Page 38 of Wish You Were Her

Jonah and Grace sat in one of the arcade booths, underneath a large flatscreen. Jonah was on his third beer, Grace her second pink lemonade. The arcade was always a favorite haunt of young people in Lake Pristine. Hera was only strict when it came to stepping onto the bowling lanes.

“Grace, can I just check something?” Jonah asked. “This, we’re just friends, right?”

Grace spluttered out a delighted laugh. “Yes, Jonah. We’re just friends.”

“Sorry,” he said, meaning it. “It’s just… I thought me and Kerrie were just friends and—”

“I know,” Grace said soothingly. “She’s… she’ll get over it, don’t worry. She’s a bit down at the moment. Mapesbury University put her on their waiting list. She’s hoping to get a call every day and it just never comes.”

“I didn’t mean for all of this to get so complicated. I didn’t realize I was leading her on.”

“Aw, Jonah, you weren’t leading her on,” Grace said. She glanced up at the TV screen and then around at the bustling arcade. “The whole town knows who it is you like.”

Jonah felt himself flush but he downed another swig, wincing at the taste of hops and barley. “Don’t, Grace.”

“I mean, the whole world now knows.”

“Except Allegra.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t know how I feel. We never got to even talk about it. Her team put her in a car and took her away from me. Her dad wants me dead, her publicist, too, I reckon.”

“Her dad? George. You mean George. Since when is he anything but George to you?”

“Sure. George who just fired me.”

He took another drink as Grace stared at him in complete disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Why?!”

“Fighting Simon. Almost having Allegra. Some other stuff he won’t tell me about.”

“He’s been weird with you all summer.”

“Agreed.”

“But I never thought he would…”

“Well, he did.”

They sat in silence and Jonah realized how restless and angry he was. Restless with Lake Pristine and its confines, angry with George for giving him a reason to leave. “I have to get out of Lake Pristine.”

“Jonah,” Grace said sternly. “Just drink your drink, okay? Feel sad, feel whatever you’re feeling, but don’t make any rash decisions.”

“It’s not rash, it’s overdue.”

“What’s overdue?”

“Leaving! Getting out. There isn’t anything for me here that’s worth staying for. Nothing that won’t be here when I come back to visit, that is.”

Grace, who he knew was also planning to leave, asked, “What will you do?”

He had barely got that far in his mind. Or perhaps he had always known, so he had never needed to think about it.

“I want to write. So, I’ll write. I’ll sell books in the meantime, on the street with a wooden box if I have to.

Earn pennies while I write and then earn possibly even less. It’s better than having a boss.”

“It’s normal to have a boss.”

“I’ve had one for years now, it’s overrated. And Allegra? Stuck at the whim of those studio bosses? No. I’ll make my own work, and then me and Allegra—”

He stopped speaking as Grace made a noise of surprise and pointed to the flatscreen above their heads. He glanced up and swore.

Allegra was on The Late Show with Ellis Beckton .

Ellis was sitting behind his large, mahogany desk on the right side of the screen.

He had black hair with dignified streaks of silver and a suit that probably cost more than what Jonah used to earn in a year.

The interview had clearly just begun, as Allegra settled herself into the guest chair on the left side of the screen.

She looked otherworldly. She wore a floor-length dress of lamé fabric in the Grecian style. It looked like molten gold, hugging her and shaping her. Modest but stunning. Her hair glinted in the bright studio lights and she smiled at Ellis Beckton as if they were old friends.

“Turn it up,” Jonah said, to no one in particular, before jumping up to adjust the volume himself.

“… back again, friend of the show, so it’s lovely to see you,” Ellis Beckton said, in his tone that was always brash and playing to the back row. “So! Allegra! How’s your summer been? Do anything interesting? Or anyone?”

Jonah frowned as the studio audience laughed uproariously at this pointed remark. “That’s not funny.”

“Shh,” Grace said.

Allegra merely smiled, in a way that completely beguiled her host. “I had a very relaxing summer, Ellis. How about you, how’s everything been here in the EBC building? I hear they don’t let you leave.”

