Darkness. Then, a sound—the beat of something striking the ground. Sharp, high-pitched, steady.
Coming this December…
It’s only September, and December feels like a lifetime away. We’ve been waiting a year and a half for the sequel—a year! And! A half!—and my twisting stomach can barely stand it.
There is a soft, steady beat that echoes over the sweet, low horn of the Starfield theme.
The text fades and there is Carmindor kneeling in front of the Noxian Court. His lip is bloodied, and there is a gash across his eyebrow. He looks to have been tortured, his arms bound tightly behind his back. His eyes are shadowed by his disheveled hair.
“Prince Carmindor, we find you guilty,” says a soft, deep voice.
The other members of the court, of the different regions in the Empire, some emissaries from far-reaching colonies, representatives from the Federation, all dressed in their pale official colors. Their faces are grim. At the head of the court is a throne, where the ruler of the Nox Empire should sit, but it is empty.
“Guilty of conspiring against the Empire,” the same voice says. “Of treason.”
There are flashes of the first movie—Carmindor at the helm of the Prospero, the defiant faces of Euci and Zorine beside him, the fight between the Nox King and Carmindor on Ziondur, the moment Amara says goodbye to Carmindor and locks him on the bridge—
“But most of all,” the voice purrs, and the blurry image of a man in gold and white, hair long and flowing, looking like a deity of the sun, slowly comes into focus. Bright blue eyes, white-blond hair, a sharp face and a pointed nose, the hem of his uniform glowing like burning embers. A chill curls down my spine. “We find you guilty of the murder of our princess, our light—our Amara.”
Amara’s ship swirls into the Black Nebula, her smile, her lips saying words without any sound that mysteriously look like “ah’blen”—
A hand grabs Carmindor’s hair and forces his head back. Lips press against his ear, and the prophetic voice of General Sond whispers, “No one is coming for you, princeling.”
Annie gasps, pressing her hand to her mouth. Because Carmindor’s eyes—his eyes are the pale, pale white of the conscripted. The beat—the clipping sound—gets louder. It sounds like the drum of a funeral march, like the coming of a predator, like a countdown to the end of the world.
The screen fades to black again, and then on the next beat—two pristine black boots, heels striking against the ground. The flutter of a long uniform jacket the perfect shade of blue. The errant flash of bright red hair—as red as a supernova. The glimmer of a golden tiara.
Annie grabs my wrist tightly, and squeezes. I know—I know.
It’s her.
The camera pans with her as she makes her way toward the throne, from her fluttering Federation coat to the golden stars on her shoulders, to her face. You can tell she’s different. That she isn’t the same princess who sacrificed herself to the Black Nebula. She’s new, and unpredictable, and impossible.
My heart kicks in my chest, seeing her again, returned from some improbable universe, and my eyes well with tears.
Because for once death isn’t final.
For once, for once, love is enough.
And the left side of Amara’s mouth twitches up.
The screen snaps to black—and then the triumphant orchestra of the Starfield theme swells into our ears, and the title appears:
STARFIELD: RESONANCE
And then it ends.
We stare at the blank screen for a moment longer. My heart hammers in my chest. It’s real. It’s happening. And Amara is back—our Amara.
Finally, Annie whispers. “I…I think I just popped a lady-boner—”
“A-hem.”
Annie and I whirl around toward the sound of our manager, Mr. Jason. He’s red-faced and standing with his arms crossed over his chest in the middle of our respective cash registers. She quickly yanks the earbud out of my ear, rolls up the wires, and shoves the cell phone into her apron.
“If I see you two with cell phones out one more time tonight…” he warns, wagging his finger at us, “then I’ll—I’ll…”
Uh-oh, he’s so flustered he doesn’t have words.
“We won’t, sorry, sir,” Annie says, and Mr. Jason nods, not quite believing her, and turns on his heel back to his office.
I let out a sigh of relief.
Annie mouths, Yikes.
