by Melody Anne
You’re hopeless.
I shrugged and pointed behind him as the line moved up. We inched past the rows of darkened stores and toward the brightly lit Bookworm. I couldn’t suppress my smile as I spotted the green worm woven through the O’s of the sign above the door. I’d been coming to this store since I was a toddler begging my mother to buy me every picture book on the shelf. Bookworm always felt like home.
When we finally made it inside, my breath hooked in the back of my throat. The mingling scents of new books, teenage sweat, and air-conditioning wafted around us. I blinked against the lights and pulled my body in tight. The usually calm store was a flurry of activity as people raced to the shelves and the cashiers. My personal space dwindled down to almost nothing and I stole a longing glance at the exit.
The store had really gone all out for the book release. Banners announcing Viking Moon Three: Sticks and Stones hung from the ceilings and the ends of bookshelves. Models of the ships from the books marked the entrance to the young adult section. They’d even hired actors to play Thora and Dag. The pair stood on either side of the boats, greeting customers and posing for pictures.
I ducked my head at the rush of pride creeping through my skin, momentarily muting the anxiety. Although none of them knew it, these hordes of people were here for me.
Jin tugged my arm to get my attention. The store was packed; he didn’t have much room, so he spoke as opposed to signing. “This is insane!”
I widened my eyes and shook my head. “Crazy.”
He dragged me over to a rapidly emptying shelf of Sticks and Stones novels. Grabbing one of the last copies, Jin triumphantly held up his book.
“No matter how many of these come out, I’ll still never believe you wrote them,” he said. My heart skipped a beat. I grabbed his arm and scanned the crowd. When my eyes returned to his, he smirked. “Don’t worry, psycho. I whispered it.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Although,” he said, “if I’d written a bestselling series at sixteen, I’d sure as hell want to tell people.”
No thanks, I signed. I had no desire to tell people three years ago, and I don’t need to tell them now.
“So years of royalty checks and world recognition haven’t changed anything?”
“No.” I fingered my scar. “Not a thing.”
“Like I said. Hopeless.”
He shoved me gently as we pushed through the crowds to stand in line at the cash register. I pried the book from his hand and ran my fingers along the cover, marveling at the art. The artist had created a perfect version of Thora, her red hair flowing behind her like fire as she clutched her sword and shot a sensual smile at Dag, a well-defined hunk of a man. Dag was bare-chested, with a traditional Viking silver-horned hat on his head and furs around his waist. He stared down at Thora with a longing that caused a warm flush to creep up my cheeks and made me tingle in places lower than that.
I traced the raised lines at the bottom pronouncing my pen name, Aubrey Lynch. Flipping the book over, I opened it to the author bio page at the back.
Aubrey Lynch lives in Fernbrooke, Ohio. When she’s not writing, she enjoys water-skiing and hiking. She’s the bestselling author of the Viking Moon series, soon to be a television show.
I grimaced. The first part, about where I lived, was true. Fernbrooke had always been my home and probably always would be. The call of big cities was one I’d never felt the need to answer. The second bit, though . . . well, I’d never been on water skis. And the one time I’d tried to hike anywhere, I’d gotten incredibly lost and had been sure I’d die in the woods after consuming a poisoned berry. Thank goodness for cell phones and Jin.
Someone touched my shoulder. I looked up at Jin, his dark eyebrows furrowed. He tapped the bio page.
“I completely understand using a pen name and fake bio,” he said. “But I’ll never understand why you used a fake photo, too.”
I glanced down. Above the ridiculously untrue bio was the picture of a stunning girl who looked to be about my age. She had long, dark hair and piercing green eyes. She was free of any scars or insecurities as she smiled at the camera. Basically, she was everything I wasn’t.
