by Sarah Kuhn
In truth, they were embarrassed by her.
Maybe that’s why the adoration of the public mattered so much.
“Second, you will clarify that you aren’t dating anyone—particularly not ‘mystery men’—because Aveda Jupiter is far too busy saving the world to have time for such pedestrian endeavors.” Aveda crinkled her nose, as if disgusted by the very notion. “Third, you will casually drop in a mention of your insanely high metabolism, which allows you to cram as many dates down your throat as you want.”
She set the iPad down and gave me a frosty look.
“And, please, in the future, Evie, try to embody behavior that is more becoming of Aveda Jupiter. Being me is a big responsibility. And this is simply not up to my standards.”
I took a deep breath, tamping down on the unhinged feeling welling up in me. I had the urge to blurt out every single thing in my overstuffed brain. Like the fact that she’d loved the dress when I’d first brought it to her. Or the fact that taking an escort to the benefit had been her idea. Or the fact that I had so seen that statue demon, dammit.
At least . . . I thought I had.
My toe started tapping on the floor of its own accord, seemingly detached from the rest of my body, and I felt adrenaline spike in my veins.
It’s fine, I told myself. Let her talk. She’s probably going stir-crazy from being trapped in here. From being bedridden. From being unable to be Aveda Jupiter. That’s the one thing that gives her meaning and purpose and drive and now she can’t do it, and that’s got to be frustrating as hell. She’s micromanaging the shit out of me so she has control over something. And she’s probably overcompensating with the attitude a bit. Or a lot. Whatever.
It’s fine.
“You can actually do your press conference right now,” Aveda continued, examining her flaking nail polish. “My Social Media Guru has noted mentions on Twitter of strange activity at the Yamato Theater. Everyone’s freaking out because the movie stopped in the middle with no explanation and they can’t find anyone to restart the thing. It’s probably nothing. You know our dear citizens think a new portal’s opening up whenever they feel so much as a light draft in the room. But me putting in an appearance reassures them that they’re safe. And this will give you the opportunity to bring up the talking points we just discussed.”
She smiled at me in her “that settles it” kind of way.
“Aveda,” I said. “What if it’s not nothing? What if there is an actual portal with actual demons and I have to fight them? What if I have to, like, punch something? I don’t know how to do that.”
“Don’t be silly.” She turned back to her iPad. “There’s no mention of anything even remotely portal-ish in the tweets, and if you’re really concerned, you can take Lucy with you. I’ve been through this kind of thing a million times and it’s always a false alarm. People just want to see Aveda Jupiter. You worry too much.”
“No.” My toe tapping increased to double-time, beating against the floor with the ferocity of a heavy metal drummer during a shred-tastic solo. “I think I worry the exact right amount. We should think this through and discuss—”
“Oh, stop being so emotional,” she said, giving me a look. “Really, Evie. Arguing with me about the best course of heroic action? Going on about some statue demon hallucination? These little outbursts aren’t just unbecoming of a girl posing as a superhero. They’re unbecoming in general.”
“I . . .”
“Take that phone call from last night,” she continued. “You didn’t need to get so upset. I had it under control.”
“You called me! You were drunk and you let Bea—”
“We were having a good time. I think she’s starting to see me as a big sister figure.”
The adrenaline flowing through me turned vicious and icy and my toe dialed up its manic tapping. And before I could stop it, rage built, taking me toward that feeling of unhingedness again. I felt my hands clench. I tried to slow my breathing, to remember how I usually calmed myself when Aveda was being unreasonable.
It’s fine, I thought, trying to repeat my mantra from a few minutes ago. Finefinefine. So she accidentally let your little sister get her wasted and is now covering by saying it was all in good fun and is trying to claim said sister for her own and come to think of it, this is extra-crazy behavior, even for her—
CRASH.
I swung around to see a parade of burly men in coveralls hauling stacks of boxes past the bedroom door and down the hall. My eyes went to the source of the crash: shards of broken glass splayed out all over the hallway. One of the coveralled men guiltily tried to sweep it into an overflowing box. I squinted at the shards, which looked familiar.
