“He’s not going to say yes, Rosie,” I say, holding back a scowl. “He barely promotes his own films. He’s not going to agree to be in a student film where he’s not even getting paid.”

“Then you have to convince him!” Rosie says, finally dropping the pictures of Moonlight and Train to Busan into my locker, though both of them are crumpled now. I’ll have to reprint them. I try to focus on that rather than the nonsense Rosie is spewing at me. “Put on your game face, dress up for battle. Whatever it is you have to do, just do it. This is life or death.”

“Why can’t you do it?” I ask, turning my glower on my locker instead of her, grabbing my Nutritional Science notebook from the back.

This isn’t fair. The last thing I want to do is apologize to Emmitt Ramos.

She gapes at me. “Because I’m gay!”

“So what?” I turn to her incredulously. “You can’t use that as an excuse to get out of everything.”

“Yes, I can! What if you have to seduce him to get him to agree? I can’t seduce him! It has to be you!”

“Seduce him?” I repeat hysterically. “You think I’m going to seduce him? Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

Rosie shakes her head. “I’m being absolutely serious right now. If you have to seduce him, you better go in there and fucking seduce the shit out of him. You already insulted him multiple times! You have to take one for the team!”

I open my mouth to protest, but Rosie slams my locker shut, startling me. “Think about the competition! Think about the judges! You know having Emmitt in our movie will make waves in the film community. I checked his IMDb, and he’s supposed to be in the next Firebrand Studios movie, Mina. Firebrand. They’re almost as big as Marvel and DC. He’s going to blow up and become mainstream in no time. I bet you regretted losing your temper at him the moment you realized who he was. Don’t lie to me!”

I take a deep breath to keep from screaming incoherently. She’s right. Of course she’s right.

The minute I got home Saturday night, I also checked his IMDb page and followed up by searching Twitter for mentions of his name. The results were half people mentioning his role in the Firebrand Studios movie and half people keyboard smashing about how they want to have his children. I spent all of Sunday mourning the missed opportunity. I know I should have been more levelheaded this morning, but it’s hard when I have to stare at Emmitt’s stupid face and his stupid hair and his stupid smirk—

Calm. I have to stay calm.