The Famoux Read online

  Many, it appears. As Swanson takes her ruler to every inch of my skin, she also makes a few sketches in a tattered notebook. Not a few. A dozen, at least. Even just in a scribble of pencil, I can already somehow see the shimmer and the color.

  To Swanson’s credit, she does her best to make me as comfortable as she can throughout this whole measuring process. She distracts me with lengthy stories about her time at fashion school—most specifically, about the time Norax strode into her class one fine morning and plucked her right from her seat, no explanation, and named her Head Seamstress. Her story really resonates with me. There’s a comfort in similar origins.

  Once she’s gathered everything she needs, and has sketched enough to fill a picture book, I’m given back my clothes, which I toss on as quickly as I can possibly muster. In no time, the guards are escorting Norax and me out of the mirrored room, and we’re on to the next stop.

  “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Norax asks me in the car.

  “It was odd,” I say.

  “You ought to get used to being watched and admired now,” she tells me. “Soon enough, it’s going to become your norm.”

  The Emilee part of me finds this hard to believe, but I don’t doubt her. I’ve seen the way the Famoux are gazed at—the way there’s a new photo of them every time they step outside, their every movement a painting to be framed. Even I admit I’ve admired them with great detail.

  “How long did it take for the other members to get used to it all?” I ask Norax.

  “It varied for each of them,” Norax admits. “Kaytee loved stepping out for the paparazzi from the first moment she did. It took Race the longest …”

  “Race?”

  “Oh, Calsifer,” she says. “We all call him by his surname back at the house.”

  My mind files this away: Calsifer Race is just Race. Despite how well versed the kids at school made me, this is a fact I didn’t know. Makes me wonder how many other things I don’t know about them.

  Our next destination is the headquarters of The X, the only trustworthy news source for all things Famoux. By now, everyone knows to rely only on The X for the real news, but their issues aren’t published as frequently as other publications. They release a new issue every month, whereas gossip tabloids drop rumors every day. The purpose of our visit is to begin what I’m told will be my debut cover spread, which will be put out into the world just before the next Darkening.

  “It will be your formal introduction,” Norax tells me. “They will have a whole magazine of facts and photos to get to know you. No sudden drops of information. No pulling the rug out from under them.”

  Them, I suppose, is the entire world. I think about the glossy copies of The X people from school would pass around. The thought of me on one of those covers makes me almost giddy as we pull up to the sleek headquarters.

  Gerald and the other guards that lead us through to the headquarters’ hallways are so tall, I can’t see past them at all until we make it to a door. Norax inputs an elaborate code on a keypad, and it swings open, revealing a room that feels like an optical illusion. On the left side, we might as well have walked straight into the past: vintage trunks for tables, patterned sofas, distressed hardwood floors. The other side, in contrast, is what I’ve grown to expect from the Famoux: large silver screens, machines with blinking lights, and dark metal tables.

  “Oh! Hello!”

  My eyes fall on the young girl sitting cross-legged on the paisley couch. She, like Swanson, is young and beautiful, with her hair pinned up in a bun.

  “Miss Abby Booker,” Norax greets.

  But Abby barely even sees her—she’s too busy gaping at me. “Oh my gosh. Is this Emeray? She is … well, she’s indescribable!”

  “I’ve been telling her all day.”

  “As you should! A face like hers deserves constant reminders!”

  My eyes shift to the floor, a smile creeping up on my face. Compliments have always been like rare gems to Emilee Laurence, but it looks like Emeray Essence is irrevocably adorned in jewels. It’s going to take some getting used to.

  “Why is the room like this?” I ask, in a somewhat forced attempt at steering the conversation away from myself.

  “I’m indecisive,” Abby says, and nothing more.

  “You better have made some decisions, at least, about the spread,” Norax teases. “How is it going?”

  “Please, take a seat!”

