Wish You Were Her(68)
She sighed in relief and then looked over to Natalie. “Okay. Hit me with it.”
“It … could definitely be worse.”
“Bullet points?”
“Everyone your age is vehemently defending you. Millennials, too. In fact, a lot of millennial women are writing think pieces about the whole thing. Bustle and Cosmo have been so great, I can’t even tell you.”
“But?”
“The morning shows have been kind of brutal. Lots of red-faced, right-wing men. Lots of heat on you, none on the boys.”
“That’s good, I guess,” Allegra said quietly.
“It’s not good,” Natalie shot back, sounding indignant. “Allegra, that horrid weasel gave all three of your names to that editor. He doesn’t deserve your sympathy.”
“But Jonah does.”
She could feel Natalie staring at her profile, as she looked ahead and out of the windscreen of the car. Nothing but woodland road ahead, barely a goodbye to her father. Lake Pristine fading away in the rear-view mirror and all of the invisible bindings of fame starting to tighten around her once more.
“You really liked him, didn’t you?”
Allegra felt the bindings creep up to her throat, as if trying to stop the truth from slipping out. Her eyes itched and her chin trembled. “Yes.”
“So, why not just go with Plan A? Owning the relationship? Ask people to be understanding?”
“Because,” Allegra rounded on Natalie and, for the first time in their long, professional relationship, her voice was raised, “I want better for him. I want better for him than an embarrassing publicity stunt that he’s only going along with because he’s a good guy. I’ve had to fight for every fucking role in this industry, countless auditions and callbacks and meetings and readings and lunches. I gave up prom and school and sneaking out and having fun. Always auditioning. Always trying to impress, always fighting to be considered. I want him to choose. I don’t want to have to convince him. I don’t want to have to win him over. And hey, guess what, Nat? He’s autistic, like me. You’ve always said I’m so good at auditions. Ever wonder why? Autism. When every fucking social interaction feels like an audition, a performance, you get really good at it.”
She took a breath, anger melting away to reveal a deep sadness she had felt since leaving the house at the lake.
“Except him,” she breathed. “Never felt like a performance with him. Suddenly … didn’t feel like there was a camera inside my head anymore. It felt easy. And hard. And natural.” She paused, wishing he was there. “And real.”
There was a whole minute of complete silence and stillness between them. Then Allegra felt a tentative hand on her arm. She glanced at Nat, shocked to see the other woman, who was always so clipped and proper, looking devastated.
“Okay,” the publicist said softly. “Hear you loud and clear. Your mother is at your apartment, we’re going to debrief there and then let you get some peace.”
Allegra nodded but couldn’t help glancing back at Lake Pristine, as it completely disappeared from view. It brought on a strange, emotional ache to leave the place that had so lived up to the imaginary version she had put together in her head. Now she was fleeing it. She was always fleeing—darting from a restaurant to a car, from a set to a hotel. From a meet-and-greet to a hastily scheduled doctor’s appointment, where the doctor told her that her lungs needed rest, and she could only laugh and give him a pitying look.
She didn’t want to flee Lake Pristine. She wanted to stay.
She had the strange feeling that she had left her chance at peace behind.
Chapter Twenty-Four
By lunchtime, Jonah had had enough.
He was able to dodge the last of the remaining reporters, but he was sick of cars slowing down so Old Man Mason or his schoolfriends’ fathers could lean out of the window to congratulate him, or try to shake his hand. He hated how Mrs. Heywood quietly asked him if he was going to make an honest woman out of “the actress.” He despised the looks, the stares and the whispers. He was used to the small-town experience of Lake Pristine.
But this was something else entirely.
He pushed through festival-goers and burst into the small tent reserved on site for festival employees and volunteers. Simon was standing up against the far wall with a bottle of water, talking with Kerrie and Skye. Jonah stalked toward his ex-friend without a second care and grabbed him by the neck.
“The hell?!” squawked Simon, spluttering and spraying water everywhere as Jonah shoved him against the flimsy tent wall.
“Give me a good reason not to maim you right now,” Jonah said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Because I’m struggling, Si.”
“Let go, you lunatic.”
“No. You fucked up. What were you thinking?”
He could vaguely hear Kerrie and Skye demanding that he let Simon go, but he was too far gone. He stared at his old friend, a friend he had always made allowances for. Jonah had been forced to fight his way out of special needs classes, where his disability had been foolishly considered synonymous with unintelligence. Simon, who had struggled with reading, had been his lighthouse in the storm. They had made mischief together. Jonah had overlooked the exceedingly rare occasions where Simon had lashed out at him, and only him, attributing it to the idea he was a lot to deal with as a friend. After all, that was all he had ever heard as a kid. From teachers to absent fathers, he had been told he was “a lot.” So he took Simon’s sporadic flashes of meanness as the tollbooth fee on the road to having a friend.