Note: Fancy seeing you here on time this fine morning. How are you doing? Good? Good.
PREVIOUSLY ON THE CLASSIX: So Emeray's going through a bit of a crisis. She saw Foster, right? But who was that bouncer who saw Foster too since the other bouncer on duty didn't know him? And why did Emeray suddenly start caring so much about what Norax thinks, especially after we all previously agreed that Norax sucks? Why is Emeray taking a thousand steps backward all the sudden??? Don't you hate when the protagonist does something you hate!?!?!???!
So let's take a little breather.
chapter stones, everybody
There's something up with Emeray. Not in a she-seemed-a-little-distracted-this-morning-at-breakfast way. Not in a she-missed-her-piano-lesson-two-days-in-a-row-and-I'm-concerned way. No, there's something up with Emeray in a way I struggle to computeââin a way in which I can only describe using words I don't want to use.
To be perfectly frank about it, it's gotten to the point where I don't even recognize her anymore.
The thing is, she's changed. You can see it in her walk, in the way she speaks, in her entire disposition. It's been gradual, discreet in a manner that reminds me of how Lex started to change on the Onward Train set. A few personality dips here and there, a new way of dressingâânothing too incredibly drastic so as to imitate some kind of warning sign. The differences have been developing so slowly, too, that one might not even notice Emeray's really changed at all unless they recall to life the person she was months ago. I, for one, don't voluntarily go prancing through most of my memories, good or bad as they may be. That's probably why it took me so long to realize.
But when I did realize, it was unavoidable.
March may be drawing to a close, but it's another arctic day today in Colburn. From the window I can see a mixture of rain and snow sheeting down on the frost already on our grounds, covering the grey slush with a newer, whiter coat. Coming from a place in Eldae where it only ever really rained, snow had been a really new thing to me when I joined the Famoux a couple years back. Today, it's nothing out of the ordinary. Colburn is located in a northern region of Betnedoor, and so snow in Marchââeven in Aprilââis something you get used to quickly. In fact, I can't even remember what spring used to be like without seeming to be winter's drearier sequel.
Most of the Famoux are using today's snowstorm as an excuse to cancel their calendars for a day. I've been sitting at one of the dozens of drawing rooms on the Hideaway's first floor for hours now, and one by one other members have been trickling in and joining me. For a rare moment, almost all of us, Classix and Fanatix alike, are gathered together in one concentrated place.
Minus one.
But of course Emeray isn't here.
She never is.
Some of us pass the time personally, writing things down or reading like me, while the majority sits close knit around a coffee table, debating on and on about what they believe the best movie of last year was.
The unity between the Fanatix and the Classix, I'll be honest, surprises me. It had been assumed by just about the entire world that the Famoux's caliber of celebrity couldn't mesh seamlessly with anybodyââthat there was this rift between Famoux and nonFamoux that had to be constantly sustained in order to achieve a balance. Dismissing the instances when we're being broadcasted constantly in the Fishbowl, we were mostly cut off from the rest of civilization if it didn't have anything to do with us. Articles about us in the tabloids were shots in the dark about what might be going on in the Metropolix, and the only reliable source about the Famoux was The X. I guess this rift, in hindsight, made us seem a lot colder than we really are.
The stratification between Classix and Fanatix is still prevalent, sure, but not in the way I was expecting it to be. The new members aren't afraid of us like some fans are when you've only thirty seconds to say hello and make an impression. When given some actual time to spend with us, one on one, they've gotten more comfortable. Articles in the magazines are personal, including recounts from the Fanatix about our day to day lives, our quirks, and, perish the thought, our flaws. A group that was once seen as the epitome of perfection is now seen to be what people hoped they wereââa group of humans.
But that doesn't mean things are easygoing around here. With eyes watching and waiting constantly to alert the media, there are few places to unwind. We're on display almost every second of the day, from the moment we wake up, and what we do in those seconds determines how the world is going to think of us by the time we go to sleep. Our only time we actually have alone is the time we're in our rooms, where there's nothing to do but invite more voices and opinions by checking the Analytix discreetly built into our bathrooms.
Having total, unlimited access to what people are saying about you can easily become an addiction. Personally, I never check my Analytix, but I know some of the Classix members check theirs constantly. Five times a day at the least.
Nobody's gotten a threat from DEFED in months, yet with every trip to the Analytix we leave starting to feel like our lives are on the line again.
I see this prevalently with Race. Kaytee told me a week ago that the only time he leaves her side is when he's going to a meeting or checking his Analytix. He comes back each time more frantic than the last, desperate to stay in the good graces he's hearing.
