“At least he doesn’t call you stupid for liking Elementia.”
“Ryder! He’s never called you stupid.”
My brother gave me a look that said, He doesn’t have to say it.
“Dad is…” I’d never tried to talk to Ryder about this before. Would it help? Was he old enough? “You know how Mom is different from other moms?” He nodded. “Well, Dad is just as different, although he’s better at hiding it. There’s something big in him. Something—”
“Sad?”
So Ryder was old enough to get it.
“Yeah.” I brushed his hair out of his eyes. “You know those lessons he’s been asking you to think about?” He nodded. “He wants you to have interests outside of fantasy. Something he can buy lessons for you to pursue, so he can feel like a good dad. It can be anything. Martial arts, Mandarin, or how about engineering? You like building things.”
“What if I got cooking lessons and become a chef like Mr. Donato?”
I laughed too hard, too fast. “He won’t go for that. He wants you to do something special with your life. Nothing blue collar or, heaven forbid, fine arts.”
Ryder rolled to face the wall. “Everything I do is wrong.”
I touched his back. “Ryder, look at me please.” He didn’t. “Okay, well, when I was your age, Dad wanted to get me lessons too. I picked literature because it made him happy. Every week I read a new book with this tutor named Mr. Sams. We read Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Moby Dick. I mean, in hindsight, it was way beyond my comprehension level, but it was fun, and Mr. Sams acted out roles and we had the best talks.”
Ryder rolled back over. “Was he like Mr. Donato?”
“Yeah, a bit.” I chewed my bottom lip, wondering how much I could tell him. I decided on an abridged version. “One day he gave me a new book, a fantasy trilogy like Elementia.”
“What was it?” my brother whispered.
“His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. It changed my whole life. It was amazing. I can’t even—” I cut myself off. This was where the memory turned sour, and I had to have enough courage to tell Ryder the truth. “Dad got upset when he saw how much I liked those books. He accused Mr. Sams of turning me into a little Thornian, and he fired him. Dad took over, giving me books to read, but we never talked about them together. And it wasn’t fun anymore.”
My brother was stunned, his eyes bright.
I was stunned I’d told him, but I pushed on. “Ryder, if you choose lessons that make Dad happy, well, it might make you unhappy. And vice versa. We’ll try to find something that makes you both happy. How about that?”
He smiled wearily, and that’s what I hated most. All this stuff with Dad made both of us so old.
“Okay, now I’ve got to go practice.” I stood and grabbed my guitar.
Before I could slip outside, Ryder called out. “Eyeball?”
It had been years since he’d used his little-kid name for me. “Yeah, Cowboy?”
“You think you could get me those Dark Materials books?”
“Definitely.”
• • •
Slipping outside into a chilly, late-spring Irish evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Ryder and I had the same parents but such different experiences. Sure, I’d had my hands full raising him over the last eight years, but I had also been my parent’s precocious sweetheart, an only child for nine years. Ryder had been treated like a wild animal since birth, and what was worse, looking back, I’m not sure my parents even tried.
I turned the corner and ran into Eamon, but the pillow he carried cushioned the crash.
“Hiya!” he said way too enthusiastically, like he’d forgotten I was on this set. He clutched the pillow to his chest. Then he looked at my guitar. “Did Cate talk to you about the song?”
I nodded. “I guess I should say thanks?”
He blew out a sigh of relief. “Taping you was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I sort of thought that you might, you know, kill me and harvest my organs.”
I held down a smile. “I thought about it.”
He edged around me as though he was late to get somewhere and didn’t want to be rude.
“Where are you going?”
He pulled a hand through his hair. It stuck in his fisticuffs of curls, and he had to back it out. Smooth, Eamon O’Brien. “My big first scene is in two days. Shoshanna is helping me loosen up. I’m sleeping in her trailer tonight.”
If the blood rushing to my face could make a sound, it’d be howling like a train whistle.
