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“Has she done anything like this before?” Everly asked. She wasn’t sure what she wanted their answer to be. If they said yes, it confirmed her suspicions, proved her intuition right. But it also meant that this show that she loved so much, that had helped her feel seen and normal, was harmful to others.
Jazzy and Stanton exchanged a glance. “Nothing explicit that we’ve ever seen,” Jazzy said.
“But there’ve been rumors.” Stanton set his elbows on the table and balanced his chin in his hands.
“Like with Carrie’s adoptive mother.” Everly remembered reading so many think pieces on that episode and not wanting to believe that the show would exploit someone’s pain that way. “And Veronica’s complaints about how she was made a villain?”
Jazzy nodded. “There was also speculation around season one that Sady coerced that sorority to let Nelly pledge.”
Everly winced. She’d seen how the forums had celebrated that moment. Nelly had never felt like she belonged anywhere, and then suddenly she had a house full of potential sisters.
And there was a chance none of it was real. What had happened to Nelly once the show ended? Was she okay?
Anger roiled in Everly’s insides. Sady couldn’t keep messing with people’s lives this way. No matter what good she claimed to be striving for. “She can’t do this to us. She can’t air that episode.”
“How do we convince her of that?” Taking a sip of her wine, Jazzy leaned back in her chair. “Logan, you know her best. What’s most likely to sway her?”
Logan combed his fingers through his beard, thinking. “Ratings, obviously. Legal stuff. Threats?”
“The triumvirate,” Stanton joked darkly.
“I could probably find some legal arguments.” Everly stood to retrieve her laptop from the coffee table. “I did a ton of research while I was looking over the contract.” And she might, perhaps, have organized it all in a spreadsheet. A beautiful, color-coded one.
“I can see what the fans are saying,” Logan offered. “If they’re as pissed as we are, it might change Sady’s mind.”
Jazzy waved a hand between her and Stanton. “We’ll check with our agents, see what recourse we might have. I don’t want to be associated with a show that exploits its guests and crew like this.”
Stanton nodded in agreement. He was quieter and more subdued than Everly had ever seen him. “I’m sorry this happened.”
“We’ll fix it,” Jazzy promised. As if it was their problem. They’d never been anything but kind and generous to Everly. She hated that they’d had to drag the hosts into this.
Still, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “But what if we can’t?” She had to be prepared to protect herself from any possible scenario. Sady might be swayed by their arguments. But she also might not care about anything but ratings records.
“Then we go nuclear,” Logan said softly.
Everly turned to him with wide eyes. “Quit?” She couldn’t do that. She’d signed a contract. They could sue her.
And what about the Collective? She and Stanton had worked so hard on her display pieces and her booth. She was so close to making this happen. To finally doing right by her grandmother and proving that she was the person Grandma Helen had always believed her to be. Her transformation wouldn’t be complete without doing the art show. Everly couldn’t back out. Not for a second time.
“Could I still do the Collective?” she asked.
Logan took a breath. “I don’t know. Sady secured a prime booth based on promises of advertising. Without the show’s backing…”
“They probably wouldn’t want me.” Her grandmother’s superhero portrait deserved to be hanging on a wall in that convention hall, along with the book covers that she’d loved so much. “I can’t give this up.” The very thought of it carved a hole in her chest. She pressed a hand there as if that might seal it over.
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure you don’t have to.” Jazzy squeezed her hand. Her face was hard with determination, but Everly thought she saw doubt clouding her eyes.
When the hosts left an hour later, Everly and Logan moved to the couch. She rested her back against him as she pored over searches on her laptop, while he scanned Read-It on his (finally charged) phone.
He found a ton of online comments that showed plenty of viewers who were invested in “Loverly” without more than a kiss on camera,others who were troubled by the explicit nature of the promo footage, and still more asking about Everly’s tattoo.
Each one he showed her gave Everly a little more faith in her beloved Read-It forums. Hopefully, when the show was over, she’d feel ready to pop back in there, and maybe participate for once.
She’d read some news articles about former reality TV participants who’d won civil cases against shows for misrepresenting them, and now she was scanning her contract for evidence that Sady had truly removed the right to defame clause, which seemed like the best chance they had of changing the showrunner’s mind. Showing Everly having sex on TV seemed like a prime example of defamation, at least as far as Everly understood the word.
“Wait. Here it is.” She angled her computer screen so Logan could see it. The section entitled “Right to Defame” had been struck through, with a comment in parentheses at the end that read “Not a Precedent.”
Logan’s eyes scrolled over the page. “Perfect. Print it out.”
