Before I can tap into the comments, out of the corner of my eye I see a pair of familiar sneakers and look up—there is Ethan with his hands in his jeans pockets. Alarmed, I turn to him. “Where’s Imogen?”

“You got the text.”

“Of course I did, and my social’s crashing because of all the comments.” I try to control my voice, but panic eats in at the edges. “What happened, Ethan? What’s happening?”

“Well,” he says calmly, pushing up his glasses, “Darien found out on stage that his character’s dying, and he didn’t take it well.”

Of course he didn’t.

My eyes are beginning to burn the longer I think about Carmindor dying. Something in my chest is tight and wrong, and it’s so uncomfortable, but people are watching us, even in the back of Artists’ Alley, so I can’t freak out. Breathe.

“I should be happy, right? Carmindor dies, and because of that I’m sure Amara’s not coming back. I’m free. Even if I don’t find the thief who stole my script—I’m free.” My vision blurs and my voice hitches. “Why aren’t I happy?”

Ethan takes his hands out of his pockets and pulls me into a hug. “Because you love it, Jess.”

The hairs on my skin stand on end. I push away. “Love it? Ethan, Starfield was the worst thing to happen to my career. It almost killed it!”

“Jess, I know you, and you’re always so focused on the future. On what’s ahead of you. You never looked around and saw what you had already.”

“What I had?” I scoff, pressing my palms over my eyes, for once glad that I’m not wearing makeup that would smudge. “What I had was a dead-end contract—”

“Then why aren’t you happy that you don’t have to play Amara anymore?” he interrupts, his voice like flint. “I know you’re not.”

“I-I don’t know! This convention has messed everything up in my head.” I try to keep my voice low, but a person buying a salted pretzel is eyeing me curiously. The pretzel man waves them on and I continue in a hushed voice, “I only have a short window in my career—shorter because I lied about my age when I was fourteen—and I refuse to be known as that dead space princess. There are no awards for that.”

“There’s the Razzies.”

“That’s not funny, Ethan.”

He exhales through his nose. “Look, Jess, I love you and you are my best friend, but you are so hardheaded sometimes I could scream. What movies do we remember the best? Do we remember the film that won the Academy Award in 1977 or do we remember the low-budget space opera from that same year that—”

“Rocky.”

“What?”

“Rocky won Best Picture in 1977.”