“It’s for my acting,” he added, like that made it better.
“Of course,” I said, surprising myself with a cool tone. “Julian told me to warn you, by the way. He said Shoshanna is trying out method acting, so if she seems like she has feelings for you, she’s pretending.” Somewhere in the middle of my speech, my tone went from cool to ON FIRE. Eamon froze, and I had another flash of Sevyn and her ability to call lightning down on anyone who pissed her off. That did actually make her a pretty badass heroine.
“You’re upset because we shifted,” he said, and when I blinked like he’d spoken Latin, he added. “Because I kissed you. I should have asked first.”
No, I’m upset because you haven’t been doing it every minute since.
Shoshanna leaned out of her trailer across the circle and called Eamon’s name. He hollered back before turning to me. “Got to go, but we’ll talk later. Just us. Right?”
“Sure,” I whispered.
He hugged me, and I hugged my guitar case. “It’s for my acting,” he said again.
“I thought you weren’t an actor.”
He scowled, reminding me of our initial, not-so-pleasant interactions. “I don’t know—not yet. I’m trying to find out.” Eamon left with his pillow, disappearing into Shoshanna’s trailer where he’d be “sleeping” all night or “acting.” It didn’t matter which, because both of them were “smashing my feelings into smithereens.”
Needless to say, I did not practice.
SEVYN
Film: Elementia
Director: Cate Collins
On Location: Day 5
Killykeen Forest, Ireland
Filming Notes:
A.M. & P.M.: SEVYN running through the forest moments.
Etc. Notes:
Iris Thorne will be recording a song for the soundtrack from 12–4 at Dublin Recording Studio.
Julian Young flies out on Aer Lingus Flight 2059 from Dublin Airport at 11:40 a.m.
HOW COME WHEN YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE, THEY COME TRUE ALL EFFED UP?
“Julian!” I shouted. “You have to listen to her!”
The driver put up the screen between the cab and the back of the short limo. Julian and I were getting loud on the drive to Dublin.
“But she doesn’t listen to me!” he said. “She worries about these specific things. ‘I don’t want people to take my picture.’ Or ‘I don’t want people following us on vacation.’ Do you know what she pulled yesterday? ‘What if we have kids, Julian? We’ll have to hide their faces.’ Kids! So, I said, ‘I’m twenty-one years old. Why are we talking about kids?’ And she said, ‘You’re so shortsighted, Julian. How can I marry you?’ And hung up.”
He took off his dark, dark sunglasses, which were pretty pointless because the whole of Ireland had turned grey—definitely not gray—today.
I checked our progress. We seemed close to Dublin, and soon Julian would be gone, and I wouldn’t get to see him again until the end of the shoot, if we all made it that far. “Look, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve spent my whole life hiding with my brother. You don’t have that luxury, but Elora doesn’t want to be hounded just for loving you.”
“You think she should dump me as well? Great. Thanks, Iris.”
“Work harder to see this from her perspective. Girls ar
e going to be mean when they find out you’re with her. Like mean. You have no idea what they’ll say. When you were dating that girl, the one from Alien Army, my school friends and I said all kinds of stuff about her.”
He looked up, so horrified that I was ashamed. “Bella? Why? She’s the sweetest.”
Good question. Why had we been wretched about that famous actress? We picked apart her body like she was a dissection in science class. We made up insulting nicknames. We’d raged with empty jealousy, as if her dating Julian was a personal affront.
“We just, well, Bella was dating you, and we loved you, and that meant she wasn’t good enough for you.” I found myself thinking about Cate’s “continent of women.” How connected were we after all? And what did tearing down one woman do to the others?
All of a sudden it felt like self-sabotage.
“You and your friends loved me?” Julian sniffed and tried a small smile.
“Julian, I was so happy when I ran into you at Cate’s office, I nearly cried. I might’ve even told my friends I was going to seduce you, which is why they gave me Julian Young underwear.” I couldn’t believe I’d said that. I waited for him to laugh.
