Ship It

by Britta Lundin

  I see the girl who offered me pizza gesturing with her phone to her friends with a furrowed brow. They pull out their phones, too, and I can see they’re all looking at Twitter. I see another group with Twitter open on their phones, too.

  I fumble as I pull my phone out of my pocket, and I have to squeeze my fingers into a fist a few times to stop my hands from shaking.

  I manage to unlock my phone. Open the Twitter app.

  And there it is, gathering retweets by the second.

  Forest tweeted: This wasn’t supposed to happen, but it’s over now. Smokey is dead. Forever. There’s a knot forming in my throat, making it hard to breathe. I take shallow breaths and focus on the grass below me.

  Smokey is dead. Smokey is dead.

  Heads crane around. The girls to my left are staring at me. Other people nearby take notice. Their whispers fill my ears, it’s all I can hear.

  Smokey is dead.

  My screen slides down as View 1 new Tweet appears at the top.

  I tap it. Another tweet from Forest:

  Blame heart-of-lightness.

  THE POUNDING IS incessant.

  I don’t think it’s the pizza guy.

  “Forest!” she practically screams through the door.

  Nope, not the pizza guy.

  I roll off my bed and straighten myself up.

  “Go away,” I tell her. There’s literally no one I want to see right now. Especially not her.

  “Forest, open up!” she hollers, banging away. She’s going to cause structural damage if she keeps going like this.

  I cross to the door, but I don’t open it. “Claire, go home. It’s over. You’ve done enough.” I say it sharply. Maybe if I can convey just how much I am not fucking around she might listen to me.

  Silence.

  Maybe it worked? Maybe she left?

  “What did they say to you?” she asks, sounding almost defeated—a new attitude for her.

  “Jamie said I’m fired because people like you won’t shut up about SmokeHeart unless Smokey’s literally dead.”

  I hear her let out a long breath. “He actually said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s true. He’s dead.”

  “Dead, dead.”

  “Well, what the fuck was this all for, then?” She sounds almost primal.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  “Claire, I’m not coming out, just go home.”

  “Pizza,” a guy says.

  I sigh, and lean my forehead against the door. Okay. Let’s do it. I whip the door open, grab the slip from the guy, and start signing it.

  I don’t even look at Claire, but she’s right there, wound tight like she’s going to pop. She comes up right behind the pizza guy, making him very uncomfortable, and speaks at me over his shoulder.

  “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been such a monumental asshole,” she says with a scary fierce-

  ness.

  “Hey, this is my job, okay, Claire? It’s a lot more to me than it was to you.” I look at her for the first time, and she’s standing there like a wet dishrag that someone wrung out and left in the sink. Tear-streaked and rumpled, she glares at me.

  I shove the receipt at the poor pizza guy and grab the pizza box from him.

  “It’s just a show,” I say. “And not even a particularly good one. Move on. Go get a job or something. Have a life. Read a newspaper. Care about something in the real world.”

  The pizza guy slips out from between us and makes his escape.

  “This is important,” she says, wiping her cheeks, steeling herself. The old Claire coming back out. “That’s why this never worked out.” She waggles her finger between us. “Because you still don’t think that representation matters at all. That it’s not important for gay teenagers to see someone like them on TV.”

  “Who?” I demand, the irritation at her endless soapboxing finally boiling over into anger. “Who are these gay teenagers who care so freaking much about Demon Heart? Do you know any?”

  She sputters, then spits out, “There’s Tess.”

  “Then why are you here, and not her?”

  I watch her fumble for an answer. Yeah, that’s what I thought. “Why are you really doing this?”

  “I told you.”

  “Claire—”

  “I said I already told you!”

  “You haven’t told me shit about yourself, cupcake. Not really.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “Of course it is, Claire. What is your sexuality?”

  She shakes her head at me, pissed. Her hair, stringy and falling in her eyes, her jaw tight, she growls, “What’s yours?”

