Chapter One
“Wil, either take off your sunglasses or stop fidgeting.”
Wil Greene slid her sunglasses down her nose, squinting over six rows of people who were talking and laughing so loudly, she couldn’t hear herself think. Hundreds of lights hung from crisscrossing catwalks overhead, illuminating the cavernous space. She turned to her mother, Beanie. “Explain.”
“The squirming is ruining your cool.” Beanie pointed up and down at Wil in her good jeans and leather jacket. “If that’s what you’re going for.”
“Naturally, that’s what I’m going for. Did you see my new boots?” Wil stuck out her feet, making Beanie roll her eyes. “It’s just that it’s so incredibly bright in here,” Wil explained. “There must be three hundred lights.”
The stage their chairs faced was painted severe black and backdropped by a truly massive screen, bigger even than those in a movie theater. Just in front of it were two mid-century-style chairs that looked quietly expensive. Dozens of cameras and mics ringed the stage, with bored-looking press standing around tapping on tablets and phones. Wil didn’t watch TV news, but she recognized several faces, including a morning show anchor who turned out to be surprisingly tiny in person, balanced on sky-high nude heels with bright red soles.
It was surreal. Even though Wil had never been on a soundstage in her life, and even though the lights were so much brighter than any she’d seen before and the crowd was bigger than she’d known to expect, waiting for Katie Price to walk onto a stage still felt completely familiar to Wil’s body.
As though no time had passed at all. When actually it had been at least, what? A dozen years. A little longer. Thirteen.
Wil hadn’t actually laid eyes on Katie in thirteen years.
God.
She stashed her sunglasses into her bag and bussed her mom’s cheek. “I guess I’ll go look at the set.”
Beanie gave her a quick cheek kiss back. “Good. Ask questions. All these film students are very eager. They feel bad if you don’t talk to them and act impressed. Do your best to make up for the massive student loan debt they’re facing after graduation.”
“Got it. You want me to scare them with an object lesson in what happens to a person when they don’t follow their dreams.” Wil stood, one hip cocked to make it obvious that she was talking about herself, and Beanie smacked her thigh with her program.
“If you want to talk about that, let’s talk about it. I saw a diner down the street. I’ll buy the coffee and pie. Jokes like that aren’t as cute as you’d like them to be, Wilifred Darcy Greene.”
“Obviously, I know better.” Wil kept any comedy out of her voice and conceded the point to Beanie, who was looking at her with a lot of knowing.
“You do,” Beanie said. “Because I’m amazing, which can only mean you’re amazing, too.”
Wil reached down to squeeze her mom’s hand, then minced along the aisle, passing Beanie’s best friend, Diana, who Wil had known her entire life, and who was pretending that she hadn’t heard Wil’s conversation with her mom. She made her way past the long row of folding chairs that had been set up on the concrete floor of a giant soundstage in Chicago’s Studio City.
Having navigated her way free of people’s knees and bags, she flashed the lanyard Diana had given her at a security guard, who permitted her into a roped-off area, giving Wil access to the set, a retro 1970s family home where they filmed the hour-long weekly drama Mary Wants It.
Wil pointedly did not look past the brightly lit set to the moving shadows of people behind the stage and screen.
She wouldn’t be able to tell, anyway, if one of those dark silhouettes, out of reach of the studio lights, was Katie.
The interior of the set’s living room area was remarkably like a real living room, except without a ceiling or fourth wall. As soon as Wil crossed the threshold, a staffer made enthusiastic eye contact. “Do you have any questions?” The student’s smile was embroidered by several glinting piercings against a goth-white complexion and framed by a genuine sheet of glossy black hair.
Mindful of Beanie’s encouragement, Wil put her hand on a coatrack hung with a collection of vintage coats and tried to think of a good question.
“What do you do for the show, and how important are you?” she asked. “But be gentle with me when you explain it. I only recently figured out that there weren’t tiny people living inside my television, letting me take a peek into their lives for my entertainment.”
The student laughed. “Oh, wow, no. I don’t work for the show. My roommate’s girlfriend is a PA for it, but she mostly just works from home on compliance—you know, keeping track that everyone on set has worked the right number of hours and has the right credits and all of their paperwork. I’m a very unimportant screenwriting student at the University of Chicago. I have an internship here.”
“At Studio City? That seems like kind of a big deal.”
