Taking my place at the end of the line, I lean against the wall, pull out my phone, and run my fingers over the fading Demon Heart stickers on the case. I get to see Smokey and Heart soon! It’s almost too much, so I open Tumblr, but I’m too jittery to actually look at my dash, so I open my email, but there’s nothing new, so I open Facebook, but I hate Facebook, so I reopen Tumblr. My own personal endless loop of being an anxious person with a phone in public.
“Here you go.” A voice forces me to look up from my phone. It’s the girl behind me in line, she’s handing me a clipboard with a name/email signup on it. “In case you want to join the Demon Heart mailing list.”
I’m totally already on the Demon Heart mailing list. Obviously I’m on the Demon Heart mailing list. But the way she smiles at me flusters me for some reason.
“Oh, okay,” I say, and start putting my info down anyway.
As I scribble my email address, I can feel her watching me. I glance up, and she looks away. She’s black, and her hair is shaved short on the sides, but the longer tight curls in back and on top stick out in every direction, including over her forehead into her eyes. She’s not in cosplay. Or if she is, it’s for, I dunno, Pretty Little Liars or something. She’s wearing a gray dress that curves over the top of her body but is flowy at the bottom, with little orange foxes dotting it. I finish writing my info and pass the clipboard down the line. I kind of want to say something else to her, but what is there to say? Besides, she probably already has friends here. She looks pretty and put-together, and she has a very cool haircut. There’s no way she’s not popular.
I pull my phone back out and open Tumblr, but as I scroll, I can feel her looking at my phone. When I glance back at her she blushes, caught in the act.
“Sorry,” she says, and gives me an apologetic smile. She’s wearing the brightest pink lipstick I’ve ever seen. I don’t wear lipstick, couldn’t even imagine wearing that shade. But on her it looks perfectly natural, like she sells it with confidence alone. She busies herself straightening her skirt over her hips, smoothing the wrinkles out. When she looks at me, I’m still watching her hands move across her legs. Now it’s my turn to be embarrassed.
“Sorry,” I say. Then I laugh, because this is dumb, and then she laughs, thank god.
“This is my first convention,” she says, almost like she’s apologizing for something. But she has nothing to apologize for. It’s weird to see someone wearing such confident lipstick be nervous. Like they don’t go together.
“Me too,” I say.
“Oh, good!” she says. “I just assumed everyone here had already done this before.”
“Not me.” And then I run out of things to say. I feel my cheeks warming, so I look away, and then I click open my phone again, needing an excuse to stop talking to her.
“I… I love that gif,” she says, nodding at my phone.
I glance at the screen, open to Tumblr. The gif is from a scene in the Demon Heart pilot. One of the first moments I picked up on the presence of something extra in Smokey and Heart’s relationship. Smokey’s been tracking a demon the entire episode, until he finally corners it at an abandoned warehouse (because of course it’s an abandoned warehouse). They have a foot chase through all the shadows and the towering, vaguely industrial equipment, and up onto the roof, until the demon jumps off and lands three stories down on the ground, leaving little old human Smokey stuck up top. The demon pulls himself to his feet, unharmed, and looks up… and that’s when Smokey recognizes the demon is Heart, his old acquaintance. They share a long, subtext-fueled look, until Heart escapes into the shadows and Smokey is forced to grapple with what he’s just seen. That look is what got the pilot a first-season pickup. And that look is what captured the heart of, well, me, and probably everyone else in this line right now. What was in that look? What did it mean? Where was this headed? That’s the whole thrust of Demon Heart. So yeah, it’s an important gif.
“It’s one of my favorites,” I say, and I watch in amazement as her shoulders relax.
“Me too,” she says, then adds, “I’m Tess.”
“Claire.” Until now, she’s been grabbing one elbow across her body, her sleeveless dress showing off her arms, wide and soft and this deep smooth brown and just out there like they belong out there. Sleeveless dresses—another thing I couldn’t imagine wearing. How does she make it look so easy? But now she lets go of her elbow and reaches over. I slip my phone in my pocket and shake her hand, which is cool and soft. Her smile spreads across her entire face.
