Ship It(85)

“Thank you,” she says, then narrows her eyes. “You just trying to butter me up so you get better questions?”

“What do you mean?”

“They didn’t tell you?” Her eyebrows shoot up in disbelief. “Oh man, okay. Um, well, I’m going to be moderating your panel.”

“Oh! Wow.” I snort. “Jamie’s going to lose it.”

“Probably.”

“You gonna make it all about SmokeHeart?”

“I have to ask about it.”

“Okay, but just a warning, all I’m going to say on the topic is ‘no comment.’”

She shrugs but smiles, and it almost feels like maybe we’re finding a way to be normal. I wiggle my controller at her. “I’m in the middle of a game here. Do you… maybe want to play with me?”

She frowns, dubious. “Did Ms. Greenhill ask you to do this?”

I hold up my hands and laugh. “I swear to god, this is all me.”

She thinks about it, then drops her bag and comes over and takes the controller from me. “What’re we playing?”

“Red Zone,” I say, and she shoots me an amused look.

“Still on that?” she says.

“Once a fan, always a fan.”

“Oh no, is that how that works?” she asks in mock horror. “You can never unfan something?”

“Sorry, dude, you’re gonna be obsessed with this” —I draw circles around my face—“forever.”

She laughs, and it feels like a breakthrough.

Claire’s actually pretty good at Red Zone. After thirty minutes of playing, she’s killed almost as many enemy fighters as I have. We’re closing in on the final battle when she asks me something I wasn’t expecting.

“So, Jack Tension, huh? You think you’re gonna get the role?”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“There were a bunch of gamer bros talking about it in the lobby,” she says. “They seem stoked.”

“Those are just rumors,” I say.

“True ones?” She shoots an enemy who had the bad fortune of sticking his head up in the desert just as she was training her rifle on him. Dang, she’s getting good at this.

“Studio hasn’t approved me yet. They’re worried I don’t have the necessary appeal.”

“The necessary appeal? Do I need to send them some URLs to fanblogs?”

I laugh. “I’m not sure that’s the kind of appeal they’re interested in.”

“Ah,” she says as she creeps through the remains of a bombed-out shack in the game, “they’re not looking for girls.”

“Well, it’s a big action movie, so…”

“Yeah.”

She lobs a grenade over a half-bombed wall, and as it explodes, it takes out three enemy fighters.

“All this gay stuff probably isn’t helping you, either,” she says.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I mumble. “But… no. It’s not.”

“I get it,” she says. “No one’s gonna make a movie with a gay action hero.” She fires—TAT-A-TAT—into the brush, laying out several more enemies. “Even though that sounds rad.”

She runs through the doorway of the next checkpoint, with me on her heels. The game dings our successful completion of the mission and goes into a cut scene, congratulating us on our work so far and explaining the next stage.

I drop my controller to my lap. “I’ve never wanted a role as much as I want this one,” I say. “I mean, I don’t envy them their decision—they have to find the right guy in the entire world to bet a billion-dollar franchise on. But I’m just sitting here hoping it’s me and trying not to do anything that could jeopardize that.”

“So basically, you’re hoping SmokeHeart doesn’t come up at the panel today,” she says, not cruelly, just matter-of-factly.

I take a deep breath. “It would be easier for me if it didn’t, yeah. But, Claire…” I rub my neck and think about the best way to say this. “I want you to know that I’m genuinely sorry for how I reacted. That first day in Boise, especially, and all those days afterward. I was uncomfortable, and I took it out on you. I’m sorry.”

She nods and chews on her lip. I’m half-afraid I accidentally said something wrong in my apology and she’s about to launch into a lecture. But instead, she says, “Thank you.” Then, after a beat, she adds, “I know you can’t do this, but it would be nice if you said that publicly. This is your last convention with Demon Heart, your last chance to tell people how you feel.”

“I… don’t know how I feel,” I say, and that’s the truth.

“Do you still think we’re crazy?”

I remember the Demon Heart marathon back in Seattle, a park full of sighing fans. I think about Claire’s fanfiction—surprisingly well crafted, emotional, and thoughtful. I think about her sitting me down over doughnuts and showing me the Tumblr fan experience. I think about what Rico always says: You think too much, Forest.

“No, you’re not crazy.”

She nods and half smiles at me. We both know this is progress. “It would mean something to a lot of people to hear you say that.”