The Princess and the Fangirl

by Ashley Poston

  There will be nothing quite like this ever again.

  Amon introduces us. I try to squint beyond the glaring lights pointed at me, but I can’t see if Jess is in the audience. I can’t see Ethan, either. Wherever Bran is, he should be calling Vance’s phone right about now. I glance down the table to the phone’s screen but it’s dark.

  Please let this work, I pray to the impossible universe.

  “So! Before we get into the questions, and as we wait for our Carmindor,” Amon says into his mic, setting his phone on the table. The screen blinks on—someone is calling him.

  And not Vance.

  About a thousand expletives race through my head.

  No way.

  NO FRAKKIN’ WAY.

  “I want to give you all a surprise—the title of the sequel! Can we bring it up on the screen?” he shouts back to the guy operating the lights. But what he hopefully doesn’t see is that the tech guy excused himself a few minutes ago after a fan—Elle, really—accidentally spilled an Icee all over him, and Ethan, cosplaying a techie in a too-short black shirt, quietly took his place.

  I just hope Ethan knows how to operate the light board.

  But the lights don’t even flicker.

  I watch Amon’s phone light up as the number calls again, and again, but because it’s set to silent, it doesn’t vibrate. I begin to feel sick to my stomach.

  Vance isn’t even looking at his phone, which is also faceup on the table. He gets a text from his mom (SWEETIE U LOOK SO HANDSOME!!) but that’s it.

  Oh no.

  Amon clears his throat. “Uh, tech guy? Hello—”

  This time the lights flicker.

  We need to stop this now.

  The plan has become our worst-case scenario and I’m really regretting not telling Jessica about how unlucky I really am.

  “Hey, is there a technical difficulty? I can show the title later—” Amon says, but he gets shut down very quickly by raucous booing fans. He quickly holds up his hands. “Okay, okay! We’ll wait.”

  Vance glances over to me as if I’m responsible for this, and I give him a cheesy smile and wave, one finger after another, because yeah buddy we’re in this. We’re here for the ride. There’s no way to stop Bran, and it’s too late to call off Ethan, and the stage lights are crashing to black.

  Besides, you know what they say:

  Anything can happen once upon a con.

  Everyone sits in darkness with baited breath. No one moves. No one speaks. It’s as if a weighted blanket has been thrown over the entire room. The audience is looking expectantly at the screen behind us, waiting for it to display the title and logo of the Starfield sequel, when suddenly the back door bursts open.

  The thump of heels on padded retro carpet is the only sound in the room. From the light leaking in through the open doors, I watch as the folds of her radiant dress billow around her like a swirling dark-purple nebula, rhinestones and glitter and starlight sewn into the seams. The original, stolen straight from the glass coffin it was kept in. The dim light sparkles against her golden tiara, inset with crimson jewels to match the blood-red of her hair.

  Starflame, she looks like Amara.

  She looks like our princess never died.

  I’VE HEARD FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES, ALL of them named Darien, that if you watch Starfield in chronological order, Amara has a redemption arc to rival Prince Zuko’s. She actively hates Carmindor in the beginning, she hates everything he stands for, she hates the Federation and the Intergalactic Peace Treaty. She wants to make her father proud.

  In the second half of Starfield, she realizes that nothing can make him proud. There are lines she can’t cross. There are things she doesn’t want to do. There are things she does anyway.

  And in the final episodes? She may not be nice—but she is good.

  I am the best parts of her, and part of the Amaras I pass in the crowd—the gender-bent one across the aisle, the ten-year-old one with glitter in her hair, the Black Nebula Federation Princess Amara come back from the grave. I’m a part of every Amara at the con, every Amara on the screen—just as the first Amara is a part of me.

  And we don’t die quietly.

  There are stories that you tell and stories that tell things to you; stories that win awards and stories that win hearts. Sometimes they’re the same. Sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes the stories you want aren’t the ones you need, and the ones you need are the ones you never thought you’d like.

  Perhaps this is one of those stories.

