Page 88 of This Time It's Real
“I came because we made a deal, and because I understand how much it means to you and your career. But, Eliza . . .” He shakes his head with a laugh that sounds more like a sigh. He moves away from me, and the space between us—the space I’d once tried so hard to manufacture—feels cold, cursed. “Whether they’re real or not—all your words have consequences. You can’t just take them back.”
It takes me too long to recover, to pick my heart up from where it’s fallen like shattered glass. By the time I do, Caz is already gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The next week, I’m in math class when the interview goes up.
Ms. Sui is out today. We’ve been left without a sub and instructed to use the hour as a study hall, so everyone around me is already scrolling through their socials, a tab of our algebra questions left open in the corner just for show. Then there’s a small flurry of activity: quiet, half-muffled giggles, chairs squeaking as friends turn from their desks to watch, curious eyes swiveling from their screens to me.
And the empty seat beside me.
A now-familiar pang fills my gut. Caz has been absent from school all week. Busy shooting again.
Although, as Savannah sets her laptop on the teacher’s desk, in clear view of the whole classroom, and starts playing that dramatic reenactment Caz and I did, I’m not so sure this isn’t a good thing.
“Oh my god.Lookat you two,” Nadia says, grinning over at me while the others giggle.
I don’t really want to, the same way you wouldn’t want to scratch at an open wound, but the video volume’s now playing too loud for me to ignore, my own stilted voice drifting toward me:
“I should be asking you that, you fool . . .”
Resisting every impulse to cringe, I look up.
Whoever edited our interview has gone through the trouble of placing my clip with Caz beside a reference clip from the original drama he starred in. And as the video plays on, the camera zooming in on Caz’s face while he makes his famous confession, I can’t help noticing a difference between the two versions. I mean, there’sobviouslya difference; the original actress is far more beautiful and natural on-screen than I’ll ever be, and with the peach blossoms unfurling around them in the background and their long, blood-splattered, traditional-styled robes, their scene together looks like something from an epic tragedy.
But the look in Caz’s eyes is somehow different too.
Because when Caz tells the actress how he waited for her, how he missed her, how he refuses to lose her again, his acting is impeccable, wholly convincing. Yet it’s only that—acting. When he murmurs those same lines to me, however, the raw, piercing intensity of his gaze is undeniably real.
What was it that Daiki had teased us for on Caz’s birthday?
We can see it in your eyes . . .
I grip the edge of my desk, a startled breath rattling in my throat. Caz had told me, of course. Both the day we kissed, and the day in the rain, and again after the interview. But maybe, up until this very instant—with the evidence playing right before my eyes, the camera forcing me to see myself and him through its objective lens—I’d nevertrulytrusted that he could mean it. That Caz Song could feel something real for me. That there isn’t something fundamentally broken about me, something that will inevitably drive him away.
And now the only identifiable thought in my head is:
Shit.
Shit.I’ve messed up. Miscalculated. The whole time I’ve been trying to protect myself from getting hurt . . . I’ve hurt him too. More than I could’ve possibly imagined. I have to talk to him, set things right. Ask for one more chance.
I start to rise to my feet, but at the front of the classroom, Savannah lurches back first. “Oh my god,” she whispers, staring at something on her laptop. Her widened eyes cut to me, and confusion rolls through my gut, merging with something sour like dread. “Um, Eliza—I think you should . . . I don’t . . .”
The interview clip has ended now, but a notification has popped up. There’s a new article about Caz waiting, posted only a few minutes ago. I peer closer, heart speeding, and the words leap out at me in fragments, sinking in like shards of glass:
Young actor Caz Song . . . while filming highly anticipated xianxia drama . . . accident on set . . . injuries unknown . . . Lijia Hospital . . . waiting for comment—
I go completely still.
Still as death.
What?I want to say, but the word never leaves my mouth.You’re joking, but that doesn’t make it out either. I want to throw up. My heart is self-cannibalizing, I swear, shrinking smaller, shrinking into nothing, and I can’t do anything except stand there. Suck in breath after breath after breath until I manage to unhook my voice from my throat.
Even then, it comes out as a weak rasp. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“It says something about a broken wire,” Savannah says, reading fast, and the temperature in the classroom seems to plummet a hundred degrees. Everyone is frozen beside me. “Or the equipment when they were shooting. Some kind of malfunction—”
And I’m officially panicking. Hyperventilating. My mind fogged with white.