Under the scrutiny of the Fanatix, Race and Kaytee have to be on par constantly. After the disaster that was the Kaytee and Cartney breakup, she and Race are only being seen as a delightful couple to the press right now because their members Lacey and Sam say so. In order to keep this stigma, they have to be delightful all the time. And so arguments are quashed before they can even happen. Anger is bottled up and stowed away for another occasion. They've gotten so passive aggressive with each other now that sometimes I feel like they're no different than how Cartney and Kaytee used to beââalways putting up a front, always fighting to look happy.
It's upsetting to watch unfold.
"Hey Chaps," Till asks, pulling me from my thoughts. I look up from my book and find the whole group looking at me. "What do you think?"
"What was the question again?" I ask.
"What was the best film released last year?"
"Oh, that's simple. Yours, of course. Riot."
They flare up with more discussion, agreements and debates being thrown into the air at once. I return to my book, but it's hard to focus with nine other people in the room with me. This place is a palace, a kingdom within walls, and yet most everyone still chooses the same few rooms to congregate.
I glance over at Lex, who's scribbling something into a notebook. Beside her, Elle is actively, loudly participating in the conversation at hand. She meets my gaze, giving me a small, understanding nod before excusing herself from the room.
"Where are you going, Lex?" asks Gerald.
"Too loud in here," she says. "I need to focus."
As she goes, she looks back at me again. This time, I nod.
For having formally been a Famoux guard, Gerald looks surprisingly frightened to be left behind. I've started to notice that whenever he's not around either Lex or Emeray he completely shells up and doesn't participate with the others. It doesn't take too long before he excuses himself too.
As much as I'd prefer to read in silence, I don't get up and move like Lex and Gerald. Reading isn't my point of being here, anyway. No, I'm only here because this is the one sitting room in he entire house that opens to the main foyer. My armchair boasts a completely unobstructed view of the front door.
"But you have to admit that in all, Key was dynamically more intense than Riot," Sam insists to the group. "I think the build up, paired with the cinematography, made it so much more mature."
Sarah, Till's member, protests. Her red hair bounces as she feverishly shakes her head. "But Riot was actually exciting, Sam. The franchise is beloved, too. Key didn't even make sense half the time!"
She's right there. Even I didn't understand Key too much, and I starred as the film's eponymous lead.
"That's the point! It was for intellectual thinkers!"
"They can't make it so confusing and expect people to like it," she says. "We don't even know if Key was real!"
"Hey." Elle looks to me over the device on her lap. "We have the professional opinion right here in the room. Chapter, did Key exist?"
I set my book down, stretching my arms out in front of me. "That depends, are you going to post something about it to your hate blog?"
"If I feel like it." She shrugs, unable to hide her smugness. "Your little character's existence has been a highly debated topic among just about everyone in the whole world. I think it would be highly appreciated if you shared your insight."
The whole group turns to me once more. I hesitate.
Here's the problem: I have no freaking idea whether or not Key existed. For the main character, Arden, he would come and go, only existing in her life when the clocks were ticking. When time stopped, he'd disappear without a trace, without even the slightest signal that he'd been there at all. Her friends wouldn't know what he was talking about. Her teachers insisted she'd been doing her class project alone.
Critics and audiences alike theorized what this meantââwhy he only existed when time was ticking, not frozen. Was he a figment of her imagination, or was he an actual person? Did the clock moving signal real life, or another life? Why did Key show up in the first place? And, most importantly, why did he disappear at the end of the film?
"It's really up to the viewer," I tell Elle. "You can look at the story's ending in a variety of different waysââ"
"Oh, c'mon," she says. "We all saw you at your premiere, Chapter, so we know you've been a viewer at least once. What do you think, from a viewer's perspective?"
I steal a quick glance at the door. Nothing yet. Acknowledging that I won't be able to get out of this without an answer, I tap my chin, considering it for the group. Did the director or one of the producers slip me a secret about Key's existence between takes? I wrack my brain for a memory.
"Well, there's that one scene," I start, unsure of where I'm going with it. "That . . . that scene where Arden confronts him about who he is. He sort of makes it seem like he's more symbolic than literal there, don't you think?"
"So you think he's not real?"
"I mean, the scene makes it seem so."
I picture it in my head. The set. The costumes. Bree Arch, alive and standing in front of me, reviewing her lines quietly to herself before the cameras rolled. We only had to film this particular scene twice. The first time, she told the director that she hadn't done enough. The second run through was perfect.
"What are you?" Arden asked him. Bree asked me.
Key grinned at her. I grinned at Bree. "I'm Key. You know that."
"I don't know that! I don't!" She brought her fist down onto the dresser, an ad lib. I'm lucky the camera wasn't on me thenââthat it didn't catch me flinching with surprise when I was supposed to stand cooly. "I've been walking around for a whole week hearing everybody tell me that they've never heard of you!"
Bree played most all personas well, but she played frustration the best. She was especially good at getting into the role without forgetting herselfââone moment on camera crying, and the next cracking jokes with me after the director yelled Cut! The polar opposite of how Lex was acting on the set of Onward Train.
