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supposed to be on a TV show.”
    â€œ Spotlight ?”
    â€œYou too?” Her too.
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œHow nervous are you?”
    â€œI’m going to approach this thing with a lot of energy.”
    â€œWhat?” I look at her sideways. “Come on, that’s a cop-out. That’s like a robot answer.” I break into a robot dance for her for a second, doing a robot voice. “I-have-en-er-gy.”
    She regards me with such seriousness. “Your robot is so bad that I’m not sure they have robots where you’re from.”
    â€œNow, I thought we were being friendly.”
    â€œI am being friendly! And energetic.”
    I think about what a girl like her would think if I took her out with me in Calumet. The way the other girls would give her suspicious looks, how small potatoes it would all look to her. The difference is just in the way that everyone’s come up. It runs through everything everyone does. A girl like this could barely grasp at the feeling you get when you’re born and raised in a town so small that people still hold you responsible for shit your grandparents did.
    â€œIt’s different where I’m from.” I look out over the endless lights. “That’s for sure.”
    â€œDifferent how?” she asks.
    If I wanted to explain why to her and do any kind of a decent job, I’d have to get into my background and my family. And telling her about Marigold already feels like enough of a stumble.
    â€œI really don’t think you’d understand,” I say, and as soon as I’ve said it, I can hear how it sounds. It sounds like I’m blowing her off.
    The look in her eyes changes, like she’s suddenly given up on whatever she wanted out of our conversation. She gets up out of the egg chair. She does the Robot—and she’s good at it.
    Then she walks off, her high-tops squeaking on the pool deck. I watch her, outlined against the night, and I keep my mouth shut just in case being mysterious can save me.

Magnolia
8
    The producers originally wanted the ten of us to meet while arriving at the mansion so cameras could be there when we took in the size of the bathtubs. But we have to do it instead at the vocal coach’s glass house in the Hollywood Hills. Or at least what’s supposed to be the vocal coach’s house for the purposes of the show, since I don’t know if this is actually where she lives. I’m kind of suspicious because I haven’t seen personal photos anywhere. Also, she keeps saying things like “This is so cute” and “Cute, cute, cute, I love this” every time she notices a vase or a little statue on a shelf. Either she’s just really, really appreciative of her belongings every morning or else she’s never been here before either.
    There’s no filming yet, so Catherine, the head producer, says, “You can just be yourselves for a second.”
    We’ve been asked to sit still on the white leather sectional while a cameraman checks the lighting under our faces. But the guy I met on the hotel rooftop, Ford, has gotten up to go stand at the window while he waits his turn. He was in my dream last night, and it was one of those dreams where your brain tricks you into thinking you’re so close to someone you don’t even know in real life that you wake up sort of devastated, like you’ve actually lost him. And all we were doing in my dream was collecting marbles together.
    Anyway, this lingering feeling is making it hard for me to look at him, so I’m ignoring him instead.
    Besides that, I think I’m doing great at coming out of my shell. Normally, I would be the one standing over at the window. But here I am, sitting on the couch with the group and keeping my eyes wider than usual so I don’t seem withdrawn.
    Catherine stands in front of us and claps her hands together once as if she’s going to lead us in a prayer. I can smell