Wil had been amazed when they arrived and Beanie parked in a huge lot. A golf cart picked up Wil, Beanie, and Diana to take them to the VIP entrance for this afternoon’s event. She’d also been amazed by how enormous the Chicago-based film studio lot was and how many famous shows and films were made here, including Mary Wants It. Wil hadn’t thought of Chicago in the same breath as LA or New York, but something was obviously holding its own here.
Her observation earned Wil a bigger smile from the student. “I beat out two hundred other people just as awesome as me, honestly. Although, who knows why I got the internship? I think they put our apps in a random-number generator.”
“Well, congratulations.” Wil straightened up from where she’d been leaning close so she could hear the student, who was short. Then she felt fingertips touch her wrist.
“I’m Sasha.” The student held up her lanyard with her name and pronouns and a bright red bar featuring the word INTERN. She gave Wil another smile, a flush of pink racing up from the collar of her white button-down to her cheeks. “I’m not usually so cringe, I guess, but are you doing something after this?”
Oh. Wil cleared her throat and glanced involuntarily toward the back of the stage again.
This had backfired. When Beanie and Diana asked questions of twentysomething film students, it did not come across the same way, apparently, as when Wil did it in her leather jacket and new boots, leaning in close and smiling.
Sometimes she didn’t realize she’d activated her flirt mode until things had gotten to wrist touching. Her moves had become habitual.
“I’m so completely flattered. I’m—”
“Don’t even. You don’t have to.” Sasha’s voice was very brave now, her eyes big and serious. She moved her hand away from Wil’s wrist. “It’s just, I was thinking, you probably have some really great party to go to after this.” Sasha pointed at Wil’s VIP lanyard. “I know there’s that meet and greet with Katie Price, or you have something, I mean, somewhere booked in the city.” Sasha nudged Wil’s shin with her knee. “And unless you also have a someone, I’m a really good date at fancy parties.”
Wil had to laugh. Sasha had some moves as well. “I have no doubt. Actually—”
Sasha waved her hand in front of her face, grinning. “Listen to me, oh my God. But I had to shoot my shot, right? Or I’d regret it forever. Also, you need a better camera person, because fuck me, you are hot. I knew you were hot, but TikTok is not doing this justice.” Her hands flapped at Wil’s body, her neck bright red now, while Wil slowly caught on to what was happening, which was not, in fact, a direct consequence of her game.
She’d been recognized.
Despite having well over a million followers on her channel, Wil-You-Or-Won’t-You, it didn’t happen often. Maybe because she rarely left Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she’d lived most of her life. It wasn’t unusual for Wil to be recognized in Green Bay, of course. She got recognized for all kinds of things. The scandalous cheer routine she’d choreographed in high school to Ke$ha’s “Take It Off” that nearly cost her her spot as valedictorian, for example.
Sometimes, driving her Bronco around town, she’d get a familiar wave from someone she didn’t recognize and then wonder if the wave was actually for her dad, who’d driven the Bronco before her, or if the person waving was someone she’d met through work and forgotten. Wil had taken a lot of reports of trees falling through the roofs of garages in her job as an insurance adjuster.
But also, Wil suspected that even when she did get recognized in Green Bay for her TikTok, most everybody in her hometown was too Midwest polite to mention where they knew her from. Not least of all because it would mean they’d have to admit they followed her channel.
Green Bay was really Catholic.
She turned her attention back to Sasha, taking a breath so she could be completely present in the moment. The huge studio and the lights, the slight fug left over from the three-hour car ride from Green Bay, and her jumble of unlabeled feelings about being here at all had shattered Wil’s usual focus on one thing at a time.
She looked—really looked—at Sasha, who was definitely a little bit nervous after hitting on Wil, but still meeting her gaze. She noticed the way Sasha’s eyes watched her face for changes in expression, which told Wil that Sasha wasn’t shy, but she wasn’t indiscriminately extroverted, either. Wil realized Sasha was most likely being humble. There would be good reasons why she had this coveted internship, and also why she’d recognized Wil right away in a sea of strangers, placed her, and felt confident enough to approach her.
Sasha was smart. Really smart. And she took in details, and she knew she was good.
In any other circumstances, Wil would have absolutely asked Sasha to kiss her.
“Honestly, it’s not that I wouldn’t seriously consider the offer if I were able to.” Wil kept her voice matter-of-fact, because no one really liked being treated gently or condescended to. “And it’s not because I have any kind of glamorous commitment after this. It’s just that my ride here was my mom and her best friend, so this is strictly a family outing today. To see Katie.”
