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The first time I met Dillon Sinclair, I almost killed her.
I was driving back to the hotel from Dani’s picture-perfect, postcard wedding. It had been exquisite—exceeding even Dani’s standards—but despite being the Maid of Honor, I hadn’t been able to focus on my best friend’s fairytale ceremony.
Not since I got the call.
The call, as I’d later come to think of it when joking around with my studio friends, lamenting our early days of audition-after-audition-after-fruitless-dead-end-humiliating-audition. The call that changed my life. The call everyone in the business was waiting for. Hoping for. The one that, somehow, by the grace of the Gods of Show Business, astonishingly came to me.
But it wasn’t just the call that turned my universe on its axis. It was hours after that. Long after the lavish sunset ceremony on Honokalani Beach, and the romantic, poetic vows ofI Do. After the toasting and roasting, and the barefoot dancing in the shimmering black sand.
I’d made it part way up the winding two-lane highway—the famousRoad to Hanawith its majestic, panoramic views. It was pitch black out, and though I’d driven the stretch of road from the resort to the small, private cove with Dani half a dozen times over the last three days, the turns were still unfamiliar tome. Especially now that I made the trip alone. I drove slowly and praised myself on having limited my wine consumption to the single glass I’d sipped throughout the reception—a feat not easily achieved as I sat in anxiety all evening waiting to make my Maid of Honor speech.
This must be a breeze for you, Kameryn, Dani’s mother snipped the previous morning, while I anguished in silence over my handful of notes. It felt impossible to sum up the two-decade friendship I’d shared with her daughter—a bond established over wetting our pants in the sandbox on the first day of preschool.
Speeches must be second nature to you by now.Snide. Condescending, as ever.
How little she knew me, after all these years. And how much less she even cared. I would always just be Dani’s ‘farmgirl friend.’ Never mind that my mother’s occupation as a professional horse trainer didn’t exactly constitute a ‘farm.’ To her, I was just the girl who’d lived outside the city limits of their upper-class suburban district, bussed-in to their fancy schools. It would never make any difference how successful—how accoladed—I ever was in my career. Even when news broke about my upcoming role. It wouldn’t matter. I’d never be one of them. My friendship would never be worthy of Darlene Hallwell’s perfect little girl.
But none of that was where my mind was as I plugged the little four-cylinder Wrangler along the coastal highway. I was still thinking about Aaron’s call; the edge to his voice, usually so calm, so collected, but this time percolating with excitement. He’d been my agent for five years—representing me since the day after my eighteenth birthday—and never once, in all the phone calls we’d shared, had he ever called me Kam.
“Kam!” He’d spoken over the top of my hello. “I’ve just heard from Universal!”
There was something in the sentence, something in his atypical familiarity, that snatched any response I might have given from my lips.
He’d continued. “It’s a go, Kam. It’s a go!”
I was afraid I’d misunderstood. I couldn’t even hear the inquiry of my clarification over the thundering of my heart.
But I heard his response, his laugh brimming with a buoyant giddiness that snuck through his baritone voice. “This is it, kid. This isit. Do you have any idea what this is going to do for you? Hell, forme?! This isn’t one of Netflix’s Top Ten streamers. You hit this one out of the park, Kameryn Kingsbury. Buckle up, because we’ve got one hell of a ride ahead.”
I knew what he meant. I just never imagined it could happen. Not once in the eight months I’d been auditioning for the role did I remotely think there’d be a chance in a million years they’d ever want me. Even when they said they wanted a newcomer, I still figured they’d ultimately settle on a big name. I had so few notable credits. Indie stuff and commercials, a couple appearances on daytime TV. My biggest claim to fame was my two Disney voiceovers. I wasn’t the A-lister they’d be seeking.
Only, it turned out they weren’t blowing smoke. They hadn’t wanted a household headliner. They really did want to cast the lead as an unknown. A no one. A nothing.
And to the desks at Universal, I was exactly that. A clean slate. A blank page.
The project itself held all the weight they needed.Sand Seekerswas projected to be the next Harry Potter. Star Wars. Twilight. The Hunger Games. It drew the same type of cult attraction, the same fanatic followers eagerly awaiting their obsession to be magnified on the silver screen.
I knew all this, because I’d daydreamed about the role. I fantasized about the call from Aaron, despite knowing in the back of my mind it was never going to happen. I imagined I’d saysomething clever, something casual. Pretend I knew I’d land the part all along.
Fake it ’til you make it.
In the end, I’d never managed to string together more than two coherent syllables at a time.
“Of course, you already know, but mum’s the word, Kameryn. Not a breath of this until the green flag is waved.” Aaron had at last returned to his succinct, all-business state.
I managed a yes. I might have thrown in asir. And then the call was over, leaving me swaying beside a palm tree a hundred feet from the crystal blue cove where Dani’s ceremony was about to start.
Replaying the phone call over and over, I wound around the dark highway, wondering how I would ever manage to keep it secret until everything was settled. It could be weeks. Months, even. Until at last someone from the studio would slip a name to TMZ, pretending the story’d been scooped, and then cash in off the free publicity. Only then could I call Dani—call Carter—maybe even call my mom—and tell them the news. Assure them the headlines were true.
But until then, that cat was locked securely in a bag.
I reached to turn off the radio. It wasn’t even Halloween yet and the latest pop edition of Mele Kalikimaka was blaring on the local station, pounding its upbeat chords through my over-taxed brain. I just wanted quiet after hours of being surrounded by the Hallwells, and Dani’s two hundred destination wedding guests.
I found the knob on the unfamiliar center console and stabbed it tooff. Finally, silence.
As I looked up, there was a flash of metal in my headlights. A streamlined frame bent over handlebars. A brief blinking red.