  On the couch in the vintage section, Abby hands us what she’s worked on. Though she’s only had a day to prepare, Abby has already made a magazine template, with blank, labeled spaces for where writing and photos will go. It’s long, perhaps a hundred pages, and it’s baffling. Will there really be this many photos of me? Is someone really going to want to look at this?

  Norax points to a few pages with nothing on them besides the other members’ names. “What are these?”

  “Oh, I want them to write about her,” Abby tells her. “I think it would be very effective if the members told their fans what they love about Emeray in their own words.”

  The names are suddenly like sirens, blaring out at me from the paper. Kaytee McKarrington, Till Amaris, Foster Farrand, Calsifer Race, Chapter Stones. The idea that they would have things to say about me at all, much less things they love about me, feels impossible. That static buzzing begins to rise up my fingertips.

  One of the later pages near the end of the spread is labeled CAREER. “We’ll put her upcoming projects here, so fans know what to be eager about,” Abby says. “Do we have any plans for what she’s going to do yet?”

  “What would you like to do, lumerpa?” Norax asks me.

  This is a big question.

  “I don’t even know what I can do,” I admit.

  “She could absolutely be a model,” says Abby. “I mean—Emeray, stand.”

  I expect to hobble to my feet, but I rise with a fluidity I’ve never felt before, causing me to pause and gape with wonder at my new body. Even the way I move is new? Every muscle feels like it’d been dipped in gold, if dipping something in gold makes every piece of it more smooth and refined and lovely.

  Abby grabs an old-looking camera, one I’ve seen only in textbooks. She squeezes the button before I even have the chance to smile.

  “I wasn’t ready,” I say. “Can you take another?”

  “Nonsense,” she says.

  “Have you ever seen a bad photo of the Famoux?” Norax asks. “They don’t exist. Zoya took care of that.”

  A slip of thick paper spits slowly from the camera. In a matter of minutes, it’s ready. Even I have to gasp. Somehow, my startled, unprepared stare has translated into determination, focused nonchalance. I’ve always hated having my picture taken—not that the occasion presented itself all that often. But looking at this instant photo, I want to sit for a thousand more pictures and look through them over and over. The sudden burst of vanity would usually embarrass me, but wanting to look at pictures of this new face doesn’t feel superficial—it just seems right.

  “I think I’ll make a copy of that immediately,” says Abby. “That could be the cover.”

  “How did that even happen?” I stammer. “I didn’t even pose.”

  “Looks like you’ve no idea what you’re capable of, Emeray Essence,” Norax says.

  I guess not.

  “She could definitely model, all right,” Abby says. “I can’t stop looking at this!”

  “Do you think modeling is something you’d like to do?” asks Norax. “Anything you want. The options are endless for you.”

  Endless options. And to think, just two days ago I thought my life was set in stone.

  “I want to do everything,” I admit. “Anything I possibly can.”

  “Perhaps not talk shows,” says Abby.

  She’s right. That was Bree’s.

  “I don’t think I’d want to do that anyway,” I say quickly, almost defensively. But it’s true. The idea of sitting down and making small talk with a million different people every week sounds like my own personal nightmare.

  “So not everything, then,” Norax teases.

  For the next couple hours, we go through a few sample interview questions and photoshoot ideas, and I hear a dozen stories about Abby and her husband, a TV host named Sam. Between her and Swanson, so far it seems as though everyone who meets Emeray Essence feels compelled to tell her all the ins and outs of their lives. I love it. It’s so different from the way people used to ignore me at school—how I could last a whole day without speaking to anyone. What a welcome change this is.

  Before we leave, Abby gives me the instant photo to keep. Norax and I admire it as we walk out. Norax tells me she likes how soft, yet severe I look in it. It reminds her of her favorite book, she says. “It’s in the hideaway’s library,” she tells me.

  “We have a library?” I ask.

  “Of course,” she says. “We’ve got all the books you could ever want.”