“It’s nice to be around people who get it,” she says. “My friends, they don’t do, you know…” She waves her hand around. “This.”
It’s my turn to comment on whether my friends do *hand wave* this or not, but… friends? Yeah, no. I guess I have Joanie, and my parents, and none of them get it.
I say, “Heh.” Vague enough to sound like I’m agreeing without offering any additional information. I wish I hadn’t put my phone away, because now would be a good time to start looking at it again. I want to try to extricate myself from this conversation, but I also don’t. Tess is much easier to talk to than anyone at my high school, and I get the feeling I could start talking about anything at all and she’d be happy to join in. But I’m somehow paralyzed by what to say next. Obviously she likes Demon Heart, so we could talk about that, but everything I think to say sounds stupid. So, you like Demon Heart, huh? Ugh, dumb. Who’s your favorite character? Agggggh, gross. For a fleeting moment there, I had become one of those chatting, social people in line I was intimidated by before and I want that feeling back. Finally, I come up with something and before I lose my nerve, I just blurt it out.
“Do you want to trade Tumblr URLs?”
“Oh,” she says, and frowns. My stomach sinks.
“We don’t have to.” I adjust my glasses. “Never mind.”
“No, it’s fine! I just…” she says hesitantly. “I’ve never done that before. I, uh, have a lot of Demon Heart stuff on there.”
“Oh. Yeah, so do I.”
“And some of it’s kind of…”
Kind of what?
“You know,” she says. “Between Smokey and Heart…”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Totally.”
“So you…”
“Ship them? Definitely,” I say confidently. About this one thing at least, I’m 100 percent certain. She lets out a breath and starts to smile. Wow, she has really nice teeth. “I don’t know how anybody who’s paying attention could not ship them. I mean, come on.”
I unzip my hoodie to show her my other favorite Demon Heart T-shirt. Smokey’s holding his battle-ax to Heart’s neck, and Heart is gripping Smokey by the throat. It’s supposed to be suspenseful, I guess—men on opposite sides of an eternal battle. But to me, it just looks like two incredibly attractive guys playing a high-stakes game of Twister with props.
Tess squeals in delight. “I haven’t seen that one! Oh my god, they’re so close. If they would just…”
“I know,” I say, and I pinch my shirt between my fingers causing a wrinkle, bringing their faces even closer together.
“There it is!” she shouts.
Then, by hunching and straightening my shoulders, I’m able to bring their lips together and apart, again and again, and Tess is dying laughing and I can’t help but giggle with her. Her laughter is contagious.
“Okay, but you can’t add me until later, okay? I don’t want to see you looking at the dumpster-fire stuff I reblog.” She pulls a sketchbook out of her bag and tears a blank page from the back. Holding the paper against the wall, she writes her URL on it, then hands it to me.
“Pan-labyrinth,” I read. The paper feels heavy and nice in my hands. Her handwriting is loopy and large.
“And don’t laugh at my fanart,” she says.
“I would never!” I tell her genuinely. I take her pen, my fingers brushing against hers. It’s a nice pen, with silky black ink. I write heart-of-lightness on the other half of the paper and
tear it off and I don’t even pause before I give it to her, but when she reads it and looks up at me with big eyes, I realize with a cringe that she knows who I am.
I can see her image of me changing as she looks me over brand-new.
It’s not that I’m famous, I’m not.
No, really, there are people on Tumblr who are legit famous, and I’m not one of them. But I write fic, and a lot of people follow me so they can ask when the next chapter of whatever WIP I’ve been posting will come out, that kind of thing. But I don’t really have friends online. Acquaintances, sure. Mutuals, definitely. It’s just that most of the time on Tumblr I feel like everyone else is friends with one another and I’m just around, reblogging gifsets and posting fics and trying to avoid any drama. We’re a community, for sure, but I’m kind of like the old lady in the creepy house at the end of the lane who never comes to the block parties. It didn’t even cross my mind that Tess would recognize my name.
“You’re heart-of-lightness?” she asks incredulously.