When my editor had come to me three years ago and told me the publisher needed an author photo for promotion and the back of the first book, my stomach did more somersaults than if I’d been riding a roller coaster at superspeed. I’d spent years learning how to avoid having my picture taken. I had looking at the floor at just the right time down to a science and I’d perfected moving at the last second so everything came out a blur. This made finding a picture to send to my publisher an impossible feat. Despite the fact that my Instagram feed was full of other people’s selfies—with the odd pet or food pic thrown in to prove they weren’t entirely narcissistic—I didn’t have a single usable photo of myself.
After weeks of my editor badgering me and giving me a solid deadline, I did what any self-conscious teen girl would do—I gave her a picture of someone else. I’d never met the girl in the photo. I didn’t even know her name. But she looked exactly how I wished I could. The confidence in her eyes was something I would never master. Plus, the fans loved her. There were fan sites devoted to her hair, her eyes, her perfectly peaked nose. And the fact that her image gave me anonymity once the books hit it big was a bonus. I didn’t belong in the spotlight. She clearly did.
Shrugging, I handed Jin the book as we moved forward in line.
I don’t know, I signed. Didn’t want the attention.
“Where did you even get that picture?”
“Google.”
Jin shook his head and we found ourselves at the front of the line. He sauntered to the cashier and I stepped aside, my muscles unclenching as I stole a moment away from the crowd. I surveyed the plethora of teens around me. Many were already flipping open the book, their eyes darting back and forth as they skimmed the pages.
Although I usually tried to avoid lip-reading private conversations, curiosity overcame me and I studied the mouths of those around me. Sometimes—especially moments like this, when I wanted to know what people thought of my work but didn’t want to actually talk to them—it came in handy.
Jin once tried to convince me I should use my lip-reading ability for good and become a superhero, or a government spy. I’d reminded him I wasn’t one for binding leather outfits, or capes, or running. He’d rolled his eyes as far back as they could go and declared me “no fun.”
But surely it couldn’t hurt to see what my fans thought of my books now. I was here, after all.
“I heard one of the major characters gets killed,” said a girl with a red-haired wig askew on her forehead. Dressing up like Thora seemed to be a popular choice among the fans swarming the store.
“It better not be Dag,” her friend said. “I’ll never forgive Aubrey Lynch if she kills him off.”
The fake redhead nodded and clutched the book to her chest. “He’s so hot. I wonder who’ll play him in the TV show.”
“I heard they signed Gavin Hartley,” her friend said.
I froze. No one had told me that. I’d been anxiously awaiting a text from my agent to tell me the casting news. I could barely believe they were filming a series of my book. I wasn’t sure I could handle them casting Gavin, my all-time favorite actor, too. I’d suggested him to my agent as the ideal choice to play Dag when the news of the TV show first broke, but hadn’t heard anything since.
Jin came toward me, a smile pasted on his face and a yellow bag slung over his shoulder. He glanced behind me and stopped. His eyes widened. At the same moment, the energy of the crowd shifted. Everyone turned and gaped in my direction. Then they started to run.
My heart knocked around my chest. Oh no. Oh nononono. Somehow, they’d figured out who I was.
I shielded myself with my arms as they drew closer—and then ran right past me, a breeze in their wake, knocking me off balance.
Jin grabbed my wrist to steady me. He cocked his head as though he w
as trying to determine what to do. Then he spun me toward the commotion.
My breath gasped out of my chest and I almost fell to the floor.
“Impossible,” I whispered. “She can’t be here.”
But as many times as I shut my eyes and tried to blink reality back into place, the vision never faltered.
The girl from the back of my books was standing right behind me.
How is that possible? I signed to Jin. Where did she come from?
He shook his head. I don’t know.
She was even more beautiful in real life than in her picture. In the years since I’d stolen her photo, she’d clipped her hair into a razored bob, with dark bangs that made her emerald eyes pop from her perfectly symmetrical face. Tall and slim, she wore a white skirt and pink blouse that showed off her curves without being too revealing. I tugged my own T-shirt down over my barely there hips.
