A Safe Space (Someone Else's Fairytale Book 4) (4 page)

My room looks like the set of
All About Veronica
. Pink is what I chose when I hired my decorator (yet another expense I now regret), maybe because I’ve played Veronica so long that this is where I’m comfortable. Or maybe because I’ve lived such a sheltered life that I’m still a little girl inside.

On my bed is a pile of very worn, beat-up stuffed animals. I keep everything fans send me and own a whole bank of storage units to house it all. These particular toys belong to fans of mine who are no more, people who died as children from disease, accidents, and even a couple of murders. When I received the first of these, a dingy yellow cat with no whiskers or nose that had once belonged to a girl who’d lost her battle with leukemia, I brought it with me to my next interview and posed with it in the photo shoot, and that started a trend. More stuffed animals followed, often from children I’d visited in the hospital. My personal assistant helped me sort out the real ones from the hoaxes, and here they sit, little careworn survivors of a silent war. I suppose it’s morbid of me to keep them around, but it’s not like I could ever get rid of them.

I nudge them over to make room to sit on the bed and open up my laptop.
Blood Ritual
is available for streaming from its network’s website. I settle myself in to watch.

Forty minutes later, I dab tears from my eyes and close my laptop with shaking hands. If that’s what I have to compete with, I’m done for. There’s no way I can hold a candle to Vicki Hanson.
I can see the writing on the wall. I will never go back to work on
Clues
. And I’ll soon have no income again.

The next morning, when Kyra and I arrive at the gym, Devon stands in the hallway talking to a girl with long, dark hair.

“What do you mean, you don’t date?” she says.

He shrugs. “That’s just the way it is.”

“Could you be more shallow?”

“I really don’t care what you think.”

“So, forget about tomorrow night. Forget about the tickets I got and the strings I had to pull to get them or that they’re for
your
favorite band, not mine. Apparently I’m already used goods to you.”

“I’m sorry if we’ve had a misunderstanding here.”

She looks ready to scratch his eyes out. It’s a scene I’ve witnessed twice already, Devon shutting down one of his conquests. It just goes to show how sick my subconscious is, because I still have a crush on him. His sympathetic behavior yesterday didn’t help matters.

“You are so going to regret this,” she says.

“All right.” He turns away from her and starts eyeing a leggy blonde by the nearest treadmill.

“I can’t believe you.” The dark-haired girl turns and storms off.

Kyra shakes her head. “Seriously, if he wasn’t so good at his job, I’d try to get him fired. He’s such a jerk.”

“Bandwrecker!” he hollers at Kyra.

“I only pay for your insults twice a week,” she shoots back. “Save ‘em.”

He laughs and turns to me. “Morning, Veronica.”

I’m in no mood to deal with his taunts, so I just walk towards the changing room. As I pass him, I feel a gentle tug on the hem of my shirt, and when I look back, Devon’s gaze is still on me. He has one eyebrow raised as if to say, “You all right?”

I turn away fast.

After my workout, I head into LA to meet with my manager, Julian, for brunch at his favorite restaurant, a French bistro. Despite the fact that he controls much of my schedule, I don’t know him very well. He’s who I signed on with after the whole fiasco with my finances. People recommended him to me because he’s managed a few former child stars who successfully transitioned to adulthood with their career intact. One of his former clients is Kyra’s uncle, Jason Vanderholt, the mega-A-lister.

“Hello!” he calls out to me when I step inside.

This place is part dining room and part greenhouse with broad skylights that let in copious amounts of sunlight. Potted trees, however, provide dappled shade and keep the temperature just right. Julian’s seated at a table in the back. His white teeth stand out in stark contrast to his ebony skin, and he’s wearing his usual mirrored shades. That still puts me off, not being able to see his eyes, but Kyra told me that he has an eye condition. It isn’t just him being a Hollywood weirdo.

“Now, now, now,” he says as I come to sit across the little round table from him. Our chairs are embellished with wrought-iron scrollwork and scrape loudly against the concrete floor. “You look like you’re taking the hype a little too much to heart there. This is show business, sweetie. Trends last five minutes, and you’ll have some bad ones, but you can make it longer than five minutes.”

“Can I?” I ask. I don’t mean to whine.

He leans forward and clasps my hand, his skin making mine look vampire pale. “Listen, you let Vicki Hanson have her moment. Someday, you’ll have yours. Meanwhile, let’s talk about what to do while they rework
Clues
. I spoke to the producer today, and he’s estimating a week for the rewrites and maybe some recasting. I’ve booked you some interviews, after talking to your publicist, and a photo shoot, and I also wanted to talk to you and Delia”—Delia’s my music agent—“about whether or not you might have some new material for some concerts? Maybe play some gigs at some local clubs.”