“Uh, yeah.”
“I love your fics!” She says this with, let’s be honest, far more weight than I really deserve. The line starts moving, and I feel grateful to be able to escape what has suddenly become a much more intense conversation.
“Thanks,” I say as we shuffle forward.
“No, seriously, you’re really good. Oh my god, don’t reblog any of my fanart, you probably have a million followers.”
“I don’t. At all. But don’t worry, I won’t. I’ll, ah, see you online,” I say, and slip into the hall.
Before I’m out of earshot, I hear her mutter “heart-of-lightness” to herself again. And I feel a little stuttery. I think about the look on her face when she read my name and I smile to myself, and mutter under my own breath, “Tess.”
THE CONVENTION CENTER isn’t big, necessarily, but that has never stopped me from getting lost. As I’m wandering the service corridors, peering through doors, searching for the greenroom Paula told me about, I hear a familiar voice.
“Hey, Z-Dawg!” It’s Jamie. I follow the voice and round the corner to see “Z-Dawg” is Zach Sanchez-Anderson. I didn’t even know Jamie knew him. Maybe they’re both in some secret showrunner society. He’s the creator of this show called Time Swipers that my agent tells me has “franchise potential” and is apparently “blowing up with the demo.” All I know is that three years ago he was a nobody and now he has a hit TV show and—according to the Hollywood Reporter—a very tasteful historic Spanish-style house in the Hills.
I hang back, not wanting to interfere with their little showrunner catch-up session. Looking over Zach, he has almost the same style as Jamie—sneakers, baseball cap, hoodie—but he stands a little straighter, keeps his haircut a little fresher. Jamie’s the only showrunner I know personally, so I sort of assumed he was par for the course, but I see now that slob-chic isn’t necessarily the required style.
“What’s cookin’?” Jamie asks him. “Your network got you out here, too, huh?”
“You kidding?” Zach says. “I begged them to let me come. Our panel had to move to a larger room. Twice.”
“Well, you got a great show, Sanchez. People love it.”
“Started out as assistants and look at us now, right?” Zach says. Then he spots me hanging down the hall. He calls out at me, “It’s your time next, man. Get used to the love out there today, you deserve it.” Jamie turns around to see me approaching.
I didn’t realize Zach Sanchez-Anderson would even know who I was. “Thanks,” I say, and start to make my way toward them, embarrassed that I was caught eavesdropping.
“I’ll catch you later,” Zach tells Jamie. As he strides past me, he slaps me on the back. I amble up to Jamie, who stares after him, curling his lip in disgust.
“His show blows,” Jamie mumbles once Zach is out of earshot.
God, Jamie really just hates everything. How did he ever manage to create a show as emotional as Demon Heart with that kind of attitude about everything?
Jamie takes off in the other direction, dragging his feet in a pouty sort of shuffle. “Where you been, anyway? Our room’s this way.”
When we reach it, the greenroom is just an unused conference room with a large table of snacks. It’s not that I expected Boise, Idaho, to offer up the lap of luxury, but this is so utilitarian that I’m reminded of my LA apartment. IKEA furniture and Lärabars—ahh, feels like home.
Rico is already there, scoping out the snack table. I join him just as he stuffs three Red Vines in his mouth. “You talk to Reynolds?”
“Just his assistant. Can you believe he’s here? In Boise? In this building, even?” I’m disappointed I didn’t get to talk to him, but remembering how close I got makes me buzz with anticipation. What if Tattoo Guy tells Reynolds about the panel and he actually comes?
I catch Rico’s eye and he looks amused. He probably doesn’t get excited by his favorite directors anymore. It’s all old hat to Rico Quiroz.
“Anyway…” I start inspecting the bananas on the table.
Rico puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t ever let Hollywood kill your spirit, hombre. You hear me?”
“Have I ever told you I’m super into your bromance?” Jamie says from across the room, leaning back in a conference chair and putting his brand-new black Chuck Taylors on the table. I pull away from Rico, reinstating a personal bubble, but Rico only chuckles and whacks me on the shoulder.
