Page 45

All This...

The RealTV studio has transformed again since Marsh saw it last.

The roof is at least twice as tall, and every surface is now made of tinted reflective glass, turning the building into an ink-black mirror in the night. Across the front, the network’s logo is lit up in full neon—the dark sky glows with the sizzling red lights.

The word CHRYSALISTV glares back at Marsh, each letter taller than she is.

“That does not look very inviting,” Dylan says. “At all.”

“Nope,” she agrees nervously.

Up close, she can see through the window tint that the lobby looks empty inside. Nothing moving, nothing making noise. A camera in the corner of the awning watches her and Dylan with a dim crimson eye.

Marsh tests the door, but of course, it’s locked.

“Don’t suppose Talia gave you a key?” Dylan asks.

She shakes her head. “Should we try to pick the lock?”

“Not enough time. I think we should just break the glass.”

“What if there’s an alarm?”

He shrugs. “Then we’ll have to move fast.”

Slowly, they both look back at the door.

Marsh picks up a brick-sized rock from the Zen garden–style landscape beside the concrete walkway and hands it to Dylan.

He passes it hand to hand, testing.

“Well, here goes nothing,” he says.

Marsh expects a blaring siren as the rock crashes through the glass, but the night remains quiet after the shatter. Or maybe it’s just a silent alarm. Either way, after a few moments, she lets out the breath curdling in her lungs, and they inch forward.

Dylan chooses another rock to scrape away the remaining shards so Marsh can stick her arm through and unlock the door from the inside.

“Ready?” he asks.

“As I’ll ever be,” she says.

In the foyer, the lights are low, everything just an outline of itself. Somewhere, a clock is ticking, and the computer at the receptionist’s vacant desk hums in its electronic slumber.

Marsh half expects Talia to be waiting just inside the entrance, all of the set pieces of her finale transported with her, grinning maniacally as she holds out her microphone.

But so far, the room remains empty, and she and Dylan are alone.

“Where to first?” he asks.

“Maybe Talia’s office,” Marsh suggests. “It’s this way.”

But the Show Bible isn’t there—or at the hair and makeup counters, or in any of the greenrooms, or the conference area. Marsh begins ducking into every door she passes as she and Dylan work their way toward the back of the studio, just in case, but the nearer they draw, the more she knows there’s only one place the Show Bible could be.

Marsh grips the metal handle of the door to the soundstage, and jumps at how cold it is. The darkened ON AIR sign at the top of the wall looks strange in its sleepy, standby state.

Slowly, she lets Dylan and herself in.

The stage is silent and still. Only the safety lights are on, but it’s enough to see. Cameras, duct tape, gauzy light diffusers, and some discarded pages of Talia’s script from the preseason teasers slowly come into focus in the dimness of the frame.

The two of them creep to the edge of the black curtain wings and stop there, listening for movement before they emerge into the open. Quickly, secretly, Marsh makes the stage just a little bit bigger. This is the first time Dylan’s seeing it, and she wants it to seem grander, more important.

“So, this is where it started?” he asks softly.

Marsh nods. She can’t help the flicker of nostalgia that finds her, in the darkness. Every moment of that first episode is viscerally fresh. She points to the fraying X of tape at the center mark. “I made the first choice right there.”

She’s sure Dylan is wondering what that decision was.

“I, um...”

“It doesn’t matter.” He turns to look at her. “None of it was real.”

Marsh hesitates, unsure of what to say to that. She’s glad that it’s too dark for him to see her expression.

Because... the adrenaline rush, standing in front of the other lawyers in her firm’s boardroom. The electric, thrilling shiver on her skin whenever Ren touched her. The desperation every time she hurtled herself backward in time, earlier and earlier in her marriage, searching for a way to save all of the history she and Dylan had built together. The pride she felt while watching Harper raise her bow at the head of the orchestra...

All of that certainly felt real .

“Come on,” Dylan whispers. “Let’s check the producer’s booth.”

Together, they creep out of the wings, onto the stage. Just beyond the top row of the audience, Marsh can see it—a giant black cubicle where the sound mixer, lights manager, and director sit during filming. It’s an imposing structure already, but even in the semidarkness and from this angle, it’s clear that there’s something huge hulking over the edge of its vast desk.