I agree. He’s really not in the best mood tonight. We shouldn’t push our luck. Mr. Jason is known to have two modes: absent and dickweed. At the moment, he’s in full dickweed mode.
After I ring up the waiting customers, I straighten my aisle and leave to wrangle the shopping carts from the parking lot. There’s a toy dispenser outside that is calling my name, and I’ve got just the quarter that feels lucky enough for me to test it.
“Going to go try it again?” Annie calls to me as I wander toward the automatic doors.
“After that trailer, I’m feeling lucky,” I reply, flipping the quarter with my thumb, and step outside in the warm September evening.
There is a Starfield toy dispenser by the grocery cart lane, featuring the old characters from the TV series, though the Amara really looks nothing like Natalia Ford. She’s in this skimpy bodysuit with a pistol, and honestly Princess Amara would burn the entire dispenser if she saw that. Carmindor and the other six collectibles look somewhat like themselves, at least, though I’ve gotten so many Carmindors I could melt them all down and make a life-sized Carmindor to use for target practice whenever I decide to take up axe-throwing.
Maybe today, though, I’ll finally snag a Sond.
I pop the quarter into the Starfield toy machine. A toy rolls out, and I fish it out of the metal mouth and shake it. It doesn’t sound like another Carmindor. Maybe Amara? Euci?
Ugh, I have enough Eucis, too.
The outside of the shell reads, LOOK TO THE STARS AND CHASE YOUR DESTINY!
Dare I disturb the universe, crack open the egg, and find out what my future holds?
I’m about to twist the sucker open when someone calls my name. Like, not just calls from across the parking or anything, but like…megaphone calls my name.
I glance up.
And pale.
Oh, no.
Garrett Taylor is standing in the bed of his Ford truck with a karaoke machine. On the window of his muddy black truck, he dramatically unfurls a banner that says, HOMECOMING?
What the…
Oh.
Oh Jesus Mother Mary Aziraphale Crowley.
The realization of what’s happening hits me like the Prospero fresh out of hyperdrive. And I don’t have time to escape.
“Rosie Thorne,” Garrett begins valiantly, turning his snap-back around. Tufts of his chocolate-brown hair stick out the hole in the back of his cap, shaggy around his ears. A silver stud glints in his left ear. “You and I are a tale as old as time,” he says into the microphone, trying to be smart and funny.
He’s none of the above, and this is one hundred and ten percent mortifying.
Forget the carts in the parking lot. I try to make it back into the store before he can do something I will regret.
“Rosie!” he calls after me, vaulting off the flatbed, and races to cut me off. He succeeds. Barely. “What do you think?” he asks, motioning to the large HOMECOMING? banner. His posse follows him with their expensive GoPros, and I can feel their tiny bulbous camera eyes slowly leeching my soul.
Ever since he went viral on YouTube, I can’t stand him. He was fine before, but now he’s just insufferable. Everything has to be video’d and monetized.
“Garrett,” I say, putting my hand up so the GoPros can’t capture my face, “I’m flattered, but—”
He grabs me by the hand I was using to block the cameras and squeezes it tightly. “
Don’t say it! Just think on it, okay?”
“I did think—”
“Rosie, you know as well as I do that we’re a team! Remember back in elementary school? We were the best Red Rover pair.”
“We have similar last names so we had to stand by each other—”
“And then in middle school, we made the best English projects together.”
I try to yank my hand out of his. “I did all of the work!”
“And I’m sorry high school hasn’t been very kind to you. Not since your mom died, and you had to move into a bad apartment after you had to pay for the medical bills—”
All things that make my skin crawl when he brings them up. Things that he has no right to say—period. Especially not on camera.
“—but I want to make your last Homecoming the most magical it can be. Yeah? Remember back on the playground? I promised you I’d look after you.”
“I’m not a charity case, Garrett,” I snap, finally able to pull my hand free. “Is that what you’re doing? ‘Oh, poor Rosie, she’s had a tough time—’ ”
“You’re also really pretty, if that helps,” he adds, and his two henchmen wince. He realizes a moment too late his folly, because I’m already halfway back into the grocery store. “Wait! That’s not what I meant!”