The audience laughed and Ellis joined in. He cast a quick look into the crowd and then quipped, “Yep, I’m just stored in the back with a caffeinated IV.”

“And then they wheel you out every night at ten-thirty?”

“Wheel me out?! Wait, why are you clapping, don’t turn on me!”

The audience roared as Ellis cartoonishly chastised them and Allegra smiled in victory.

It was extraordinary. She had quickly moved the conversation away from the elephant in the room.

Her long legs, her sparkling Jimmy Choos and her knowing smile—it was still Allegra, but it was like Allegra with an extra gear. She was a supernova.

“She’s… so good at this,” Grace remarked, her voice almost inaudible. They both stared up at the screen in amazement.

“So, you’ve got a new movie coming out in a couple of weeks,” the late-night host said, continuing with the interview after the audience quietened. “It’s called Maybe in Waiting and it’s—well, you tell them what it’s about.”

“Sure,” Allegra glowed as she crossed one leg over the other. “So, it’s directed by Diego Charlotte—”

“Who just won the Academy Award for Best Director.”

“Yes, sure did—”

“For Time in Tinseltown —”

“—for Time in Tinseltown , yes. Anyway, so yeah, he’s directing and it’s about this cafe in Paris and like a lot of his work, his incredible work, it’s very old Hollywood. And it’s about this guy, played by the amazing—”

“Auden Bishop.”

“Yes, he’s unbelievable. He plays this guy stuck in this Parisian cafe while it’s raining and me, and the rest of the ensemble cast, are the, sort of, colorful characters he meets as they all wait for the downpour to stop.”

“Sounds great, here’s a clip!”

As the show started playing a scene from Maybe in Waiting , Grace turned to Jonah. “This is the one she’s taking us to. The premiere.”

Jonah swallowed, as he watched this apparently amazing male actor and Allegra as they moved about the screen in the clip from their film. “If she still wants us to go.”

“She will, Jonah, she’s not mad at you. She just had to get out of this town.”

“I’m just,” Jonah stared up at her face, the face he had held in his hands, the face that had haunted him for weeks. “I’ve never been good at knowing what to do or say in social situations, let alone unusual situations…”

“Yeah?”

“But when I’m with Allegra, it feels so easy. I just want to love her and tell her she’s perfect. But that’s not socially acceptable. So, I panicked and made so many stupid mistakes.”

“But it wasn’t your fault that the two of you got photographed. And she knows that. She’s not stupid. Let her put out this fire. Then try again.”

As Jonah stared up at the screen, he knew he had to move.

In the chess game of his life, he had to get to the other side of the board somehow.

Lake Pristine stayed the same. It was a town in a beautiful painting or the inside of a snow globe.

It was hard to change inside it. He needed to wake himself up from its comforting spell.

He didn’t want anyone else’s life. Not in Lake Pristine, anyway. He wanted a life that couldn’t be found in a small place, with comfortable people.

He was not going to leave his teenage years, grow old and be that guy getting drunk in the afternoons and talking about the time he had almost loved a movie star.

He had to be something else. Something better.

Allegra had learned to smile broadly every time Ellis interrupted her.

While most late-night hosts were now young men who had been comedy writers or cast members on Saturday Night Live , Ellis was more old-school.

He was usually more famous than his guests, and he knew it.

Allegra’s fame was the kind he would find a little intimidating, so she anticipated some male foolery from him.

His show was a small kingdom, where everyone fawned and bowed.

Allegra had been reminded about how lucky she was to be squeezed in, lucky because they had bumped an up-and-coming comic until the following day so that she could have the slot.

Now, as Ellis smiled in a way that told Allegra he was about to turn, she braced herself. She was not afraid. She was playing a role. The mask had grown to cover her entire body. It was a terrible sort of armor, now necessary and employed like an octopus ready to ink.

Autistic girls were told they were their own worst enemies, but Allegra knew that was a neurotypical lie.

She was her own ally. She was her own protector.

She let her true self curl up into a ball inside a small room in her heart, a frightened eighteen-year-old in the fetal position, while she took over.

She. The person Allegra became when it was time to pretend. To seduce, to entertain, to convince. It was a choice so many actresses had been forced to make, autistic or not. Should I be her? she asked herself, whenever she stared at her own reflection in the dressing room mirror.

