Ship It(16)

“What’s cookin’?” Jamie asks him. “Your network got you out here, too, huh?”

“You kidding?” Zach says. “I begged them to let me come. Our panel had to move to a larger room. Twice.”

“Well, you got a great show, Sanchez. People love it.”

“Started out as assistants and look at us now, right?” Zach says. Then he spots me hanging down the hall. He calls out at me, “It’s your time next, man. Get used to the love out there today, you deserve it.” Jamie turns around to see me approaching.

I didn’t realize Zach Sanchez-Anderson would even know who I was. “Thanks,” I say, and start to make my way toward them, embarrassed that I was caught eavesdropping.

“I’ll catch you later,” Zach tells Jamie. As he strides past me, he slaps me on the back. I amble up to Jamie, who stares after him, curling his lip in disgust.

“His show blows,” Jamie mumbles once Zach is out of earshot.

God, Jamie really just hates everything. How did he ever manage to create a show as emotional as Demon Heart with that kind of attitude about everything?

Jamie takes off in the other direction, dragging his feet in a pouty sort of shuffle. “Where you been, anyway? Our room’s this way.”

When we reach it, the greenroom is just an unused conference room with a large table of snacks. It’s not that I expected Boise, Idaho, to offer up the lap of luxury, but this is so utilitarian that I’m reminded of my LA apartment. IKEA furniture and L?rabars—ahh, feels like home.

Rico is already there, scoping out the snack table. I join him just as he stuffs three Red Vines in his mouth. “You talk to Reynolds?”

“Just his assistant. Can you believe he’s here? In Boise? In this building, even?” I’m disappointed I didn’t get to talk to him, but remembering how close I got makes me buzz with anticipation. What if Tattoo Guy tells Reynolds about the panel and he actually comes?

I catch Rico’s eye and he looks amused. He probably doesn’t get excited by his favorite directors anymore. It’s all old hat to Rico Quiroz.

“Anyway…” I start inspecting the bananas on the table.

Rico puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t ever let Hollywood kill your spirit, hombre. You hear me?”

“Have I ever told you I’m super into your bromance?” Jamie says from across the room, leaning back in a conference chair and putting his brand-new black Chuck Taylors on the table. I pull away from Rico, reinstating a personal bubble, but Rico only chuckles and whacks me on the shoulder.

The social media girl Caty saunters into the room. I avert my eyes—I don’t want her asking me how my feed or whatever is going. After she set me up with an account, she told me to “just start tweeting.” I haven’t opened the app since. Rico mentioned on the flight to Idaho that I already had 42,000 followers on Twitter. Without a single tweet. The thought of trying to come up with something clever to say to 42,000 people makes my throat close up and my fingers twitch. I don’t know what she expects me to do. I’m an actor. If she wants me to be interesting on Twitter, she’s going to have to have the Demon Heart writers’ room get together to write me something.

As she comes over to the snack table and starts casually looking over the options, Rico chats to her about garlic versus red pepper hummus and the benefits of each. Meanwhile, I sneak a look at Caty. She’s young, maybe recently out of college. Today she’s wearing a small-patterned floral shirt under a very loud large-patterned floral blazer. I can’t believe she’s pulling it off, but with her confidence and her dark curly hair in a messy-chic bun (or is it just messy? I can’t tell) it looks pretty good. I wonder what she studied in college to end up here, setting up Twitter accounts for reticent actors. She snort-laughs at something Rico says, and I feel a pang of jealousy that this all comes so easy for them—the small talk, the traveling, the social media. Rico seems perpetually comfortable with himself, and so does Caty. I wonder how they do it.

Caty looks over Rico’s shoulder at me. “Hey, Forest,” she says. “Saw you’re up to sixty-five thousand followers now. Think you might like to tweet something soon?”

No, not really, I think.

“Yeah, totally,” I say.

“Just say hi,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. People will be excited just to hear from you.”

“Okay, yeah,” I say, ignoring the pit in my stomach at the idea of “just saying hi” to a group of people rapidly approaching the size of my hometown.

“Hey, did you guys hear the glee club singing in some Star Trek language out there?” Jamie sneers.

“Pretty sure it was Elvish.” Rico corrects him effortlessly, taking his bagel and sitting down in a plush chair. He shrugs at Jamie’s eyeroll and adds, “I went to a million of these cons when I was on Star Command. You pick up things.”

“Yeah, well, nothing against the geek-apella, but this convention tour blows. If the network’s gonna cancel us, I wish they’d just do it already instead of turning us into PR indentured servants,” Jamie grumbles.

“Nobody’s making you do anything,” Caty says almost under her breath, not looking up from her giant pink phone. Her thumbs are zipping around, typing at mach speed.

“Sorry, who are you again?” Jamie snaps.