Just the mention of new material and playing gigs gives me a headache. “I don’t have anything,” I say. “Delia’s trying to get me signed with a label, but it hasn’t happened.”

“And that is
fine
,” he says. “Angie said she’d call you with some details on voiceover work, and rumor has it there’s a video game that you’d be perfect for.” Angie is my acting agent.

I nod. His upbeat attitude is infectious, which is what I like about Julian. He’s always trying to figure out how to make the best of a situation, but he’s not full of fluff. Retaining him was a big deal for me, since there are literally thousands of actors who covet his expertise.

The waitress arrives with fruit salad and Greek yogurt. Julian’s also well acquainted with the diet a person like me has to keep.

“Now, I’ve found a promising lead on a personal assistant,” Julian goes on. “She’s willing to do a one-week trial period before you commit to hiring her. Name’s Cleo, and she’s actually the younger sister of Chelsea Banes, the country singer? The family’s from here in LA, and she’s been part of the show biz scene her whole life. Your mail’s piling up. Do you want to retain Cleo for a week and see how it goes?”

I pause. I can’t afford a personal assistant. With my show in limbo, I’m not even sure I could afford this brunch we’re having if I had to pay for it. Julian agreed to wait for his pay until I get my first paycheck for
Clues
. I just hope that actually happens.

“Now, I have a suggestion,” says Julian. “She’s also got an offer to work for Emilia Salazar, but I’ve talked to Emilia’s people and they say maybe you two can split Cleo. She can stay in LA full time and work out of her home and just handle phone calls and email and regular mail. She wouldn’t be around to run to the grocery store or Starbucks for you, but you also wouldn’t need to pay her as much.”

I bite my lip. “Maybe…”

“I have her contact details. I suggest you at least talk to her.” He pats my hand again. “Girl, I believe in you. You’ve got what it takes to stay afloat in this business.”

I nod. “Well, thanks.”

“Now eat, girl. Enough shop talk.”

After brunch, I stop by my acting agent’s office to sign some contracts for voiceover work that have come in, and as I’m exiting the building, I get a phone call.

“Hi, Elizabeth?” the person says when I answer.

My hackles go up. I do
not
like strangers calling this phone. I’ve changed my number seven times in five years.

“Yes?” I say.

“This is Cleo Branson. Julian said he spoke to you about hiring me as a personal assistant?”

“Oh, yes, hi,” I say. “It’s Lizzie.”

“Listen, I don’t mean to gush—”

My hackles rise again.

“—but I am
such
a huge fan of your charity work. My brother survived leukemia when he was six.”

I blink. “Oh. And he’s okay now?”

“Yep.”

“Congratulations.”

“When you did that donor drive for Mackenzie Schaller, that was right after my brother got diagnosed. I swear, I watched every single video and interview you did… Okay, I’m gonna get all choked up here…”

Mackenzie Schaller was a fan I met when I was just starting to get famous. An orphan with just an adult older brother to look after her, she was on death’s door when I paid her a visit in the hospital. I asked her if there was any treatment that could save her, and she explained that she needed a bone marrow donor and there were no matches in her family.

That’s when I learned about the bone marrow registry, a database with the genetic information of hundreds of thousands of volunteer donors willing to give bone marrow if a patient came up who was a genetic match. A person has to be eighteen to join, so I was too young (I was only twelve at this time), but I decided to use my budding publicity platform to help one of the helpless.

I put up a video on my blog and did interviews on news and talk shows, and the response was overwhelming. So many fans got their parents and older siblings to sign up that, six weeks later, Mackenzie had a donor. It was the single most inspiring event of my career. I keep a picture of Mackenzie by my bedside, where it serves as a counterweight to all the stuffed animals I have from fans who didn’t make it.

“Well, thanks,” I say. “Listen…I don’t mean to be rude, but—”

“I need to not gush. Got it.”

“No, I can’t afford you. I’m really sorry.”

“Oh… really?”

“Yeah, so thank you for calling, but—”

“Then maybe let me do a trial period or something until your first paycheck from
Clues
clears. Or could you not afford me even then?”

“Well…” My show being in limbo isn’t the kind of news I want to spread around.

“What am I even saying? Lizzie Warner,
please
let me help you with your charity work. Please. Let me arrange hospital visits and answer letters. You’ve made such a difference to so many people and I totally want to be a part of that. Emilia will pay me enough to cover my bills and stuff. Let me volunteer.”