As if by magic, she produced a silver Sharpie and began signing copies of Sticks and Stones shoved her way. Jin’s jaw hung slack as he watched her, his eyes narrowing.
Is she signing your books?
I nodded and grabbed the bag from his shoulder. Reaching for the book, I maneuvered through the crowd until I was in front of the “author.” She gave me a smile that could have lit up a palace and reached for Jin’s copy of Sticks and Stones.
“Would you like me to sign that?” she asked.
Without waiting for a reply, she plucked the novel from my hands and opened it to the title page. She scrawled something inside and handed it back to me.
People pushed against my back, but I felt stuck to the ground, as though the Bookworm floor were made of mud instead of concrete.
Fake me frowned. “Is something wrong? Is there something I can do for you?”
My tongue went dry as sandpaper. Her lips were a perfect ruby red. They didn’t have a trace of gloss on them.
How could a person’s lips actually be that color?
Someone tugged on my T-shirt and began to pull me away from her. A look of relief flashed across the girl’s face before I was whisked out of the crowd and into Jin’s arms. Concern lined his dark features.
“Why would you do that?” he asked.
Instead of answering, I opened the book to the title page and scanned the beautifully scripted words written below my title and pen name.
Thanks for being a fan! Keep on pillaging your dreams!
Love, Aubrey Lynch
“What the hell?” I said. “That doesn’t even make sense. Why would someone want to pillage their dreams? Just because they’re Vikings . . .”
Jin took my arm and led me out of the store, which was fortunate, since I seemed to be numb from the waist down. My legs wobbled like Jell-O and I leaned against my friend as he pushed through the crowd.
A blast of heat greeted us when we exited the air-conditioned sanctuary of the bookstore. My clothes almost instantly plastered themselves to my body. I scanned the people still waiting in line, their lips moving in rapid succession.
“Did you hear? Aubrey Lynch is in there!”
“What? No way!”
“Yeah, she’s signing copies!”
“Oh my gawd! I need to meet her! She’s my hero!”
I turned away from the crowd, a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. My insides rolled as I pictured the woman we’d left signing copies of my book.
When we reached my car, Jin placed his hand under my chin and tilted my head. What are you going to do? he signed.
Dropping the book back into the bag, I shrugged. Nothing, I guess. There’s nothing I can do.
But those are your books and she’s taking credit.
I put her on the back cover, I signed. It’s my own fault. Besides, who cares? I can still write and forget about her. I’m the one who gets the royalty checks, after all.
Jin motioned as if he wanted to sign something more, then thought better of it. He watched me for a moment, his hand reaching to brush a lock of hair behind my ear. I pulled it back to cover the scar and his body deflated as he exhaled.
He scanned the street. At that time of night, even with the book launch, downtown Fernbrooke lay still, caught in the slumber of most of its residents. I steadied my breathing. We were alone at last.
“So, you’re okay with this?” Jin asked. The purple in his hair glowed beneath the streetlight.
“I have to be.”
He ran a hand across the back of his neck. “You’re kind of infuriating, you know?”
“But you love me anyway.”
“I do.” His thin lips held the hint of a smirk. “Though not quite as much as I love Gavin Hartley. Now there’s a lickable god of a man, if ever there was one. Is it true he’s going to be Dag?”
The thought of the handsome movie star playing a character I’d created made me quiver. I stared at my feet so Jin couldn’t see my flushing cheeks by the light of the streetlamp.
“I don’t know,” I said. “No one tells me anything.”
“Could you imagine if you got to meet him?” Jin asked. “I think I’d die.”
“That won’t happen,” I said, “because he’ll be expecting the ridiculously gorgeous girl we left at the bookstore.”
Jin’s face fell. “You’re right. How do you plan to pull that off, El?”
“Easy. They’re filming in Hollywood. I told my agent I’d be in school and wouldn’t have time to travel. She understood. They sent me the first script to approve, though.”
“Seriously? A real Hollywood script? You’re going to let me read it, right?”