  Perhaps Starfield is one of those kinds of stories to me.

  With each step I take, the crowd grows increasingly restless. They begin to understand just what’s happening. That the Jessica on the panel is not me.

  Vance Reigns lays eyes on me for the first time. “You—you’re Jessica? The real Jessica?”

  I cock my head to him. “Are you the real Vance?”

  He jabs a finger back at Imogen. “Seriously? This fake has been playing you? This whole time?”

  At the end of the table, Amon tries to keep the panel under control. “There’s probably a reasonable explanation for all of this. Jess? Whichever one of you is real?”

  “We’re both real,” I tell him.

  Imogen is shaking her head at me. Something is wrong.

  “Then why don’t you explain it and let us get back to our panel?” Vance replies, and if I didn’t know better I would’ve thought he was being very amiable. Not about to lose his temper. But there’s a muscle throbbing in his jaw. He doesn’t like being taken for a fool. “This is pretty rad.”

  “Of course, but don’t you want to know the name of the film first? Friends?” I ask, looking back to the audience, and they cheer. I lower my hands and they quiet again. Wow, this kind of power is kind of addicting. “But I think Vance already knows it.”

  Vance laughs. “Yeah, I can take a guess—”

  “No guesses needed. Because you’re the one leaking the script.”

  The crowd murmurs.

  I see Imogen hang her head.

  Vance’s eyebrows jerk up in surprise. “I—what? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Vance. It’s not becoming.”

  “Yeah, because I’m not. Bloody hell, I don’t even know what you’re going on ab—”

  “Then show us your phone.”

  “What?”

  “Show us your—”

  Vance Reigns, General Sond, the villain, holds up his phone. There is a text from his mom—now two, now three—but no missed calls.

  But if not him, then…

  My eyes find Imogen’s, and she has her arms crossed and is pointing (not so subtly) to the right. Toward Calvin and Amon.

  And Amon’s phone is lit up like a beacon.

  Yeah, I’ll just keep spam-calling him through an untraceable Google number, Bran had told us. You know, to get the screen to light up.

  Ohmygod.

  This entire plan just went supernova.

  “What’s the meaning of this, Jessica?” Vance asks. “Why do you think I’d leak the script? I don’t even have it! How do we know you’re not the leak? That it’s not your script?”

  My trusted director looks at me, and we lock eyes, because I had been wrong this whole time. I’m not the only person with the script. One other person would have it. In fact, he’d have it before everyone else.

  Amon.

  Was he just—was he going to let me take the fall? Let those fanboys and trolls have at me, make their lewd comments, scrape my career across their teeth? When the time came for someone to get in trouble for leaking the script, was he simply going to pawn it off on me because I was on the outs and leaving anyway? He gave me a script even though Princess Amara was dead.

  He was so adamant not to have Amara come back that he wanted to frame me for a publicity stunt to ensure that I wouldn’t.

  He’s the one who killed me off in the first place.

  “It is,” I say, never taking my eyes off Amon. “It
is my script, but I wasn’t leaking it.”

  Amon clears his throat. “We can talk about this later, Jessica—”

  “No, we need to talk about it now. It was you.”

  Amon scoffs. “You just accused Vance, and now you’re accusing me? Jessica, think a little. Why would I steal your script?” There’s a patronizing note to his voice that curdles my blood. I won’t let him talk to me like this. He never thought I was pretty enough on camera, he never praised my work while giving Dare and Calvin compliment after compliment. He made me run in heels when I obviously didn’t want to, and Princess Amara never would have.

  I ball my hands into fists.

  “I lost the script, Amon,” I say, “and I spent two days looking for it because I thought someone had stolen it out of the trash. At first it was so I wouldn’t look bad in front of you, or any other director who wants to work with me in the future, but now…”

  “Jess, come on,” Amon groans. “Stop making a hysterical spectacle. You don’t like Starfield anyway.”

  At that, I hear a few people in the audience chuckle. I feel their laughter crawling up my spine, mocking me.

