, an SF thriller about a wiki where your edits come true. She has also worked on iOS fitness games Zombies, Run! and The Walk; The Maester’s Path for HBO’s Game of Thrones; human rights game America 2049; and the independent commercial ARG Perplex City. Her nonfiction book A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling is used to teach digital storytelling at universities around the world. You can find Andrea at andreaphillips.com, or on Twitter at @andrhia.
Mur Lafferty is the author of The Shambling Guides series from Orbit, including The Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans. She has been a podcaster for over 10 years, running award-winning shows such as I Should Be Writing and novellas published via podcast. She has written for RPGs, video games, and short animation. She lives in Durham, NC where she attends Durham Bulls baseball games and regularly pets two dogs. Her family regrets her Dragon Age addiction and wishes for her to get help. She tweets as @mightymur.
Amal El-Mohtar has received the Locus Award and been a Nebula Award finalist for her short fiction, and won the Rhysling Award for poetry three times. She is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey, and contributes reviews to the LA Times and NPR Books. Her fiction has appeared most recently in Lightspeed, Uncanny Magazine, and is forthcoming in The Starlit Wood anthology from Saga Press. She divides her time and heart between Ottawa and Glasgow. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com, or on Twitter @tithenai.
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