There are dark sides of every fandom. The pockets filled with a certain kind of nostalgia where everything is sacred and shouldn’t be tampered with. Where new things are always trash, or judged too harshly, or not up to some unknown holy standard. Where new people with new ideas can’t touch an old sinking ship even if it’ll repair it—make it better than before.
This is that toxic side, bubbling up, boiling over. It’s the side that I’ve had the pleasure of staying far away from because it’s so small and inconsequential. But now, sitting up here on the panel, that sludge of toxicity is pushing right to the edge of the stage.
Jess is always so much closer to it than I ever was. Is that why she hates Starfield?
Is this all that she’s seen of it?
By now, my fingernails are leaving crescent-shaped indentions in my palms. This is my chance to tell the haters off. To make my argument that Amara should be saved—that she deserves to be saved and—
And in saying that, would I be any better than these people shouting that they want Natalia and David back? These people arguing that Jessica Stone can never live up to the dress she slipped into? Haven’t I, too, done that in a certain slant of light? For better reasons—good reasons, I daresay—but I don’t think my heart has been in the right place. I think she holds an important place in the Starfield fandom, but that isn’t why I want her back. I want to bring Princess Amara back because she has become a reflection of my own self-worth.
And Jessica Stone—the girl I’m supposed to be playing, the actress in this Greek tragedy—never wanted that.
Because the fandom never gave her a reason to want it.
Oh, starflame. Now I understand, and it took almost three thousand manbabies to show me.
I set my jaw, my thoughts loud over the roar of the audience as a shouting match breaks out between new and old viewers, hardcore Stargunners and casual fans, shippers and antis, and it’s all a mess. Darien forces back his chair and leaves the stage in long, angry strides and I quickly follow him down the stairs and through the side door into a hallway. I don’t know whether to stop him, to comfort him, or…
I don’t know.
But I have to do something.
So I grab him by the sleeve to stop him. “Darien, do you want to talk about—”
He doesn’t look at me, his dark eyes trained on the ground. “Jess calls me Dare,” he says softly. “People will start noticing if you don’t.” Then he wrenches his arm away and stalks down the hallway out of sight. I clench my fists again. We fans of Amara have been living with the knowledge that she dies for years, since before I was born, but Darien is just now coming to terms with the fact that he might be dead, too.
I look down at my badge. JESSICA STONE. VIP GUEST. And the button beside it, so small I doubt anyone in the audience could read it: #SAVEAMARA.
I could have done what I wanted to do up there on stage. I had the chance.
But I didn’t, because it wasn’t my place. Because I’m messing with Jess’s life, and because Ethan’s right—I am nothing more than a clone, merely playing in her star-studded world. It wasn’t me those fans came to see, but her. It isn’t me they love, but Princess Amara. I just happen to look like her with a little makeup and a lace-front wig.
“You didn’t do it.”
Startled, I turn toward the soft voice.
Ethan is leaning against the wall a little ways behind me, his arms folded over his chest in his usual old-man pose. He looks tired. His raven-black hair hangs shaggily around his face, and his dark eyes behind his glasses look strained. He’s wearing a crumpled button-down with dinosaurs on it, unbuttoned enough to reveal a white shirt underneath, and blue jeans, definitely not in the state of dress I’m used to. Not pristine. Not Jessica Stone’s assistant. He looks like the eighteen-year-old boy he actually is. He pushes his fingers through his hair.
I feel my spine straighten, like it always does around him. “Because you’re right.” My voice cracks. “I’m nobody.”
“Imogen, you’re not—”
“It’s Jess right now, remember?” I turn so he can’t see the tears filling my eyes and start to walk away. “I’ll see you at the meet-and-greet thing.”
And I leave before I give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
I SLAP MY HAND OVER MY MOUTH to stifle a gasp, but the pretzel man notices me anyway and looks at me worriedly. I quickly turn my back to him.
Oh, poor Dare.
I don’t know how he feels, but I know what it’s like.