He didn’t. He looked sort of strung out, hopeful but exhausted.
“But then I got to know you, and you’re great. And you love Elora. You just have to be more sensitive to her fears.”
He nodded.
“Eamon’s terrible at this too. He thinks I should do his video blog to help the movie.” He’s also sleeping over at Shoshanna’s.
Julian nodded. “A show of support from the Thorne family? Yeah, the movie needs that. The fans would be so happy.”
“Well, I can’t do it. You see that, right? People will come after me, whether or not the movie ends up being good. I’ll never be able to blend in, in college or anywhere else.” I left out my raging fear of people like Moss. “And I’ll never be able to start my music career on my own terms.” I glanced at Annie’s case next me. I was on my way to a recording studio to lay down tracks for a song that I could not—for the life of me—remember how to play. This was already not on my own terms.
“How do I be more sensitive?” Julian asked. “I’ll do whatever. I’ve already spent a year not dating her, and it ate me apart inside. She only agreed to date me again if I promised to keep it a secret, but at some point, someone is going to catch on. I’m terrified that that’ll be it for us.”
Oh, Julian. His nose was all slimy and somehow still adorable.
“Plus, I don’t want people to think I’m hiding her. I want her on my arm at my next red carpet. I want people to know she makes me damn happy, and I’m so proud of her.”
Tears sprang into my eyes. “You really are good at being romantic, Julian.”
He grinned. “Yeah?”
“You know what you said yesterday? About Nolan and courageous love? I think I can help you.” I leaned forward. “Someone told me that courage is two things: being honest and not backing down. You need to go to Elora. Tell her everything. Say you’re scared, but you can’t live in the dark. You’re right. At some point, people are going to find out, and the only control you have is how they find out. You won’t have that control forever.”
His smile faded into a slow understanding. “You don’t need to be afraid either, Iris. Imagine what might happen if people know who you are.”
I laughed. “Here’s where we’re different. I’m nobody. My grandmother was the star. I’m an immediate disappointment to anyone who’s excited to meet me.” I’d never thought about it that way before, but it was true. “The first time Eamon met me, he called me a mountain troll.”
“That guy.” Julian shook his head. “He could use a lesson in being a love interest.”
“I’ll say.”
We pulled up outside the Dublin airport. Julian looked out the window and then took my hand in both of his. “Iris, I want you to think of your fans—” I gave him a withering look, and he shook his head. “They are your family’s fans whether you like it or not. Your fans. And if you let them know who you are, some will be extra nice. Some will be extra mean. But the majority? They’ll want a smile and a picture for their Instagram feed, promise.”
He let go of me and straightened his leather jacket. Popped on his sunglasses. “Imagine what it would be like if you didn’t have to hide? It’s freeing.”
I wanted this to be the whole truth, but I already knew it wasn’t. “What if some of the fans are cruel? Unstable? What then?”
Julian looked at me over the top of his glasses. He knew what I meant. “Give me your number.” He pulled out his phone and began thumbing fast. I gave it to him, yet was still pretty shocked to hear my phone receive a text in my pocket. “Thanks for everything, Iris. We’re real friends now, right?”
“Yeah. Of course.” Considering I’d been hoping for this, I sounded very cool.
He got out and grabbed his bag from the driver. “See you in six days. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck!” I missed Julian the second he turned his gorgeous, leather jacket–clad back and walked into the airport. I glanced down at my unread text.
This number is Top Secret
A second message popped up. A URL. The preview was a photo of the back of Julian’s head with a tiny bald spot and the title “Young Gets Snipped By Fan at Florence + the Machine Concert.”
I clicked on the article and read about a girl who’d shorn a spot on Julian’s head while he was on a date. She’d nearly cut off his ear. I wrote him back in a hurry.
This is EXACTLY what I’m afraid of! This is terrible!
