Page 115 of Wish You Were Her
While the others had been talking, Allegra had taken in the audience. Her heart had almost stopped when her gaze had landed on a smirking Julie M. Atkins, seated two rows behind Jonah. When she met Allegra’s gaze, the columnist gave a snarky little sneer and Allegra was back in that restaurant once again, feeling on trial. But she steadied her nerves. She would not let Julie have the last word. No one was having the last word on Allegra Brooks anymore.
The question was a generic one, asked by a friendly but shallow radio presenter called Matteo, who was hosting the talkback session. Allegra smiled, regardless.
“It’s a love story. We need more of them. Maybe fewer stories about individuals saving the world, and more about people saving each other.”
The answer was clearly too short for the presenter’s liking and he chose to expand with a rather daring additional question. “You were recently the victim of a rather opportunistic photographer, has that made doing all of this a little trickier? Are you feeling all right? That’s obviously the worst part of the job, but what’s maybe the best part? Getting to talk to audiences like this? All of this?”
There were murmurings from the thousand people in the crowd . She knew she should just shrug and say that the invasiveness was the price of a very special job. The overly familiar faux concern from strangers was always jarring and, under normal circumstances, she would brush over it efficiently and find her way back to promoting the project.
But something had changed. She looked back at Julie, who was assessing her with sharp little eyes.
Everything had changed. She was not the same person Julie had interviewed in that car crash of an article.
“That’s funny,” she said softly, into the microphone she was holding. “The way you phrased it. ‘All of this.’ What even is all of this?”
There was an awkward silence. The atmosphere in the audience instantly shifted. Allegra looked out at all of their faces. They stared up at her with a mixture of earnest engagement and curiosity. A few studio executives looked bored and bemused. Some fans looked decidedly worried. Only Jonah watched her,with eyes that told of real acceptance, no matter what came out of her mouth.
“That’s not the worst part of the job, actually,” she said, her tone deceptively casual. “The photographers? Not the worst part at all. No, the worst part is the dying kids.”
The stillness in the room made her want to laugh but the noise that came out of her mouth was a choked sound.
“So many kids who are sick and dying. And all their parents can do for them is get their favorite actor to come and see them in hospital. So you go. How can you not? You fall in love with them. You take pictures. You ring the bell with them. Then months later, the call comes. They’re gone. And you can’t mourn. Because it was never about you.”
The words had poured out without consciousness. She could still feel the grasping fingerprints of the strangers from outside bruising her arms. Years of characters who she had been praised for playing, who she knew better than she knew herself, standing in the room with her like ghosts who wanted to rest.
“I’ve been doing ‘all of this’ since the age of fourteen. I’ve had stalkers. I’ve had people searching through my garbage. I’ve had people pretending to be my friend. I think I’m maybe better equipped for it than a lot of people.”
“And why is that?” pressed the presenter, despite the evident disapproval radiating from the rest of the panel, all completely mortified by the kind of honesty that should never be allowed in a press conference or preview screening.
Allegra smiled. “Because I’m autistic.”
And the spell was broken. The words rushed like an enchanted wind through a dusty, locked-up castle. The thorns no longer had the power to wind and climb over the garden wall.The dragon that always relied on silence and secrecy didn’t need a sword in its belly, just for her to reach out with one hand and touch the thing she had walked with since birth and only recently decided to learn to understand. They would step into the sun together.
“Because you’re… did you say—”
“Autistic. Not artistic. Well, I’d like to think I’m that, too. But fame is manageable when you’re an autistic woman, you see. Because you’re so used to separating parts of yourself. You’re used to keeping yourself safe. I think of the girl I have to be during things like this as a different person. Aher, rather than ame. She does all of the work and yes, I pay the price, but that would be the same if I were working in an office or a restaurant.”
The audience was stunned but when she caught Jonah’s eye, he was smiling up at her. Proud of her in a way she had never thought someone else could understand.
“I don’t like these silly dances we all have to do to make great art,” Allegra continued, completely uncaring. “I don’t like that people in newspapers feel that it’s okay to write pages and pages about me and my love life rather than my work. I don’t like the fakery. Did you catch that, Julie?”
Julie, who had lost her smirk during Allegra’s confession, turned as white as chalk dust and started to sink in her seat as a few people followed Allegra’s direct gaze.
“I’m sorry I didn’t give you anything juicy to write about,” Allegra told the reporter. “I’m sorry your questions were so surface-level and boring, you had to write a tirade in order to get clicks. But I guess one has to get desperate. My mother told me you once got caught plagiarizing. So I guess you struggle with ideas.”
Julie sputtered and croaked, while people gasped. Some industry employees near the back whooped and clapped inappreciation of Allegra’s attack. Perhaps they, too, had been victims of Julie’s bile.
Allegra returned her focus to the wider room.
“So, I went to my dad’s small town for a summer. And I fell in love.”
“Well, that brings us back to the film,” Matteo interjected frantically, but Allegra ignored him.
She glanced out to Jonah. “Hey, you know what?”
He looked back, eyes wide but full of something beautiful. Allegra felt her own welling with tears as she smiled down at him. “I got all of your emails. I loved all of them. I was there the whole time. And I love you, too.”
He made an unconscious noise of surprise, putting the picture together with the quickness of his truly brilliant mind, the one she had come to love so fiercely.