  They have more than all the books I could ever want, they have everything I could ever want. On the car ride to our next destination, Norax tells me all about the other rooms within the house. Viewing rooms, tasting rooms, recording studios, ones covered wall to wall in the group’s ever-growing accolades.

  Abby made copies of the photo she took but has given me the first one to take home with me. Staring down at my face, my chills are nonstop. “None of this feels real,” I admit. “I don’t understand how I’m here.”

  “I saw something in you,” Norax reminds me.

  “Right,” I say. “I looked different.”

  “It was more than that.” Norax gazes out the window. The sun is almost fully set now, casting her face in orange and gold. “You looked so broken out there, Emeray. And those boys … I knew your life couldn’t have been easy.”

  I think about my mother, my father. She doesn’t know the half of it.

  “All the members had that same look to them. That broken look. It just … It feels so much more righteous for it to be people like you who the world should admire so deeply. Not just any old person dreaming of fame—someone who needs it. Someone who deserves it.”

  Norax’s eyes are swimming in some emotion I can’t place. “Lennix didn’t love the idea of choosing people like you for the Famoux. He liked the way he ran things. He was the one who insisted we had to make the Fissarex in the first place, if I really wanted this.” Norax touches my golden hair. “Believe me, I wish you didn’t have to go through all this to live this life, lumerpa. But now, you get to live it however you want.”

  The car slows down at our next stop. It’s dark out now, so I can barely make out the shape of an alleyway through the window.

  “Where are we now?” I ask.

  “It’s—”

  Her sentence is cut off when I open my door. In an instant, every shred of softness we were just sharing is halted by a stampede of light and noise.

  Not so secret an entrance, I guess.

  “There they are!”

  The sound of cameras popping is sporadic. I can’t find a rhythm. All there is in front of me is pure and utter chaos. I try to see the ground below me, but I can’t make out anything except light and the voices. All yelling. So much yelling.

  Yelling my name.

  “Emeray Essence!”

  It is a careening chant among blinking lenses, clipped quick and sending my whole system reeling. I recoil into Norax as Gerald in the front seat leans to the back of the car and slams the door shut.

  “Back in!” he yells, flustered.

  Just like that, our car is flooring it down the street, taking us far away from all the commotion. But even when we’re past it all, it’s still ringing in my ears. I don’t even register where I am for a few moments.

  What just happened?

  When my vision is no longer dotted with camera flashes, I see Norax beside me, barking orders into her phone. Panicked.

  “What was that?” I ask. Perhaps I shout it—I’ve lost my gauge on volume.

  “Paparazzi,” she says.

  “They were saying my name.”

  “I know,” she says. Then she swears, murmuring to herself, “It’s barely been a day. One day, and—”

  “Norax, do they …?”

  “They know,” she confirms. “I don’t know how they know, but your secret is out. Well, the secret of you is out.”

  The aftershock of all that noise and uproar is an evasive drum in my ears, beating on my skull. I close my eyes, the reality of what’s just happened to me setting in. They know.

  They know I’m here. No more waiting for the gala anymore.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We’re zooming through streets and intersections with reckless abandon, but I can barely see it over the splotches of light still streaking my vision.

  They’ve found us. They’ve found us. Three days ago I was watching fans at school, crying together. Crying over Bree. Saying a whole year would be too soon to replace her.

  What are we going to do?

  I can’t get the crying faces out of my head as the car comes to a halt in front of the mansion. The grounds are guarded, so there’s no one waiting when we step out. Even so, I’m whisked inside at lightning speed. There isn’t a spare moment for me to take in the splendor of the foyer for the first time before I’m shoved down the hallway, being herded to my next destination.

  “Your tour can come later,” Norax asserts. “Right now, we need to get to the Analytix.”

  “The Analytix?”

  She yanks me down the hall past doors painted a bright white. We don’t stop our scurrying pace until we reach one labeled 888. Norax exhales, punching in codes on the keypad with trembling fingers. When the code comes up as incorrect, and she lets out a mangled cry. I grab her hand and squeeze it.