  My neck stiffens. “You think you know, do you?” I say. I put the pizza down in the doorway and dig my phone out of my pocket and hold up the page. “Yeah, I read all about it in, what’s it called? ‘Sugar and Cream’?” Claire goes pale. “This is a major breach of trust. You don’t write sex scenes about someone you know.”

  “How’d you find that?” Claire takes a step back, unsteady now. “That’s fiction,” she says.

  “It has my name on it—and Rico’s. It has things I said to you in confidence. You made up shit about my dad.” My voice is low, but I know she hears it. She drops her gaze now.

  “It’s just a story. Lots of people write RPF, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “This isn’t about that and you know it. People know you know me. They’re going to think my dad beat me.” I pull my T-shirt up and show her my back. “See? Nothing. No scars. But that doesn’t matter now, does it? No, none of that matters as long as people get to read about me banging Rico in my trailer on my birthday.”

  “Everyone knows it’s not real,” she says.

  “Do they? Because I’m not sure you know. Rico and I aren’t in love, Claire. We’re not secretly having sex. We’re not making out after hours. We’re. Not. Gay.”

  She shakes her head at me and curls her lip. “You’re such a homophobe, and you won’t even admit it.”

  “No, I’m just straight. There’s a difference.”

  “If this was about you and some hot female costar, you wouldn’t give it a second thought,” she spits out at me. “This is entirely about your own internalized bullshit. Well, get over it.”

  “You wrote porn about me.”

  “They’re just dicks, you dick!” she shouts, throwing her hands up and grasping the back of her head. I’m worried people are going to start coming out of their rooms. She rubs her hands over her head and down her face, growling in frustration. Then she straightens her glasses. “I’m going home.”

  “So glad we talked. Thanks for the sympathy,” I say. “Don’t worry about me, I can always go on unemployment.”

  She stares at me, her eyes narrowed, full of spite. “I’m glad they killed you instead of Heart,” she says quietly. “At least Rico doesn’t hate us. I’m pretty sure he even shipped it.” She starts down the hallway, mumbling, “I hope whatever role you land next gets you the kind of fans you actually want.”

  She turns the corner and she’s gone, finally.

  MOM LOOKS UP from her book when I make it back to our room.

  “How’d it go?” she asks. I don’t answer, I just haul out my duffel bag and start packing my things. My cheeks are hot, but I’m not crying anymore. I don’t have any tears left for this.

  Mom sits up in bed, getting that worried-mother expression. Oh, now she’s worried. Where has she been this whole time? Why did she spend so much time learning how to LARP and not enough time telling me not to do foolish things like feeling things for other people and caring about stuff?

  “I want to go home,” I say.

  “What’s wrong, honey bunny?” She follows me into the bathroom where I start grabbing my toiletries. “What happened?”

  I shove everything into a plastic bag and brush by her into the main room where I stuff the bag into my duffel. “I just… I thought they would understand me here. But they don�
��t. None of them do.”

  Mom rubs my shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  I flop onto the bed, partly just to get away from her. “I want to leave. Can we leave now?”

  She must see that I’m serious, so she calls the airline and changes our flight, and within a few hours we’re at the airport waiting for our plane back to Boise.

  I don’t want to open Tumblr, but I know I have to.

  My notifications are chaos. I don’t read the discourse; I’m not interested anymore. There was a time when I would have started typing an angry screed about everything that’s happened, but it turns out it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

  Nothing I did helped at all. It only made everything much, much worse.

  I open a text post and stare at it. What do I even say about all this?

  Sleepy passengers walk past us, pulling suitcases and clutching paper cups of hot tea. My mom snores slightly in the next chair. I tip my head back and lean against the cool glass of the windows behind me. I gaze up at the night sky above the airport.

  Finally, I type: I’m sorry. SmokeHeart is dead and it’s my fault. I never meant for it to turn out this way.

  I publish it and wait a few minutes for enough people to reblog it to ensure it’ll get out there.

  Then I go into the settings and delete my blog.

