The Empty Ones Read Free Page A

habit. Nasty! Here, come on, that was the last reel for today. Let’s get you in your civvies and out of my damn expensive clothes before you do any more damage.”
    Steele grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. She let him lead her across the set like a blind woman. He pointed out the various cables and rigs so she didn’t trip on them, and only released her when they were safely around the corner and out of sight. She slumped into the beaten and stained break-room sofa while Steele filled a Styrofoam cup with stale coffee.
    â€œMiss Nelly, I thought you were supposed to be a smart girl.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œSmart girls know better than to keep talking with the Empty Ones once the damn camera stops.”
    â€œI didn’t know…” Nelly said, “I didn’t know he was one of them. I’ve never met him before. Just seen him on TV. He always seemed so…”
    â€œNice?” Steele laughed and handed her the tiny, wholly inadequate cup of coffee. “You sound like one of the rubes, Miss Nelly. You know they like to put on a show.”
    Nelly made an affirming noise, and sipped at her terrible coffee. It burned her tongue, but she didn’t really notice.
    *   *   *
    I flicked the television off, then decided I didn’t like the silence. It would just give me time to think about what I saw. Digest it, swallow it, and let it slowly poison my thoughts until I’d lost another night to sweat and anxiety dreams. Instead, I flipped the channel a few times and dropped the remote onto the duvet cover that the ’90s forgot. It was pale pink, shot through with pastel blue fractals and little squiggles of orange. It looked like the cover to my old Trapper Keeper. The Trapper Keeper I had in fifth grade. The same one that used to hold my embarrassing pictures of Marco Luis, in his role as hunky jock J.C. Sable on the teen sitcom Home Room . I had three pictures, I think, and all of them were as precious as fine art to my childhood self. I had lovingly cut them from those preteen girl softcore porno mags— Tiger Beat, Seventeen, Teen Vogue —with a pair of blunt scissors, and got them laminated in the library. The librarian laughed at me when I made the request, and my ears had turned red, but I braved the embarrassment, shoved the glossy papers across the desk and waited.
    They were worth it.
    There was Sable in the pool, shirtless and staring back at the camera with his self-satisfied “I know you want me” smirk. Sable dancing with Kristi at the prom, her head leaning on the shoulder of his sleeveless white tuxedo. Sable with Mack, the two of them posing against an old cherry-red Impala. God, I couldn’t count how many times I’d stared at those pictures and imagined myself as Kristi, my great big puffy ’90s bangs crushed up against the wide lapels of Sable’s tuxedo/vest. Imagined myself in the backseat of that Impala, belting out all the wrong lyrics to classic rock songs while Sable drove and Mack played air guitar. How many times I pictured myself in that pool, Sable’s strong hands lifting me up and swinging me around, entwining in my bathing suit and …
    And then I met him.
    I actually met him!
    Jackie had dragged me to an industry party in the Hollywood hills—the kind where underpaid waiters wander around with trays but everybody’s on some specialized diet and nobody takes the food. You know how those things go. There’s never anybody to talk to at those things except the people you came with, and they always ditch you in the first fifteen minutes. And then out of nowhere, there was Sable.
    Marco Luis.
    He was funny. He was self-deprecating. He was a little odd. He was also so goddamned pretty it hurt to look at him. He should have been in a museum, surrounded by little velvet ropes and a stern-eyed guard that would clear his throat at you if he saw you start to