The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon a Con #2)(49)
“Older?”
“She’s nineteen.”
“Nineteen,” I echo. “But the internet says she’s definitely older.”
“The internet’s wrong, surprisingly. She lied when she was fourteen to get the part in Huntress Rising. She told the director she was almost eighteen. After that she just never corrected anyone.” He shrugs. “She’ll do just about anything to make sure she succeeds. She needs to. It’s like there’s this dial in her head that’s constantly turned up to eleven. She’s intense. She’s always thinking one step ahead—or three.”
He talks about her in such a tender tone, like he really does admire her. He might say he doesn’t love her, but maybe he just doesn’t realize it yet.
“Sounds like she means a lot to you,” I say.
“She does—she’s like a sister to me.”
“Well, she’s doing better than me. I’m no one,” I reply. “I mean—Jess is smart, and she’s gorgeous, and she’s talented. She made a fantastic Amara. She’s amazing, and I…I guess I can do cool voices?”
Ethan studies me with those dark, dark eyes, and I feel myself shifting uncomfortably. “Imogen,” he starts—and the way he says my name, like it’s somewhere between a lullaby and an exasperated sigh, makes my stomach flip all the same. “Why did you want to trade places with Jess?”
The question takes me by surprise. I turn my eyes toward the water, watching my dress float and ripple around me. The reflection of my pink hair creates a rosy halo around me. “Don’t you already know? You sleuthed me out, Detective. I want to save Amara.”
“But you could’ve done that a myriad of other ways—you are doing that, it seems, at least by your online presence.”
“As if that’s enough,” I sigh, resting my hand just above the ripples of the water, watching the lights from the pool dance across my skin. “You know, I really love Amara. I relate to her. She was able to make mistakes and still come back from them—she wasn’t ruined because of them. She learned, and she grew, and she became stronger.” Because Amara is the type of character who always screwed up—like me, trying to do the right thing but never doing it the right way. Like the online petitions, the Twitter hashtag, the movement itself—it’s all fine and good, but it wasn’t the right way because…“I’m no one, Ethan. I haven’t done anything. So I guess that’s why I wanted to be Jess, so I could be someone. So my voice would matter.”
“Imogen, that’s not—”
“Oh, it’s true,” I interrupt. “My brother’s a year younger than me and he’s vice president of his class, and he’ll probably even be quarterback. He’s just so talented at everything, I feel like…like I’m letting everyone down because I’m not good at anything. And it’s not because I don’t try,” I add before he can suggest it, because people always suggest it. “I’ve tried out for the debate team, but when I had to debate a guy over women’s reproduction he told me that women are too fragile to have control over their own bodies. I got kicked out of the club for kneeing him in the nads—”
“Whoa, really?”
“—and I tried to join the track team but I’m about as good at running as I am at algebra, so I couldn’t join the math club, either.”
“Imogen,” he tries to stop me, but I’m just getting started on the Great Failings of Imogen Lovelace.
“I suck at grammar, even though I love books,” I tell him, beginning to count my shortcomings on my fingers. “I’m in the book club, and the anime club, and I started a sci-fi club for the sole reason of getting after-school credit for watching reruns of Starfield. I’m still very proud of that.”
“Imogen.”
I begin to pace from one side of the pool to the other, half floating, half moon-walking. “But it’s not like the sci-fi club will turns heads on a college application. I don’t even know where I want to go, or what I want to do, and I’m a senior now. Milo’s basically already accepted to any school he sets his sights on and I—”
I don’t realize that he’s slid into the water until he catches me by the shoulders with his large hands and turns me around. He didn’t take his clothes off, either, abandoning only his glasses on the edge of the pool, and dampness is slowly bleeding up his starched button-down shirt. He sinks down and looks me level in the eyes. Starflame, is he handsome. Long eyelashes and warm brown eyes and expressive brows that crinkle together a little as he says my name for what feels like the millionth time, and I’m still not tired of it.
“Imogen. You started an online movement that has over fifty thousand signatures to try to save a character from a television show you are fiercely passionate about.”
I quickly look away. “Yeah, but anyone can do that.”
“I think you’re wrong—and I certainly don’t think just anyone can step into Jess’s shoes as well as you have.”
“But that’s only because I look moderately like her with a wig on and I can imitate voices pretty well.”
“Not everyone can do that.”
“Look moderately flawless?” I joke.
“Imogen,” he says, and I kind of just want him to shut up and keep saying my name over and over again until I get so sick of that name that I want to change it to something else, and then I want him to say that name, and then the next one, and then—“you might not be now, but you’re learning how to be, and someday I know you’re going to be amazing.”