My shoulders slump. Whatever the opposite of promise-sworn is, that’s Mark. Later is never going to come. “Yeah.”

“Good. Oh—and Darien?”

“Yeah?”

“Diet. Don’t forget. I think the third floor has a cafeteria.”

I make a face. “Cafeteria food? That’s cardboard, bro.”

“Bro, get a salad.”

I purse my lips. With my new workout regimen and my personal trainer (who reminds me of Wolverine with the personality of a wet cat…so basically just Wolverine), I’ve existed on protein shakes and rabbit food. And chicken. So much chicken I could sprout feathers. And it’s not even seasoned. All to keep me looking like the however many million dollars my body’s apparently worth.

David Singh—the original Federation Prince—never had to worry about crunches, or cardio, or airbrushing, or fangirl ambushes on live TV. The original Starfield show barely made the ratings, and yet it somehow inspired a cult following. He got fans for his work, for inspiring people to think bigger than the Earth and ignite the stars.

I get fans for my abs.

If I were David Singh, if I were really Carmindor, I’d tell Mark to shove off. Diplomatically, of course. And he’d listen, and I’d go get a burger down at Shake Shack.

But I’m not Carmindor. Not in this universe, anyway.

—

THE CAFETERIA ON THE THIRD FLOOR is worse than cardboard. It’s an entire table of absolute gluttony and sin. Because doughnuts. Nothing but doughnuts. Doughnuts as far as the eye can see. And sitting to the side, like an emo kid in a high school cafeteria, is one sad and lonely fruit cup.

“It’s you and me, buddy.” I take the fruit cup and find a table.

There’s a few other people eating breakfast—doughnuts, to be exact—but I bypass them all to the far corner of the cafeteria. It overlooks Rockefeller Center. The blue and silver Starfield crowd has almost dissipated. It’s hard to think they all came for me. Me. My stomach twists, and it has nothing to do with the fruit cup.

I give a pineapple chunk a poke. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a guy walking toward me. The one who until a moment ago was eating a heavenly looking chocolate-sprinkled doughnut. He’s older than I am, with thick-rimmed glasses and a sweat mustache.

“Hey,” he says. “You’re Darien Freeman.”

People say this to you all the time when you’re famous. What do they expect me to say back—Yeah, you caught me. Instead, I just stick out a hand to shake. “Hi there. Nice to meet you.”

He doesn’t take my hand. “Great show today.”

I know sarcasm when I hear it. “Thanks, man,” I reply, giving him a tight-lipped smile.

“Me and some of my PA buddies were just talking about it.” He leans in a little closer. “Can I ask you a question? Just between us.”

I don’t like where this is going, but there’s no way for me to say no, is there? And Gail isn’t here to distract him while I make a break for the door. I shift uncomfortably. “Uh, sure.”

“Do you actually know anything about Starfield?”

My eyebrows shoot up.

“Because you might have all those Seaside fans fooled, but they wouldn’t know a decent TV show if it hit them upside the head. I bet you couldn’t even tell Carmindor from Captain Kirk.”

It’s not a question. He just assumes.

“You know, there’s a lot of us who actually love Starfield. It’s not a fad. Or a cash cow. It’s not just a chance for you to get your face on a billboard. It matters to people. So don’t ruin it, dude.” He starts to walk away, then stops and half-turns back to me. “Oh, and just so you know, I’m not the only one who thinks it. You’re a joke.”

“I’ve never been good at jokes.” I try to crack a smile. “I’m not that funny.”

He doesn’t smile back. “Starfield isn’t a game to us. We’re a family, not a franchise. Just look online.”

Then he stalks away before I can even formulate a polite, movie-star-worthy reply.

I clench my fork. I want to grab him by his starched shirt collar, turn him around, and shove the promise-sworn salute—pointer and pinky fingers out, middle two together, thumb down—into his eye sockets. And while I have his attention I want to lay down in excruciating detail the synopsis of all fifty-four episodes I watched religiously as a nobody teenager in the suburbs of L.A. From the Nox King to Princess Amara to every moon orbiting Galactic Six and every dwarf planet from the Helix Nebula to Andromeda. I want to tell him what that ending monologue meant to me. What it meant to see someone who looked like me in command of the Prospero. I want to cut out my fanboy heart and show him that it bleeds like every other Stargunner’s. I want to tell him that the Federation Prince Carmindor saved my life.

