The Princess and the Fangirl

by Ashley Poston

  I clear my throat. “Ethan…um, hi. I, um, left my stuff in here.”

  He breathes in through his nose, and a little of the tension melts. He sidesteps so I can slip past him into Jess’s hotel room. It’s just like when I left it. I grab my bag that I’d thrown on the couch and loop it over my shoulder.

  “I think I’m going to go back to my hotel room for the night. So, tomorrow morning…”

  And that’s when I notice all of the freshly ironed shirts hanging in the bathroom doorway. An ironing board stands just behind the couch, the iron giving off a soft hiss of steam.

  He was…ironing?

  “Where have you been?” he asks, closing the door with too-measured gentleness. His voice reflects his true feelings: quietly controlled rage.

  Oh. It clicks.

  “You iron when you’re worried,” I say, hazarding a guess.

  “And fold laundry, and mop floors, and hem pants—and don’t change the subject. Where have you been?” He folds his arms over his chest, a finger tapping agitatedly against his biceps.

  “Out,” I reply. “Why do you care? I wasn’t being Jessica.”

  “You went off on your own!”

  “Of course I did! Aren’t I allowed to? You obviously don’t care what happens when I’m me, only when I’m being your precious Jessica.”

  “Imogen—”

  “And you know what? I get it. She has everything! She’s not living in anyone’s shadow! Don’t worry. Jessica Stone’s intact. I didn’t tell anyone her secrets. Besides I’m no one. I’ll always be no one. It’s my lot in life, right?” And then I do something I know I should not do. I adopt Jessica Stone’s perfect lilt and I purr, “But I think your love for Jess might be a bit unrequited?”

  A muscle on the left side of his jaw twitches with annoyance.

  I know I’m being nasty and cruel. But he was nasty and cruel, too, and I’m too tired and emotionally compromised to reel myself in.

  So is he, apparently.

  He rakes his fingers through his thick black hair. “Forget it! You know why I was mad? Because of this.” He digs his phone out of his sweatpants pocket and hits a contact. He puts the call on speakerphone and my stomach drops into my gut when I read the name.

  IMOGEN LOVELACE.

  He even spelled my name right.

  Although he’s calling it, my phone doesn’t start ringing, and shame eats at the edges of my ears because I remember I put in the number for my favorite pizza joint back home. It rings three times before one of the co-managers answers, “Junie here, and you’re calling the Roman Pizzeria, what can I get for you—”

  He stabs his thumb on the END CALL button, his dark eyes seething at no one but me.

  I swallow hard.

  Oh.

  Right. I forgot about that.

  “Is this some game to you, Imogen?”

  I clench my jaw and look away. Okay, I hadn’t really thought that plan through. And all of the little things are starting to come together. Him ironing, calling my number, being angry with me—it means that, whether it’s because I’m Jessica or not, he was worried about me once I’d stormed off. And that makes me feel just a little worse for yelling at him.

  “You can’t be Jess forever,” he says, his voice thin and brittle, “and those people out there? The ones who cheered for you? The paparazzi who called out your name? They care about Jess, and no matter how much you want or try to be her, all you’ll ever be is a copy.”

  His words feel like a Kamehameha wave come to incinerate me, stinging deep below the makeup and the pretty designer dress. Tears pool at the edges of my eyes, burning.

  “Is that what I am to you?” I ask quietly.

  His eyebrows furrow and he looks like he might say something, but he never does. The silence is all the answer I need. I duck around him and head for the door. “I’m going to my room. Have a good night.”

  I slam the door behind me, leaving like a companion from the Tardis, because the doors close exactly the same, abandoning me in the universe.

  Alone.

  DAY THREE

  SATURDAY

  * * *

  * * *

  “You were warned about me, ah’blen.”

