How to Be a Movie Star

by TJ Klune

  Josy barely heard them. In his head, he was working out the logistics of kissing Mason/Grady/Dante (he was unsure, exactly, of who this was supposed to be). He had fangs in his mouth and elaborate makeup on his face. It was of a good stock, meaning it wasn’t supposed to smear easily, but Josy didn’t want to take any chances lest he be faced with the wrath of Dee.

  Mason was scowling at him, which added to the effect. He looked lionish.

  And this was just a job.

  Josy was an actor.

  He could do this.

  He was Liam Eagleton.

  His father was dying.

  His imaginary lion friend was real.

  He missed Dante, but it was like he was almost here.

  Grady’s eyes widened as Liam took a step toward him. Liam couldn’t exactly remember what he was supposed to say. He thought he should ad-lib. “I’d be lion if I said I didn’t want to kiss you right now.”

  The tree in the room started choking wildly.

  “Get away from me,” Grady said, though Liam knew he was just trying to be brave.

  Liam reached out and put his fingers in Grady’s mane.

  He leaned forward.

  And kissed the lion king.

  It was… chalky. And a fang poked his lip awkwardly.

  He pulled away a little bit. “Huh.”

  Grady rolled his eyes. “You’re not angling your head the right way.” He reached up and tilted Liam’s head to the right. They kissed again, mashing their lips together.

  The mane tickled Liam’s nose. He sneezed on Grady’s face.

  “What the fuck!” Mason cried.

  “This is nothing like the fan fiction I spent the entire year of 1989 writing,” Bernice said with a grimace. “I hate it when fantasy doesn’t match the cold wet truth of reality.”

  “I’m sorry!” Josy said, rubbing his nose. “Your mane was all over my face!”

  “So you sneezed in my mouth? What the hell is wrong with you!”

  “It was a surprise! Like I wanted to sneeze on you! I just wanted to get this right, but it’s not my fault you don’t know how to kiss!”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Say that again. I dare you.”

  Josy squared his shoulders. “You don’t know how to kiss.”

  Mason grabbed him by the back of the neck, bringing him forward. The kiss was ferocious. Josy imagined this was what it would be like to make out with a real lion, though he’d never given that much thought before. The fangs still made things awkward, the mane got in the way, but still. It was better than it’d been before.

  And then the door opened. “Hey, guys, I had some thoughts on—”

  Josy pulled away from Mason to see Quincy standing in the doorway, mouth hanging open.

  “Hey, dude,” he said easily. “Just practicing to make sure we get it right for you.” He smacked his lips. “It was awkward, but I think we got it.”

  Quincy closed his mouth and then opened it again. No sound came out.

  “Oh boy,” Bernice said.

  Mason rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I didn’t even want to do it in the first place. Josy made me. It’s not my fault if he finds me attractive.”

  “Actually,” Josy said, “it did nothing for me. I mean, I know we’re supposed to be in love and stuff. Or at least like a version of you. But man, it was like making out with the stuffed bear I had when I was eight. Which I never did. Because that’s weird.”

  Mason glared at him.

  Josy grinned.

  “Can I speak to Josy, please?” Quincy asked, sounding strained. “In private?”

  “Sure,” Bertha said. “But since we were here first and told not to leave, you can go somewhere else. It’s a big house.”

  “Dude,” Josy said. “I know just the place! We share a room, remember? The We Three Queens made sure of that.”

  Roger shook his head, smiling ruefully. “Listen to that chorus sing.”

  The We Three Queens chuckled quietly as Josy followed Quincy from the room.

  THE FIRST thing Quincy said when they were safely behind closed doors was “My followers think we’re dating because you said we were.”

  “Oh man,” Josy said. “That’s gnarly. How did that happen?”

  Quincy waved his phone in Josy’s direction. “You—you and your hashtags.”

  Josy blinked. “Say what.”

  Quincy looked down at his phone, scrolling furiously before shoving it in Josy’s face again. The picture was the selfie he’d taken of the both of them, with Quincy turning toward Josy’s face.

