Ship It(13)

“Never gets old,” he says.

Rico pulls away. I follow but my eye is drawn by two people working to unfurl a banner for… Red Zone.

“Holy shit,” I say, gripping Rico’s arm. “Holy shit, Rico, Red Zone is here!”

“Oh yeah, I meant to tell you! Jon Reynolds did a panel this morning on video game adaptations in the post–Lara Croft world. You have to go find him.”

Wait. Jon Reynolds is here? Jon Reynolds… is here?

“Forest,” Rico says, jiggling my shoulder. “We still have, like, forty minutes before our panel. You have time. Go find him. Get that face-to-face, brother.”

I meet his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Okay.” I turn to find the stairs down to the floor. I have no idea what I’m supposed to say if I find him, but I’ll go. I have to try.


Jamie cautioned me against venturing down to the convention, but Rico said Jamie is a fool and I should experience what he calls “The Floor” at least once per con. But I’m not going downstairs for the life experience, or whatever. This is a mission.

Thankfully, I’m already wearing a big sweatshirt, and I tug my Sooners hat down over my eyes. The idea of being approached by a fan while I’m on my own sort of freaks me out, so I’m hoping to avoid attention by being generically bland-looking.

The floor is crawling with people. It’s claustrophobically tight, like when everyone leaves at the end of a Thunder game, except with more costumes and nerds. Thankfully, I don’t see the two Demon Heart fans we waved to earlier. Hopefully they’re off somewhere, tweeting about it.

Oh god, tweeting. I flinch thinking about the account Caty set up for me that I haven’t used yet and then push it out of my mind.

The Red Zone booth sits right in the front of the whole convention. Prime real estate. They have game systems set up promoting the new version that will come out soon, Red Zone 4. I’m itching to play it—I’ve already played through Red Zone 3 many times and I’m ready for a new challenge—but I don’t have time for that right now because I have to get back for my panel soon. I find the banner with a photo of Jon Reynolds off to the side advertising that they’ll be doing signings at the booth later today. He looks like exactly who you’d want to helm an action movie—a perfect balance of wise and badass. He has this distinguished haircut, hipster glasses that probably cost more than my monthly rent, and a strong jaw and thick neck that indicates he works out. I wonder what he benches.

I called my agent from the staircase to ask him how he thought I should approach this. To his credit, he promised to do what he could to get me an audition, and then he said, and I quote, “Just get in there and talk to him. Face time is huge.” Like that’s just a thing. Like Jon Reynolds is just some dude and not a famous multimillionaire director in charge of one of the biggest film franchises in recent memory. Thanks for the tips, Mr. Agent Man. No sweat. I’ll take it from here, I guess. I wonder if Rico’s agent treats him like this.

As I approach the booth, there’s a guy setting up the signing table. Between his perpetual scowl, his tight red jeans, and the very modern, large, solid black rectangle tattoos covering both forearms, he’s putting out pretty clear too cool for this signals. I don’t see Reynolds anywhere. I wonder if he’s behind the curtain right there or somewhere else altogether, far away from the crowds and noise of this room. I gather myself up and approach the guy.

“Hi, can you tell me when Jon Reynolds will be around?”

Tattoo Guy barely glances up. “The signing starts at five.”

A nerd dude standing in front of the booth pipes up. “There’s a line,” he says, jerking his thumb behind him, where there are already about eight guys waiting.

Like, yikes, it’s not even three p.m., y’all, isn’t there something else you could be doing?

I turn back to the Tattoo Guy and lower my voice. “I’m not here for an autograph, I just wanted to have a few words with him.” I tip the brim of my hat back, giving him a look at my face. “I’m Forest Reed, I’m an actor?” The guy finally looks at me, but his flat expression doesn’t change. “Demon Heart? Mondays at nine?”

Nothing. I start to feel my cheeks turn red. This was a bad idea, why do I ever listen to Rico? I start talking a little faster. “Okay, no problem, my agent’s getting in touch with him anyway, but I just wanted to see him face-to-face, have a quick hello since we both happened to be in Boise….” I give a little chuckle here, but he is giving me nothing in return.

I take a step to go and then turn back because like, god, if I’ve already started to make a fool of myself, might as well bring it home, right? “You know, hey, if he’s inclined to swing by, my panel is today at three thirty in Hall C.”

“Okay” is all Tattoo Guy says.

“You’ll let him know?” I want to run away from here, but I need to hear him say it first.

He eyes me one last time. “Yup,” he says, and goes back to work.

And that’s it. The nerd at the front of the line gives me a nasty smile and I get out of there, pulling my hat back down and hoping this wasn’t all a waste of my time.


THERE’S A LINE for the Demon Heart panel, and it looks, well, lively. There’s maybe fifty people already waiting, chattering and buzzing with excitement. It looks like they all know one another, even though there’s no way that’s possible, right? Could I be the only person here who came alone? I wonder what my mom is doing right now. Probably convincing the Holiday Inn to make their pool area clothing-optional.