“Aveda,” I said, trying to keep my tone steady. “Is that my lamp? The one that’s usually in my home?”
“Hey, boss.” One of the coveralled men stuck his head in the bedroom doorway, addressing Aveda. “My guys are moving a little slow today, but rest assured: we’ll get it done.”
“Thank you, Frank,” Aveda said. “Your work is much appreciated.”
A sickening realization took root in my stomach. I turned back to Aveda. “Annie. What . . . is . . . going . . . on?”
Nate frowned at Aveda. “You didn’t tell her?”
“It’s better this way,” Aveda said. “Especially with her heightened emotional state.” She didn’t even look up as she started to address me. “Evie: I’m moving you and Beatrice in here. I think you’ll agree it’s for the best. You’ve been practically living here the past couple days anyway. And now you can receive my instructions properly and I can look after Bea while you’re busy being me.” She finally deigned to look up from her iPad, gifting me with a dazzling smile. “Not to worry, I didn’t move your furniture—just your clothes and favorite knickknacks and decorations, so it really feels like home. You can still sublet your old place if you like. It’ll be wonderful for everyone.”
“And you just decided this.” I looked back at the movers merrily jostling my stuff down the hall. Another CRASH rang out.
My wheezing took on a snorty, labored sound. Why am I letting her get to me? My one true superpower is I never let her get to me.
And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my sister bustled into the room.
“Bea . . .” I stared at her in confusion. She had her phone in one hand and a clipboard in the other.
“Hey, guys.” Bea nodded at Aveda. “Boss, the tweets about the movie ‘mysteriously cutting out’ . . .” She made little air quotes around her clipboard. “ . . . have increased eighty percent in the last forty-five seconds. Evie needs to glamour up and get out of here before the ‘Where’s Aveda’ hashtag really takes root.”
I glanced over at Nate, but he looked as bewildered as I did.
“Do you even remember that school is a thing at this point?” I blurted out.
“School’s for nonstarters, Big Sis,” Bea said. “I have a job now.”
“Job?”
I heard Nate muttering to himself. “Social media . . .” He put a hand on my arm and an idle thought plopped into my head: Maisy was right about one thing. His biceps were very—
For fuck’s sake. What was wrong with me?
“That’s what Aveda meant just now,” he continued, “when she started talking about the Social Media Guru.”
“Yeah, keep up, oldsters.” Bea snapped her fingers at us. “The world keeps turning while you age. Aveda and I had a good talk about her social media presence while we were hanging out last night and we agreed my talents were being wasted in the public school system.”
“Wasted?” I sputtered. “Was that before or after you got tanked on spiked punch?”
“I mean, your idea for tracking mentions during Aveda’s battles wasn’t bad, Evie, but there’s so much more to be done in that arena,” Bea said, as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Oh, hold up . . .” She frowned at her phone screen. “The hashtag is imminent. People are pissed about the movie cutting out and the Yamato employees seem to have vanished. They really want Aveda. You’ve gotta get over there, Evie.”
I opened my mouth, closed it. Stared at her some more. Thousands of stray thoughts were warring in my head. Hallucinations . . . statue demons . . . social media . . . biceps . . .
I took yet another deep breath. If I wasn’t careful, those thoughts were going to mix themselves into emotional stew and cause me to burn HQ to the ground.
So I forced my hands to unclench and did the only sensible thing I could think of: I backed out of the room and pointed myself toward the Yamato.
CHAPTER TEN
I THOUGHT I was done running for the day.
Given how wrong I’d been about everything this Being Aveda Jupiter gig entailed, I needed to cut it out with the dumbass predictions.
Thud . . . thud . . . thud.