A monstrous, book-shaped something.

“There,” Marsh points.

“We’ve only got a few minutes,” Dylan says.

“Let’s make this fast, then.”

They take off across the stage at a run. But before they reach the edge of it and drop down into the audience, all the lights come on at full blast, a garish swirl of color and shapes flooding the stage, and the All This and More music begins to blare.

“What’s going on?!” Dylan asks as they cower.

The slow click of heels on hard floor echoes over the chaotic soundtrack. Marsh turns toward the wings to see Talia Cruz emerge from the darkness and saunter onstage. As she enters, the lights pause their flashing and the music suddenly shuts off, as if scared into silence.

“Well! This has been quite the finale,” she purrs in the newfound quiet. “So many surprise twists.”

“Talia!” Marsh exclaims. “Thank God! You have to help us. We—”

“Oh! And I’m so glad you finally found Harper’s wayward father,” she continues, her golden season finale gown sparkling as she turns to him. “Hello, Dylan.”

Her voice is generous, but her eyes are too focused, too sharp. Marsh isn’t sure she’s blinked yet.

Back at the original finale set, Marsh assumed Talia was trapped in Chrysalis’s thrall, unable to tell anything was wrong.

She seems different now.

“Let’s jazz things up, shall we?” Talia suggests, and snaps her fingers.

Suddenly, the stage shifts. It’s no longer a TV studio. Everything is dark, and there’s a disco ball rotating overhead, casting little flecks of rainbow light across the dim room. Crooning music swells. Marsh, Dylan, and Talia are standing at the center of the dance floor, surrounded by a crowd of couples—all from the season two crew—slowly swaying to the tune. Charles dips Alexis; Julie waltzes with Claire. Sarah and Rafael gently twirl.

“What?” Dylan gasps over the song. “What’s going on? Where are we now?”

Marsh stares down at the Sharp Purple chiffon dress now on her body.

Oh no.

“It looks like my senior high school prom,” she says.

“Very good,” Talia replies, pleased. “Almost perfect! But we’re still missing one very important person.”

She turns and beckons.

“We can’t end your season without your dream guy here!”

“Talia, no !” Marsh cries with horror—but it’s too late.

The couples jostle slightly as Ren steps forward from the crowd. He’s in the tuxedo he wore to their senior prom, holding a flower boutonniere.

“Marsh, I know you’re scared, but we’re almost out of time. Please, just think about this,” he says.

But Marsh rushes to Talia before he can.

“Talia, listen,” she begs desperately. “Everything that’s been going wrong, he’s behind it. He’s the mastermind.”

“Mastermind!” Talia trills. “Don’t be silly.”

Marsh tries to grab her host’s flawlessly smooth arm.

“He’s Chrysalis, Talia,” she shouts as she grabs for her again—to shake her, to drag her to safety, to force her to warp them elsewhere. “Ren is Chrysalis !”

But Talia’s response stops her cold.

“Marsh, I know, ” she says.

Everything freezes.

Huh?

Marsh stares at her, confounded.

“... What?” she finally asks.

Talia sighs. She snaps her fingers again, to transform her outfit. The gold dress replaces itself with a dark silver one, her hair slicks back, and her nail polish turns gunmetal gray.

If she was glamorous before, now she looks... formidable.

Oh no.

“Marsh, Marsh, Marsh.”

She shakes her head, as if bored, exhausted.

“Do you really think Ren could have pulled any of this off on his own—let alone all of it? And without me noticing?”

She glares, imperious.

“I’m your producer. I know everything about your season.”

No, no, no.

Marsh is backing up now, dragging Dylan with her. She can hear his racing breath, feel the tiny beads of sweat flick from his brow as he shudders.

“I can explain,” Ren starts.

“No,” Marsh says, drawing back.

But even as she refuses to believe, she knows it’s true.

How did she miss it? she wonders with sickening dread.

It’s so obvious now.

