After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

older on something.”

I was sixteen. Bree was nineteen, and kind of a bitch.

“What’s the story?”

“My brother is missing,” I said, “and he was the last thing I had left of home. Now I’m fighting the people who took him since I’m dead inside anyway, grenades exploding on us any moment, blah, blah, blah. They wanted someone who can handle a gun, not for crying or anything.”

Bree’s fork wasn’t moving anymore. “Is this for some newspaper?”

I grinned. “The evening news.”

Now she was looking up, her head angled by instinct to catch the best light on her face. “What?”

“Yup.” I shrugged like it was nothing. “I was handpicked. If the segment breaks big, they’ll probably have to retire me.”

Bree looked stunned. After a second, she recovered and said, “Dream big.”

“I’m going to get it,” I said.

She smiled. “I’m sure,” she said. “And if that doesn’t pan out, there’s always a place for you on Naturewise.”

She was acting like I’d been the back half of the bear.

I stood. “I’m going to rehearse.”

“Break a leg,” said Bree, like she meant it.

When I was still a kid, Bree had gotten a gig as a grieving bride whose husband was killed by government troops on his way up the stairs of the church.

(She was still in the dorms with me, then; she wouldn’t be a teacher until after that segment.)

It was supposed to be a small part, a background tableau in the middle of a bigger story, but Bree wasn’t a person who played small parts.

In the on-scene segment with the news man in front, she had clutched her veil in her fists as she wept over the body of the guy who’d been her husband.

He was from some other agency. I hadn’t seen him since—she’d kept him in the spotlight too long, and his face was too famous after that. She’d taken his career down. Bree played for keeps.

In the grainy newspaper shots (meant to have been taken by a wedding guest), Bree had cradled his head in her lap and lowered her mouth to his mouth, their lips almost touching but not quite.

(“You’re not supposed to kiss before marriage in that country,” Bree told me the night before filming, when everyone else was asleep.

“There’s nowhere to go with that,” I said.

Bree said, “Watch me.”

At the time I hated that we shared a dorm. Our beds were pressed up against the walls, separated except for her voice, and I was trapped listening to her; but there was no question that the advice had done me good.)

The bride segment had been aimed at a regional station, to drum up sympathy for the insurgents in a couple of key cities, that could be pushed over the edge of public opinion by a sob story on the news.

(Stations hired out their news stories now. It was easier and safer than going looking for news, and our stories never went sour on you the way they did if you trusted them out in the wild.

And it’s not like audiences knew the difference. To the Uppers, one tragedy on their television was as surreal as the next. Let those who would be fooled, be fooled.)

Bree was paid for a segment on the independent channel, and a picture in the locally edited newspaper.

She ended up on the cover of Planet magazine.

(“The segment tested so well they’re thinking of extending the war,” Bree told me. “The Uppers love to watch a cause they can donate to.”

Her voice sounded strange.)

She had one of the first editions framed above her bed. It was a close-up, her tear-stained face half hidden by a gold silk veil; her gaze sliding sideways with smeary, kohl-rimmed hazel eyes looking out at the viewer.

The headline: the Weeping bride on the mountain path.

The article was ten pages about the plight of the fleeing insurgents. The quotes came from the insurgents, too; Planet was classy enough to do research like it was still real. They’d even called the agency to get quotes right from Bree and not from our publicity office, because Bree had done such a good job with the part that they didn’t want the performance to be diluted.

(I listened in, of course. I hated her, but I knew when to take notes from a master.)

“I can never kiss him, until we meet in Heaven,” Bree had sighed into the office phone, her voice shaking, and on the other end of the line the Planet guy muttered, “Holy shit, that’s great,” and started typing.

(Her hands were shaking, too; Bree never did anything by halves.)

The article won a Pulitzer. Before the year was out, that government fell apart, and the insurgents got the revolution they’d paid for.

At the agency, they treated Bree like she sweated gold nuggets, and added the leader of the insurgents to their list of references for when the next guys called up the agency looking for the kind of story that couldn’t happen by accident.

They had pulled Bree out of the audition pool for good after the story faded, because there was no way people would ever forget her face after that.

If you ask me, she was doomed from the beginning with eyes like that, anyway. No hiding those; I don’t care how big your crowd shot is.

Now Bree had a look like she thought this was all beneath her. She shouldn’t: she was still here, teaching. (The insurgents were good for publicity, but they hadn’t paid so great. Wherever the Uppers’ money had gone, none of it had made it to Bree.)

She was the only person at the agency who had ever been retired because of success.

So far.

Bree knew how to act above it all, but everybody has their tells, and I knew I’d gotten to her when I saw she’d signed up for phone privileges.

She made a lot of calls; she was a Lower, but she had parents on the outside. They came to visit once a year, and brought books for her (Bree could read), and told her how happy they were that she had done well for herself.

It hadn’t made her any friends, but I guess when you have parents, you can take or leave the rest.

I pulled a muscle in calisthenics to get out of the session early. It took some doing to wrench my arm without breaking it, but it was my only option. No good faking anything. The downside of working in a casting agency was that everybody was on to your act.

“Ice that down at the nurse, now,” said Miss Kemp, as I headed out. “You’d better look like you know how to carry a gun at the audition tomorrow.”

I wasn’t worried. I was tall for a girl, and wiry. I could carry half a black bear suit; I could manage a gun.

“Don’t worry,” I told her, and grinned. (I had all my teeth. My smile was priceless, even on Miss Kemp.)

The phone room was on the office floor, so it was easier for snoopy adults to catch snoopy students. Not that it mattered. With Bree, you never had to get any closer than the landing.

“Mother,” she was saying, “you’ve got to do something about the part they want this girl for.”

Bingo.

Her voice, tense and serious, echoed down the hall. “It’s not fair. She’s sixteen, but she’s never done anything! I don’t know why they’re doing this at all. There’s got to be someone else who could use her.”

One success can really turn a petty person sour, I thought.

“Yeah, she’s good enough,” Bree said. “Can’t you buy her out? She’ll find some other way to earn out of her contract.” And a second later, meaner, “Well, decide faster.”