  —Princess Amara, Episode 54, “Nox and Forever”

  I PULL MY—WELL, IMOGEN’S—BADGE OVER my head as I hop on the escalator and head up to ExcelsiCon. The showroom floor doesn’t open for another ten minutes, so that means I have time to grab coffee from the hotel café and find Harper’s—and my? Imogen’s?—booth. My cheekbone is still a little sore, but concealer has covered up most of the gross bruising. My face should hurt more and I should feel much sleepier than I do, but honestly bliss is the best pain reliever.

  The last few hours feel like a waltz across the stars. I never want to come back down.

  Harper and I stargazed until just after midnight, when she had to go check on the Stellar Party, and I ended up falling asleep in her bed before she returned. This morning, I woke up to her in bed with me, looking at me from where she lay on her pillow, the distance between us like one star to the next—lightyears traveled in a single breath. She smiled and I burrowed my head into the covers and tried to stop my heart from beating so fast.

  Harper’s room was not quite as stocked as my suite—they didn’t even have coffee filters—and so she tasked me with a coffee run while she began setting up the booth.

  That gave me time to hurry up to my suite in the other hotel and grab an extra pair of clothes; I didn’t want to wear Imogen’s again. I found Ethan asleep on the couch, his phone on the floor. I picked it up and put it on the coffee table and covered him up with a blanket.

  Imogen probably stayed in her room for the night. If I’d been in her shoes, I would’ve too.

  Without waking Ethan, I took a quick shower and slipped into a pair of jeans and a black hoodie I’d reserved for the plane ride home; I put on a pair of comfortable flats and tucked my hair into my SPACE QUEEN beanie. As I quietly left the suite, I slid Ethan’s glasses back on, the feeling of anonymity settling over me like a soothing balm. No one looked twice at me in the lobby; the morning was cool, the convention halls empty.

  Maybe I don’t hate ExcelsiCon as much as I thought.

  I decide to take a shortcut across the showroom to the café, thinking that I haven’t even gotten a call from Ethan yet, which is glorious. The Twitter leaker hasn’t posted again either. Everything is so calm.

  And I am so, so happy.

  Not even the towering Nox King on the corner of the aisle can ruin my mood.

  “Monster!”

  My feet slow to a stop. It’s a voice I don’t recognize—not Bran or Milo or any of the people I met last night. I glance behind me.

  Approaching me is woman with long black hair, dressed in a lacy black evening gown with butterfly sleeves and thigh-high boots. Her nails are like cat claws, her eyes dark with thick makeup. And then those dark eyes widen. “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re someone else.”

  I blink at the woman and then, remembering the warning, I look to the Nox King statue. Then back at her.

  This must be one of Imogen’s mothers.

  Cursing, I quickly angle my face away and fold my arms over my chest to hide my badge. “Um, it’s fine.”

  When I begin to leave she adds, “Your aura is very troubled. Come to Figurine It Out and we can—”

  “That’s great, goodbye!” I hastily escape the aisle, grateful that she doesn’t follow, and breathe a sigh of relief. That was much too close. Harper said that Imogen’s parents were fun, but that was just bizarre.

  I shake off the encounter and grab our coffees, arriving back at Artists’ Alley right before the floodgates open and con attendees rush inside. I slip behind the table just as people emerge from the escalators, on their way to panels and signing lines and meet-and-greets. I sit with a relieved sigh and hand Harper her coffee.

  “The nectar of the goddesses,” she says, and sighs happily. “You know, there’s some
thing lovely about coffee in the morning when you’re running on four hours of sleep.”

  “Four hours? You should’ve gotten at least six.”

  “Well someone kept kicking me out of bed.”

  “Well there was an entirely other bed that your roommates didn’t use last night.”

  “It was cold in the room. We needed to sleep together for warmth,” she points out slyly.

  “Save Amara!” I cry, thrusting a pin to a passing Caine Wise, who takes it and goes on his way. The convention is slowly filling again with people, browsing across the showroom floor and into Artists’ Alley. I push my glasses farther up my nose, hoping Harper will change the subject because, despite how much I truly and deeply want to flirt with her, I am walking a tightrope of time.