But anyone watching this scene of Key, watching Bree thrash around and make a ruckus right in front of me, wouldn't have guessed that not thirty seconds after filming she'd be teasing me about the way the designers had styled my hair that day.
ArdenââBreeââran her hands through her hair, her voice a wrenching shout. "What in the world are you?"
I remained silent for a second, still grinning. She erupted once more, stomping five times on the floor. Two times slow, three times quicker. Thump, thump, thump-thump-thump. Another improvisation. As she told me after filming, it made Arden seem almost childish in this momentââstomping on the floor like a kid who hasn't gotten their way. But even so, this addition always confused me. She must've been thinking a whole lot about making Arden seem childish in the second take, because the action seemed so oddly purposeful.
Then came my turn to speak my line. I pointed to myself, amused. "What am I, you're asking? Arden, I believe it's impolite to call somebody a what."
Bree glared so roughly, it felt real. I had to force out a laugh that suddenly wasn't coming too easy.
"I told you," I said. "I'm Key."
"The key to what?"
This is where it gets interesting. Key doesn't admit anything, but redirects the attention back to Arden instead. Perhaps a confusion tactic. "Why, you've lived so long in a shade of beige, Arden. Weren't you tired of beige?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"You need to unlock the other shades of who you are. That includes the darker colors."
So maybe Key only existed because she unlocked a darker part of herself.
Maybe he himself was the darker part.
Or maybe none of it mattered, because it was just a movieââa movie that wouldn't have done nearly as well as it did had it not been Bree Arch's final film.
"All this debate doesn't matter, anyway," Race proclaims to the room. As everyone looks to him, he smiles wide. "You're going to forget all about Key and Riot when Algus & Alondra comes out, you know."
"Oh yeah," says Till. "Isn't the premiere this weekend?"
He nods, voice turning snide. "It was supposed to come out a little later this month, but we moved the premier forward. The world needs something to get excited about after Cartney's album flopped."
Laughter follows. Nobody in the drawing room particularly enjoys Cartney Kirk's presenceââat least, not admittedly so. I notice that Kaytee and I are the only two people who don't laugh along.
Cartney's album, You're Impossible, did well for about a day or two before tanking on the charts. The critics claimed that there were far too many slow songs that sounded the sameââthat the whole album droned by like a bad dream. It's as if Cartney Kirk forgot how to write a hit, wrote one of the reviews. The way he pleads for some kind of forgiveness song by song is genuinely embarrassing to listen to.
I know that, despite whatever threat he might be facing, this kind of a failure should be divesting for Cartney.
But like Emeray, Cartney isn't quite himself either. He couldn't care less.
"I'd really been hoping for more angry songs," Sam admits, stating the opinion of nearly every person who bought an album.
Race nods. "I thought, knowing him, he'd create some drama. But all he could do was mope on and on about losing Kaytee. It's like, everyone's over it."
Beside him, Kaytee frowns, and again I'm the only one who notices. She meets my gaze for all of a second before transforming back into a happy girlfriend, putting her hand on Race's shoulder before getting up from the couch.
"That reminds me to finish a song I've been working on," she says. She nods to Lacey with urgency. "Do you want me to mentor you a bit? We could maybe go to the studio and work on something."
Lacey gets up too. "Sure, Kay."
The two of them depart from the room, grabbing their coats before exiting through the front door. Slowly following, the other members seem to develop their own obligations. Within a few minutes, Till, Race, and their Fanatix members are gone too. Elle is the last to leave the sitting room after a little while more.
And then it's just me.
Time passes. The room is finally silent, but I still can't seem to focus on the words in my book. My eyes keep shifting up to the clock on the wall as it ticks away, second by second, minute by minute. After a while a part of me expects it to stop ticking all together, just like in the movie.
I'm about to get up and leave when the front door finally opens. All my attention is directed to the massive bouquet that enters the house and the girl that follows at least three feet after it.
xxx
Thats right, we're shaking things up. New perspectives and all that jazz. You're welcome for sparing you yet another chapter full of Emeray's inner turmoil. Yet, all we got today was Chapter being all dramatic and brooding. Well. I'm just fantastic at this. Maybe I'll have to update again just to add some pizazz.
Tell me your thoughts.
Honestly, I felt this indescribable happiness while writing this week. I truly love posting for you every Friday, and for some reason I couldn't even think about Wattpad this week without getting all teary eyed and happy. I love doing this, and I especially love doing this for you.
I'm finally getting around compiling all those questions readers were commenting on the character interviews in book 1. Someone asked that I do a video answering the questions, and I was wondering if you'd like that? Please tell me what you think!
If you have any questions for me about my life, about writing, about Famoux, just let me know right here. If I don't do a video, I'll surely write them down and post them.
Have an amazing Friday, Wattpad. Remember:
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but haters make you famoux. Stay classy, stay classix.