When I initially read the Starfield script, for the first reboot movie, Princess Amara did not die. It’s a little-known fact. But then Amon wanted to stick with Amara’s original arc from the television show. He wanted to make the diehard fans happy, even though so much else was changed, and he thought he could do that by killing her off.
“We want to give our older fans something to recognize,” he had said. “It’ll look odd if you live.”
He hadn’t even asked me what I thought about the script change. He just handed it to me one day during filming—the day after Dare did his building-jumping stunt—and told me to read through the rewritten ending and memorize it.
So I did. The difference was, Amon had told me in private. I didn’t have to learn about it out in public—in front of a crowd of thousands of people. I could process it before the rest of the world found out.
Dare deserved better.
Being an actor is weird sometimes. You get so attached to your character, some plot twist that takes you by surprise. But this is different. I was just a girl who was told that her character, to whom she connected, would die. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy when he told me. It wasn’t a guaranteed out, but I had been naive. Dare…Carmindor had been a dream gig, a fanboy’s dream, and now…
I try calling him for the third time but he’s not picking up. I begin to pace in Artists’ Alley, and the pretzel man’s gaze follows me the whole way, though honestly I can’t bring myself to care at the moment. I know that the panel ended abruptly but I can’t parse how, and my Twitter notifications are pinging faster than I can mute them. What in the world happened? Is Dare okay?
I get so many Twitter comments that the app freezes, so I log onto Instagram instead. I wish I hadn’t. A mind-blowing amount of comment notifications pop up. So many more than usual. I haven’t checked my feed since arriving at the convention, and after a few days the comments usually taper off because of the app’s algorithms. (Ethan once tried to explain all this tech stuff to me, but most of it soared way over my head.)
Before I can tap into the comments, out of the corner of my eye I see a pair of familiar sneakers and look up—there is Ethan with his hands in his jeans pockets. Alarmed, I turn to him. “Where’s Imogen?”
“You got the text.”
“Of course I did, and my social’s crashing because of all the comments.” I try to control my voice, but panic eats in at the edges. “What happened, Ethan? What’s happening?”
“Well,” he says calmly, pushing up his glasses, “Darien found out on stage that his character’s dying, and he didn’t take it well.”
Of course he didn’t.
My eyes are beginning to burn the longer I think about Carmindor dying. Something in my chest is tight and wrong, and it’s so uncomfortable, but people are watching us, even in the back of Artists’ Alley, so I can’t freak out. Breathe.
“I should be happy, right? Carmindor dies, and because of that I’m sure Amara’s not coming back. I’m free. Even if I don’t find the thief who stole my script—I’m free.” My vision blurs and my voice hitches. “Why aren’t I happy?”
Ethan takes his hands out of his pockets and pulls me into a hug. “Because you love it, Jess.”
The hairs on my skin stand on end. I push away. “Love it? Ethan, Starfield was the worst thing to happen to my career. It almost killed it!”
“Jess, I know you, and you’re always so focused on the future. On what’s ahead of you. You n
ever looked around and saw what you had already.”
“What I had?” I scoff, pressing my palms over my eyes, for once glad that I’m not wearing makeup that would smudge. “What I had was a dead-end contract—”
“Then why aren’t you happy that you don’t have to play Amara anymore?” he interrupts, his voice like flint. “I know you’re not.”
“I-I don’t know! This convention has messed everything up in my head.” I try to keep my voice low, but a person buying a salted pretzel is eyeing me curiously. The pretzel man waves them on and I continue in a hushed voice, “I only have a short window in my career—shorter because I lied about my age when I was fourteen—and I refuse to be known as that dead space princess. There are no awards for that.”
“There’s the Razzies.”
“That’s not funny, Ethan.”
He exhales through his nose. “Look, Jess, I love you and you are my best friend, but you are so hardheaded sometimes I could scream. What movies do we remember the best? Do we remember the film that won the Academy Award in 1977 or do we remember the low-budget space opera from that same year that—”
“Rocky.”
“What?”
