Page 3 of Wish You Were Her

Allegra’s mother, Roxanne, came to collect her daughter from the airport and, as the eighteen-year-old slipped into the front passenger seat of the old Vauxhall, her mother became slightly tearful.

“Ma, don’t,” Allegra said, her voice full of incredulity.

“Well, I’m sorry,” her mother replied, laughing. “This is the first time I’ve seen you properly in months.”

“I saw you at the Bystanders screening.”

“For five minutes, Ally.”

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s been busy.”

“Well, anyhow,” her mother sniffed as they hit the long, runway-like road that would lead them to Lake Pristine, “I get to boast about you at the office but it’s not exactly the same as seeing you.”

“It’s been a wild year.”

“You’re just everywhere,” her mother said, glancing at her daughter with a touch of worry. “I watch one episode of the show and then you’re every recommended video on my phone. Your press tour was… a lot, Ally.”

“Well, I’m done with the show now,” Allegra reminded her. The relief and satisfaction was very evident in her tone. “Unless they find a way to un-drown my character.”

“Your dad hated that scene.”

Allegra was surprised. She didn’t know that he had been watching the show. “It was a mess to film.”

She had become hypothermic. The director had been told he was only allowed to film in the cold water for fifteen-minute intervals, but he had been annoyed at the “suppression of his art.” So, Allegra, despite her protests, had been sent into the cold water for long stretches.

Which resulted in pneumonia. Her agent, Maria, had screamed at the producer for over an hour as Allegra was wheeled off to get an X-ray.

Now, almost a year later, she was weaker in the lungs and desperate for sunshine. She had never been to Lake Pristine but her mother had assured her that it was at its most beautiful in the summer. As the car sped closer and closer, the pale gray clouds turned to iridescent blue skies.

“If it weren’t for the nosy busybodies, I’d consider moving back,” Roxanne said. “Or at least staying with you this summer.”

Allegra wondered how true that was. Her mother was very happy in the city, far from the small town she had grown up in. But Allegra still believed that old ghosts were the reason Roxanne stayed away.

“I’m going to be normal for four whole months,” she said softly.

Roxanne kept her eyes on the long stretch of road ahead, which was baking in the sun and casting illusions of water. She reached over to squeeze her daughter’s arm.

“Don’t you worry about ‘normal,’” she said, just as softly. “Not a good enough word for you.”

Allegra tried to smile. “Ma? Did you read the Eyewitness piece on me?”

Her mother scoffed derisively. “I did. Then I looked up the journalist’s background. Her parents are both giants in the newspaper world and she was fired from a previous job for plagiarism. I don’t know where she found the audacity—”

“Should I tell people I’m autistic?”

Roxanne pulled her car over to the side of the road. She turned off the engine and shifted her body to face Allegra.

“Ally, where has this come from?”

Allegra stared at the long road ahead of them and all of the cruel comments people had been making about her heaved into her mouth. “I’m not like other people. And they’re starting to work it out, Ma.”

“Tough. It’s not their business.”

“I keep thinking, maybe it should be. Maybe I should, I don’t know, come out of the library, so to speak.”

“Do you want to?”

Allegra thought about what her publicist would say.

Natalie firmly believed that telling the world would only narrow her opportunities and force her into the unwanted role of a spokesperson.

“I don’t know. I want people… I want them to know there is a reason why I do things the way I do.

That journalist called me cold. I’m not cold. ”

At the end of the article, Julie M. Atkins had quipped that a summer of rest was probably “too much warmth for the frosty, unapproachable, impenetrable Miss Brooks.”

That closing line lingered in Allegra’s memory. It had burned into her sense of self with a sticking quality that kind compliments never seemed to achieve.

“If you’re going to be public about it I want you to be completely ready and happy,” Roxanne said carefully, and Allegra could tell by her mother’s expression that there was no fear over her daughter’s reputation or public image, just her mental health.

It felt like a balm. “Once you give private parts of your life to the press, it’s out of the box forever. ”

Allegra had learned that fans could get obsessed by the smallest details.