  “That’s a good one,” Josy said, handing him the phone back. “Thanks for showing it to me.”

  Quincy groaned. “That’s not why I—look. You remember when you took that picture of the food at Gus and Casey’s house?”

  Josy nodded. “I do. They were some good-looking noodles.”

  “We were sitting together next to each other.”

  “Right? Such a good time, man.”

  “You—argh! That’s not what I’m saying!”

  “Oh.” Josy frowned. “I thought you had fun. Didn’t you like hanging out with me?” The idea that Quincy didn’t have a good time rubbed him the wrong way.

  “What? What are you talking about? This is about the picture.”

  Josy squinted at him. “What about it? Should I not have taken it? Are you against noodles on the Internet?”

  “I’m against hashtags where you say we’re dating! And my followers know it’s me because sometimes they can be a little obsessive and figured out I was sitting next to you in the picture by the fact you could see part of my hand and my knee.”

  “Whoa,” Josy said. “They can tell who you are by your hands? Show me!”

  “What?”

  “Hold up your hands!”

  Quincy looked confused. “Why are you—and now you’re holding my hand.”

  Josy brought Quincy’s hand up close to his face, studying it intensely. “I mean, it’s a nice hand, sure. But I don’t see how—oh, maybe it’s that little freckle near your thumb. Dude, it kind of looks like a heart! That’s awesome. I figured out how they knew it was you.” He dropped Quincy’s hand and smiled at him. “That’s still a little creepy, but go them!”

  “You told them we were dating.”

  Josy shook his head. “I don’t think I did. I would remember if I wrote that. I wouldn’t say something like that without talking to you first.”

  Quincy gaped at him.

  Josy shrugged. “See? No worries.” He gently took the phone from Quincy and looked down at it. “Look, not dating. It says it’s a friend-date with the Q-Man. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to people on the Internet who see what they want to!”

  “Oh. Well, I can’t really do anything about them. Casey told me once that you can’t make everyone happy because it’s impossible and people are dumb.” He laughed. “S’funny, right?”

  Quincy rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s—that’s not how that works, Josy. That coupled with the first picture—”

  “The one where it looks like you’re smelling my beard?”

  Quincy flushed brightly. “I’m not smelling your beard.”

  “I mean, no worries if you were. That’s what the beard oil is for. Makes it soft and smell good. Like mangos.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “Wow,” Josy said, scrolling through the post. “I mean, I saw some of the comments, but I muted it so I could focus on making the movie as best as I know how. This one says we’re cute. This one says we should take more photos together because we have an interesting dynamic. This one got graphic really quickly, so I’m just going to skip over it. Look! This one says we’re so adorable, she could just die.” Josy frowned. “I hope she actually doesn’t die. I would feel really bad. I’m just going to tell her not to die. Hold on a second… annnnd posted. Oh, this one is also graphic. Wow. I cannot bend that way.”

  “Don’t you see the problem with this?” />
  Josy looked up at him. “No? I mean, it’s the price of being in the spotlight, right? My agent, Starla, told me that if I ever got famous, paparazzi were going to jump out of the bushes and take my picture. She also said that if I ever went to Barbados, I couldn’t sunbathe nude because they would climb trees to take a picture of my junk. Paps, man. I mean, I get they have a job to do, but not cool.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Josy shrugged. “People speculate about stuff, right? Like, tabloids and celebrity news blogs. They eat that stuff up. Doesn’t mean it’s true. Remember Weekly World News? They always had interviews with women who got pregnant by Bigfoot or aliens or—wait. That sounds like it’s right up your alley. Oh man. Is that where you get your ideas? How do authors get ideas? That sounds like it’s really tough. I can’t write—”

  “We aren’t dating!” He started pacing.

  Josy nodded. “I know that. And you know that. The people who like us know that. Who cares otherwise?”

  “How can that not bother you? That people make assumptions about you that aren’t true?”

  “Because people have made assumptions about me my entire life.”