Ren could not have engineered all of this on his own. Collapsing the Bubble before Alexis could pull him out, trapping his crew inside without their memories so they couldn’t warn anyone of what had happened, getting a new third season picked up by RealTV, and making the episodes air live this time, so that nothing could stop the show early...

He had to have had help.

“I don’t know where you think you’re going,” Talia says. “This is a Bubble, Marsh. Remember?”

Marsh faces her duplicitous host at last.

“You betrayed me,” she accuses.

“Betrayed you?” Talia feigns amazement. “Is that what I was doing, when I was busy making you a lawyer, and changing Ren’s personality, and improving your relationship with your daughter? When I was creating your new life in Iceland, and Mexico, and everywhere else you wanted to go, so you could stomp through and pick it all apart? When I painstakingly tweaked every last detail for you, until everything was exactly how you’d dreamed, and you were happy?”

She snorts, disgusted.

“You should be thanking me.”

Marsh reels, startled by the vitriol. She’s lost in her shock, unable to make sense of this revelation.

Talia Cruz already got everything she ever wanted. Her season was perfect.

Why come back, then? Why do it again?

Talia, meanwhile, is preening for some invisible camera as Marsh flounders.

“When Ren used one of his last remaining episodes to find me and ask for my help, at first I thought he’d just chosen poorly, and ruined his own season,” she says. “I was about to turn him away to live with the consequences of his choices.”

“But then I told her about you,” Ren adds, still staring at Marsh eagerly, beseechingly.

Talia nods. “And my interest was piqued.”

Marsh shudders.

“Why do you think I chose you?” Talia asked her on the very first day, as she stood there unable to believe someone as shy and unsure as she could be chosen out of millions to be the season three star.

If only she’d understood what her host really had meant then.

“Every time Ren tried to change something in his season, you resisted,” Talia continues. She rolls her beautiful eyes. “Tweak after tweak, replay after replay, he could not get you to cooperate. You corrupted his episodes, rejected his decisions, mangled his paths.”

“Because it wasn’t my choice,” Marsh says.

“No,” Talia scoffs. “I don’t believe that. It was just because you weren’t satisfied with your options.”

She grins.

“But I knew I could make you so—with your own season.”

“So we’re just pawns, and this is a game to you?” Dylan growls, but Talia barely looks at him.

“The opposite,” she says. “It’s so, so much more than a game.”

Her eyes are locked with Marsh’s.

“It’s everything .”

Finally, understanding dawns.

Talia was the first, and only one, when All This and More began. When her finale concluded, and she became the world’s biggest star, she wouldn’t have realized she had it backward until much later. It wasn’t about how much the show still needed her, but how much she still needed the show.

Talia is afraid.

Not of herself, but of the other contestants.

Because if one of them isn’t happy with their outcome—if they don’t think their lives are perfect, too—then what does that mean about her own season? What does that mean about All This and More ’s promise?

If the show isn’t real, then how can Talia’s life be?

“But the show is real,” Talia replies, as if reading Marsh’s mind. “Isn’t it?”

She stares Marsh down, challenging her to disagree.

“You’re going to tell me that I didn’t succeed, even with Ren’s continued meddling? That your life really isn’t better than it was before? That you really aren’t happier now?”

Marsh opens her mouth, and then closes it again.

She won’t let herself agree with Talia. But she can’t disagree with her, either, she knows.

At last, Talia checks her delicate watch, and claps her hands. The disco ball starts to spin a little faster; the music gets a little louder.

“So, now that we’re all here together, and we all know everything,” she says, her voice exaggeratedly, falsely bright, “it’s finally, finally time to make your last choice, Marsh.”

Dylan curses, but Talia talks over his affronted sounds.

“Do you want everything you’ve made for yourself here?”

She nods at Ren.

“Or, do you want to go back...”

She casts a disdainful glance at Dylan, to mean the life Marsh had before—no career, possibly no marriage, and certainly no adventures, no excitement.

“... to that?”

Marsh looks at Dylan, and then at Ren.

She trembles, terrified.

Even if she had a whole entire new season, she doesn’t know if she could answer that question.

Suddenly, a loud crack shatters the romantic song, and everyone turns toward the high school gym doors.