I tapped the bag on his shoulder. “You already have plenty to read.”
“Did you really kill someone off in this one?”
“You’ll see.”
“Tease.”
I winked and unlocked my car. Giving him a hug, I closed my eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of his cologne. He smelled like fresh laundry on a summer day. If there was one thing I could count on, it was Jin looking and smelling good—even at one in the morning during an unrelenting heat wave.
He released me and I slipped behind the steering wheel and shut the door.
As I headed home, my thoughts drifted back to the girl at the store. Worry gnawed at the edge of my stomach with sharp fangs.
Had I made a mistake putting a stranger on the back of my books? To be fair, I honestly never thought they’d take off like they did. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
I tried to shrug off the nerves as I pulled onto my street. I had bigger things to think about. Like the fact that this time next week I’d be on a campus with thousands of complete strangers. I’d be living with someone I’d never met. The very idea sent my stomach into insta-vomit mode.
The girl pretending to be me would have to wait.
A few days later, I lay stretched out on Jin’s black comforter, surveying the familiar walls. My best friend’s bedroom looked like Broadway had thrown up all over it. Two years before, we’d spent the whole summer painting the walls the velvety red of stage curtains and covering the light switches and doorframes in gold glitter. Jin had even lined the mirror of his vanity with those bare lightbulbs they used in dressing rooms.
Framed posters and Playbills for musicals with names like Wicked and Spring Awakening battled for wall supremacy against photos of Jin performing in local theater productions of Sweeney Todd, Miss Saigon, and Bye Bye Birdie.
Although I couldn’t hear the music plunked out by the lone accompanist, I’d been to every show my friend had done. Jin explained enough of each story beforehand to keep me invested in the show, and my lip-reading got me through the rest. When they weren’t dancing and spinning around the stage at alarming rates, the actors were actually pretty easy to read. They overdid every movement and word—the key, Jin said, to reaching the people in the very back row. I refrained from reminding him that our local theater had ten rows, tops, and the people in the back probably had zero issues seeing him.
Of all the shows he’d don
e, Bye Bye Birdie had been my favorite. Jin played Birdie, an Elvis-style rock star who came to a small town to kiss one lucky contest winner on TV before setting off for the army. Seemed like a sweet deal, being a normal girl in a small town and still getting to kiss the famous man of your dreams. Well, except for the millions-of-people-watching-on-TV bit. My shoulders quivered at the thought.
Jin had been amazing, though. He danced and strutted around the stage like he’d manifested from the wood and velvet and lights. He’d received a standing ovation every night. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that he was accepted into every theater program he’d applied to.
Didn’t make it suck any less, though. Having your only friend in the world pack up and move to New York kinda blew giant ostrich eggs.
We’d both taken a year off after high school. Jin spent his time getting “experience”—which was basically code for slinging coffee at the café during the day and rehearsing community theater shows in un-air-conditioned church basements at night. My parents had allowed me to take a one-year break before college so I could finish the most recent Viking Moon book, but only with the promise I’d start at the local campus this year. It had seemed like a fantastic plan back then, but now that the time had actually come, I was nowhere near ready for any of it.
Jin sat cross-legged on the carpet, emptying the contents of a drawer into a cardboard box. For the moment, he’d abandoned stage makeup in favor of dark pants and a white T-shirt with the words ACTORS DO IT ON CUE in sparkling silver letters across his chest.
I rolled onto my side so I could see him better. “Holy crap, Jin, I think you have more clothes than me.”
“That’s easy to do when you have, like, the same seven outfits you just rotate through.”
“Hey, there are at least ten.”
“Sure. If you plan on wearing sweaters in the middle of summer.”
I tossed one of his pillows and it bounced off his head. His perfectly sculpted hair didn’t even waver.
“Now, now,” he said. “No need to get violent.” He picked up the pillow and hurled it back at me. I giggled and ducked. The pillow flew past my head and landed on his bedside table, knocking the photo that had been propped there to the floor.