  Quincy stopped and stared at him.

  Josy felt—well, not exactly uncomfortable, but a little off-centered. He didn’t think this was something he was going to talk about today. If he’d known, he would have prepared himself better. But it was already out there, so he might as well get it over with. “Look, man. It’s not a big deal. I know I’m not the smartest person in the world. I say dumb shit all the time. I’m a stoner, and I like socks with cows on them, and for reasons no one really knows, I’m pretty great at radio trivia. People look at me and see the beard and the clothes and say, ‘Hey look, it’s one of those hipster dudes.’ And maybe that’s true. I mean, sometimes I get it. I liked Arcade Fire before everyone else did. One time I bought something called a reclaimed apothecary matchstick container that cost two hundred dollars, even though it was just a glass jar with long sticks in it, because I needed it. But you know what? I don’t care what those people think. I do the things I do because they make me happy. I am who I am because this is the person I want to be. It took me a long time to get this way, and I don’t let little things like people assuming things on the Internet get to me.”

  Quincy looked taken aback. “I didn’t mean—I like who you are.”

  This pleased Josy greatly. “Thank you. I like who you are too, even if I sometimes think you don’t give yourself enough credit. Like, man, you’re making a movie. From something you wrote. How many people in the world get to say that? Yeah, sure, sometimes your brain gets a little wacky and you think bad things about yourself, and that’s okay. That happens to me too. I know it’s probably not even close to being the same, but I think it helps me understand it a little. But no matter what happens, even when you start to think bad things, even if people start making shit up on the Internet, there’s still someone who knows you’re pretty rad. You took a jump outside of your comfort zone, and man, that’s something to be proud of.”

  Quincy gave a shuddering sigh. “That’s—that’s nice of you to say.”

  Josy shrugged. “It’s the truth. It’s easier to say things that are the truth than to spend the time thinking up a lie. But you know what? We can fix this right now if it bothers you so much. You have a Facebook page, don’t you? Because you’re old-school.” He looked down at the phone and flipped through the apps until he found the one he was looking for. “You have a much bigger follower count than I do. Good for you, man. Let’s just use yours, then.”

  “Use mine? For what? Josy, what are you—”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Quincy didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Of course I do.”

  That was better than any high.

  “And we’re on!” Josy said cheerfully, stretching out his arm and angling the phone toward them. “Hi, Q-Bert’s followers! It’s me, Josy! I’ve taken over the Q-Man’s page, coming to you live from the set of our first film together! We’re—wow. Twelve hundred people are watching already. And now there’s thirteen hundred.” He swallowed thickly. “That’s a lot more than I expected this quickly. Or at all. Oh look, now it’s up to sixteen hundred. It’s the middle of a workday! How are you all watching this?”

  “Oh my god,” Quincy said faintly.

  Josy shook his head. “That’s okay. I can do this.” He grinned into the camera, ignoring the little red box in the corner that showed the viewers increasing exponentially. Tiny little hearts and smiley faces and blue thumbs-ups began shooting across the screen. Josy didn’t understand why Facebook needed that. It seemed unnecessarily complicated. “As I was saying, I am here with the man of the hour! We’re making a movie. Q-Bert wrote it, and he’s also directing it, and it’s pretty cool. We’re not going to tell you what it’s about, because that would be spoilery, but I will say that it’s about happy queer characters, because goshdarnit, we deserve it. Say hi, Q-Bert!”

  He turned the phone toward Quincy, who stood wide-eyed. “Um. Hi?”

  Josy moved until he was standing next to Quincy, their shoulders pressed together. Quincy was pale, and Josy knew he was nervous, so he reached out and took his hand. No one could see it as it was off-camera, but Quincy latched on tightly. Josy hoped it made him feel safe. “We’re a couple of weeks in, and we’ve still got about a month to go. But I think it’s going to be something like you’ve never seen before. Isn’t that right, Q-Bert?”