His reply was ninja fast.
Are you kidding? It was the best concert of the century!
And another one:
Imagine if I missed out on this:
The next text was a picture of Florence Welch glamour-glaring beside Julian, a python around their shoulders. I sent off my own series of rapid-fire texts.
This picture is amazing. Where’d she get the snake? Tell me she pulled it out of her dreams.
You like Florence?! WHY HAVEN’T WE TALKED ABOUT THIS YET?
Can you introduce me to her?!?!
Never mind. She’s a god. I’m not worthy.
I waited a few minutes for his response, the biggest, dopiest smile on my face the whole time. I pictured him at the counter, checking his bag. Finally, he shot back:
ROFl Gonna miss you
And:
You got this, Iris. Play your heart out.
• • •
Conor clicked the button and his voice reached through the speaker over my head. “Iris? Do you need a minute? If I’m making you nervous, I can set record and head out for a coffee. We’ll trim the excess when I get back.”
I nodded stiffly. He set the record, the red light glowing from the ceiling bulb, and left the sound booth. I repositioned on the stool, fiddled with my tuning, but it didn’t matter. The song wasn’t in me anymore. I’d tried to recapture the fingerpicking pattern I’d played on the cliff, but I couldn’t remember the notes that bolstered it—that made it sing-able. Also the poem Cate had given me was ridiculous:
THE FIRE PROPHECY OF QUEEN SEERIA
Ultimately Cerul will touch
The land’s blackened despondency.
The verdant Ertha, dry and rust,
The trees plagued by sterility.
Need of life and hope will not trust
The ties that bind Water to sea,
And Wind’s breath will choke with dust,
Hope chilled with solemnity.
Then a childe will be born in two,
Both blessed and cursed with Fire’s heat,
Will feel and bear the threat of doom
To weather loneliness’s defeat.
Till need regrows in Erthen hue
And life sprin
gs forth from foliage pleat,
Till Wind binds both star and moon
And Thornbred’s curse is truly beat.
That was some Grade A Fantasy Bullshit. Sorry, Grandma Mae. Not your best work.
My palms were damp as I fitted fingers to strings. I glanced at the glowing red light above my head and tried not to cry. A desperate, hard feeling lodged in my throat, nearly choking me. I had about fifteen minutes left of the very expensive two hours of recording that Cate had paid for, and I had nothing to show for it. That’s why Conor had bugged off; he knew I was blowing my chance, and who wants to watch that?
I closed my eyes. This was for Nolan’s—Eamon’s—big scene. I stumbled into the melody. Almost there. Maybe two notes off. Be honest, keep going. Be honest, keep going. I pushed myself to the edge of that cliff, but I couldn’t make myself stay there. Couldn’t hold my ground. All I could think about was disappointing everyone, and the song broke apart.
I dug through my bag. “Last ditch effort, coming up.” I flipped through Dad’s worn copy of the Elementia trilogy to the page Ryder bookmarked. Maybe if I knew what this scene was about, I could figure out how to play it.
The night sky was muddy and violet. Sevyn had run for hours though the white, skeletal trees of Norgatia until she came to a river that followed the base of a snow-capped mountain. She ate soft, dark berries, washing them down with icy river water. Then she collapsed in the rubbery weeds, briefly longing for the confinement of her lonely tower, for the simplicity of a world that ignored her.
“I feel you, Sevyn,” I muttered. “It’s easier when no one wants anything from you.”
Unconsciousness came quickly, leaving her limp in the heart of a strange land. In the distance, beyond the outstretched arms of the Norgatia trees, an orange halo pulsed with the remains of Maedina’s still-burning tree.
Sevyn woke hours later, retching violently. Fever berries, she thought wildly. How could she have been so foolish? She gave another violent heave and her forehead pulsed. The smell made her stomach quake, and she crawled from it, curling up along the exposed roots of a giant, white tree.
Now a Major Motion Picture Page 13