The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon a Con #2)(67)

AS IMOGEN FINISHES MOPPING UP THE MILKSHAKE, she says, “So let me get this straight: you accidentally threw away the Starfield sequel script that some asshole then found in the garbage and started posting on Twitter, so you asked me to switch with you in hopes that you could find the thief before they revealed that it was yours?”

“That about sums it up.” I tap some hot sauce onto my fries.

“Huh.”

Most of the paparazzi have left us for Calvin (I gave them his hotel name and room number, so I make a mental note to buy him a sorry-you-were-bait bouquet later), but a few hang around in the diner, watching Imogen and me from a distance. They aren’t taking photos, though, because I promised them a better op later. The paparazzi aren’t all soulless cockroaches. They just go where the money is, and I’ve never given them a reason not to trust me. They’re more like—what’re those things called? The birds that sit on a rhino’s back, picking bugs off its skin? They’re more like that.

There is an ecosystem in Hollywood that I know well. It’s just the rest of the world that I don’t quite get. Especially the internet.

Imogen leans on the mop. “And you still haven’t found out who took the script?”

“It’s a big convention. I was stupid to think I could do it alone.”

“Then that makes two of us,” she replies with a sigh. “Listen, Jess, about the whole Save Amara thing—”

“Why does it mean so much to you?” I interrupt, picking at my basket of fries. “Why does she mean so much to you?”

She. Princess Amara.

Imogen winces, her lips pressed into a thin line. She picks at the rough handle of the mop, as if I had asked her to explain solar combustion. Now that I finally have a good look at her, I much prefer her with a pink pixie. She looks a little too much like me in that brown wig and drawn-on mole, and I’m really not all that surprised she pulled me off so well. In any other life, she could’ve been me.

There is a theory of parallel universes—or a multiverse—much like String Theory’s extra dimensions of spacetime. It’s the speculation that there are other parallel universes running alongside ours with different pasts and different futures—where one choice you make splits off into another parallel world. So, perhaps there’s a universe out there where the impossible happens and I’m not Starfield’s princess.

Perhaps there is a universe where a girl with a pink pixie is.

“Princess Amara is brave,” Imogen finally says, and her voice is soft and timid, like she’s telling me a great secret not many people understand. “And resourceful and she’s the kind of princess who rescues herself, you know? She wasn’t made to be someone else’s character arc. When I first saw Starfield, I knew her. She wasn’t perfect—and that’s what I needed. She’s constantly in her father’s shadow, or Carmindor’s—but she tries so hard, constantly, to cast her own. And in the end she does by becoming the best version of herself. That’s why Amara means so much to me. She taught me that I can make mistakes, and own up to them, and be better because of them. So…I want to apologize—I didn’t know what you’d gone through. Or I mean, what you go through.”

I snap my gaze up to her, and she quickly looks away, but it’s too late. I know that tone. “What happened? Did something happen?”

Her mouth thins, and she sits down on the other side of the booth in silence. The waitress refills my glass and, seeing that she’s interrupting something, quickly hurries away. Imogen refuses to meet my gaze.

I don’t know Imogen very well, but I know that when she’s quiet, there’s something incredibly wrong. “Imogen, what happened?”

“It’s stupid. I mean, it’s done now.”

“That doesn’t tell me what happened.” Then I add, “It wasn’t Ethan, was it? I know you two got into a fight last night but…” I reach for my phone in my pocket and pull it out to call him. “I don’t know what’s come over him but—”

“NO!” She almost climbs over the table to stop me from texting him. I stare at her, startled, and she melts back into her seat in embarrassment. “No—it’s not him. It’s really not that big of a deal, okay? During the meet-and-greet today, a guy I knew came in. He just—his hand ‘slipped’ and he—you know—sorta copped a feel,” she says hurriedly, her cheeks burning.

Oh. Oh no.

“It was mortifying,” she adds quickly, “and before you ask, he didn’t recognize me. He thought I was you.”

Wait—she thought that I’d be mad at her? I’m furious, but not at her. I exhale through my mouth, the one thing I can do to keep myself calm as I process this. “And you’re okay?”

“Me?” She gives me a surprised look. “I want to punch his teeth in, I’m so mad.”

“You and me both,” I reply, and on my phone I pull up the email for the con’s management team.

“Do you know this asshole’s name?”

“I don’t know if he’s going under his real name or his YouTube name, but I’m supposed to meet him tomorrow after the con anyway. He wanted to tell me something. Me, Imogen. Not you,” she clarifies, and with a relieved sigh, she stands to put the mop back into the bucket. “I can really pick ’em, you know.”