“That’s bullshit!” Shoshanna yelled. “They never put things back in motion after they’ve been shut down like this! They’ll sell the establishing shots and call it a loss!”
I looked to Eamon. His head was turned away, his bare chest collapsed. I tried to take his hand, but his fingers slipped away. He left, and Henrik said, “Leave him be, Iris. His dreams just flatlined.”
Shoshanna continued to berate Henrik. She even called Julian and the two of them launched into the AD over speakerphone like he was the reason this was happening. Moving in a sort of daze, I went to the costume trailer and put my real clothes back on. Then I went to makeup and had Roxy remove my ears. The extras were talking about the scene; no one knew we had been shut down yet.
“You all right?” Roxy asked, peeling one of my elf ears free. “You were awfully combative when I put these things on you. Now you’re still as a rock.”
“You should talk to Shoshanna. There’s been some…news.”
“Oh.” Roxy caught on immediately. Her hands dropped to her sides. Today her pants were being held up by braided rainbow twine, and the side of her hair that wasn’t shaved was knotted via a pair of chopsticks. “That bad?” she whispered.
“You should talk to Shoshanna,” I said again, even though it was probably weird.
“I bet she wants to be alone.”
“Nope. She wants to be with you. A lot.” Part of me worried I was crossing a line, part of me didn’t care. Roxy went to work on my remaining elf ear, and I could see the faintest hint of a smile in the mirror. At least there was some silver lining in all this mud. But then, I didn’t want to jinx it with hope. That’s what always happened. I wanted something, and then the second I started to hope for it? Gone.
Hope was the kiss of death.
After I’d been de-elfed, I knocked on Cate’s door and wondered if this would be the first time she didn’t see me coming.
“Come in, Iris,” she called out.
I stepped inside and found her still wearing her sunglasses. There was a stillness to her posture that felt rather dangerous. “Can I help, Cate?”
“We’re beyond that, girl. Unless you know where we can find a few hundred thousand dollars and a fan base that promises to buy tickets to this movie and the special edition DVD, instead of signing a petition to do precisely the opposite.”
“They’re out there,” I muttered. “Maybe we can find a new way to reach them?”
“It’s too late.”
“What if I appealed to the Thornians?” I tried. “I’ll go on Eamon’s YouTube show. I’ll call each and every one of them on the phone! You can raffle off a date with me. Anything!”
“It’s too late, Iris.”
“I’ll give you the money. I have a trust fund,” I said, ignoring the fact that I couldn’t access it without my dad’s say-so. “Henrik said it’d be like an investment. When the movie is a huge hit, I’ll make it back threefold in book sales and merchandise.”
“Iris! It’s too late.” Her shoulders folded in on her tiny frame. “Once we leave this location, the pieces of this production will fall apart fast. This time next week, no one will remember the production was filming. It isn’t personal, Iris. It happens all the time in Hollywood. At least we have valid reasons for shutting down. Some films don’t even get that much.”
“What will happen to you?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “I’m staying here in Ireland. I’ve been marked a failure. The blame falls on me”—she took a deep breath—“so I bear it. This was my adaptation from the start.”
“So it is personal! The studio kept slashing your budget and hoping the movie would go away, and when you persisted, they said you were the problem.” She didn’t have to confirm my suspicions. The undercurrent had been clear from the moment that reporter had stepped foot on the set, which reminded me of her terrible Titanic metaphor. “You’re not going down with the ship, Cate. Movies need women like you. Girls everywhere need you. Look at me: I didn’t have a single adult to look up to before you.” Tears filled my eyes, and I scrubbed at them.
Cate got up and hugged me. I held on tighter than I’d ever hugged my own mom. She couldn’t disappear now. She couldn’t be beaten down to nothing.
“Great. Your life’s work is on fire, and you’re consoling me,” I said between sniffs.
“Same continent, Iris Thorne. Same pain.”
“Hollywood is full of goddamn miracles,” I whispered. “I hear about them all the time.”
“The miracle is you,” she said. “And if we have to stay married to Grace Lee’s unoriginal Titanic metaphor, you are the unsinkable Molly Brown. You’re the one who comes out of this stronger.”
Angry tears tumbled out. “Don’t be proud of me. That means it really is over.”
Henrik entered, looking mightily disheveled. “Can you go comfort your boyfriend and brother, Iris? They’re taking the news hard.”
“Shoshanna?” Cate asked.
“Hulking out. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knocked the castle off the rock.”
Somehow we all laughed the tiniest laugh. Everything seemed impossible. Everything felt doomed. But isn’t that the exact moment when fantasies get real?
• • •
When I left Cate’s trailer, I couldn’t find anyone. Not Ryder. Not Eamon. Not Shoshanna. I still had no response from my dad, and only one unread text from Julian:
This blows. I was finally starting to dig my role.
The news must have spread while I was talking with Cate, and almost everyone had gone into town to drown their disappointment in a pint. I went for Annie, grabbed her out of the case, and swung her strap across my chest. Guitar on my back like a rock star, I walked to the top of the rock, passing Irish crosses and