The social media girl Caty saunters into the room. I avert my eyes—I don’t want her asking me how my feed or whatever is going. After she set me up with an account, she told me to “just start tweeting.” I haven’t opened the app since. Rico mentioned on the flight to Idaho that I already had 42,000 followers on Twitter. Without a single tweet. The thought of trying to come up with something clever to say to 42,000 people makes my throat close up and my fingers twitch. I don’t know what she expects me to do. I’m an actor. If she wants me to be interesting on Twitter, she’s going to have to have the Demon Heart writers’ room get together to write me something.
As she comes over to the snack table and starts casually looking over the options, Rico chats to her about garlic versus red pepper hummus and the benefits of each. Meanwhile, I sneak a look at Caty. She’s young, maybe recently out of college. Today she’s wearing a small-patterned floral shirt under a very loud large-patterned floral blazer. I can’t believe she’s pulling it off, but with her confidence and her dark curly hair in a messy-chic bun (or is it just messy? I can’t tell) it looks pretty good. I wonder what she studied in college to end up here, setting up Twitter accounts for reticent actors. She snort-laughs at something Rico says, and I feel a pang of jealousy that this all comes so easy for them—the small talk, the traveling, the social media. Rico seems perpetually comfortable with himself, and so does Caty. I wonder how they do it.
Caty looks over Rico’s shoulder at me. “Hey, Forest,” she says. “Saw you’re up to sixty-five thousand followers now. Think you might like to tweet something soon?”
No, not really, I think.
“Yeah, totally,” I say.
“Just say hi,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. People will be excited just to hear from you.”
“Okay, yeah,” I say, ignoring the pit in my stomach at the idea of “just saying hi” to a group of people rapidly approaching the size of my hometown.
“Hey, did you guys hear the glee club singing in some Star Trek language out there?” Jamie sneers.
“Pretty sure it was Elvish.” Rico corrects him effortlessly, taking his bagel and sitting down in a plush chair. He shrugs at Jamie’s eyeroll and adds, “I went to a million of these cons when I was on Star Command. You pick up things.”
“Yeah, well, nothing against the geek-apella, but this convention tour blows. If the network’s gonna cancel us, I wish they’d just do it already instead of turning us into PR indentured servants,” Jamie grumbles.
“Nobody’s making you do anything,” Ca
ty says almost under her breath, not looking up from her giant pink phone. Her thumbs are zipping around, typing at mach speed.
“Sorry, who are you again?” Jamie snaps.
“Caty Goodstein. We’ve met. Many times.” She finishes typing, then looks up at Jamie, slipping her phone into her blazer pocket, the bright pink bunny ears sticking out the top.
“Uh-huh,” Jamie says, looking her over, “I remember.”
“Do you think they will? Cancel us?” I ask. It’s starting to feel more and more likely. I have to get that Red Zone role. Demon Heart can’t be my only option.
“No one’s getting canceled yet,” Paula Greenhill says, waltzing in, wearing a charcoal-gray pencil skirt and matching fitted jacket, all straight lines and authority. She’s followed by an entourage of four or five assistants.
Paula puts her enormous purse down on the table with a thud, then flicks Jamie’s shoes with her fingers until he takes his feet down. “They don’t need to come to any renewal decisions until well after the finale,” she says. “We still have plenty of time to get people excited about our little show…. Is that what you’re planning to wear?” Paula looks directly at me. I glance down at my black jeans and white T-shirt.
“Um, yes?”
“Donna”—Paula nods at one of her assistants—“a little help?” Donna jumps to action, rummaging through a tote bag.
“What are you, a medium?” Donna asks me.
“Yeah.”
Donna pulls a black T-shirt out of her bag and rips the tags off it. It’s a Wonder Woman shirt—brand-new, but weathered to look old.
“See if this fits,” Donna says, handing it to me.
“Got any Red Zone shirts in there?” I ask, craning my neck to see what else is in that bag. Does she have other clothes, other sizes, other styles? Is her whole job to walk around with nerdy clothes in case people like me didn’t dress ourselves with the appropriate care?
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