Chapter One #3
There are so, so many of those in the Meadow series.
This is one of them. Probably because it would have sounded too cheesy if acted out for the movie, but it’s my job—or could be—to make it not sound cheesy for the audio.
I can’t hear anything in here, of course, no rustling from other rooms or clanking of wires in the walls as the repairman does his thing. So surely nobody will notice if I pick up the headphones and pretend to record, just to get a feel.
Because now that I’m here…now that I know it’s The Meadow …I might actually want this.
Like, want it for me.
And of course I’m not going to get it, because that’s how my life works, but it’ll be an amusing way to pass the afternoon. To try.
The headphones are cold when I place them on my head. I move the left earpad back so that I only have one properly placed, over my right ear, giving me a way to hear if Catarina and Haniya open the door.
I put the iPad on the music stand, tap to wake it, and take a deep, deep breath, maybe the deepest I’ve taken since March when Pod-Smart took over all my mental space. I take a breath, and I do what I’ve always done in times of crisis: I read.
This time it’s just out loud.
“William, it’s not fair. You asked what it would take for me to stay human a little longer, and this is my price: you.
And before you tell me again that it’s unsafe and dangerous and risky, can I remind you that all of those things apply to being human in general?
I could walk outside and get hit by lightning.
My heart could stop on its own. You can stop a lot of things, William, but not death.
Not when I’m breakable and hopelessly mortal. ”
It happens every time I’m behind a microphone.
There’s the little jolt of happiness, the stolen kind, the ticking-time-bomb kind that I know will leave like it always does.
And then, like a fever dream coming from the mist, there’s that stupid, stupid play and that stupid, stupid performance with James Freakin’ Neely telling me I have a great voice and then everything that came after.
His voice haunted me long after that class, after graduation, when I stood at the Best Buy checkout counter wondering if it was ridiculous how much of my already-too-small paycheck I was about to spend on a podcast microphone as if I knew what I was doing.
“Great voice.”
I nearly jump out of my skin, throwing the headphones against the acoustic-friendly wall just to my left.
James. Freakin’. Neely.
There’s my overactive imagination, and then there’s straight-up hallucinations, which is what this must be—has to be—because that was James Neely’s voice, the grown-up one that got interviewed by BuzzFeed and People magazine for the indie film he starred in last year that won him the acclaim and the fangirls after a career mostly spent on highbrow stages.
He might not be a household name, not yet, but he’s gotta be close.
His first film had a wide release and, even though it was an indie, it crawled over the million-dollar mark after its third weekend in theaters.
I read an article about the movie when it popped up on my news app, unable to help myself from scrolling past the headshot of James as fast as I could, ignoring the way my brain still managed to automatically register and catalog the way his face had shifted into an adult’s since college—sharper jaw, the kind of cheekbones that would make statues weep—and how his eyes were even more piercing than I remembered.
He is on the brink, teetering on the edge of fame and whatever you call this near-fame in the before, and I know he’s just one decent shove away from being a Hollywood leading man.
But none of that matters. What matters now is that he’s here. In the studio. In my headphones, the ones I just hurled across the booth.
Shit, those headphones probably cost more than my life, more than the student loans I’d rather not think about, more than the absurd amount of money it would take to get me out of Dad’s place and to New York City and the publishing hub always just out of my grasp.
I pick the headphones up, a quick inspection showing nothing immediately amiss, but when I put them tentatively back on my head, like they’re made of fire, I swear I hear a slight crackling that wasn’t there before.
“Are you still there?” he asks. “ Hello? ”
If there was any doubt that it’s actually James Neely speaking, it’s gone now. For all his talk about how good my voice is, his is distinctive, deep, a little conceited, but not so much that you want to punch him immediately. (But definitely enough that you are waiting to reserve judgment.)
I guess he hasn’t changed that much since college.
“Sorry,” I say, which I immediately hate myself for.
Why am I sorry? I didn’t know that someone else was listening.
And because he is my own personal demon that I’ve summoned from the depths of memory and the twisted, knotted ball that is time, James Neely can read my thoughts.
“Why are you apologizing?”
There’s definitely a slight crackle.