“Rocky won Best Picture in 1977.”
He falters. “That was a bad example. You were supposed to say we remembered Star Wars the best.”
“It was a great year for movies,” I add. “The Omen won best score—”
My phone dings. It’s not a text message but a news report from a celebrity gossip blog that I follow. Tagging me with screenshots of my own Instagram photos—and all the comments underneath.
Death threats. Violent threats. Comments making fun of my hair, my weight, me.
A chill crawls down my spine. They were bad before, but now they’re a torrent of the exact nightmare I never wanted. It’s coming true. It’s finally coming true.
“What did Imogen do?” I whisper, and look up to Ethan, but his face is an impasse of emotion. “What did she do?” I repeat, my voice louder, and I show him the article.
“Jess, she didn’t—”
“Didn’t she? They’re saying it’s my fault—mine!—that Carmindor’s getting axed. Because I’m not there to save him. Imogen said something, didn’t she? On the panel. I should’ve never let her be me.”
Ethan’s shaking his head. “It’s not what—”
“Isn’t it? This entire thing was pointless. There’s no way for me to win—none! If I get the script back, it won’t matter because they’ll blame me for killing Carmindor, and if I don’t get it back and everyone finds out it’s mine, I’ll be the actress who killed Starfield!”
“Jess, please stop for a second.” Ethan tries to grab me around the shoulders, but I brush him off. It doesn’t matter what he has to say.
I’ve seen enough from my comments on social, and the buttons I had to hand out, and the moments on the panels when she almost did the unthinkable, and I’ve already made up my mind.
“Go—leave!” I snap, and slip into the crowd as quickly as I can, dodging between a group of Jedis in training, hoping to lose him. But when I look back I realize that he didn’t even follow.
Ethan’s wrong—I never could have liked Starfield. Or Princess Amara. Or this fandom.
Because the fandom will never like me.
TOWARD THE END OF THE MEET-AND-GREET, the camera dies and the volunteer, a cheery girl with purple hair, excuses herself to go get a new battery. While she’s gone I shake out my nervous energy, my limbs buzzing with excitement. I can’t remember all of the people I’ve taken photos with, or all of their names—although I know I asked every one of them what it was. Whatever toxicity that was in the panel hadn’t made it here, thank goodness.
Ethan finally slips into the photo-op booth. He hesitates, then looks at me, as if seeing that I’m still in one piece and not, you know, torn apart by fans. No, I’m still intact. I’m still playing Jessica Stone.
“Is everything all right?” he asks.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I clip in reply, but instantly regret it.
He nods quietly and sits on a stool in the corner, pulling out his phone to ignore me, or to pretend as though I don’t matter. I know he’s only here for Jess’s sake, but I wish he wasn’t.
The air is thick with tension. Like Jabba the Hut thick, so thick I’d have to wrap my chains around its neck and strangle it just to make it go away—and I’m not even wearing a metal bikini to do that in.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a guy saunter into the booth. He doesn’t even glance at Ethan, who just got a text and is replying with furious punches. Ethan doesn’t notice him either.
He isn’t supposed to be here, this guy. That much I can tell.
And when he looks at me, my blood freezes.
It’s Jasper.
I would notice him from a football field away, the way he holds himself when he walks, and he grins as we make eye contact. Brown hair and green eyes. Oh how I wish he had looked at me when we dated the way he looks at Me-as-Jessica-Stone now. Then I might not have ended up bawling on the curb at last year’s con.
I instantly get a bad feeling in my gut.
“Amaraaaaah!” Jasper cries, arms wide. He’s wearing a Joker and Harley Quinn T-shirt and jeans, and one of his YouTube filming lackeys is somewhere close by, I’m sure of it. “You broke the internet today!”
I did…?
How?
When I don’t rush to embrace him, his smile falters.
“What, too good for a hug?” He says it jokingly, but my skin prickles.
He doesn’t recognize me?
No—he thinks I’m Jess.
I smile thinly. “Of course not.”