Just in time, Wil stopped herself from looking toward the back of the stage again.
She hadn’t expected to feel such a pull.
“You’re big Katie Price fans?” Sasha asked. “What am I saying? Of course you are. You’re humans in the twenty-first century. Well, I can tell you that she only got here thirty minutes ago, but I caught a glimpse of her going into what we set up as the greenroom, and she looks like she’s had twelve hours of sleep and has strolled off the runway for Ralph Lauren’s fall sportswear collection. No kidding, it’s unreal. Stars are not like us.”
“Yeah.”
Her answer didn’t even make sense, but when Wil tried to think of something else to say, she couldn’t.
What was Katie like now? That was the question Wil kept circling back to in the car on the way here, tuning out Beanie and Diana’s chatter to look out the window at the farm fields rushing by I-43 and wonder if becoming a star had transformed Katie Price into someone completely unfamiliar, or if she would still feel like Katie.
Like the Katie who Wil had once known better than anyone.
A bar of lights hanging from the three-story ceiling flashed twice.
“Five minutes,” Sasha said. “You should go back to your seat. Hey, could I get a selfie?”
“Yeah,” Wil said again. She took Sasha’s phone, since she was so much taller, and pressed her cheek to Sasha’s while firing off a bunch of pictures. Sasha gave her a hug. Then Wil was weaving around bodies to go back to her seat. She made it just as the lights over the audience lowered.
Wil glanced behind her at the endless rows of filled chairs that went all the way to a huge garage-style door in the side of the soundstage. There had to be at least five hundred people here. For Katie. At an event so elite, it wasn’t even public. Today’s viewing and the interview to follow were restricted to invited film students, industry professionals, media, and people like Wil who’d been put on a list by Katie or Katie’s inner circle.
In this case, by Katie’s mom, Diana, who’d been Beanie’s best friend since kindergarten.
Diana leaned forward, her ash-blond hair slipping over the shoulder of her sweater set. Diana’s skin, direct from her Norwegian ancestors, was struggling under the intense lights. Even the tip of her nose had turned a startling red. “Katie just texted me to make sure we’d been well taken care of. She said to tell you hi.”
Katie said to tell you hi.
Katie said to tell you she wished she could’ve made it.
Katie said to tell you she wished she could’ve seen you, but she had to get back to Los Angeles.
Katie said to tell you she’s so, so sorry about your dad, and she wanted to make sure you got her card and flowers.
Diana had been telling Wil what Katie said for fully thirteen years. Or, even more often, Beanie told Wil what Diana had told her Katie said.
“Tell her I said to break a leg.” Wil smiled.
Diana started typing, and Beanie patted Wil’s knee, which meant that she’d responded correctly. Versus, say, blurting out, Tell Katie she could give me her number.
Beanie leaned closer. “After this is over, Diana’s going to fly back with Katie to LA for a couple of days. So get ready for a nice long talk on our drive back to Green Bay.” Beanie smiled at Wil with an eyebrow raised.
“I love that for us. Do you want to hash out a rough agenda or stick with the classics?”
Beanie laughed. “I do like the classics, but maybe we could mix it up a bit. After the part where I gently ask you what you’re going to do with the rest of your life, and I remind you that I’m tired of hearing about your TikTok at my workplace from people I try to avoid talking to, then we could try out—and I’m just workshopping this, so do feel free to offer feedback—I don’t know, processing some of our feelings about losing your dad and the love of my life?”
“Oh, wow. Okay.” Wil nodded, staring at the still-darkened stage. “Or, option B, we could talk about Katie’s thing. Our observations and deeper contemplations about what we’re about to witness.” Wil gestured toward the stage. “Enlighten ourselves with the arts.”
“Sure, sure. Except, this is you and me, right?” Beanie leaned back and smiled. “We might as well get a sack of burgers at a drive-through and turn the stereo up super loud.”
“That,” Wil said. “Let’s do that. It’s been working for years. Why mess with our amiable and pleasant mother-daughter bond?”
Beanie pursed her lips. “Your deflection is noted for the record.”
A beam from a hidden projector lit up the screen, and a lush sound system filled the cavernous concrete-walled studio with the opening theme of Mary Wants It.
Copyright © 2024 by Mae Marvel
