Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cat
Andi doesn’t respond to my email, not even via Carter, but I do get an invitation to attend the writing team’s weekly meeting. Given her radio silence, I conclude she’s gearing up to humiliate me in front of her staff. She probably hated everything I sent her. Either that or she’s furious I corrected Carter’s use of the title Ms. I spend all week with my stomach in knots, and on Thursday I walk into Heartrender, ready to be torn down.
Nothing of the sort happens. In fact, beyond a round of obligatory introductions and curt head nods, no one speaks to or about me at all. Andi’s team is a tight and well-oiled machine, where everyone finishes each other’s sentences and where people disagree and argue and decide, then move on. There’s twelve of them, including Andi and Carter, which makes me unlucky number thirteen. Always the odd one out.
Throughout the meeting, though, Andi keeps darting her dark eyes to me. My skin warms and the muscles in my belly tense each time she does, like my body is preparing for her to single me out. I almost want her to so I can respond with something brilliant and show her up, and I spend large swaths of the hour in my own head, constructing imaginary dialogue between us:
ANDI
Why don’t you share with the team why on earth you think your romantic arc between Kelsi and Sentinel works?
CAT
(smiling graciously)
Sure thing, boss.
(Cat goes on to wow the crowd. Everyone oohs and aahs. Andi becomes increasingly distraught, wringing her hands and mussing her hair.)
ANDI
(contrite)
You’re right, Cat. I’m not sure why I didn’t recognize your genius before. I’m sorry for being a smellfungus.
“Cat?”
I lurch out of my own fantasy. Andi is holding the conference room door open and listing her head toward me in question. Thanks to the way she’s standing, her white shirt is bunched up around her side abs. For a beat, I fixate on the striations of fabric hugging her lower ribs.
“Cat?” Andi repeats, sounding distinctly impatient this time. “Meeting’s over. Everyone’s gone.”
She’s right. The room is vacant except for Andi and me. A fire razes its way up my cheeks as I jolt to my feet. “I knew that.”
“Daydreaming?” Andi asks, the beginnings of a lopsided smile pricking her lips. Her smirk is full of languid confidence, and as it forms, two dimple-like folds carve themselves into her left cheek. It’s so irritating to look at that out of defiance—and embarrassment—I sit back down again.
“No,” I retort. “I was thinking about the script. Can’t a person reflect in peace around here?”
With a shrug, Andi lets go of the door. “Suit yourself.”
Ugh. How does she do that? Annoy me within an inch of what is humanly tolerable? Now I have to hang around and pretend to reflect. And I didn’t even get a chance to ask her what she thought of Kelsi x Sentinel.
Fifteen minutes later, I slink back to my cubicle way off in the corner of the D-pad and hinge open my laptop, resting my wrists on its base. What to do? Should I keep filling in the details around Kelsi, or should I move on to another pairing, perhaps Evaralin? My one-on-one with Andi isn’t until next week, but I can’t imagine she’ll be pleased if I sit on my thumbs in the meantime. Besides, I want to work. My head is brimming with ideas, lines and decision points and cutscenes, if only my hoity-toity boss would tell me where to focus my attention.
On a whim, I Google Andi’s name, as if that’ll help me suss out what she wants from me. I doomscroll past the first few results (articles about Aftermath and Compass Hollow and her “website,” which is about as bare-bones as a sun-bleached skeleton) and end up studying a picture of her at TornadoCon three years ago. She’s on the mainstage wearing black jeans, lace-up combat boots, and a white T-shirt that reveals her (admittedly nice) forearms, but it’s her gaze that snags my attention. Direct and full of rage, it’s almost as if she’s daring the audience to call her out. Like she’s saying, Yes, the person who made your favorite video game looks like me, and if you have a problem with that, we can take this out back. She looks cool. Fierce. Maybe a little scary.
Basically, the opposite of me.
I must lean in too close and accidentally touch the trackpad, because all of a sudden, fifty more pictures of Andi “Andz” Zhang pop up. It’s so startling that I jerk away, my spine making resounding contact with the back of my chair.
