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“A gaggle?”
“A parliament? A murder? What’s your preferred term?”
“There’s no gaggle. Just me, remember? One camera.” Though still low and rough, something softer had snuck into his voice. “They want something they can use for the premiere special and to fill in the occasional gap among the other footage, that’s all. Mostly, you’ll have Jazzy and Stanton there.”
“Easy to say from the passenger seat.” And behind the camera.
Everly turned the key in the ignition. Being on camera was scary. There were so many ways she could embarrass herself. So many opportunities to say the wrong thing, to laugh too loud, to be too much. But if she wanted a chance to be in the Collective and do right by Grandma Helen, if she wanted the push she needed to get the tattoo she’d dreamed about, if she wanted to figure out what her career could be, whoshecould be, then she had to get used to being filmed. And maybe try to find a way to enjoy it.
Maybe she could torment Logan endlessly until the final shoot. So far that had been plenty enjoyable. She fought off a smile at the thought.
“You ready?” He adjusted the camera in his lap so it was aimed at her profile.
She nodded.
His eyes lingered on her face for a moment, then he flicked a switch on the side of the camera, and a red light popped on.
Filming had begun.
SIX YEARS EARLIER
@EverlyWinters on YouTube
Video #67
Video opens to a younger Everly sitting at a desk in her small dorm room. Her hair is piled messily on top of her head, and she’s wearing a tie-dyed sweatshirt with the collar cut out so it hangs off her right shoulder. “Claymore University” is written across the rainbow colors in white.
She arches her eyebrows at the camera.
EVERLY: Hey all. I wasn’t planning on posting anything this week, but people were shook by my reimagined cover forRomeo and Julietwith a fat Juliet—which, to be clear, was probably closer to accurate Renaissance beauty standards. Go lookat some Renaissance art if you don’t believe me. Plump ladies used to be scorching hot. Fuck it. We still are. Have you seen our boobs? Our hips? They call them love handles for a reason. It’s something to hold on to.
A blush sweeps across her cheeks, but she grins slyly at the camera and winks.
EVERLY: Anyway. A lot of you asked about how I draw fat bodies, so I thought I’d do a quick how-to with a guy’s body this time.
The camera shakes as she spins in her chair to face her desk and attempts to fasten her phone to a mount. It clatters loudly to the desk.
EVERLY: Shit.
There is a loud snort, then a louder laugh.
EVERLY: Well, I guess that’s staying in there since I suck at editing videos, and I don’t have time before chem to start over.
There’s more shaky footage of her desk as she mounts her phone more securely. When the image steadies, it is focused on a sketch pad resting diagonally across the desk. Her right hand is holding a charcoal pencil.
EVERLY: I always start my figure drawing with circles. Usually three. One for the head, one for the upper body, and one for the lower body. How you space them out, and the varying sizeof the circles will determine the figure’s height and shape. So if you want to draw someone who is middle-heavy, you’d want the last two circles to be similar in shape and to intersect. Like this…
CHAPTER 6
“What seems more retro to you? A disco aesthetic or a cottagecore vibe?”
The phone hadn’t rung for the last hour, and half of upper management was at a conference, so Everly had taken to mocking up a few designs for clients to pass the time. Over the next few weeks, Stanton would push her to think about her career goals, so this could be a good way to decide if brand building and marketing was something she actually enjoyed.
Currently, she was assembling a style sheet for a bakery that had requested something feminine and retro.
“You’re not supposed to talk to me,” Logan muttered from behind his camera. He’d been standing in the corner of Reception since the office opened, like a garden ornament without a garden.
“It’s hard when you’re right there.” And he’d been right there since they’d left her house—beside her in the car, filming as she fed the parking meter (dropping her quarter and having to chase it down the sidewalk must have made forenthrallingfootage), taking the elevator up tothe office, making a lackluster cup of coffee in the break room because she’d been so nervous she drove right by her usual coffee spot and was too embarrassed to turn around.
