I did, but I have the sinking feeling it no longer matters.
ONE MOMENT I’M ENJOYING a blissful nonexistence in a dreamless sleep, and the next a fifty-pound German shepherd somersaults onto my bed. She sticks her cold nose against the back of my neck—and starts nibbling on my hair.
“Oi, oi, not the hair,” I mumble, batting her away.
Sansa replies by flopping over on top of me.
“Gerroff.”
“Wuff!”
I give up and sigh into my pillow. “I hate you, you know that?”
She whines, knowing that I mean the exact opposite. I roll over and rub her around the ears, because she really is a good doggo—despite almost nailing me in the testicles a moment ago—and I know I don’t tell her that enough.
“Okay, you got me. I’m alive,” I tell her softly, and Sansa dutifully slides off me. I sit up, but everything hurts since I haven’t moved in who knows how long, and my migraine isn’t any better. I brush my hair out of my face—and my fingers tangle into it. It’s longer than I’ve ever had it: around my shoulders, and I can’t remember the last time I washed it. It hangs in greasy strands, but I just pull up the hood of my hoodie and hide it.
Sansa slides to the edge of my bed and puddles off it like she’s made of slime. I rub my eyes. “Did Elias not let you out?” I ask, and when I realize I’m expecting her to answer me, I grab my gray sweatpants from the floor and slip them on.
“All right,” I tell her, rubbing her behind the ears. There are few things I can’t say no to, and Sansa is one of them. “Let’s go.”
She perks up and goes bounding out of the room and down the hall to the stairs, where she takes a flying leap down the steps.
I shuffle after her. By the lighting out in the hall, it’s perhaps late afternoon. I open the back door and she tears out into the yard. A murder of crows breaks into flight above us, settling somewhere in the trees.
“Elias, I’m up,” I call. No response; he must’ve gone to the store. I grab a LaCroix from the fridge and glance into the living room. The sofa, and the still-damp spot in the center, reminds me of the events last night.
And of the girl.
Elias said I had to work with her to fix up the library, so I make my way to the library to see just how much work I won’t do.
The library door is heavy and made of some sort of dark wood—mahogany or oak—and is carved with flourishes of vines. I hit it with my toe, and to my surprise the hinges give easily, and it creaks open. The library is quiet. A thin layer of dust coats the shelves, and most of the books are faded, their spines broken. Starfield, Star Wars, Star Trek, on top of old Anne McCaffreys and Douglas Adamses and a myriad of other ancient sci-fi authors. They’re in no particular order, and there are more books in cardboard boxes stacked against the bookcases. There are at least thirty of them. They’re probably also full of yellowed paperbacks.
The book that took a dip with the girl rests on a towel on the desk at the far end of the library. The Starless Throne by Sophie Jenkins. I pick it up to read the back summary, surprised to find out that the book is about the character I played in the films—General Ambrose Sond. The villain in Starfield: Resonance.
To atone for the crimes of the Twelfth Order, Ambrose Sond escapes his lifelong imprisonment in the Mines of Mourning and is sent careening into a plot that may destroy not only the Federation but everything he once loathed—until he finds a reason to protect it.
“Sounds terrible,” I mutter, tossing the book back onto the towel. It’s still mostly damp, and the cover has begun to curl around the edges. To say it’s ruined would be an understatement. It’s pulp. I can hardly imagine that once it was worth as much as my favorite trainers.
I can hardly imagine any book would be worth that much.
If Elias thinks I will help out in any capacity in this library, he’s sorely mistaken. I am not here to play housekeeper—that sounds boring, anyway.
As I begin to leave, a magazine on the edge of the desk catches my eye.
PULL THE REIGNS ON VANCE! it says, which is really quite ingenious, I have to admit.
I slowly sneak up to the magazine, as if it’ll jump away and disappear, but it’s really there. I’m quite surprised, actually, that this magazine is the first bit of the outside world I’ve seen in weeks, and it’s…sort of terrifying. But I’m too curious to simply look away.
