Page 37 of Wish You Were Her
She retrieved the phone in her pocket and showed it to Grace. “This is one of three phones I have. One for personal use, one for work and a backup one for work that isn’t even out of the box yet.”
Grace raised both eyebrows and nodded at the phone in Allegra’s hands. “Which one is that?”
“Personal. But look!”
Allegra showed her the messages and call log.
“Who’s Natalie?”
“My publicist from my management team. Then there’s my agent. There’s the odd group chat from productions, but they die off when people move on to their next project.”
“Wow,” Grace said, her voice a combination of amazement and sadness.
“The last true friend I had? The only friend I had in school, we went to drama club together. She told me she couldn’t be my friend anymore. She said my success was too painful.”
Grace gasped and Allegra realized that this was the first person she had told about her painful friendship breakup with Ana. She had tried to ignore the ghosting at the time. She had sent text after text, left voicemails and mailed postcards. Then when she had finally got in touch, Ana had spat out the words.
“I’m happy for you, but it was my dream, too,” she had said over the phone, while Allegra’s world lost color and brightness. “I can’t watch you do it. It’s too hard.”
Allegra had tried to set up meetings, arrange castings for Ana, but her ex-friend had changed her number by then. It had felt like withdrawal, and Allegra’s autistic sense of justice and sensitivity to rejection had led to numerous shutdowns.
No breakup with a lover had hurt nearly as much.
“That’s awful,” Grace said and her serious voice and pained expression made Allegra feel lighter. She had gaslit herself into believing she was needy and desperate and weird.
When all she really felt was hurt.
“I don’t really have any close friends,” Grace admitted softly. “I pal around with the girls from ballet, and I know Kerrie from school, but… I’ve always found it hard to make friends. I love Jasper but she sees me as a little sister; she would never share with me like you just did.”
Allegra was grateful for the vulnerability. It felt like a gesture of solidarity.
“I want to be your friend,” she told Grace, smiling the smile she always saved for the final take, the one she knew they would be forced to use in the cutting room, despite what came before.
Grace blinked and returned the smile, utterly moved by her words. “And I promise not to tell Simon. But when are you going to come clean?”
“Not sure,” Allegra replied. “I can tell he likes the actor version of me that he has in his head.”
“Yes, he’s not exactly being subtle.”
“But I want to make sure he likesme. Me, me. Not masked me.”
“Then it takes as long as it takes,” Grace said, her aura cheerful as they prepared to part ways. “And I’ll not tell a soul.”
George and his booksellers sat around their small table for another festival meeting, while the odd customer drifted in and out of the shop, browsing around the team and occasionally stealing glances at Allegra. She worried with every glance that someone might leak her location, but no leaks ever came. Simon’s mother had kept her word by only sharing their selfie with a closed group. People stared, but didn’t run to the nearest phone to report a sighting. So she surmised that every newcomer in Lake Pristine probably received this level of inspection.
“We’ve run into a bit of a snag,” George told his small team. “Most authors are confirmed and in the log, but Quentin Morrison is asking for more money. We may have to cut someone.”
Jonah’s head snapped up. “Cut someone? Because he wants more cash?”
George took a sip of his black coffee and avoided Jonah’s stare. It was something that he was doing more often of late. “We can bump a couple of poets.”
“No!” Jonah stared at his employer in disbelief. “No, we can’t just ‘bump a couple of poets.’ The whole point of festivals like this is to let local talent, and writers without gigantic marketing campaigns, meet readers and find an audience. We can’t hurt the up-and-comers because some old white man wants to take us for all we’re worth. What about the marginalized authors? What about the disability in fiction panel, who aretraveling all the way here? We can’t look them in the face and say we value their input if we’re paying some hack more money than them.”
He suddenly realized that he sounded like Allegra.
“He’ll probably be most of the ticket sales, Jonah,” Simon said gingerly. Jonah hated how he was trying to sound reasonable.
Jonah frowned at that. “Women and marginalized authors can bring in loads of money, too, they just need the same level of support.”