Something bangs on the door again—and then it bursts open.

“ Lev? ” Dylan asks.

“Lev!” Marsh cries, relieved.

“Hey, Marsh,” he says. “Long time no see, Dylan.”

He catches the door with his foot before it closes, and pushes it open again as more people crowd in behind him.

Marsh is confused at first, but then her heart soars when she sees who they are.

Jo, Victor, Adrian, Bex, Harper, and even Pickle—they’re all here.

Lev winks as Talia glares at him.

“Wouldn’t be a proper finale without the whole cast, would it?” he asks.

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then it does.

Lightning fast, Dylan tackles Ren. “Go, Marsh!” he yells as they tumble to the floor. “Now!”

The prom explodes into chaos. The season two crew stops dancing and lunges for Marsh, but her season three cast leaps into the fray. The mellow lights and music go haywire. Marsh screams as Talia’s taloned hand lashes out to grab her, but Lev gets in the way.

“Get to the Show Bible!” he shouts. “We’re almost out of time!”

Marsh leaps to action. She bounds across the dance floor toward the DJ’s booth as quickly as she can, with the speakers wailing and disco ball whirling madly. The dance has become a mosh pit—she can even hear Pickle barking wildly somewhere as he runs through the season two crew, clipping them all at the knees, and Harper telling him he’s a good boy—but she keeps going. Her hand strikes the platform, then she’s hauling herself up, then she’s over, tumbling into the DJ booth.

“I have it! Dylan, I have it!” she says as she drags the Show Bible off its pedestal and onto the floor with an earsplitting slam. It’s so huge, it nearly comes up to her waist even sitting on the ground, and probably weighs several times what she does.

“Please!” Ren calls from a tangle of limbs. “Marsh! Think about this!”

“Shut up!” Dylan orders, trying to cover Ren’s mouth.

“This is the most important choice you’re going to make in the whole show,” Ren says quickly, struggling to keep his head free. “You’re really going to give up your chance at this new life and go back to what it used to be? Back to being unhappily married, or divorced? Back to being a paralegal instead of the lawyer you’ve always dreamed of being?”

“If it makes things right, then yes,” Marsh says through gritted teeth.

“What about Harper?” Ren asks.

That slows her down.

“You’re really going to take away everything she’s accomplished at the violin? All her studies at Pallissard, all her breathtaking concerts, all the skill she’s gained?”

Shit, she thinks. Her hands grip the book, lost.

“Wouldn’t you do anything for her? To make her happy?”

Marsh grimaces. Harper lives for her music, she knows. She’s never been more alive, more fulfilled, than she is now. And it’s all because of the show.

Can Marsh really take that away from her?

Or is that just a convenient excuse?

“It’s too late,” she finally says.

“No, it’s not,” Ren argues. “It doesn’t have to end like this. You can have anything you want.”

“But it would be a lie!” Dylan cries.

Marsh knows the voice he uses in his classroom lectures. Even as tired as he is, Dylan’s trying to give a big speech. If this were a scripted show, here would be his big moment.

But it’s not. It’s reality TV. And the struggle with Ren has exhausted him too much for eloquence.

She understands what he means to say anyway. That the point of these stories is always that your original life is the best one, after all. That’s the warm and fuzzy moral they want you to take away, right? The hero or heroine goes out and tries on all these new lives, but always comes back in the end, because they realize it’s not about the success, or the stuff, or the circumstances. It’s about the self. That you are the thing that makes your life special.

Talia chuckles dryly as Dylan’s voice peters out, spent.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But that is bullshit. And you know it.”

Marsh looks down, so that Dylan can’t see that it’s true.

“No matter how good, it doesn’t matter,” he insists, dogged. “Because it isn’t real.”

Ren sighs, as though Dylan will never understand.

“What would you really rather have?” he asks Marsh as she stares at the Show Bible.

Her hands shake as she touches the cover.

“Something that’s true? Or something that makes you truly happy ?”

As if in answer to Ren’s question, the chaotic music finally cuts off. In the hanging silence, a single tone rings soft and pure.

It’s the opening note to the decision music.

The end of the season finale.

