Preview of The Daydreams by Laura Hankin

Preview of The Daydreams by Laura Hankin

One

2018

We all had our roles to play, and I was The Bitch.

Or, to rephrase in the family-friendly language preferred by the corporation that aired our TV show: The Mean Girl. A villain with devious plans and that devastating eyebrow. One slow raise of it, and I could turn even the most poorly written insult into the kind of taunt that keeps a person up at night. (My eyebrow got a workout.)

Liana was The Best Friend, supportive and true and allowed to be a little bit funny, her face always right outside the spotlight's glow.

Summer and Noah? They were The Stars, and The Star-Crossed Lovers. Golden, beautiful teenagers practically designed in a lab to sing and dance their way into your heart. Summer swooned for Noah, and a million girls swooned with her. Noah longed for Summer, and a million men longed for her to turn eighteen.

We played a group of fictional high schoolers who started a band together. Over the course of the show's two seasons, the special concert appearances, and the live finale crafted to set us up for a blockbuster movie, story lines switched between the band's budding music career and high school drama that was so heavily sanitized, we seemed to live in a world where babies were delivered by stork.

The show was called The Daydreams, and in the thirteen years since our live finale went so spectacularly wrong, I've been trying to leave it behind me. Yet here I am hiding in my office, squinting at a video link that I fear will plunge me right back into the mess I've worked so hard to escape.

I'm a lawyer now, by the way. I'm on the partner track, and I wear skirts from Banana Republic, and the people I meet assume that I am the boring, real-life version of the big-city girlfriend in a Hallmark movie who doesn't appreciate Christmas. Sometimes, though, my disguise slips. I forget and use the devastating eyebrow on a difficult client whose kid used to watch the show, or whose assistant was a preteen girl at just the right time. It clicks into place for them: Katherine, who patiently responds to all the urgent emails they send at nine on a Friday night, is actually Kat, who for a couple of strange, glorious years was one of the leads of a television phenomenon. They take a new interest in me, asking why I left Hollywood, if I'd ever go back. "Being a movie star has nothing on mergers and acquisitions," I say with a smile, and usually that works.

Once, though, a middle-aged businessman kept going. "So did you know that Summer Wright was going to-" he started. I knocked my coffee cup into his lap, and that got us off the topic.

Liana's got a new role too: A Wife. Her husband plays for the Texas Rangers and has been setting all sorts of records that I do not understand because I don't follow sports. She looks great in the stands at his games, more made-up and glamorous than she ever was on the show. She looks a little less great in the tabloid photos, underneath headlines wondering when she and Javier are going to have a baby.

But you want to hear about The Stars. Everyone always does. I haven't spoken to either of them since the finale, and I have better things to do than sit around all day refreshing their social media pages. Still, I am a person living in the world, so I know this much:

Noah is the only one of us whose role hasn't changed. If anything, he's grown more golden, with an Oscar nomination in his pocket and all sorts of casting rumors about his next big project. All sorts of rumors about his love life too, now that he and his long-term girlfriend have broken up. I wish him nothing but the worst.

And Summer. Ethereal, wide-eyed Summer, who had all the potential in the world? She is The Cautionary Tale.

I don't want what I did onscreen back then to define how others see me, or what I did offscreen to define how I see myself. But now, I stare at the video on my phone, labeled Entertainment Wow Exclusive: Interview with Noah Gideon. My boyfriend, Miheer, sent it to me while I was in a meeting with a client, along with a string of text messages. You're having a moment online! was the first one, then, Uh, this thing is blowing up, and finally, I'll grab wine on the way home. As my client droned on, the buzz of my phone in my pocket grew increasingly steady-notification piling upon notification-until it felt like I was sitting on a vibrator. I made some excuse and escaped to my office, knowing that something must have happened with The Daydreams. Something big. Probably something bad.

My heart rate speeds up. I press play.

Two

2018

There he is on my phone screen: Noah, with a closely trimmed beard and vivid blue eyes, sprawling in a chair. An interviewer-midtwenties, giggly, the kind of thin that I used to be before I left Hollywood and started eating bread-leans forward, almost panting with excitement. Her enthusiasm doesn't faze him. He's used to being worshipped.

"It's so fun to be talking with you today about your adorable new film, Genius!" she says.

"Thanks for having me," Noah replies.