“I threw the headphones against the wall,” I confess. “I guess that’s why. I wasn’t sure if it, like, thumped against the wall or something and—”
“You read well,” he says, interrupting my rambling.
I swallow and wish the earth would follow suit and drag me down to its core so I don’t have to think about the fact that I just read a relatively sexy scene that James Freakin’ Neely overheard.
“A good voice,” James continues. “You perform it but don’t overdo it.”
My head is spinning. There is too much information to process, and I have no idea when Catarina and Haniya will return, and…
A thought stops zooming long enough for me to catch it.
God, am I still mad at him? For something that happened nearly a decade ago, a nothing moment after lots of nothing moments that only had the potential to be anything else in my own mind?
But there it is: anger or maybe hurt. I’m shocked at how sharp it feels, how fresh.
I’m trying to tamp it down, to make some attempt at understanding it or else to go back to embarrassment, which is a much easier emotion to work with, when James’s voice comes to me again.
“Do you disagree?”
I take a deep breath.
“Do I disagree about what ?”
“That you read well.”
“I didn’t know anyone was listening,” I say.
James’s tone is even and cool. “All the better.”
I’m thinking about telling him, about just asking if he remembers me and that night and his words, but then James Freakin’ Neely does what he does best: He makes it all about him.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks.
Maybe it’s because he sounds more curious than pompous, but I decide to answer him like I’m reading straight from one of the countless fan pages I have no doubt exist in his honor.
“James Neely. Gifted stage actor come down from on high to bless our phones and televisions and tablets with his presence in the form of a breakout indie movie, Disassembled, about a superhero who must return to civilian life after giving up his powers to save the planet. Famous for that one viral clip where he made Jimmy Fallon snort water out of his nose at a charity fundraiser. Infamous hater of cheese.”
I can’t quite read his tone when he answers, “That about sums itup.”
“And now you’re…” I don’t know why I’m curious, but I make myself ask anyway. “You’re going to audition for The Meadow ? Really?”
“Worse than that, I’m afraid,” he says dryly. “I’ve already been cast as William. Today is all about finding my Arabella, as Catarina keeps putting it.”
Well, that settles that. Another nail in another coffin that looks just like all the other Juniper-tried-to-be-too-ambitious coffins I’ve buried in my head.
I. Should. Not. Be. Here.
I shouldn’t have come at all, but now that I know it involves James Freakin’ Neely, there’s no room for even the most explosive imaginations to see a way forward. There’s just enough history, just enough barbed wire wrapped around the image of him in my mind for this to ever work.
No matter how badly I need the money. No matter how desperately I want to find my own footing after the Pod-Smart disaster.
No matter if this is the first and only ticket I’ve found that maybe —the most dubious of maybes—could get me to New York and publishing and Mom’s ghost floating around in a twelve-thousand-a-month closet apartment in the city waiting for me to show up—
“Did you throw your headphones again?”
This time, his voice is transportive, the almost laughing tone from Romeo and Juliet all those years ago.
I shake my head like I can physically rattle the memory out of my mind.
“No,” I say. “No, but I think this was a mistake, coming here. I should probably go.”
Now The Great James Neely sounds startled.
“Go? But with that voice, you have this in the bag. Trust me. You just have to beat out whoever it is that Catarina keeps talking about. The one with the podcast.”
“I am the one with the podcast.”
There’s a long silence, like he’s reevaluating how to entice me since the usual methods are clearly not working.
“Look, we’re both trapped in here until they fix whatever is going on with the other booths, and I’ll level with you: I’m extraordinarily, completely bored. Yesterday was quite the shitty day, and I’m teetering on the edge of violently hungry. Humor me, please? Just…talk to me?”
I’ve read dozens of books where there’s a magic phone, a magic house, a magic mailbox that allows a person to talk to someone out of their own time—in the future, in history, wherever.
I’ve loved a fair amount of them, but the one thing that has made it difficult for me to sustain the disbelief for the conceit is that so many characters just act like nothing is out of the ordinary, like they are having another normal, everyday conversation.
I get it now.
I could resurrect everything, ask James if he remembers Romeo and Juliet, if he remembers me, but what’s the point in that?