And the reality of my, well, reality, begins to settle in.
“I always thought he was bad news,” tweets one of the authors penning the current young-adult book series Starfield: Ignite. “About time his problematic behavior caught up with him.”
Vance Reigns has always been somewhat of a hot-button topic. Whether it be the ragers he hosts at his house in Beverly Hills, or the questionable videos on his Instagram in clubs he’s not yet old enough to get into, or the revolving door of men and women through his love life, Vance Reigns gave us a little of it all and we drank it in. After all, he’s a young guy in Hollywood with too much time on his hands! We’ve all lived a little vicariously through his exploits.
But his appeal turned sour a few weeks ago when he took a nose dive into a private pond in a Tesla with Elle Wittimer herself, costar Darien Freeman’s longtime girlfriend. They claim they were pursued by paparazzi, but the question stands: what were they trying to hide?
Darien Freeman and Elle Wittimer have since broken up—and Vance Reigns’s popularity has plummeted. He has become one of the most-hated celebrities on the internet, rivaled only by the polarizing hatred for Kylo Ren from the Star Wars franchise—a fictional character.
And where is Vance Reigns to own up to what he has done? No one knows. While we have our suspicions as to where he might be, Starfield is scrambling to control the narrative of this disaster. There is no doubt Vance Reigns has quite a career ahead of him as a villain of epic proportions.
But the real question is: will the fans let him? Or will his career, like Darien Freeman and Elle’s relationship, be canceled?
I feel sick to my stomach and quickly close the magazine. The entire room begins to spin. Somewhere in the distance Sansa barks, but I barely hear her as I sit down in one of the wingback chairs.
Darien and Elle are broken up?
I was supposed to take her back to Darien’s place on the west side of LA. It was during the wrap party for Starfield: Resonance. We had filmed our last scene that day, and so we were celebrating at Natalia Ford’s—our director’s—house in the Hills. Which would have been grand, but I had a previous engagement at a club with a few of my other blokes, so I decided to leave the party early.
I was heading back to my car when I intercepted Darien, dark hair messy and shirt crumpled, and Elle in an oversized sweatshirt and jeans. She wanted to leave, he didn’t. Classic case, really.
“I’ll just call a car,” she was telling him.
But he was shaking his head. “No, just hold on—I’ll drive you home.”
“You want to stay, Dare, and I have an exam tomorrow morning. It’ll be fine. Stay and enjoy the evening, okay?” she told him soothingly, and pressed a kiss onto his cheek.
“Get a room,” I called as I passed them, spinning the key ring around on my finger, earning a middle finger from Darien. I should’ve just kept quiet.
“Thanks for the—wait, are you leaving?” Elle called after me, much against Darien’s insistence not to.
I shouldn’t have stopped, but hindsight is always clearer. I looked back at him. “Does it look like I’m staying, Geekerella?” She hates it when I call her that, most likely because she gets it every time she shows up in the tabloids.
Her face flickered with annoyance, but then she said, “You’re heading over toward that club, aren’t you? On the far side of the strip?”
“Am I that predictable?”
“Yes,” both of them said in unison.
I rolled my eyes. “What do you want?”
Darien began to shake his head, but Elle pushed on and said, “Would you mind dropping me off at Dare’s place? It’s on the way.”
Again, I should have said no. I should have told her to get her boyfriend to take her home, because I shouldn’t have dealt with the trouble of her. But I said yes. Not because I wanted to be nice.
I said yes because I knew it would piss Darien off, and I wanted to piss him off as often as I could. He’s just so insufferably perfect, like his character in Starfield. He does everything right, and he says all the right things in interviews, and he has a beautiful girlfriend, and everyone loves him.
But I think I hated him the most because he loves himself. He loves his life.
It annoyed the hell out of me.
So I agreed to take Elle home just so I could see the look on Darien’s face when I led his girl to my car and helped her inside. But once the door was closed and I pulled out of the auto spot, she said, “You really like getting under his skin, don’t you?”
