Page 59 of Witch You Would
“If she did anything, someone’s going to catch her. But we can’t take any chances. Trust no one except each other.”
“Exactly.” Penelope blew out a breath. “I’m so glad you get it. I was worried you’d be super chill about this.”
Uh, no? “Some things are too serious for chill. Even people like me have some sense. Rules, even.”
“Leandro Presto has rules?” she asked, grinning like I’d made a joke. “About what?”
It shouldn’t have annoyed me to hear that, but it did. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to you, clearly.” Penelope’s smile turned to a worried look. “Sorry for laughing. Are the rules like, for life,or your show, or...?”
I stared at the ground, derpy smile back on. “The show, yeah. I don’t usually talk about them.”
“Oh. No worries. You don’t have to tell me.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. They’re not secret, just personal? Stuff like...” I mentally went down the list, skippingthe ones that said too much. “Leave work at work. Hands off the fans. Everyone is important.”
“Those are good rules.” Penelope tilted her head. “So you never date fans?”
“Never.”
“Not even the ones who don’t give you their underwear?”
“No.”
“Huh. Okay.”
Why did that “okay” make me so tired? I suddenly, desperately wanted her to understand me better, even if it meant a tiny break in character. A little Gil slipping through the Presto.
“Some people just want to hook up with someone sort of famous,” I told her. “That feels like they’re using me? Even the oneswho aren’t like that, they don’t really know me. They know who I am in my videos, or when I chat online. That’s not . . .”Real? True? “. . . the whole me.”
Penelope stared like I’d just handed her a tricky spell problem. “But if you don’t go out with any of them, how will you getto know each other?”
I opened my arms and shrugged. “I don’t know. But I can’t risk it.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Won’t. I won’t take chances on strangers I don’t have a reason to trust.”
Did I trust Penelope? I thought I did...
Her frown smoothed out. “I guess I’m not a fan, so that rule doesn’t apply to me anyway.”
Did she realize what she’d just said?
And then she did, because her eyes got huge and she turned red as a pitanga. “I mean, not that we’re going to—well, we alreadydid, but I won’t assume you want to, you know, again. I don’t want to make things weird.”
“You’re not making . . .” I stopped, hearing footsteps coming down the hall. Clacky high-heeled ones. And voices, two women.It sounded like—
“It’s Felicia and Charlotte,” Penelope whispered. “Quick, hide!”
“What? Why?”
“Shh! Get under the desk!”
That made no sense. I pulled her into the casting booth instead.The door was heavy, but I managed to close it behind us quickly. We crouched so we couldn’t be seen through the small window in the door. There was barely enough room for both of us; my back and right shoulder hit the foam on the side walls, and Penelope’s back was pressed against my front, her butt dangerously close to my crotch.
From this angle, with the outside sound muffled, I couldn’t tell whether Felicia and Charlotte even came into the room. Istarted to get up to peek, but Penelope squeezed my arm and looked at me over her shoulder, shaking her head.