  “You’re right,” I admit.

  The murmurs grow louder, and Amon sits back, amused.

  “I didn’t like Starfield,” I go on, “but that was because I didn’t know what it could be. I only saw a part of it. I only knew what it was like from the outside looking in.

  “But I think I’m beginning to. Starfield isn’t going to win any awards, and Starfield isn’t going fix everything that’s wrong with the world, but you know what? Sometimes the stories we need are the ones that can show us a happy ending and make us feel whole and welcome and loved. And that, I think, is the true magic of Starfield, of watching twenty Amaras through a small camera lens strike the same pose, of howling a theme song off-key, of debating its economy and its politics and its world-building and whether Carmindor’s uniform is really the perfect shade of blue. That’s the part of Starfield I never saw before, that magical, weird, and wondrous part that I now want to protect.”

  I turn to the audience and survey the three thousand shadows staring back at me. My doppelgänger sits behind me at the table, looking increasingly uncomfortable, but she shouldn’t worry. The audience isn’t looking at her. In the dark room, telltale flashes of cameras and lock screens set people’s faces aglow.

  “I only saw the parts of Starfield that didn’t want me,” I say, and that includes Amon. “I knew the niches who didn’t like my acting, or my hair, or my breast size, or the fact that I even existed. They said that my mole ruined their princess. But that’s the thing with Amara”—I look out at the audience, those shadowed faces staring back at me, unrelenting—“she belongs to no man, and no king, and she certainly doesn’t belong to you.” I look down at one of the girls in the front row; she’s ten and dressed as Princess Amara. I take off my silver crown and place it on her head. “She belongs to us—all of us. She taught us how to be bold and powerful, and she taught us that we can make mistakes and be better. That we don’t have to be perfect—we can just be enough. We carry her with us. And because of that, Amara will never die.” The ballroom is quiet and this is not how our plan was supposed to go, but this is how it went, and I am still intact on the other side. Whatever happens now is out of my control. Perhaps it always has been, but I like the thought of having tried to change it.

  And then I turn, like a ghost, and return down the aisle whence I came, and behind me rises a tide of silence.

  Amon stands abruptly and calls after me. “Jess! Jess, where are you going?”

  “The horizon is wide,” I say over my shoulder, my words spoken in the steady, even cadence of Amara, “and I have a girl to kiss.”

  Then I pick up the sides of my dress made of stars and wishes and impossibilities, and I run out of the room.

  THE BACK DOOR SWINGS SHUT, AND silence swallows us whole. No one moves as Jess’s words sink in. No one breathes. It’s like the silence after a rubber band, wound too tightly, suddenly snaps. The tension is gone. And then—

  Vance glances at Calvin. “Did she just say a girl?”

  Calvin gives him a crude look. “Don’t talk to me,” he says—I think—because at the same time an audience member stands, picking up her magical staff, and follows Jess. Then another. And then an entire row of people. Filing out in growing numbers until everyone is trying to cram out of the doors.

  That’s when it hits me—Jess is going to find Harper.

  I jump to my feet and hurry around the table. Behind me, Amon shouts Jess’s name, but I don’t stop. That is not my name, and he definitely doesn’t deserve mine.

  Ethan meets me at the edge of the stage, with Elle right behind him, and takes my hand to help me down. “I think I know where she’s going,” I tell them.

  “This way!” Suddenly, Darien flings the backstage curtains wide, beckoning us to hurry.

  “Oh, so you’ve returned,” Ethan says mildly.

  Darien gives him a look. “You would not believe what just happened—”

  “Let’s talk and run, shall we?” I interrupt. “Follow me! I know a shortcut.” There’s a door on the side of the room that is always barred, mostly because it lets out to the next panel space, where the old guy from Star Wars is taking questions and—

  “Does he sound like the Joker or is it me?” I ask.

  Ethan rolls his eyes, and we cut into the next hall, and then the next, Darien and Elle following close behind. I know this convention center like the back of my hand. I know every nook and cranny, every shortcut and quiet bathroom, and soon I navigate us outside into the sticky Atlanta night.