  The thief hasn’t posted another part of the script since last night, and I’m beginning to wonder why they’ve been silent for so long. Any one of these people could be the culprit—any of the costumed heroes and antiheroes and secondary characters that pass by the booth. They might’ve even taken a Save Amara pin, for all I know.

  And I hate to think—I’m dreading to dwell on—the realization that I’m not really looking forward to the next tweet. Because that means I’ll be one step closer either to finding the thief or to the thief outing me, and either way that is another step farther along the tightrope away from Harper.

  There have been so many chances to tell her the truth and yet…

  “Save Amara!” I call to a passing Spider-Man, and he takes the pin with a nod.

  Harper finishes setting up her side of the booth, various art prints and stickers and enamel pins laid out across the table, and then opens her sketchbook to work on commissions. We sit in comfortable silence as she draws and I hand out pins, asking people to sign the petition, even though it goes against everything I want in my career.

  I’m doing it to keep in character, I convince myself as I clip a pin onto a small Amara and watch her toddle away with her mother.

  “Your brother’s trying out for quarterback, right?” Harper asks as she sketches the face of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Space Daddy (the commissioner’s request, not my words).

  “Um…yeah.” I think she’s talking about Milo. Imogen doesn’t have another brother, does she?

  “Has he heard anything yet?”

  “Um, I don’t think so.”

  She nods, looking up from her sketch, and her eyebrows furrow in uncertainty. “Um, Imogen?”

  “Hmm?”

  My name is Jess, I should say.

  “Would you…would you want to go to the ExcelsiCon Ball with me tonight?”

  My breath catches and I swallow hard to keep the answer from rising up out of my throat. I hesitate because I’m not Imogen, and I am standing on the edge, and this is very, very bad—

  “Or not,” she adds when I don’t say anything. “I mean, dances are stupid anyway.”

  “No, Harper, that’s not—”

  A familiar ringtone breaks out from my back pocket. At first I think I imagine it—but no, it’s definitely the Pokémon theme song.

  Only one person is assigned that ringtone.

  “Excuse me,” I apologize, and slip out of the booth. I retreat to the outer corner of Artists’ Alley, near where the pretzel man set up shop. It’s a little quieter here, and it gives me space to shrug out of Imogen’s character without anyone noticing. I check my phone.

  I have a missed call and a text from Ethan.

  ETHAN TANAKA (12:02 PM)

  —Jess, another tweet is up.

  —[Link]

  —I think you need to call Darien.

  I click on the link, even though I already know I don’t want to read it. The dreamy haze that has danced in my head all morning crystalizes with a cold burst of dread.

  CARMINDOR DIES, the tweet reads.

  It feels like a rubber band that has been wound and wound and wound around me pops. I sink to the carpet, staring at the excerpt. There are no clues this time who this person is or where they are—just the barest edge of a leather sofa. But I’m not sure if I really care all that much who is leaking the script.

  I don’t know what I thought I wanted to find in the sequel.

  I don’t know how I expected to feel.

  But it isn’t…this.

  I pull up Dare’s number, but I hesitate to call. It’s noon, and the cast has a panel at noon.

  The news broke during the panel, I realize, and my stomach twists into knots. I hope Imogen doesn’t do anything stupid.

  Ethan won’t let her. Will he?

  A PHONE DINGS IN THE AUDIENCE—Starfield’s communication tone—and then another ding in the front row. Then a hundred dings in succession.

  My smartphone vibrates on the table.

  Darien and I, the only two of us on the panel (Amon, our moderator, is late), look at each other. We’re supposed to be talking about what it’s like to play opposing forces. “Star-Crossed in Starfield” is the name of the panel, and, you know, I was feeling pretty good about bullshitting my way through it.

  Another phone dings.

  Now I shift in my chair, apprehensive.

  A murmur sweeps across the crowd.