But I don’t. Because Mark is in the back of my head saying, Don’t lose your cool. Follow the director. Cash the check. Be a star. And more than anything: Don’t become a headline.

“Just look online,” the so-called “true fan” had said. I push aside my depressing fruit cup and pull out my phone so I can search for whatever he was talking about. Did some A-lister tweet about me? Or did one of the gossip websites put something out already?

It doesn’t take long. A few searches through Starfield-related hashtags and I’ve found it. A blog post, linked to by one of the bigger social media outlets, entitled “FAN-TASTIC OR FAN-SERVICE?”

Against my better judgment, I open the link.

The choice of teen heartthrob Darien Freeman as the noble Carmindor can only be seen as a slight against the true Starfield fans.

It has over a thousand retweets. Hundreds of comments. Great.

I copy the link to the post and begin to text it to Gail, ready to point out that this is why I shouldn’t go to a con. The fans will eat me alive. But then I pause. Mark’s with Gail, and if he hears that there’s bad press—even if it’s just a blogger—he’ll probably put me under 24–7 surveillance. And force me to go to the con. And if that con is full of people like Mr. True Fan here and whoever writes this Rebelgunner blog, well, then, I’m screwed. It’ll be humiliating. Worse than any dunk tank. But if Gail can’t get me out of it, and Mark won’t…

What would Carmindor do?

I thump my phone against the table, annoyed. He wouldn’t blame others for his problems, that’s for sure. He’d take things into his own hands. Maybe I can call ExcelsiCon instead. Pose as my own assistant. I’m an actor, aren’t I? I can speak with the con director and get this whole ordeal sorted out. Googling ExcelsiCon, I start scrolling through their website again. I try the number for the corporate event management company, but I get lost in a phone tree. I need a human being. After even more scrolling, I find the con’s About Us page, which doesn’t have phone numbers but does have the name of the guy who founded it. One quick white pages search later and I’ve got his info.

Score.

I clear my throat, punch in the number, and listen to it ring. Maybe the fans don’t think I’m anything more than “a brainless soap actor with more hair gel than talent,” as that blog post so eloquently put it, but I am an actor—so I’d better get to acting.

SAGE PARKED US IN THE VERY CORNER of the public parking lot, the one surefire way around Isle of Palm’s “no food truck” ordinance. Despite the crowd at the beach, it’s a pretty slow day. June in Charleston is sticky and heavy, like the syrup at Waffle House. Not even the beach breeze dents the humidity, so no one wants to move. Tourists just lie on the sand like slabs of meat, grilling in the sun.

I chew on the end of my pen, staring down at my journal. Beside me, Sage is doodling something in her notebook, her pencil making soft tch-tch-tches across the page.

I peek over. It’s an illustration of a girl—no, she’s faceless; it’s an illustration of a dress.

“Wow, that’s a nice drawing,” I say. Sage looks up, her dark-stenciled eyebrows drawn tight. “Not that I’m surprised,” I quickly add, feeling my ears burn red. “What I mean is that I didn’t know you could draw that well—no, I mean, just, I can’t draw, so…”

Another brilliant conversation between coworkers. I swear, I try to be friendly to everyone—except the twins and their country club friends—but I suck at being social. I think one thing and my mouth says something completely different, like I’m possessed. By a whole lot of stupid.

After a long moment, Sage goes back to her sketchbook, etching a long line down the curve of the dress.

“Who do you think did the pumpkin on the side of the truck?” she asks without looking up. I begin to answer when she cuts me off. “Spoiler: it was me.” Then she nudges her head toward a customer coming up to the truck. “Your turn.”

I sigh, closing my journal, and turn to the order window. The guy’s young and tall, his shaggy hair in such bad need of a trim that it’s begun to curl around his ears.

He recognizes me at the same time. “Oh. Hey. Elle.”

I purse my lips. “James.”

The back of my neck prickles with sweat, and a little panic. James Collins is one of the twins’ country club cronies. Relatedly, he’s the reason I’m sworn off trusting boys—ever. Maybe it was my fault for assuming that someone like James would ever be interested in me, but I’m not the one who filmed our ill-fated country club rendezvous and sent the YouTube link to the entire school. No, that would be my charming twin step-vloggers. You know, because they weren’t already making my life miserable enough. And James was all just part of their plan.