  Darien and Elle speed ahead, folding their fingers together, leaving Ethan and me to follow.

  A stream of people follows Jess from one side of the convention to the other, trickling down into the street like the parade we saw earlier, and I can’t help but smile like mad—because although it isn’t a marching band, this is totally my new favorite trope. A bunch of nerds following a princess in a dress made of galaxies.

  Beside me, Ethan lets out a long sigh. “So, now that you’re you again, I think we need proper introductions. I’ll start. Hi there, my name’s Ethan Tanaka.”

  “That’s a real smooth pickup line.”

  “That’s a very long name you have, That’s a real smooth pickup—”

  “Imogen,” I laugh, offering my hand. “But my friends call me Mo.”

  “Mo, it’s a pleasure.”

  We shake hands.

  A block away, the crowd has stopped moving. I squint into the distance. “Is Jess trying to—”

  He nods, looking as grim as ever. “Yep. She’s climbing on top of that food truck. She always does things the hard way. There is an elevator. She knows there’s an elevator.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and sighs.

  I grin at him, secretive and sincere. “I never got to thank you for helping me out with He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy from the meet-and-greet. I knew him—well, Imogen knew him.”

  He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and the lenses flash in the street lights. “You’re welcome. I’m sorry if I was a little…overbearing.”

  “You, overbearing?” I snort-laugh. “Whatever gave you that idea? But that move you pulled was really cool. What was it, karate?”

  He gives me a blank look. “Mo, not every Asian guy knows karate.”

  My cheeks redden. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It was Mortal Kombat.”

  I blink. “What?”

  “The game?” He explains: “I’m kinda a world champion Mortal Kombat player, so I guess my subconscious picked up Raiden’s—”

  “Okay, okay,” I interrupt, and his lips twitch up into a smile. “Ugh, nerd.”

  “Ugh, fangirl,” he mimics.

  An impasse.

  Down the block, Jess has finally climbed onto the food truck. The fans have gathered around he
r, and the Starfield song has somehow bled into the very fabric of the street. The street lights glitter off the tall buildings, green oaks lining the sidewalks beside lampposts and traffic lights. The streets are empty of cars. An older Luke Skywalker, peppery beard and shaggy hair, sitting on the shoulders of the tenth and eleventh Doctors, leads the singing, conducting the music with his lightsaber.

  Jess grabs something from a green-haired girl standing on the hood of the food truck and hoists it into the air.

  “Is that—? She has a megaphone,” I deadpan.

  Ethan takes his hands out of his pockets. “We should probably stop her,” he advises, and begins speed-walking toward his charge standing atop the Magic Pumpkin food truck. I follow this too-tall boy into the sea of people, cosplayers and fangirls and fanboys and geeks and nerds, people pretending to be other people and people just trying to be themselves, and it hits me as we edge closer to the princess in a shimmering galaxy dress atop a food truck—

  I think I might like Ethan Tanaka.

  And as he bobs and weaves through the crowd, moving farther and farther away from me, I realize that he’ll be gone tomorrow, and I’ll never see him again.

  “HARPER!” I SHOUT UP AT THE TWENTY STORIES of hotel.

  My voice bounces back to me. I am too small and the distance is too large. I don’t know what I was thinking, to be honest. That I’d just come outside to her hotel, Romeo and Juliet style, and recite my heart’s feelings to her? And that she’d hear me?

  I’d need, I don’t know—

  “Hey!” A figure stumbles out of the back of the food truck and walks over. It’s the green-haired girl from the Stellar Party. Sage, I think her name is. She holds up a megaphone. “Wanna use this?”

  “Yes!” I grab it and angle it up to the hotel balconies. “Harper!”

  Her name booms across the hotel windows, ricocheting off the buildings in the middle of downtown Atlanta. I wince at the loudness. A few hotel guests open their balcony doors and stray outside to see what the noise is about, but not Harper.