  THE ANXIOUS ENERGY keeps running around inside me until I can’t stay in my hotel room anymore, so even though it’s past midnight, I decide to go for a walk.

  Outside, I shiver against the chilly night air and pull my collar up higher. It feels good to walk, though. I can feel the anxiety start to slip away as I round a corner and head past the darkened convention center. I wasn’t expecting there to be people outside, but there’s a long line of dedicated con attendees camped out overnight for something happening tomorrow. They’re bundled up in their down jackets and fleece blankets, hoods cinched over their faces, playing cards, making one another laugh as low music fills the air. They are the dedicated, the passionate.

  Maybe it would have impressed me before, even made me happy to see them so determined. But now I just see how it goes wrong, how quickly love can become zeal, passion can become fanaticism. How quickly I can go from having a promising career with opportunities in front of me to the gutter of Hollywood. Washed up at twenty-three. And for what?

  I pass a convention sign with an arrow pointing toward the DEMON HEART MARATHON SCREENING and I remember that they’re showing episodes until late tonight. I situate my hat low over my eyes and head toward the park a block or two away.

  It’s time to say good-bye.

  Approaching the Demon Heart screening, I see the hundreds of fans lying out on blankets and lawn chairs on the sloping grass, watching our show playing on a large projection screen. It’s dark out, and no one’s looking anywhere but at the screen. I keep to the shadows formed by a cluster of trees toward the back of the park, find a spot, and watch with them for a bit. I recognize the episode right away. It’s from late in the season, as Heart and Smokey try out a provisional truce. After destroying a monster that was wreaking havoc on a paddleboat casino together, they lean against a roulette table and share a beer.

  “Take it, man, you earned it today,” Heart says, holding out a cold one to Smokey.

  I watch myself take the beer with a “Thanks,” and hold Heart’s eye for just a beat longer than necessary before clinking bottles with him.

  I look around the park at the people watching. One girl nearby sighs, watching the screen, lovelorn, and her friend puts her head on her shoulder. “I know,” the first girl whispers, rubbing her friend’s arm. “I know.”

  This is shipping.

  On-screen, Smokey and Heart share an earnest nod before taking a drink, and the scene fades to black. Would they have made a good couple? No way to know, now. Jamie’s name flashes on-screen and the park erupts into boos. I join them, low, under my breath.

  Boo, Jamie. Boo, Forest. Boo all of us. Boo the whole damn show.

  MS. NEWTON DRONES on in calc about concepts I have no grasp of because I’ve missed so much class. Normally, I’d be anxious to catch up and make sure my A doesn’t slip, but I’m just not feeling it anymore.

  I’ve been back in Pine Bluff three weeks. If the kids here have any idea that I was momentarily famous on the internet, they haven’t given me any indication of it. I didn’t get a single “Hey, what’s it like to hang out with C-list celebrities?” I didn’t even get a “Were you sick or something?” It’s like they didn’t even notice I was gone. Except for Joanie Engstrom, who, when she saw me coming down the bus aisle my first day back, gave me a little smile and moved her bag for me to sit down before going back to reading her Bible. It’s the friendliest thing that’s happened to me yet.

  Fine with me. I have two weeks left in junior year, and I’m just looking forward to a summer full of reading books (no more fanfic for me) and lying on my back on the trampoline in my backyard, pretending I live in a different country.

  In Calc, I sketch myself in my notebook hiking the five-hundred-mile Camino de Santiago trail in Spain, far away from literally every person and every television in the world. When I run out of room, I flip the notebook over to continue the sketch on the back page, but I forgot that I had stuck a Demon Heart sticker there. Just the sight of it fills me with emotions so quickly it’s like my hate-appendix burst, and my blood is filling up with deadly toxins that will kill me within minutes if I don’t get the sticker out of my sight.

  I start picking at the corner of it, but the sticker just keeps tearing rather than peeling and it won’t come off, and my desk is filling up with little torn-off pieces, and I hate everything about it. Smokey and Heart looking at each other now, is just a taunt, a tease, a promise of something that will never come true.

