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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 besurprisingly 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’theard 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 dramaMary Wants It.
Wil pointedly didnotlook 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 genuinesheetof 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, includingMary 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 wordINTERN. 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.