  Quincy opened his mouth once, twice, then shook his head and cleared his throat. “Yeah. That’s… that’s right. It’s different. It’s… well. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to jinx it.”

  “Oh crap,” Josy moaned. “Dude, I didn’t even think about—”

  Quincy squeezed his hand. “It’s okay. This—I can do this. It’s probably better I talk about it now, right? It was going to come out eventually.” He took a deep breath, and while the smile on his face looked like the love child of a grin and a grimace, his voice evened out when he spoke again. “Hi. You know me as Q-Bert. I write monster porn. And I’m making a movie.”

  “Damn right you are!” Josy crowed.

  “And while those two things aren’t exactly related, the things I learned from my books helped me to tell the story I wanted to tell.”

  “And it’s a good story,” Josy added, eyeing the viewer count as it neared four thousand.

  “A good story,” Quincy echoed. “Josy—Josiah—plays one of the leads.”

  “I’m one of the happy queers!”

  “Yes, you are. One of the happy queers. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys about this sooner, but I think it was because I couldn’t really believe it was real. Some days I still don’t think it is. I’ve… I’ve talked about stuff like this before. How hard it is for me. To speak to all of you. To come out of my shell without feeling like I’m being torn apart. Even now, there’s a little voice in the back of my head that’s telling me to run away, to hide in my bed and not move for a long time. I used to listen to that voice a lot. Sometimes I still do. Even when I got this idea to make a movie, I talked myself out of it time and time again. But then my grandad told me that if I gave in to that voice this time, I always would. That I shouldn’t let it hold me back.” His smile became softer, and Josy adored it. “He was right, of course. Mental health is no joke. And maybe Grandad was a little crude with how he went about it, but he still had a point. It’s part of me. But it’s not who I am.”

  “You’re pretty great is who you are,” Josy said.

  “Thank you?”

  “Yep yep. And look at all those comments! Wow. Like, hundreds of them. I can’t keep up with them! That’s—oh, that one! Yes, my beard is real, and no, it’s not just for the movie. I always look like this. Q-Bert let me keep it because he’s awesome like that. If I shave, I look like I’m twelve, and no one wants to see that. Next comment! Um, that one! No,
we’re not going to tell you the name of the movie yet. It’s a secret. Next! What’s that one say? ‘I saw you on Josiah’s Instagram, when are you getting married because you need to have babies.’” And didn’t that just cause Josy’s brain to short-circuit briefly. “Um, what?”

  Quincy saved him. “What he’s trying to say is that no, we’re not getting married. We’re not dating. We’re just… friends.”

  “Right,” Josy said, nodding furiously. “Just friends. Good friends, even. And now there’s a bunch of angry emojis on the screen. Huh. I didn’t expect that.”

  “Josiah Erickson is a wonderful actor,” Quincy said quickly. “I want you all to remember that name, because he’s going to be huge. There’s no one else in the world who I could see playing the role he has. He’s… he’s perfect.”

  “Aww,” Josy said. “I think you’re pretty perfect too. And now there are heart emojis again. How fickle the minds of men. And women. And fans. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” He frowned. “Fickle is a weird word. It sounds dirty. I’m going to fickle you so hard—”

  “And that’s probably enough for now,” Quincy said, taking the phone from Josy’s hand. “Thank you to everyone who has allowed me to get to this moment. Since we’re talking about the movie now, I’ll be sure to post more about it.”

  “And we’ll probably have at least three or four live videos a day,” Josy added.

  “Maybe one per week.”

  “Per day.”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Oh. Right. Follow me on Instagram! I tried Twitter, but I don’t have a lot of thoughts that can fit into a hundred and forty characters, so it’s pretty dead over there. Bye!”

  Quincy ended the live feed just as the number of viewers crossed over ten thousand.

  It was about that time that Josy realized they were still holding hands.

  And since Quincy didn’t seem to notice, Josy certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.

  “That went well,” he said seriously. “Thank you for trusting me.”

  Quincy sighed. “Like I could ever not. Come on. We’ve got a movie to make.”