“You’re just too kind, Garrett,” I tell him over my shoulder in the most sickeningly sweet voice I can muster. “I don’t deserve you.”
I return into the grocery store, and as soon as I’m out of direct eyesight from Garrett, I duck down behind a line of shopping carts and watch as he returns to his truck with his two goons, waving at them to quit recording. Then they hop into his truck and they drive away, the HOMECOMING? banner flapping in the wind like a strip of toilet paper on the bottom of a shoe.
I pull out my phone to text Quinn.
ROSIE (6:16 PM)
—YOU. WOULDN’T. BELIEVE.
WHAT. JUST. HAPPENED.
QUINN (6:16 PM)
—Oh no did Annie just throw down an entire bottle of kombucha again?
ROSIE (6:17 PM)
—No but
“Rosie!” I hear Annie hiss, and when I look up she’s at the register, making a motion to hang up the phone. But I’m not even on the—
The intercom squeaks and the tired voice of my manager says, “Rosie Thorne, please report to the office. Immediately.”
Shit.
Annie sighs to the heavens.
Well, time to grovel, I guess. Dejectedly, I stand and brush off my work slacks—someone really needs to clean the floors—and make my way toward the back of the store. The manager’s office is situated in the far left corner, shoved between the frozen produce and the meat counter, so it always smells like frozen chickens and artichokes. I knock on the metal door before I poke my head into his office. Mr. Jason is sitting behind a crappy desk, vigorously pumping a smiley-face stress ball. He motions me inside, and I close the door gently behind me.
“Just let me explain,” I begin, but he holds up a hand and I quickly fall silent.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Mr. Jason is one of those guys who hangs his screenwriting degree behind his desk to remind himself of all of the mistakes he’s made in his lifetime, now a lowly grocery store manager in the middle of nowhere rather than some award-winning screenwriter in LA. Maybe once he had a head full of black hair, but he opted to buzz it short when he started going bald. I only wish he’d shaved off his porn-stache too, but we can’t always get what we want.
“What did I tell you,” he says quietly, “about your phone?”
“You see, out in the parking lot—”
“This is your third write-up, Rosie,” he interrupts.
I stare at him, uncomprehending. “Third? That can’t be right.”
He flips open a folder on his desk—a folder I hadn’t noticed before—and begins reading from a detailed write-up form. “First write-up happened last summer, when you told Travis Richardson—and I quote—‘sit and rotate’ while presenting him the middle finger.”
“I turned him down, so he told me I’d die alone with seven cats!”
He went on, “And the second write-up was this past spring, when you filmed a TikTok in the middle of the frozen meats section to the song—”
“ ‘If I Can’t Love Her’ from the ending credits of Starfield, yeah I remember that one,” I mutter to myself. “But it went viral! I mean, sure I did a few bad things, but I’m a good employee! I was an employee of the month!” I add, flinging my hand back to the wall of photos behind me.
Mr. Jason closes the file and gives me a weary look. “Listen, Rosie. I understand that life without your mother must be difficult.”
The words are like a sword through my middle. My hands involuntarily fist.
“It must be tough,” he goes on, as if he understands what I went through, as if he knows what it’s like to have part of your heart ripped out, “and I’ve read in plenty of coping books that acting out is a part of healing, but—”
“I’m not acting out!” I interrupt, shoving myself to my feet, but he just stares at me with this sorry sort of look in his eyes. It’s the same look I’ve seen in the eyes of teachers, and neighbors, and classmates, and strangers alike.
And something in me breaks. It snaps. Right in two.
I claw at my name badge, unhook it, and slam it onto the desk. “I quit.”
“Rosie!” He gives a start, rising to his feet. “We can talk about this—”
I force myself to my feet and leave the office, anger pulsing through me like white-hot fire. I grab my bookbag from the lockers and I don’t look back.