  My phone vibrates for only two things right now: my mothers texting me or another leak of the script.

  I don’t know what to do—should I read it like everyone in the audience is obviously doing? My eyes stray to the front row until I realize that Ethan isn’t there. I left the hotel without him this morning. I didn’t go to Jess’s room to see if he’d escort me to the convention, and I did well by myself. The paparazzi greeted me outside the con and I gave them Jess’s best smile as I breezed past.

  I don’t need to apologize to Ethan—he was out of line last night, too. Way, way out of line. Although, I barely slept a wink in my hotel room, my traitorous brain writing and rewriting apology texts to him that I never sent.

  Not that I would apologize.

  Not until he apologized first.

  Darien makes the executive decision to check his phone, and the warm look that he’d fixed on his face grows stony.

  And then distant.

  I check the notification, too. My breath catches in my throat.

  Oh, starflame.

  @starfieldscript337

  CARMINDOR DIES. LOOKS LIKE WE’RE IN FOR A NEW HERO.

  PRINCE CARMINDOR hears AMARA’s voice in his head, but it doesn’t matter. He can’t control his body anymore, and his mind is fading. He keys in the code to drop the shields to the Federation’s Commissary. The last stronghold.

  He knows he must welcome GENERAL SOND. The Path of the Sun is the only way to find salvation. To find AMARA.

  AMARA(V.O.)

  You don’t want to come find me yet, ah’blen. You have work to do.

  PRINCE CARMINDOR

  (talking to himself)

  I will always look for you.

  AMARA (V.O.)

  But you will not find me here.

  He keys in the last number as the door to the control room opens behind him. He hears his name, but it’s too late. Everything is muted. He has lost too much blood from the wound in his side.

  CARMINDOR collapses to the floor and does not get back up.

  My hands begin to shake. Just as I thought: Carmindor will be conscripted, and the only person who can save him is dead, and they haven’t written in another character who can. From the corner of my eye, I watch as Darien gently sets down his phone. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and his gaze drifts up to mine.

  And suddenly, I can see it in his eyes—how he wishes that I were Jess. The real Jess.

  My hands close into fists.

  The low murmur in the audience grows louder the longer we sit here, unsure of what to do. Do we acknowledge what just happened or press on with the panel? In all my nervousness, I realize I’m biting my thumbnail.

  Jess doesn’t bite her thumbnail.

  I force my hands onto the table and lean over to whisper to him, “Wh
at do we do?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t—”

  “Sorry I’m late!” Amon jumps up the steps, rushing onto the stage. He pats me on the shoulder as he passes. “Did I miss anything?”

  Everything, I want to scream. You missed every—

  Amon sits down at the end of the table and scoots his chair up to his microphone. “Hello there. Thank you, everyone, for coming to our panel. We’re going to start with some easy questions—”

  Someone in the audience jumps to their feet. Because of the stage lights, I can’t see who it is, just a dark shape in a sea of shadows. “Is it real?” they shout.

  Amon smooths a smile over his face. “I’m sorry, is what real?” he asks, but Darien leans in close to his microphone, shaking his head.

  “No, it’s not. It can’t be.”

  “Isn’t it?” I whisper.

  Another shadow asks, “Are you dying, Carmindor?”

  “No! I’m not!” Darien’s voice is sharper than it should be, and then he adds, quieter, as if wondering the same thing, “Of course I’m not.”

  “Don’t lie to us!” another person shouts. “Are they killing Starfield?”

  My nails dig into my palms.

  “Get a better Carmindor!” someone else shouts. “Reboot it again!”

  “Kill it!”

  “Bring back David and Natalia!” another person cries to more shouts of agreement.

  Beside me, Darien’s face begins to pale. He sits back in his chair, but his shoulders are bunched together as though he’s getting ready to spring from the table and leave. Other people shout slogans I’ve read on Tumblr and Twitter, more obscene things that I’m sure Darien has read before but never experienced in person.