Ship It(96)

So she lowers the phone and looks at me with these big eyes. And Tess goes, “Awww,” because Mom’s antics still work on her.

“Good job, heart-of-lightness!” a random audience member says as she passes. I wave at her and smile, then look back at Mom.

“Okay, fine, you can take one more, but that’s it.”

I put my arm around Tess’s shoulders and—flash—Mom takes another one.

“Claire!” someone hollers. I turn to see Caty waving at me from the front of the auditorium.

“Sorry, I’ll be right back,” I say, leaving Tess and my parents at the mercy of each other.

Caty gives me a big hug. “Oh my god, girl, that was like, historic! And you were amazing!”

“Hey! Was it okay?”

“Okay? That was epic! As long as I work in social, I’ll never see anything else like that. The numbers are currently spiking through the roof. Not that you care about the numbers right now,” she says, grinning at me. “What a way to go out with a bang.”

“Go out?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah, next week Paula’s moving me over to Time Swipers. Says it would be a shame not to spread my talents around.” She shrugs. “I met with the team last week, there’s some good stuff coming up in season two. You watch it?” I shake my head. “You should check it out. They have a femslash ship people seem to like….”

“Canon?” I ask.

“Not yet.” She winks at me, then lowers her voice. “Can’t say anything on the record, but you know I wouldn’t steer you astray. This one’s no bait.”

“I was just thinking I should be getting into more femslash….”

She laughs. “I’ll be honest, a lot of stuff came into focus for me when I started reading lady fic,” she says, and holds my look. Caty reads fic? “Hey, I gotta get going, but it’s good to see you. Keep in touch! You have my number. And give Forest a big wet one for me if you see him before I do. He was a star today. Really, iconic.”

“I will.”

I wave good-bye to her, then I look back at my parents. My dad is showing Tess something in his notebook—probably a poem he wrote about something that happened today. And Mom’s taking pictures of them. It gives me these gross warm and gooey feelings. Tess catches my eye and smiles, and I head over to join them. What a day. What a freaking day.


“OKAY, I’M DONE for a year,” I say, flopping backward onto a couch in one of the endless greenrooms I find myself in these days and letting my arm cover my eyes. After our big splash at San Diego, Paula asked Rico and me if we would mind hitting a series of conventions before the new season of Demon Heart airs. This is our last one for a while and Rico flies out in the morning to North Carolina to get back to shooting season two.

Yes, Demon Heart got a second season. Yes, Jamie is still showrunning it. Yes, I’m still dead. No, SmokeHeart is not canon. That’s how Hollywood works. It’s not fair, it’s not equal, it’s not representative. At least not yet. But hopefully we made a difference. There were a couple hundred people who talked to me today who said we did. So, maybe.

“Put your hands out,” Rico says, standing over me. I pull my arm off my eyes and squint up at him, and he’s holding a Costco-size bottle of hand sanitizer. I sigh and he pumps an excessive amount into my hands.

“Whoa, dude, relax.”

“Trust me on this, bud. You just shook hands with two hundred and fifty people. Guaranteed, you have like six different strains of crud growing on your digits right now.”

I rub the sanitizer into my hands until it starts to evaporate. “I don’t need to see another fan for the rest of my life,” I say. Rico gives me a look and I crack. He knows I don’t mean it. “I know, I know. It’s amazing, leave me alone.” Seeing an endless stream of people looking you in the eye, voices cracking, hands shaking, telling you what you mean to them—it’s wild and unbelievable and it fills you up, but it also sometimes overfills you. Afterward, I’m always happy I did it, but I’m also exhausted. Taking in other people’s joy and fear in a concentrated period like we do during signings and meet-and-greets and photo ops, I always end up with an emotional hangover. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“How can you get tired of it?” Rico says. “The endless love and devotion, the repeated cries of ‘Kiss, kiss!’” Rico cracks up. I roll my eyes.

They always want us to kiss again. We are never going to kiss again. (Unless the Demon Heart cameras are rolling, in which case, sure. But I’m not holding my breath.)

“C’mon, what do you need,” Rico says. “You want a burger? Corn dog?”

“Something green,” I say to him, and Rico nods and goes off in search of someone who can bring us some grub. This is our dynamic after these things, now. I lie flat on my back until the energy comes back to me, and Rico, who is always hyped up and ready to rock-and-roll after signings, goes off in search of something for us to eat. By the time he’s back, I usually feel human again. It works.

I pull up my phone and shoot a quick text to Caty. Signing over. Dead. Then I use the emoji with Xs for eyes. She writes back right away, Purell immediately, you will NOT get me sick with your weird mutant fangirl diseases. She follows it up with, Meet you at the bar at 9. Bring your abs.