My feet, encased in thigh-high platform boots that seemed to weigh ten pounds each, plodded against the Yamato Theater’s threadbare carpet. Aveda insisted her Galactic Warrior Princess costume was best for this situation, so I was clad in a tight silver minidress, a flappy cape that kept getting tangled around my arms, and the monstrous boots. Every single element of this getup seemed designed to prevent me from achieving my ultimate goal, which was forward motion.
As I thudded laboriously down the aisle, I was hyper-aware of the scrutinizing gazes from the packed house of moviegoers. They’d been shocked into silence by . . . well. Something so evil, no one could properly convey it on Twitter, apparently. Only the occasional rustle of someone nervously twisting a candy wrapper punctuated the air. I didn’t see the telltale portal glow drifting above our heads, though, so Aveda was probably right: it was nothing more than hyperactive imaginations at work. All I had to do was give them their desired dose of Jupiter and I’d be done.
I hadn’t set foot in the Yamato in years, but it looked exactly the same as it had on that fateful day when Aveda and I first witnessed The Heroic Trio. It was untouched by the renovations that had turned other theaters into Death Stars of high-tech movie-going—no IMAX, no 3D. It was locked in a time capsule of lo-fi mustiness, a dated haven for anyone who didn’t want to fork over half their paycheck to see the latest blockbuster reboot based on a line of shitty toys. The only modern-type thing I spotted on my thudding journey was a faded cardboard standee of Tommy Lemon at the theater entrance, urging you to see his new movie with a cheesy grin and an exaggerated thumbs-up.
I landed in front of the screen and swiveled around to face the crowd, my legs wobbling atop the platform boots.
“She’s in place.” Lucy’s voice crackled in my ear. “Now what? I see no evidence of . . . well, anything.”
My freak-ass ensemble was topped by a rhinestone-encrusted plastic tiara, which Bea had rigged with an earbud and camera. The possibility that she secretly possessed high-tech talents and could use them for her own nefarious purposes scared the living crap out of me. Not to be outdone, Nate had asked her to add a couple of other elements to my outfit: a heart rate monitor, body temperature sensor, and a few other things I didn’t even want to know about, all designed to give him metrics on my every move.
The tiara’s camera ensured that Aveda and Nate could see and hear everything I was about to do from HQ, while Lucy observed from the back of the theater, her own earbud connecting her to our communication system.
My eyes swept the crowd, a mixed bag of school-skippers, stoners, and slackers. Their eyes were fastened on me, wide and expectant.
“Make an introduction.” Aveda’s voice crackled through the tiara. “Aveda Jupiter knows how to put on a show.”
I raised my voice. “People of Earth!”
“Ugh, that’s terrible,” said Aveda. I heard Lucy smother a staticky giggle.
“People of Earth,” I said more firmly. “I’m here to save you from . . . from . . .” I glanced at the movie screen, a swath of white nothingness, silent and benign.
“What exactly am I saving you from?” I said, turning back to the crowd.
“That’s barely a speech!” squealed Aveda. “Milk the drama! And then get to my talking points!”
“Stop distracting her,” growled Nate.
“Miss Jupiter?” A girl in the front row raised her hand, her face obscured behind Coke-bottle glasses and a raggy mop of dirt-brown hair. She looked about fourteen.
“Yes?” As I raised my arm to point at her, I got tangled in my cape again. I twisted free and settled for giving her an officious nod. “Er, citizen?”
“We were watching the latest Tommy Lemon movie,” the girl said. “The one where he disguises himself as a giant baby? And all of a sudden the movie stopped.”
“I told you: false alarm,” Aveda’s voice hissed in my ear.
“Citizen,” I said to the girl. “That doesn’t exactly sound like an, ah . . . Aveda Jupiter–level emergency. Why didn’t you all just get a refund?”
“Don’t tell them to leave!” Aveda squealed. “Stop wasting time and talk about my insane metabolism!”
“Well, Miss Jupiter,” the girl continued, her voice taking on the cadence of a straight-A student gunning for extra credit, “we looked for someone to restart the movie. But we couldn’t find anyone. And then we were trapped.”
