I’m glad, to be honest. She's extremely formal, extremely experienced, and extremely cold. Think Prof. McGonagall from Harry Potter, except without the pointy hat, the ability to perform magic, or any type of soft spot for anyone. Ever. Mrs. Chapman has been my assistant/taskmaster since I was seventeen and I still don't even know her first name.
I open the tall wooden door to my tastefully decorated office, then slump my shoulders as I walk to my two-hundred-year-old white French provincial desk. I kick off my heels and plunk myself into my muted olive velvet chair and stare at the vase overflowing with hydrangeas. They’ve gone with pink hydrangeas this week. Normally, this would make me smile, as would a glance out the large windows to the view of the sun-drenched gardens behind the palace.
But not today. Today, it feels like the walls are slowly sliding toward me. I open the bottom drawer and pull out a bag of Jelly Babies, a treat Tessa got me hooked on. Popping one into my mouth, I spot a note on my desk in Mrs. Chapman’s perfect, tight handwriting.
Princess Arabella,
I’ve gone for a quick bite of lunch. It’s a no to the red dress, obviously, and to the equal rights thing. Your father and the advisers thought it too emotional a cause for you. Also, it will interfere with your ability to meet a man, since you’d be working with women all day. They thought perhaps instead you might like to become the patron of The Avonian Bankers Association. Plenty of eligible men there.
Mrs. C
P.S. Be ready to leave by one o’clock for the fundraiser for hamster wheelchairs.
P.S.S. I’ve ordered you a salad - it’s in the bar fridge. Maybe eat that instead of having another meal of Jelly Babies.
Red Bull Strikes Again…
Will Banks
Valcourt, Avonia
“I really have to be out of here in under an hour,” I say to Dwight as we hurry down the hall of the Avonian Broadcast Network building to the conference room. “Emma said if I’m not freshly shaved and at her future in-laws’ for cocktails by six, she’ll kill me, cut me up, and use my limbs to beat you until you’re dead.”
“Delightful,” Dwight says. “She’s right about the beard though. I can't even believe you would allow that to grow so close to where you eat. Have you not heard of beard ringworm?”
“First of all, gross. Second, no, I haven't.”
“Google it. It's a thing.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to Google that.”
Dwight is a bit of a germaphobe. Well, I could be understating the case. He shaves his head completely bald even though he has a full head of thick brown hair. He says hair hides all sorts of fungus, and he prefers to keep his scalp clean enough to perform an appendectomy on. When one would ever do that, I don’t know, but his scalp is surgery-ready. He also keeps a fanny pack hidden under his slightly oversized jacket, containing everything from his Tums to his disinfectant wipes to his tea tree oil spray in case someone sneezes one town over.
We reach the conference room door and he waits for me to open it so he can avoid what he calls ‘handle germs.’ As soon as I open it, I hear a whirring sound, indicating he’s getting out his hand sanitizer which he keeps clipped to himself at all times on a retractable leash. “Hands,” he says, opening the bottle.
There’s no use arguing so I hold my palms up while he squirts them, then he squirts his own. The two of us avoid eye contact while we silently rub the cool, slippery substance into our skin in front of the slightly ajar wooden door.
When we walk in, I see we are the last people to arrive. The two executives that head up the unscripted division—Victor Petty and Kira Taylor—are already here, along with their interns. Victor and Kira could be their own reality show called ‘People Who Think No One Knows They’re Sleeping Together.’ What remains of my crew, Toshiro Fukuhara (or Tosh, as we call him) and Callum MacKenzie (who hails from Scotland and goes by Mac), are standing at the back of the room near the snack table. I start toward them but am interrupted by a middle-aged woman holding a can of Red Bull.
She rushes toward me, holding out her free hand. “There he is—the star of the soon-to-be most popular nature-slash-adventure docu-series in the entire universe! I’m Dylan Sinclair, the starmaker.” She gives my hand two firm pumps, lets go, and sucks back a few more gulps of her drink. “Oh, and your new showrunner-slash-director.”
I stand in place, completely frozen as my brain slowly processes what she's just said. Glancing up and down her navy-blue high-powered suit and stiletto-clad feet, I try to imagine her jumping out of a helicopter into the Amazon River. Nope. Can’t picture it. “You're Dylan Sinclair.”
“I certainly am.” Slamming back the remainder of her can, she tosses it with an impressive overhand shot into the garbage bin, then immediately produces another one from the side pocket of her suit jacket. “Red Bull?”
“Thanks, but my mind is already racing fast enough.”
Snapping her fingers, Dylan shouts, “Let's get this meeting started, shall we, people?” She walks over to the head of the table and starts fiddling with an iPad as the rest of us take our seats.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and send a group text to Tosh and Mac. WTF?
Tosh glances at his smart watch, then looks at me and shrugs.
“You are probably thinking to yourself ‘what the farts,’” Dylan says, giving me a knowing look.
My face heats up and I suddenly panic that she might have somehow seen what I typed.
“First off, let me say I was up literally all night watching every episode of your show, plus all of the extras, and every interview you've ever given. And not to gush, but I loved every second of it. Love, love, loved it all!”
Okay, maybe this won’t be so bad after all. “Well, thank you. I really feel like we've got a winning formula here,” I say. “With a solid marketing push, we should be able to up our ratings.”
“Yes. Yes!” Dylan yells, startling everyone at the table. She points at me. “This is the enthusiasm I'm looking for! This is exactly what is going to make you a star, mister! We take your natural rugged good looks and your penchant for adventure, and we revamp everything—except the beard. The beard stays, but everything else goes. And I mean everything.”
“Excuse me?” I ask. “But if you love it so much, why would we have to change everything?”
“Excellent question! It’s because what you’ve been doing has been done, William. People have already seen Bear Grylls and … and Jacques Cousteau … and that Jane Goodall woman doing what you do.”
“Jane Goodall didn’t have a show. She studied chimps.”
“But some of it was filmed,” she says dismissively. “Here’s the thing, and I really need you to hear me now, Will. We are not in a world where people watch what they’ve already seen. They want new. They want sexy. They want exciting. And that is exactly what we are going to give them.”
My Spidey senses are tingling. I do not like the sound of this. “Umm, sorry, Dylan, I don’t want to come off as rude here. It’s just that, I only met you a few minutes ago, and you’re already talking about reinventing our entire show.”