  “Everything’s okay,” I tell her. But even as I say it, I don’t believe it. Is everything okay? I have no idea. I haven’t yet seen Norax this distressed. The sight of it sends shrill bursts of frenzy through me.

  She inputs the code once more with slower concentration. It blinks green. We scamper inside.

  The majority of this room is sectioned off by a wall of glass. Beyond it is a closed-off space with a single chair. No towering object like the Fissarex. Just a glass wall and a silver stool.

  “Where is the Analytix?” I ask.

  “Right there. Take a seat.”

  The logical, problem-solving Norax from the press conference is back, which calms me. I’m still confused, but I oblige. The chair is cold on my legs, which makes them shake even harder than they were before.

  “What now?” I ask.

  “You listen.”

  A few seconds pass in silence.

  “There’s nothing—”

  “It’s starting up.” Her voice is muffled from the other side. “They’ll be coming any moment.”

  I sit so still that I can feel how unsteady my heartbeat is. Just as I begin to think that nothing will happen, suddenly—

  A voice.

  It slices through the quiet, almost startling me off the stool. The voice is strong and assured, with odd, dramatic newscast music playing faintly behind it. It doesn’t talk to me, but about me, like it doesn’t know I’m there.

  “… So far there’s no word on whether or not Emeray Essence is in fact the real deal. No official response from the Famoux headquarters. Our question remains: Who is she?”

  The music swells before coming to its end. I inspect the ceiling, the far corners, but there is nobody else in this room except Norax and me.

  “Norax?” I call out. “I think there’s—”

  But a new voice cuts in, cuts me off. Someone talking to a friend.

  “Did you hear about the new member? Do you think it’s fake?”

  “I kinda hope it’s real!”

  “I really like her name. Emeray!”

  My heart leaps. I want to stick with them, hear more of this, but their conversation fizzles into a rough and bustling meeting. Someone with a particularly brutish voice seems stressed.

  “We need pictures now! Were any of our connections there today? Do we have any employees from The X willing to be a source?”

  “We’re developing some shots of her stepping out. They’re blurry, is that okay?”

  “As long as we have a cover for tomorrow, I’ll take anything. We’ll forge an inside source. We just …”

  His sentence dissolves, and in comes another newscast, its intro music filling the air around me. A reporter declares, “While it’s too soon to say, Emeray Essence seems quite fit to be Bree Arch’s replacement. We have a correspondent on the scene to investigate further.”

  A horn jingle and a swishing noise are followed by fuzzy audio. “We’re on the scene where Emeray was spotted attempting to exit a Famoux vehicle. We can deduce from the following candid shots captured out here that she is indeed a member. Look at her outfit. Nothing we haven’t seen before on Bree Arch, right? We most definitely have a replacement.”

  The clothes were the ones Norax handed me on the plane this morning: black pants, white shirt. Incredibly regular clothing. Is this really something noticeably Bree Arch? But I can’t dwell on it for long. Next interrupts a group of chuckling friends.

  “I think she’s pretty hot.”

  “Yeah, yeah!”

  “You guys are gross. She looks young.”

  “Old enough.”

  More laughter. Heat rushes to my cheeks. They’re quickly intersected by a new set of voices—these ones, in the middle of an argument.

  “How the hell did they replace her so fast? She hasn’t even been dead for a month!”

  “It doesn’t mean they planned it!”

  “They’ll probably kill this one, too, just to spice things up!”

  And in comes another group, bearing complaints instead of compliments.

  “This is a nightmare! She is a nightmare!”

  “Where did she even come from?”

  “And, like, Emeray Essence? What kind of a stupid name is that?”

  “I can’t believe they want us to accept this cheap knockoff of Bree. The nerve!”

  Pulled back by my own mortification, I jump off the stool. The voices cut out all at once, like I’ve pressed pause on some sinister recording.