“Trapped?”
“We couldn’t get up. From our seats. We still can’t.” She demonstrated, wriggling around, trying to detach herself from her movie theater chair. It held her in place, as if the rear of her pants was covered in glue. “And then . . .” Her eyes shifted back and forth behind her thick glasses. “ . . . right after that, all our phone signals were blocked. So we couldn’t even tweet about it, Miss Jupiter!”
I looked out at the crowd of people anxiously clutching rumpled popcorn bags. Messy-haired girl’s eyes bored into me. I wanted to say something that would instantly reassure her, make her feel safe. I scoured my brain for the right words, but it was too busy trying to puzzle out what all of this meant.
No portal, no demons. Just a bunch of trapped moviegoers with malfunctioning smartphones.
“Aveda,” I whispered in the direction of my tiara, “this is bizarre—”
BOOM.
A thunderclap reverberated through the theater, inciting scattered gasps in the audience. I whipped around, nearly toppling over in my giant boots, looking for the source of the sound.
Suddenly the lower corner of the movie screen popped forward like a 3D effect—like someone was trapped behind the screen, trying to break free. I jumped back, my heart rate ratcheting upward.
What the hell?
Screams rippled through the crowd. Just a few at first, but they built to a fever pitch as a giant fisted hand burst through the screen. The hand opened and expanded, each fingertip sporting a deadly looking claw.
“The movie’s starting again! You can finally get to my talking points!” yelped Aveda. “And wow! What an incredible special effect.”
“Not a special effect,” I snapped, lunging backward.
A different shape popped through the screen, an oversize head with protruding fangs. As the thing scanned the crowd, a malevolent glare etched itself across its face. I forced myself to focus on the details of the shape, willing my heart rate to settle down. And that’s when I noticed this terrifying visage sported a trace of the familiar: the protuberant ears and buggy eyes marked it as the usually friendly face of Tommy Lemon. The face I’d seen two nights earlier at Whistles.
Well, not the exact face. There were the fangs, for one thing. And his skin was sort of gray and pockmarked and flaky, like he was in really desperate need of moisturizer.
“HOW. DARE. YOU.” His voice boomed, but it didn’t quite match up with his mouth: the effect was distorted, eerie. I noticed a black smudge on his index finger and tr
ied to home in on it, to get a better look. His taloned fingers swiped forward, his aim wild and uneven. I jumped back, the screams of the crowd echoing in my ears.
“Evie, get them to listen to you!” barked Aveda. “Tell them it’s just a movie!”
“Pardon me, love,” Lucy chimed in. “But this doesn’t look like ‘just’ anything.”
“It’s a supernatural presence,” Nate said. “It has to be.”
“It looks exactly like Tommy,” Aveda retorted.
“You can’t ignore what’s right in front of you,” Nate countered. “I’m telling you—”
“You don’t tell me anything,” Aveda said. “Anyway, we need to get Evie to follow instructions—”
“Shut up!” I snapped. “All of you.”
“MY MINIONS,” wailed the grotesque version of Tommy. “NOT MINION ENOUGH.”
I tilted my head at the screen. “What’s that, Mr. Lemon?”
The Tommy thing responded with another wail, then extended his claws even farther. His movements were labored, lurchy. One of his claws swiped dangerously close to me, snagging my cape.
“RAWWWWWWR!” he bellowed triumphantly.
“Oh yeah, that’s real,” I gasped, trying to twist away. “Definitely fucking real.”
He yanked on the cape, dragging me back. I planted the soles of my boots on the carpet, trying to pitch myself forward.
“Dive, Evie! Low to the ground!” yelled Aveda, apparently accepting that I was in actual danger.
“Lucy! Help her!” Nate barked.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to move,” Lucy said, her voice frustrated. “Evie, try transferring your weight—”
“Stop . . . talking . . .” I gasped. My arms pinwheeled as I attempted to gain traction, tangling further in the folds of the cape.