“It helps that I have a pretty girl I can use,” I replied slyly.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not helping, and you’re not using me. You’re taking me home. I have an exam in the morning that I cannot fail.”
I knew where Darien’s apartment was, so I took the quickest route to it. I sighed, “Ah, the life of a college student. A wee bit different from perfect Darien’s life, isn’t it?”
She gave me a look. “Yes, it’s different—but neither is perfect. He has a lot of night shoots. I have exams and studying.”
“And professors who already know your name because of who you’re dating, and classmates who want to be your friend because secretly they all think they should be dating Darien Freeman instead of you.”
“Do you always think the world revolves around you?”
“When has it not?”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being the spoiled brat?”
“No,” I said, but what I honestly meant was—
If I can’t be this, what can I be?
But we didn’t have time to delve into a therapy session, because a moment later, at a red light, she put a hand on my arm. At first I thought she was getting sweet with me, but when I followed her gaze, she was looking at a black SUV next to us. The window was rolled down. And a bulbous camera lens stared unblinking at us.
This was why I took the shortest possible route. This is why I should have told her no, to call a cab, to let her perfect boyfriend take her home.
The news outlets would report that we had tried to get away from paparazzi, and that was when my car took a nose dive into a pond—which was more like a muddy reservoir, but I quickly stopped trying to argue that point, especially when everyone began to narrow in on the part where Elle and I were together in the car.
Elle and Darien set the record straight almost instantly, of course, but by then it didn’t matter.
What do you think was more newsworthy, the unfounded rumor that I was trying to get Darien’s girl, or that I was—mostly selflessly—taking her home from a wrap party?
It’s not bloody rocket science.
My manager thought it would be best if I laid low for a while. If I let everything blow over. My stepfather, at the end of his rope, thought that if I went somewhere without Hollywood influence, I would come out a better man.
But it seems like even without me there, things just got worse. I made everything worse.
I always make everything worse.
THE DISMISSAL BELL SHRILLS and I slam closed my notebook and shove it into my bag. Miss Rayna bookmarks our spot in Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and shouts at us to finish the novel. A few students grumble about having to read about sparkly vampires, but the teacher quickly tells them, “As if a ring of invisibility is any more believable—there’ll be a quiz tomorrow on the differing mythos between Dracula and Twilight!”
That was met with even more groans. I’d already read both books, so I just needed a refresher course in Dracula. Maybe I could rent the 1992 movie tonight. I always did fancy Keanu Reeves…
Pulling my bag over my shoulder, I hurry out of the classroom to meet Annie and Quinn.
“I can’t believe you get to read Twilight in honors class while I had to suffer through Huck Finn,” Quinn says as they meticulously file down their beautiful clawlike nails, leaning beside Annie’s locker. “It’s honestly not fair.”
“We also had to read Dracula, though,” I point out as I jerk open my locker, “which is drier than my love life.”
Annie and I have had lockers beside each other since middle school. It’s the curse of having T names—Thorne and Trout. Annie says, “Well, there are some one-hander bodice-rippers I can lend you for that.”
“Oh, gross.” Quinn wrinkles their nose.
Annie shrugs. “Just saying.” She takes out her book and closes her locker. “Okay, so I have a crazy idea and I need you both to be super-ultra-supportive of it.”
Quinn and I both eye her hesitantly. The last time Annie had an idea we had to be supportive of, she shaved off her brother’s arm hair and it never grew back right. Quinn finally says, “Okay, let’s hear it.”
So Annie flips open her notebook and presents us with a list titled HOW TO BECOME HOMECOMING ROYALTY.
“Oh no,” Quinn whispers as I look around for somewhere—anywhere—to hide.
