Penny makes a face down at the table. I make another mental note to ask her about this, if I can ever get any time alone with her. It could be as simple as her not liking Lennox’s movies, but still, with that documentary coming out about his career, maybe I can find a way to tie it into the profile.
“No.” Marius’s eyes go wide. “No, no, of course not. It’s, like, absolutely the biggest honor.”
I don’t have a notebook or a recorder out, but I’m already trying to remember everything about this, like how he looks super surprised and maybe freaked out. Like how he didn’t really answer my question. Like how Penny isn’t saying anything.
“Here we go,” the waiter says, appearing with a gigantic deep-dish pizza. “Enjoy! I’ll be back to know what you think.”
Marius smiles back, but not in the same way he did before. I feel like I messed something up, and I’m not sure how to make things go back to normal.
“Anyway,” Penny says, “Josie, Marius told me you’re still in high school. That’s incredible.”
Um. That I’m in high school? Or that I’m in high school and I’m here?
“Yeah,” I say, trying my best to figure out how to eat this pizza. “We do this big capstone project before graduation, so this is mine. It’s supposed to look good for colleges.”
Penny nods, like she understands the whole college thing, even though she never went.
“Where do you want to go?” Marius asks. There’s tomato sauce on his mouth. I glance down at my own plate. Eating around other people makes me feel weird.
“Spelman,” I say. “It’s this all-girls school for—”
“Yeah, I know about it,” Marius says, wiping his mouth. “Wow, how cool.”
“Yeah.”
Penny and Marius glance at each other, but I don’t know what it means. I eat more of my pizza (which is actually pretty good).
“Did you have some questions you wanted to ask?” Penny asks after a few minutes. “For, you know, your story?”
Oh. I do have questions, but I’m not sure what this is—if it’s a hangout or an interview or if I should be asking questions here. I already asked Marius something, and it seemed like he didn’t want to answer. And what will it be like to ask them both questions at the same time?
“Um,” I say. “Well, just, um, how are the press junkets? On your end, anyway.”
“Oh,” Marius says. I can’t exactly tell, but he looks…relieved, I think. “It’s sort of—”
“The worst,” Penny cuts in. “It never stops.”
I wipe my hands on a napkin and start writing in shorthand.
“Geez, Penny.” Marius does this smile where he hides his lips. “You know she’s going to print this, right?”
“It’s okay,” Penny says. “Everyone knows it’s true. The studio wants you to act all excited and remember talking points and be on all the time. That’s why your question after the screening threw Marius off.”
My head snaps up. Marius’s cheeks are red again.
“You didn’t screw anything up,” he says, leaning closer to me. “Seriously.”
“Dennis just got irritated,” Penny says, shaking her head. “Like asking why you had to bring race into it when it wasn’t even a story about race and stuff like that.”
My stomach sinks. I don’t think I asked anything wrong, but I don’t want the director to hate me.
“I—I didn’t mean to, like, start anything,” I say. “It was just something I thought about when I watched the movie.”
“Of course,” Marius says. “You and every other Black person. There’s nothing wrong with what you said. Dennis was just being ridiculous.”
I glance at my napkin. I’m writing everything down, but I’m not sure how much of this I should include in the story. Am I writing a puff piece or something about real issues? It’s hard to tell.
“Press junkets can be hard,” Marius adds after a second. “The faces and the questions—it all starts to blur together. So that’s why I remembered you. And your question.”
I sneak a glance up. He’s smiling, soft. I lift the corners of my mouth.
“It can be easy to get lonely, too,” Penny adds. “That’s one of the worst parts.”
I try not to let my surprise show. It’s pretty hard to picture her being lonely. Maybe that’s why she and Marius seem to be friends.
“Well, we don’t have to be lonely anymore,” Marius says, drumming lightly against the table. “Josie’s here, and now she’s part of our little club, right?”
“Uh,” I say. “What club?”
“The Lonely Hearts Club,” Penny deadpans. “Only emotionally stunted teen prodigies allowed.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Marius makes a face. “Well, not exactly. I don’t know about that emotionally stunted part—”
“No,” I say. “It actually fits me perfectly.”
Penny laughs, leaning over her plate. Her elbow starts to nudge Marius, who stares at me with a soft, open mouth.
“See,” she says. “I told you.”
It’s weird to think of Penny telling him anything about me. I take another bite of pizza.
“Right.” Marius clears his throat and lifts up his water glass. “To emotionally stunted teen prodigies.”
As I clink my glass against his and Penny’s, I can’t help but smile.
@JosieTheJournalist: wow, men are terrifying
“Is there anyone else from the cast you’re planning on talking to?”
It’s the next day, and Penny and I are in an empty Chicago hotel conference room for a one-on-one interview, sitting across from each other at a gigantic wooden table.
“I spoke to Art and Dennis back in Texas,” I say. “And I sent an email to the screenwriter and one of the producers—uh, Bob something? His answer was pretty helpful.”
“Okay,” Penny says, counting on her fingers. “So Marius and me. You should probably talk to Grace—she’s great. And maybe some of the other people who played characters at the conversion camp—they aren’t here, but I’m sure you could call them or something.”
I hurry to write this down. It’s a great idea that