“Hey, girl.”
I slam my laptop shut. Swiveling around, I meet Philo’s grin with a watery smile of my own. Did she see what was on my screen?
“Andz keeping you busy?”
“Yep,” I say, resting my elbow on top of my laptop. “Real, real busy.”
“Whatcha workin’ on?”
“The codex,” I say. “And … some other stuff.”
“Lovey-dovey stuff?”
“That too,” I admit.
“Good,” Philo says. “You tell me if Andi stops giving you the time of day, okay? I know you’re new—both to Heartrender and this industry—but that doesn’t mean you have to wait in the wings for five years for a chance to prove yourself.”
I nod fervently, wishing Andi were half as empathetic as Philo.
Philo smiles, her shoulders relaxing into the soft wall of my cubicle. “Remember how we met?”
I nod again. During my last semester of grad school at the University of Utah, I signed up for a Psychology of Play course that Philo taught. The class was oversubscribed, and I was one of the lucky fifteen who won the lottery. I took it as a sign that I was meant to work in games.
“You know, I never thought I’d like teaching, but your final project changed my mind. For days I couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah and Wren and how you made the player make all these relationship choices for one, then forced them to see how they played out through the other’s eyes. Like, what if we had to be on the receiving end of everything we said to our partner? I love that your project explored that.”
Blushing, I play with the end of my ponytail. “Thanks, Philo,” I manage. Lest she laugh at me, I don’t tell her I’d gotten the idea from reading dual-POV rom-coms. Even if she liked my final project, I don’t know where she stands on fluffy books that aren’t published by Tor or Orbit.
Instead, since Philo is in a reminiscing mood, I decide to ask her a question that’s been bothering me for years. “Why does Andi get so much credit for Aftermath when they weren’t even the narrative director or lead writer?”
Crossing her arms, Philo frowns down at me. I suck in a breath, immediately chastened.
“Sorry, you don’t have to answer that. Forget I asked.”
“It’s okay,” Philo says. “I wasn’t frowning at you but at the situation. You have to understand, the studio that made Aftermath was like ninety-eight percent white dudes. Then, when the game released, Ainsley Ray of Gaymes.exe panned it for being as whitewashed as a picket fence. I mean, the main character’s name is Connor White , and the only person of color in it dies five minutes in.”
I nod.
“So I guess the team thought to do some damage control by name-dropping Andi Zhang left and right and up and down. As if something can’t be whitewashed as long as one nonwhite person’s fingers touched it.” Philo snorts. “Anyway, to hear Andi tell it, she helped shape the overarching narrative, but her biggest contribution was making Connor a depressed, murderous sack of sadness. Not sure if that means she deserves more or less credit than the media has given her. Why do you ask?”
I’m so caught up in Philo’s story that I don’t register her question at first. By the time I do, she’s answered it herself.
“If you’re worried about Andi taking more credit than they’re due, I wouldn’t. That’s not really their style.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “I just …” Turtling my head, I play thumb war with myself. “I don’t think Andi likes me very much.” I don’t like her very much, either, but for the sake of my career, I can’t let the reverse continue to be true. “I was thinking if I understood her better, I could figure out why and change what I’m doing wrong.”
“Oh, honey, no,” Philo says, her eyebrows falling to the sides. “You don’t have to change. Just be yourself around Andi, and if she doesn’t like you, that’s her problem. Anyway, she hates bullshit and people who dissemble. If she catches even a whiff of it coming off of you, you’ll lose her.”
Be yourself? Being myself is what got me into this mess in the first place. In fact, I can’t seem to be anything but myself when I’m around Andi.
With a smile, Philo leaves. As I watch her go, I turn over what she told me. Maybe what she meant by “be yourself” was “be the person I’m used to.” And the person Philo’s used to is Classroom Cat, who is quiet and eager, not brash and excitable. Maybe that’s the version of me Philo thinks Andi will like and actually respect.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Opening my laptop, I decide the next time I interact with Andi one-on-one, I’m going to be calm. Level headed. Pleasant and polite and open to feedback. Even if it kills me.