  I can’t stand it anymore. I tear the entire back cover off my notebook. It makes a loud ripping sound, and everyone in the room turns to stare. Andrea Garcia is in that class; she stares. I don’t care. When have I ever cared about what other people think?

  I stand up, grab my backpack, and throw the entire notebook in the trash on my way out. Let me get a B in Calc. Who gives a shit about Calc?

  I stride into the hallway and run directly into Kyle Cunningham with a flat thud. I stumble backward, and he tips his dirty hat up to see what just hit him. We make fleeting eye contact before I tuck my head down and try to push past him, but he grabs my shoulders and holds me there.

  “Hey, hey, Claire Strupke. Where’d you go for so long? I thought maybe you finally got the help you need, and they put you in a psych ward.”

  “Leave me alone, Kyle,” I say, and try to brush past him again, but he keeps me in place with a strong grip.

  “You want to come over tonight? I was hoping we could pick up where we left off.”

  “Andrea Garcia dumped you, huh?”

  He hardens immediately. “I dumped her,” he says brusquely.

  “Maybe it’s because you like to put your hands on girls who don’t ask you to,” I say, and push him away.

  “Whatever, dyke,” he says.

  “Maybe I am,” I say, catching him off guard. He gapes at me, his ugly mouth hanging open. I shove him to the side, sending him toppling into a bank of lockers, and keep walking.

  Who knows? Maybe I am.

  “SO ARE YOU basically waiting by the phone, or…” I ask, sipping my nonfat cappuccino. Rico and I are finally back in LA, sitting on the patio of Aroma Café, surrounded by tanned and put-together industry types having conversations about scripts and stars and who got an overall deal where and for how much.

  Rico sighs and takes a bite of his scone. “My agent is having an aneurysm; I’m actually concerned for his health.”

  I can’t believe they’ve let it drag out for this long. After all our work at those conventions, our ratings for the finale were up slightly, but not spectacularly. The cast and crew of Demon Heart were supposed to know if they got a season two pickup weeks ago, but th
e network is dragging their feet for some reason that I’m not privy to.

  Rico leans in, serious now, and adds, “I keep pushing for them to renew your contract, dude, but it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. I’m not gonna let it go, though. They can’t do this show without you.”

  I wave him off. “It’s over, Ric. I’ve accepted that.”

  “There’s a million ways to bring you back. Reincarnation. Ghost. Hey, you could be a demon, like me!”

  It warms me that Rico would fight for me, but he wasn’t there when Jamie told me the news. Nothing is going to convince him to change his mind. “Jamie killed me off for a reason. He doesn’t want me back.”

  “Jamie’s an idiot.” Rico leans back in his chair and nudges his scone toward me. I shake my head. No scones until I get another job. I have to get my eating habits back on track or I’m screwed. Rico crosses his legs and looks at me. “You talk to her lately?”

  “Who?” He just shoots me a look. Oh. Her. “No.”

  “She’s a good kid. Annoying as hell, but good,” he says.

  I just shrug, and he gets the message and moves on. “No matter what happens,” he says, looking at me with a sad smile, “I’m gonna miss you next year.”

  “I’m gonna miss you, too,” I say. And it’s true. This last year would have been a living nightmare without Rico by my side. I don’t know how I would have gotten through it. It strikes me that I should tell him that, then I think, Wait, I already did. That night in my trailer… and then I realize I’m remembering Claire’s fanfiction. I start to chuckle to myself. Now who’s the one mixing up fiction and reality?

  “What’s so funny?” Rico says.

  “Oh, I was just thinking—” I say, and then stop myself, then think, Oh what the hell. “If Claire were here, she’d be—”

  “—telling us to confess our feelings?” Rico laughs. “Okay, how’s this? I think you’re a talented and committed actor and a good person, and working with you this last year has been an absolute pleasure.”

  Well shit. I guess the feeling’s mutual. I want to tell him the same, but the only words ringing in my head are Claire’s.