“Quinn will become Homecoming royalty instead, preventing one Garrett Taylor from becoming Homecoming King and guilt-tripping you into becoming his date. It’s a bulletproof plan,” Annie says triumphantly. Then she tears out the list, and I realize she’s written it down three times. She hands each of us a sheet and pushes up her glasses, like the nerdy hero of her own rom-com. “Operation Royally Screwed is a go!”
I scan down the list. “This is a terrible idea.”
“Who says I even want to be Homecoming King?” Quinn says, closing the locker door. “It’s sexist.”
“Then who better to be crowned than our favorite nonbinary Overlord?”
Annie has a good point, one that I don’t really like, but Quinn seems to have taken the bait. “Overlord, you say?”
“And you get a crown.”
“I always did like overthrowing the patriarchy,” they muse. “Okay, I’m in. This calls for a trip to the library, I believe.”
Annie nods gravely. “We need the help of Space Dad.”
I grimace and shove Twilight and my calculus book into my bookbag. “Why do we need my dad’s help? And can you please stop calling him that? It’s weird,” I add as we melt into the steady stream of students leaving the school.
“Look,” Annie says, putting a hand on my shoulder, “he’s so beautiful that his beauty is out of this world, so thus—”
“Space Dad,” Quinn agrees. “Besides, he loves those trashy sci-fi books so it fits.”
I sigh. “I’m never going to win this, am I?”
“Nope,” both Quinn and Annie reply in unison.
Of course not. I toss my keys into the air and catch them. “Okay, library it is. Only until four, though. I have a date with a few hundred books after that.”
“And Vance Reigns,” Quinn replies with a wiggle of their eyebrows.
My cheeks warm, but before either of them can notice, I push open the door to the school courtyard. Students slowly trickle out of the breezeway toward their cars in the almost-empty parking lot. I can hear the sound of some sportsball playing in the field behind the school, followed by the out-of-tune howl of the trombones over on the marching band field.
Someone bumps into my shoulder, muttering, “I can’t believe Garrett’s taking you.”
I glance back, but whoever it was gets lost in the crowd of students behind us. That was odd. It’s not like I want Garrett to take me. I told him no, after all.
> But that makes me think of something more concerning—how many people think that? That I’m stealing Garrett Taylor away from them? I mean, Garrett is popular, but it’s only because he has a few hundred thousand subscribers on his YouTube channel and everyone wants to have their five seconds of fame. Do they think I’m looking for five seconds of fame? Suddenly, it feels like everyone is looking at me even though I know—I know—they can’t all be.
Maybe just most of them.
Some of them.
Enough for me to hurry up my pace. If Annie and Quinn notice, they don’t say anything. When we get to my car, they toss their backpacks into the back, and Quinn calls shotgun. I slide into the driver’s seat and mutter a prayer to my car.
I turn the key and the engine squeals.
“Not today,” I say to it. “Please not today—”
Old Betsy sputters to life. Quinn and Annie throw their hands up in a cheer.
“To the library!” Annie cries. “Space Dad calls to us!”
No, no he does not, but I’d rather not fan the flames, so I crank up the stereo—the only part of my car that has never once failed me—and we sing our way to the library where my dad works. It’s about a ten-minute ride from the high school, down the main road on the other side of town.
For the record, everything in this town is no more than ten minutes away.
I’ve lived in this small town for my entire life. It isn’t tiny—we have a movie theater and a (slightly dilapidated) shopping mall and a few big-chain grocery stores and a Walmart. It sits on the side of a lake, along with three other towns, so it attracts an array of millionaires to the area looking for a quiet, reserved place to plant their roots. Before I was born, Dad and Mom moved here, and he stayed at home with me while Mom went to work at a nuclear site about an hour away. She was smart in ways I can never be. She could spin numbers as if they were magic, but what she loved most of all were words. She loved reading them, collecting them, coveting them. When she died a year ago, the medical and funeral costs ate up most of our savings. We had to sell the house on the lake, and Dad’s favorite Fender guitar, and finally—tragically—the collection of Starfield novels she loved so much.
Bookish and the Beast Page 6