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 are 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