Dylan jams an elbow into Ren’s neck, pressing him down. “Send us back, Mallow!”

“No! Come with me,” Ren begs.

“Both of you, shut up,” Talia says. “This is Marsh’s finale. It’s her choice.”

Marsh clutches the Show Bible in a panic.

Can she really go back to how things used to be—with no marriage, no career, no way to support Harper’s dreams, and no hope of ever getting there again—just because it was her original life? It would be true, but how could she ever be satisfied again like that, having had a taste of real happiness, of the way her life should have gone... and then being made to give it all up forever?

But if she stays with Ren and keeps the life she’s built here, would she ever see Dylan again? Would Harper?

“There has to be some way to have both,” Marsh tells herself as she clutches the Show Bible. It’s what this show is all about!

To get All This... and More .

As the music peaks, rushing toward its conclusion, a thought occurs to her.

She looks down at the book again.

Maybe there is a way.

In season two, Ren failed because he was focused on the wrong thing. He was trying to control the Bubble so he didn’t have to waste his precious few episodes cleaning up whatever unintended consequences each of his choices created.

But the trouble with trying to achieve perfection isn’t the complications from each choice.

The trouble is time .

After all, what are a few curveballs in a scene when you have as many tries as you need to fix it?

The solution is so simple. It’s been staring her in the face the entire season.

The Show Bible.

She thought she’d grasped its purpose. So did Dylan, clearly. But now, she sees why her host has been so protective of it, and why the show has rules against the contestant being able to use their own book. She truly understands its full power.

Because the Show Bible isn’t just how Talia tracks all the choices. It’s also how she moves the season forward—

Or not.

If Marsh were the one in control of her Show Bible, not Talia, then she could pause the finale. She could stay in the Bubble just long enough to have time to figure out how she really wants her season to end.

Or maybe a little longer.

Maybe until she straightens out every little kink and fixes every little detail she didn’t get a chance to correct. Until she makes everything exactly the way she wants it. Exactly perfect.

Who knows how long that could take.

Maybe even... forever.

The thrill of that possibility startles her.

No.

Marsh can’t just stay in the Bubble.

She can’t keep bettering her position at the firm, or improving Harper’s musical talent. She can’t continue to tweak every single little thing—endlessly enhancing her vacations, her wardrobe, the spice in her bedroom, even the blades of grass on her dream house’s lawn—until she reaches the absolute limit of her happiness.

Can she?

And then, another idea. Just a whisper of a hope.

Maybe, with enough time, she could even... find a way to make it work with Dylan, if she wants.

He’s upset about her season now, and there’s no one she knows who’s more stubborn than he is, but he’s still Harper’s father. And was her partner, for half a lifetime. No matter what, they’re still a family.

If she stayed in the Bubble, she could wait as long as he needed for him to come around. There would be no rush. She could introduce him to the magic of the show little by little, rather than as a surprise. Show him how wonderful things could be again. Teach him how he, too, could dream bigger than he ever has before.

And then, eventually, everything really would be perfect. She could have her career, her fabulous new life, and her family.

Isn’t that exactly what All This and More promised her?

Marsh looks up to see the entire cast and crew of both seasons staring at her as she debates this final choice.

Every face wears a different expression. Confusion, intrigue, euphoria. Lev looks grimly determined. Harper—her darling Harper—full of trust. Dylan’s eyes are terrified, and Ren’s are desperate.

And Talia, surprisingly, is watching her with something approaching a smile.

Despite every horrible trick her host played on her, every subtle lie and manipulative nudge, Talia Cruz is still the only other person in the world who’s faced what Marsh is facing now. The finale episode that will become the start of the rest of her life. The end of endless chances. The last decision before she must live with herself forever.

She knows what Marsh is going to choose, Marsh realizes.

“Congratulations,” Talia says to her, for the final time.

The music runs out.

“You could have All This ...”

You cannot simply turn the page to continue this time.

You must choose Marsh’s ending:

To go back to Marsh’s original life with Dylan: Go to ... And More

To choose Marsh’s new life with Ren: Go to ... And More

To stay in the Bubble until Marsh can make everything perfect: Go to ... And More