She had been in the industry for years but landing the role of Clera had changed everything—the public attention on her had tripled.

Her horoscope had been hotly debated by early fans, until her birth chart was made public by a stranger.

Her fashion was discussed and dissected on daytime talk shows.

If she was dating somebody, their whole identity would be put on trial to decide which one of the pair was unworthy.

The slow burn had become a wildfire because of one little golden idol.

Allegra sat back. “Well. It’s something I’m considering.”

“Okay,” Roxanne said, gently starting the car again. “Are you sure you don’t want to pal around with me in the city all summer? We can do pedicures every day!”

Allegra was rarely ever at home with her mother.

Her jobs were filmed all over the world, and although she had a flat in the city she was never there.

She felt piercing guilt at her mother’s hopeful tone.

But she was craving the anonymity of a small town, where people were too busy worrying about a festival with lots of famous authors to care about one little actor.

She would be George’s out-of-town daughter, not a cover girl.

Her father would always tell her stories about the eccentric townspeople of Lake Pristine.

Maybe it was one too many luncheons or benefits or after-parties, but something in Allegra needed to experience the eccentricity for herself.

She wanted the mundane. The habitual. The antithesis of la-la land.

“I want to be as far away from multiple smartphones and large crowds as possible. I’m going to give Lake Pristine a shot.”

“Well, I’m always on the other end of the phone.”

“Yup. As is Maria. And Natalie. And the studio. And—”

“And me, more than anyone. I mean it. Do they want you doing anything or are you allowed the whole summer off?”

“I have a premiere in August. Other than that, it’s mostly Zooms.”

“All right. You need a proper break, Ally. I’ve told your father that.

I know you want to help him with the festival, but if you need a day by the lake with a glass of something sparkly, that’s just what the doctor ordered and he has to allow it.

And! If you’re able to snap a picture of one of my authors’ books while lounging by the lake, that would be great, too. ”

Allegra laughed. The only time her mother took advantage of Allegra’s fame was when one of her authors needed a boost on social media. She was an editor and she had a history of publishing writers who were famously averse to social media. So, Allegra had become her de facto publicity assistant.

“Also, not sure if Dad can allow or disallow anything anymore,” Roxanne added, more for herself than for Allegra, it seemed. “You’re eighteen. You can do what you want now.”

The words were spoken with an air of disbelief.

Allegra knew why. It had happened quietly the previous October.

Her mother had been at the Frankfurt Book Fair and Allegra had been on a press tour.

They had spoken briefly over the phone. Then Allegra had spent her eighteenth birthday alone in a hotel room.

“All those sanctimonious mothers when you were growing up,” Roxanne murmured. “So smug because you would run away from school or because you needed extra help. Where are their amazing offspring now?”

“Stay humble,” Allegra chided, but it was with the smallest, proudest smirk.

“You are the greatest kid on this earth. Even if you’re barely a kid anymore.”

There were enough things weighing on Allegra’s mind to make her feel like an adult. She had a schedule and a team and a public image.

Now, she just wanted a fun summer. It was owed to her, after years of call sheets, invasive questions from journalists and no friends.

It was funny. As a child, she had dreamed of glamor and glitz and glimmering people. Now that she had seen those things up close, she wanted something real.

She shook away the thought and focused on the road ahead. Woodland had started to appear and the trees held a green color that she had only ever seen in the glorious technicolor of her movies. A large, clean sign waited for them and it was no mirage.

WELCOME TO LAKE PRISTINE

Allegra found herself snapping pictures on her phone of the little town as her mother pulled into Main Street because she knew a dozen set designers who would find it so inspiring.

It looked like something from a movie. They found a parking space by a shop called Vivi’s Cupcakes.

Allegra stared through the window at the creative concoctions, cakes with pastel-colored icing and famous faces made out of confectionery.

There was a vintage clothing store, a haberdashery, a sweet little cafe and a laundry, all on the corner where Allegra and her mum were standing by the car.

The sun was so bright, it made the streets of Lake Pristine glisten. They gleamed in the aftermath of a small summer rainstorm, more welcoming to Allegra than anything she had seen in months.