Annie looks up from her phone, which she has, unlike me, artfully hidden under the counter, as I pass her toward the front doors. “…Rosie?”
I don’t stop for her. My eyes are burning with tears, because he had the nerve to look at me like that. My mom died. Yeah, that happened. Yeah, it sucked. Yeah, there’s a hole in my chest where she should be but it’s empty because she no longer exists.
I get it.
I just hate the look people give me. The pitying one. The one that, behind the sadness in their eyes, they’re thinking I’m glad it was her and not me.
“Rosie,” Annie calls, but I’m already halfway out of the store.
“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” I say before the automatic doors close on me. I’m so angry I don’t slow down until I wrench open the door to my antique mustard-yellow hatchback and buckle myself in.
It’s finally quiet.
My hands are still shaking as I curl them around the steering wheel and breathe out a long breath. The kind of breath my therapist told me to breathe out whenever I felt the world spinning out of control. I’m okay. Everything’s fine.
Everything will be fine.
That’s when I remember the toy egg I crammed into my pocket before the whole fiasco started. I take it out, and shake it one more time.
Please, please let it be Sond.
I crack it open.
A small plastic figurine falls out. White-blond hair and a purple uniform. I smirk a little to myself and curl my fingers around the tiny General Sond, remembering the boy on the balcony. He didn’t look at me like I was broken, something that couldn’t be fixed. I wish I’d gotten his name. I wish I had pressed more ardently, even though I asked, again and again—
And each time he’d just smile at me and say, “You should guess.”
“That’s no fair, you won’t give me any clues! Fine, I won’t tell you mine, either. You’ll have to guess.”
He chuckled. “How many guesses do I get?”
“Until morning,” I decided.
“Until morning,” he agreed.
I wish I could go back and live in that night forever. But…it doesn’t matter what I wish,
because that night is over, like the boy himself, one moment there—then by morning, gone.
“CAN YOU TURN THAT DOWN? I have a beastly migraine,” I murmur, passing the living room where Elias is watching some lip-syncing contest. I grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, crack open the cap, and drain half. I press the cool plastic against my forehead, but it does very little to alleviate my headache. “Do we have any medicine?”
Elias leans his head back to look into the kitchen. “Try left cabinet, bottom shelf.”
I find some generic shite that will work better than nothing. I swallow it down with a gulp of water and grab a biscuit from the pack above the refrigerator.
“Ooh, come here. I think Darien is about to go on,” Elias calls.
The last thing I want is to see my costar, but then I hear David Bowie purr through the TV speakers, and I slowly ease my way into the living room.
“Bloody hell,” I mutter through a mouthful of biscuit as Darien Freeman lip-syncs to “Do You Know the Babe” on live television.
In any other circumstance, I would rightly be laughing my ass off as he humiliates himself in front of millions of viewers, but I almost choke on my biscuit as he breaks into a tap-dancing number.
“Just think, that could’ve been you,” Elias comments, nonplussed by the situation at hand, while the sight of Darien Freeman dressed as a sexy Halloween version of the Goblin King from Labyrinth—a sparkly leotard and fishnets, with an exciting blond wig—will haunt me for the rest of my life.
It is very akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion. The lights flare on and he pulls out a riding crop and slaps his thigh.
The crowd, at least, goes wild. They wave around posters that say WANNA WABBA WABBA WITH ME? and YOU SAVED AMARA! and I’M SINGLE and I LOVE YOU DARE-BEAR! And a lot of other signs that should honestly be blurred out. He does a full-on split as the song ends and the entire audience erupts into chaos.
Well, that performance will certainly give Tom Holland a go.
“I’m going to bed,” I announce, because my migraine is only getting worse watching this, but even as I say that I find myself pulling my leg over the couch and sinking down into the cushions beside Elias. He’s curled up in the corner of the L-shaped couch in his comfortable blue robe, his wet dark hair gently curling against his neck. He’s my stepdad’s uncle, and my current guardian—for a multitude of reasons.
Bookish and the Beast Page 2