Wish You Were Her(2)
“I must have done everything wrong for her to have written that,” Allegra remarked, as they waited for the car to stop. “I feel like I’m not playing the fame game very well.”
“Nonsense, you’re perfect. It’s a clickbait tactic. The snarkier and meaner they are, the more people will read it. You were trending on socials because it created so much discourse—”
“I hate discourse,” breathed Allegra, rubbing her palms and trying to find some calm.
“But the best people are on your side, kid. Don’t you stress. Now, come on. Chin up. Let’s go.”
Allegra let Natalie propel her out of the car and the flashes started. People yelled out her name and she pretended that they were calling for someone else. Some other eighteen-year-old girl who had just set the world on fire.
One successful open call audition at the age of thirteen, and she was now the owner of two Emmys and one very shiny Golden Globe. She had been made a household name by her most recent and most famous role to date: Clera in the globally acclaimed television adaptation of fantasy series Court of Bystanders. It just didn’t feel like a name she recognized anymore. She had been cast in a revival of the musical She Loves Me, but the director’s dubious past had been made public and the whole thing had been canceled. So now she had a free summer for the first time in years.
She was almost afraid of the open calendar.
At that moment, Allegra noticed a young woman filming herself at the main door. When she spotted Allegra, her eyes widened and she leaped into motion.
“Allegra? Allegra! Oh, my God! I need a picture with you!”
Allegra smiled instinctively but she saw how anxious her eyes looked as she stared at herself on the girl’s phone screen.
Once inside, Allegra felt a bitter taste under her tongue when she looked around at the glitz and sparkle: this was a charity luncheon. There was a vast ballroom full of tables with guests milling all around. A large screen played slides full of information about the people they were supposedly there to help, but nobody paid attention. Attendees buzzed from table to table, all trying to find the most socially beneficial beehive. Allegra had made a sizeable donation and had hoped, in the car, that the event would highlight the underprivileged children the charity was trying to help.
Now it seemed like yet another soulless gathering for the people who had decided she was going to be one of them. Well, if she behaved.
“This is not my world,” Allegra said, too quietly for anyone to hear. “I don’t belong here.”
Natalie was a human battering ram against the crowd of photographers. Some attendees nodded at Allegra in greeting, others looked her slowly up and down. Almost all of them whispered to their companions as she and Natalie passed by.
Allegra had been working steadily for years, hacking at the tree of acting and making little dents with every artistic pursuit. Then one day, the tree just fell. All those years of working on its trunk had paid off and the towering thing hit the ground with enormous shockwaves.
And there was no standing the tree back up.
Natalie found their place settings at their table and Allegra moved to turn off her phones—one for work and one for herself. Natalie had wrangled the personal number from her so she could reach her late at night, but otherwise only the odd co-star and her mother got in touch on the personal phone.
So she was surprised to see a little red number one looking up at her from its barely used inbox.
People were still filing into the room. She opened her inbox to find an email from Brooks Books, her father’s bookshop; a reply to an email she had sent, intending it to reach her father:
[email protected]
to: [email protected]
Subject: Summer Book Festival
Hello!
Hope it’s okay for me to email here. I called the shop but no one answered. Can I doublecheck the dates of your book festival? You don’t have a website and I can’t find it on socials.
Lots of love!
[email protected]
to: [email protected]
RE: Summer Book Festival
Dear Mysterious Reader who did not leave a name,
Apologies for our lack of technological advancement. Alas, I have implored George Brooks, my fearless leader, many times for a website but he is an adorable curmudgeon about such matters. The festival preparations have begun and it’s already taking years off my young life. We open on July 28, and the last night is August 23. Only two months to go.
Wish an overworked bookseller luck!
Warmest wishes,
Said Overworked Bookseller
Allegra smiled. It danced on her lips and then grew into something wide. She started to type a response.
[email protected]
to: [email protected]
Subject: Summer Book Festival
Dear Said Overworked Bookseller,
So sorry to have added more to your to-do list. For some reason, I thought Mr. Brooks was manning this email address but I should have known better. Consider me scolded.
Thank you for the festival dates, it’s gratefully received. The Twitter account only has this email address in its bio and no one has tweeted in this calendar year. Appreciate speediness of response via email.
Best,
Mysterious Reader
Allegra sent the email and switched both of her phones off, before sliding them into her clutch bag. It was a gift from an up-and-coming designer. She so rarely chose her own outfits anymore. She had become a canvas for other people’s art.