“Now, Allegra,” Ellis said, as the applause for the film clip died down, “let’s get serious for a moment.”

Allegra did not let her smile fade. “Sure, Ellis, let’s. That sounds fun.”

Murmurs of amusement met her answer, but the audience members were clearly anticipating the talk show host’s line of questioning.

“Some pictures of you went viral recently…”

Allegra pushed her long hair back and feigned innocence. “Was it the benefit for literacy I did back in May? Where we raised millions for children to have access to books?”

“Um, not exactly.”

“Ah,” Allegra sighed, playing up her disappointment. “Damn! That stuff never seems to go viral, such a shame. So, what are you talking about, Ellis?”

The audience laughed and hooted.

What a good sport she’s being, isn’t she charming, you’d never know the overhead lights are killing her and that she can smell everything and feel the springs of the seat beneath her thighs.

“ Yes, some pictures of me and my very good friend were taken against our will and published, ” Allegra said, before Ellis could. “We were both in a state of undress due to a broken air conditioner.”

More screams of laughter from the jackals, who looked to the people next to them to check that they were laughing as well.

“And we were actually having a fight, that’s what the photos don’t quite capture. If the pap had hung around, he’d have seen me pin him to the floor and get him in a headlock, but of course in this cynical day and age, everyone jumps to conclusions. I’m actually a Black Belt.”

Even Ellis smiled tightly at that, as the audience bellowed.

Allegra felt her body silently begging her to wrap it up.

The sensory overload was crushing her, but she told herself to persevere, she had minutes left.

They had to make it through the fakery for a little longer.

Yet as the audience cackled and shrieked, she breathed a small sigh of relief.

She had won. She had taken it back.

Albeit with shaking, frightened hands.

“Now, let’s talk more about Diego Charlotte and his sensational movie. Out very soon!”

When the interview was over, Allegra took a quick photo with Ellis for socials, blew a kiss to the enraptured audience and swiftly power-walked to the guest bathroom where she promptly vomited all over the floor.

Her feet slipped out of her high heels and her knees hit the floor as she retched. Within a moment Natalie was by her side, whispering comforting things and rubbing her back.

“You were perfect!” she said, careful to keep her voice as low as possible. “Just brilliant. It’s over now, baby, it’s done. That’s buried it. You did it, you’re the greatest. I’ve never seen anyone command a room like you when you want to.”

The other woman’s words tumbled out quickly as Allegra staggered to her feet to grab some paper towels.

Natalie poked her head out of the bathroom door and barked at someone for some water.

Allegra pressed her forehead against the cold tile on the wall until Natalie pushed a glass of water into her hands.

People thought masking was something that everyone did.

They thought it was like speaking “corporate” or behaving differently for your in-laws.

But it was so much more than that. It was the physical suppression of every natural, autistic instinct.

It was mimicry. It was sunburn. It was a hand around your own throat.

It was burying yourself while you were still alive.

Allegra felt the delayed reaction to the sensory overload and her body cried out, begging for mercy. She gulped down the water and splashed some on her face, hoping to disguise the salty tears.

Ellis Beckton was the only late-night show that went out live.

Most others were filmed in the late afternoon.

She took a moment to breathe, to try and pull herself together.

She moved like a sleepwalker to her dressing room, where her two smartphones were locked away.

She withdrew her personal phone and called the bookshop.

No one answered. She called again. Still nobody. She could picture the old landline ringing in the shop with no one there to answer it.

She wanted to talk to Jonah. But she didn’t have a number saved for him on either of her phones. She was about to open her email inbox when—

“Everything okay? The car’s outside. You good, baby?”

Natalie’s words came from the other side of the dressing room door. Allegra locked eyes with herself in the mirror. She blinked away the redness. She grabbed some concealer and quickly got to work on her face. She brushed her hair. She stared at herself, commanding herself to be all right.

Come on, we’ve done this before. We’re back to work now. They want the golden goose so let’s go. Time to sparkle.

“ I’m great, ” she heard herself say. “Ready to go.”