Page 15 of Wish You Were Her

“What was she asking you, Grace? Do you feel okay telling me?”

Allegra asked the question softly once she and Grace had dropped off the others and were the only two left walking home.

They were on the woodland path that would eventually link up with Main Street and the air felt warm, but not soupy.

It was a pleasant balm against their skin after a lively evening and sudden exit.

“She was asking if I’ve ever had sex,” Grace confirmed, her tone forgiving and resigned all at once. “Don’t worry about me, Allegra. I’m used to people like that. I’m a lot tougher than I used to be.”

“Yeah, I can believe that. But it’s still gross. Nobody’s business. Some things are off limits, even in a game.”

“Hey.” Grace examined the other girl. “It’s honestly fine.

This is small-town stuff. This is just what it’s like here.

Nothing ever really happens so people have to make drama out of nothing.

” They reached the main square of town and passed the dance studio.

Grace brushed the outer wall of the building with fond familiarity.

“Skye graduated high school at the beginning of the summer, just like me. But I’m going to school.

I’m going to dance. She has nothing. I don’t care if she’s a bitch, I feel bad for her.

This is all she has. You don’t have to defend me. ”

Allegra felt slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. I… take things too personally. I would have been really upset.”

“That’s because you’re an actress. I bet people are always overstepping. Even when they’re being nice.”

Allegra was taken aback by the accuracy.

“I appreciated you standing up to her, though,” Grace said. “You reminded me of my sister.”

“Your sister?”

“Well, Arthur’s girlfriend Jasper. She’s a sister to me.”

“I thought I wanted the normal, pre-university summer experience,” Allegra said, as they reached the town square. “But I’m a massive fish out of water here.”

“I think people are just intimidated by you.”

“Grace, can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

The town was partially lit up in firefly-like lights, the sun having set, and it was still summertime warm. The kind of evening that made walking home a pleasure. Grace was heading toward the Arthouse and it shone out ahead of them. Allegra stopped walking so she would have more time to explain.

“Remember I mentioned my secret pen-pal?”

“Yes,” Grace said. “I haven’t told anyone.”

“I think it’s Simon.”

“Shut up!”

“Yeah. I’ve been emailing a bookseller from the shop since before I arrived, only he still doesn’t know it’s me.”

Grace’s mouth dropped open and she made a delighted sound of surprise. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“You and Simon?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, you definitely know it’s him?”

“Well,” Allegra winced. “I’m not one thousand percent sure.

He never signs his name. But I’ve caught him at the monitor seconds after receiving an email and sometimes he sends pictures of books, and one of the pictures was from his den.

I worked that out tonight. Also, he uses a lot of the expressions from his emails in real life. ”

“But how can he not know it’s you? And what kind of emails, Allegra?”

Allegra laughed at the pointed curiosity in the latter question. “Friendly ones. I emailed the shop from my private email, intended it for Dad as I thought he was the only one with access to it. Simon replied. We started—”

“Flirting?”

Grace retraced her steps so she and Allegra were inches apart. Allegra appreciated the closeness, she didn’t want any eavesdroppers.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. We talk more than anything else. About anything.”

“But you never told him you were you?”

“No.”

Grace blinked and crossed her arms. Allegra watched her try to piece together the whole story in her mind. “Who does he think you are?”

“I have no idea! Some out-of-towner who’s interested in the book festival. He kind of assumed I work in social media, and I didn’t correct him. But the emails are sweet. They’re charming and they made me realize how lonely I was and how much I needed a break.”

“But it’s Simon?” Grace pointed out, seemingly a little baffled.

“Yes,” sighed Allegra. “He’s… different in his writing. Self-deprecating. Funny. Kind.”

“So, why does he act like such a…”

The girls shared a knowing look.

“I guess it’s just peacocking?” Allegra finally suggested.

“Yeah,” Grace said, though her attempt at enthusiastic agreement fell a little flat, and her skepticism was clear in her face. “I’m sure he’s different behind closed doors.”

The girls walked with excruciatingly slow speed toward the Arthouse once more before Grace was the one to stop.

“Why did you tell me about your pen-pal? I mean, I’m so glad you did. But why?”

Allegra was a girl with scripts always at the ready in her head. She was always a work in progress, a girl in rehearsal who was trying to play the perfect neurotypical. But when Grace so frankly asked the question, Allegra wanted to be honest.

“I don’t have anyone else to tell.”

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 likes me . 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 are traveling 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.”

“Fine,” Simon allowed. “But we’ve booked him. He’s expected. And the press will want to ask him to talk about cultural issues, and that will make all the Arts sections.”

“Oh, great,” Jonah snapped, his voice becoming darker by the syllable.

“Another millionaire going on about cancel culture in a huge, three-page spread with lots of exposure while our real artists can’t afford the bus ticket here.

And none of us are allowed to point out the hypocrisy of it all.

God! We’re better than this, George, we can’t have the festival associated with this crap.

These summers used to mean something to people, real people, not the pretenders who think a book’s only worthwhile if their publishers can pay enough to put it on a billboard. ”

“That’s enough,” George said, weary of it all. “You’re getting passionate about something that hasn’t even happened yet. We’ll remind him that, while we’re far more popular than we once were, we still cannot afford to pay some writers more than others. And we’ll go from there.”

Usually, George’s answer would have been enough to pacify Jonah but he was so restless.

There was something out of place when it came to George and the bookshop now.

What had once been a place of familiarity and comfort was now a constant gnawing of insecurity, a feeling that he had overstayed his welcome as a bookseller.

Once, it had been normal for George to ask Jonah about his notebook, the short story or novel he was working on.

The two of them would talk about what they had been reading.

Now, Jonah was lucky if he received a greeting in the morning and a farewell in the evening. He didn’t understand why.

“Jonah, you’ve got to relax,” George went on, finally looking at his most loyal employee. “It’s just a book festival.”

The words slithered about in the air, serpent-like to Jonah in their audacity and contradiction.

“It’s not just a book festival,” Jonah said, a little brokenly. “How can you, of all people, say that, George? You, who started this whole thing. To bring books and events to Lake Pristine, to put it on the map.”

“Pretty sure the weird carnivals and the Valentine’s Day Ball put Lake Pristine on the map,” Simon said, his voice full of a levity that did not belong in the conversation.

“This is a town for hopeless romantics, most of the year. The Summer Book Festival is the only time we can get people to actually use their brains.”

“I’m happy to talk to Quentin’s team again,” Courtney interjected. “I’m sure we can remind them that the festival has a collective nature to it and that we want all artists to be paid the same. His book sales will be enormous.”

“I’m sure his advances are better than most,” Jonah said bitterly. “More than the poets, and the children’s authors and the debut novelists. He can take it or leave it.”

“Excuse me,” George said, stepping away from the table to make sure no customers were listening to their meeting, “I make the final decisions here. Jonah, you’re acting like—”

“What if I can help?”

Allegra’s voice cut through the tension. George stopped speaking at once, seeming to remember that she was there. It was the first thing she had said throughout the entire meeting. Jonah stared at her. “What?”

“What if I can get an even bigger author to come? One who’ll bring in more sales but won’t mind taking the same fee as everyone else?”

“Who did you have in mind, Allegra?” Courtney asked. She put her glasses back on, poised to take notes. The whole room now regarded Allegra, awaiting her solution.