I’m just being paranoid. We hug. His hands slip low.
I push away from him so fast, it takes him by surprise and he stumbles backward.
“What the heck?” he yelps, and then breaks into another laugh. “What’s wrong, Jessica?”
Jessica. He has the nerve to call me by my first name—well, by Jessica’s first name—when he doesn’t even know her. When he just touched my butt like it was absolutely nothing?
I don’t remember Jasper ever doing that to me.
But it’s becoming increasingly clear that I only knew the Jasper in my head—the Jasper I wanted to know—not the one who ghosted me at the ExcelsiCon ball last year and broke up with me over text messages.
He outstretches his hand, the one that touched my butt. “The name’s Jasper Webster. I’m a pro gamer. Got about four million followers. Can we get a vid together for my fans?”
“Do you have a ticket?” I ask.
“I just”—he makes a slick slicing motion—“cut in line a little. Don’t worry, I’m sure you don’t mind.”
He’s talking to me like he didn’t just grab me. Like I overreacted for nothing. No, he knows what he did was wrong and he’s just acting as if it doesn’t matter.
He notices the button pinned to my lanyard. “Save Amara? That’s really cute.”
“What do you want?”
He flicks out his cell phone and starts recording. “I just want to congratulate the girl who ruined Starfield.”
The confusion must be written all over my face, because he laughs and asks, “Is it true you didn’t want to be in the sequel, so the director cut you at the last minute in the first movie?”
“Excuse me?” In my surprise, my voice slips out of Jessica’s drawl and into my nondescript crisp one. It’s a little lower than Jess’s, a little less sweet.
“Now Carmindor’s dying, and it’s your fault.”
That was about the most absurd thing I’d ever heard in my entire life—and I was raised in fandom. I look at the video camera, and then at Jasper, trying to gauge how he wants me to react, so I don’t give him the satisfaction—
Suddenly Ethan is there, yanking the phone out of his hand and deleting the video.
“What the hell, man?” Jasper snarls (but he definitely doesn’t say hell).
&
nbsp; Ethan tosses back the phone, his eyes like onyx. “You’re done. Get out.” At his full height, he’s a head taller than Jasper. His expression is cold and impassive, the kind of look reserved for people about to snap someone else’s neck. The only clue that he is the least bit agitated is the quickened pulse beating at his throat.
Starflame, Jessica doesn’t need a bodyguard when she has that, I realize.
Jasper laughs off Ethan’s unspoken threat and raises his hands in a surrender-like motion. “Dude, look, step back. We’re busy.”
Then he tries to come at me again, but Ethan puts a hand on his shoulder.
Jasper whirls around, fists clenched, ready to swing. I don’t have time to shout to Ethan that a punch is coming before he raises a hand and deflects the blow with his lower arm, grabbing Jasper by the shirt and pull-throwing him out through the nearest curtain. The panels of black fabric fly apart just wide enough for me to watch Jasper trip and fall on his face onto the retro rug, right in front of a line of fans waiting for the next star, before fluttering closed.
I look at Ethan wide-eyed, and he seems just as surprised as me that his move actually worked. He opens his mouth to say something but the volunteer pops back into the booth, fixing her glasses that keep falling down the bridge of her nose.
“I am so sorry! That took way longer than I thought,” she says. Then she asks if I’m ready to finish my meet-and-greet.
There are only ten fans left, so I smile and pose and ask their names, just like before. But this time, their names stick with me—though not for the reasons they should. Because they don’t try to feel me up, because they are nice, because they are decent human beings.
And I hate that some of the dickwads in their midst are not.
After the last photo, I rub my arms, feeling dirty and miserable. Is this what Jessica has to put up with all the time? Harassment like that? Is that all she’s ever seen of the Starfield fandom in the month the movie’s been out? Nothing but provocation and disapproval and people shouting how she can never live up to Natalia Ford?
I leave the booth as quickly as I can. I don’t know where I’m going, but somewhere away from people.
The Princess and the Fangirl Page 18
