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“Can we go somewhere more private to talk?” she asked.
Lily’s brow flattened, and her lips bent down. She looked over her shoulder at the stage being reset. “I don’t have much time, but sure.”
Lucy almost laughed. Lily was so fresh and green and so sincerely sweet; she had no idea the power she held. Another truth—one Lucy had learned from hanging around more seasoned stars—tumbled from her lips. “Lily, I don’t think they’re going to start without you.”
A flush curled into her cheeks, and she rolled her eyes at herself, embarrassed, as if she forgot she was the star of the show. “Right.”
She led Lucy back to the makeup trailer, where a man with bleached white hair and piercings dancing up his ears let them take over the space. It looked like a Sephora exploded inside of a creepy old attic. Wigs and props and shelves of prosthetics lined the narrow walls; bins of makeup sat on the countertops.
Lily didn’t bother removing her swords before she sat on a countertop. She pulled one leg up beneath her and looked like a kid playing dress-up. “So, what’s going on?”
Lucy knew they were on borrowed time and that someone would surely come looking for the star if she went missing for more than ten minutes, even if they weren’t going to film without her. She got to the point.
“Look, this story just broke minutes ago, and I wanted to be the one to tell you: J&J is in trouble.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed and she patted her hips in an ingrained reflex to reach for her phone. She nodded like she remembered it wasn’t stashed in her apocalypse suit but probably in a trailer or some assistant’s pocket. “Trouble? What do you mean?”
Lucy leaned against the counter opposite her, brushing against a dangling arm of alien skin. “An employee within the company came forward with sexual harassment allegations, and we’re under investigation.”
If Lucy expected bewildered naivety to cross Lily’s face, she didn’t see it. Her eyes did flash at first, but her expression easily settled into a disappointed fatigue that looked eons too old on her face.
“Are they true?”
Part of Lucy’s job was protecting clients from bad news. When Us Weekly printed pictures of their cellulite or Rotten Tomatoes slaughtered their new movie, she acted as a shield. She spun stories and mounted counterattacks. She turned bad press into good press like water into wine—actually, more like stagnant pond scum into Dom Pérignon. But this felt different. If Lily was going to last more than five minutes in Hollywood—or any male-dominated industry—she needed to know the ugly truth. She needed to be prepared. Shielding her from it would do her no favors.
Lucy thought about herself at the start of her career. If she had known what was in store, would she have given up before she even started? Or would the knowledge have sparked a flame and motivated her to stand up for herself from the very beginning?
Looking at Lily, she couldn’t help but think that being honest with her would lead to the latter, so when the truth spilled from her lips this time, it was by choice.
“Yes, they’re true. I know from personal experience. And I’m here telling you about it because I want you to know I am standing up for myself now. I didn’t before, and I should have. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I wanted you to hear this from me instead of reading it online.”
As Lily stared at her, Lucy saw the je ne sais quoi that would make every director in Hollywood want to work with her. Something to do with eyes wise beyond their years in a face as fresh as the morning sun. The combination couldn’t be taught, and Lily Chu was born with it. She could play a precocious teenager for the next six years, easily. And then a college kid; then a twentysomething; a young wife; a young mother. The roles would shift, but the common thread would be young, young, young. She’d be twenty-one on-screen until she was thirty. And all the while, she’d bring a maturity to her parts, a professional ethic uncommon in someone her real or portrayed age. One that would make her irresistible to watch and coveted as a coworker. She would have her pick of projects and shelves of golden statues engraved with the words best and outstanding. Her career would be a joy to behold, and Lucy wanted more than anything to be part of it.
She hoped Lily wasn’t so wise beyond her years that she fired her on the spot.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you, Lucy,” she said. “And I appreciate you coming and telling me about it.”
“Of course. And thank you. I’m sorry all this has come out right now, when we’re just getting to know each other. It’s obviously not ideal, and if it’s not obvious, the main reason I’m here is to convince you not to give up on me. I think we could do great things together, and I don’t want to lose that opportunity over some scandal.” She watched her with hopeful eyes and tried not to make it too noticeable she was gnawing at her bottom lip.
Lily looked down at her hands, contemplative. Lucy couldn’t be sure what she was thinking. “You know the book this movie is based on?”
She caught Lucy off guard, but she quickly scanned her brain for the information. Because of her job, she knew more about the business side of it: the film deal, the studio backing it, the director, the cast list. But the actual book, she came up short. It was the first in a young adult sci-fi trilogy that had first been released some five years before, she knew that much. Lucy had bought the first book with intentions to read it but never cracked the cover.
On another day, she would tell Lily it was her favorite series of all time and she’d read each book cover-to-cover twice. But because she hadn’t and she couldn’t, she just said, “I’m familiar with it, yes.”
Lily’s lips quirked. “Then you know that the girl in the book is white.” Her eyes cast down, and she shook her head. “I was so excited when I got this part. I called my parents and cried. I ran around the house screaming. I love these books. I met the author, and she was thrilled to have me in the lead role. And getting to work with this director and cast; it’s all a dream come true. But then people had opinions. I don’t know if I was too optimistic, but I didn’t think that people would get upset over me playing the lead character. I was attacked on social media; people sent me literal hate mail. I didn’t leave my house for two days because I was afraid of what would happen when I went out.”
Lucy remembered the backlash the previous year. The argument that an Asian American actress couldn’t portray a character originally written as white. Cruel hashtags casually circulated racism around the internet, calling the casting wrong and unfaithful to the source material. The author of the book had to make a statement giving her blessing to actors of any race or ethnicity portraying her characters. But still, some people were married to the image in the book and refused to accept Lily.
Lucy pitied all those bigoted naysayers because they would never get to see the badass alien-slaying scene she just saw filmed in all its glory. Despite that, she wasn’t sure why Lily was sharing the story with her.
“When all that happened,” Lily went on, “it really hurt, and I just wanted to hide from it. But I knew that hiding from it would only make it worse. Nothing changes that way.”
Lucy heard the truth she had been awakened to echoing in her words. She had never walked the world in Lily’s shoes and couldn’t relate on every level, but she did know that the time for silence was over. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Lily. And I agree that speaking up even when it’s hard is the right thing to do.”
Lily’s lips curled into a sly grin. “I know you agree. That’s why I’m not firing you. Look, I know there’s a lot of bullshit out there, and most people pretend it doesn’t exist, but you confront it. That speech you gave at lunch about this town being tough? And the fact that you’re here telling me the truth about this scandal? I don’t know what went on in the past, but you’re speaking up about it now, and that’s what matters. And that’s the kind of person I want in my corner. I want people on my team who are going to say something when they see something.”
She hopped down off the counter and held out her hand. She wore fingerless gloves, and Lucy noted that her ruby red nail polish from lunch had been removed. Manicures probably weren’t standard during the apocalypse. “After all that backlash, I vowed to be the best in this role that I possibly can be just to show them all. I’m here to fucking fight. You with me?”