The interviewer indicates the poster behind them, for some piece of CGI trash that will probably make a few hundred million dollars. "You voice a tech support worker who gets sucked into one of the computers he's trying to fix, and I obviously want to hear all about how you got into character."

Noah shoots her a charming smile. "It was tough, considering that my own tech skills max out at 'try turning it off and on again.'"

"Aw, I'm sure that's not true!"

"You're right, it's not," he says, straight-faced. "I'm also good at putting things in rice."

"So funny," she gushes. "But before we talk more about the movie, my fourteen-year-old self would kill me if I didn't ask you about The Daydreams."

"Oh boy," Noah says. "You sure you have to?"

"Us fans need closure, Noah!"

This happens sometimes, interviewers tossing him a softball question or two about the show before everyone moves on. (Not that I watch all of Noah's interviews! I try to avoid them, because it generally makes me furious to watch everyone fawn over him like he's a god descending from Mount Olympus. But it's been a long thirteen years, and sometimes I've slipped up.)

The interviewer turns to the camera. "I think we can all agree that the live season-two finale got a little, can I say . . . messy?"

"Sure, 'messy' is a fair word for it." Noah grins like he's in on the joke. This has been his strategy since the show imploded. He gets to be in on the joke while the rest of us are the butt of it. Still, there are some things you don't forget about a person if you used to be one of their best friends and also had a massive crush on them. Noah didn't get nervous often-the world had been too kind to him-but when he did, he transferred his anxiety into the heel of his foot. I look down-it's a wide shot-and sure enough, his foot is tapping away.

I'm certain he has a gentleman's agreement with the outlet not to talk too much about this. Besides, we all signed something long ago that ensured we wouldn't say anything to tarnish the Atlas brand, and any public comment about the finale that hasn't been heavily workshopped with a team of publicists definitely risks tarnishing. But still, the interviewer plows on.

"The speculation was that, by the end of the finale, we were going to get all sorts of plot developments to launch us into a movie. Maybe some redemption for Kat, a solo for Liana, a big record deal for the band."

Right after we'd all been cast, the show's creator changed the characters' names so that they were the same as our own. It was the savviest move he made, blurring the lines between fiction and reality like that. Our fans felt that we were playing versions of ourselves. That I actually did hate Summer. That Liana truly would do anything for her. And that Noah loved her in a pure, once-in-a-lifetime way. Some parts of that were true. But sometimes what happened behind the scenes was far beyond anything the censors would have allowed.

The interviewer continues. "But my fourteen-year-old self was most excited about the rumor that you and Summer were finally going to kiss, after coming so close all those times." She starts ticking them off on her fingers. "The almost kiss at the homecoming dance, right before Kat cut in! The almost kiss at the school carnival, when Kat shut down the Ferris wheel! The almost-"

"You know them all by heart, huh?" Noah cuts in.

"Obviously. There was even a confusing almost kiss in the broadcast, right before Summer went off script. And then the network cut the feed, so we never saw the end! Millions of us viewers were devastated. The amount of time I spent on fan-fiction sites, trying to get some closure . . . well, it's embarrassing. So can you please tell us more about what was supposed to happen?"

Noah swallows, still keeping that smile on his face. "You know, I can barely remember at this point. But what I do know is I'll be forever grateful to The Daydreams for launching my career." He deploys the Hollywood Pivot like a pro. "And speaking of, I can tell you more about Genius-"

"In a second! But first . . . we're living in a time of reboots. So, what do you say? Would you ever consider coming back for a reunion, and giving fans the ending that they've wanted for thirteen years?"

What is this interviewer doing? Some assistant must have forgotten to brief her on the list of off-limits topics. Either that, or she has gone rogue in search of a headline, throwing caution to the wind to get her face all over the internet, gentleman's agreement be damned. Noah's publicist is never going to let her interview him again.

"I guess I'd say . . ." He pauses for probably only a few seconds, but it feels interminable. His heel taps so fast he could lead a Broadway revival of 42nd Street. Any other time, I'd love to watch him squirm in discomfort. But not now, not about this.

No no no, I think, even though I already know what his answer will be. He doesn't really have a choice. This giggly, enthusiastic interviewer has fenced him in. Noah leans back and casually utters a sentence that is going to make my life very difficult. "If the other Daydreams want to come back, I do too."

Excerpted from The Daydreams by Laura Hankin Copyright © 2023 by Laura Hankin. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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