turned out to be fake, and fireproof, their mineral wool trunks wrapped in vinyl laminate bark. (Constellation had been built, after all, on top of the scorched wreckage of a county-leveling wildfire.) The leaves and flowers Marlow so loved, she found out, would never have coexisted in one natural species, especially not in California. Their foliage was laser-cut from modacrylics and melamines. When they flooded with color, they did so at the push of a button, at the whim of the network.
But even with all that was choreographed for the cameras, Constellation still had more realness to it than its fans believed. Though Marlow knew people thought the opposite, her life wasn’t technically scripted. There were writers, of course—they lived in the gray-block high-rises on the edge of town, buildings so ugly they seemed designed to remind the writers who they weren’t—but they didn’t decide what came out of Marlow’s mouth. The writers were more like overbearing aunts, giving Marlow broad pep talks on how to be, weeding out her wardrobe. The network execs were both more mysterious and more direct. They lived among the talent, rotating and functioning as watchful extras—not long ago, Marlow had been startled to find the Head of Storyline himself behind the juice bar’s counter, handing her her usual smoothie. They never spoke to the talent out loud, not with the audience watching, but they were constantly in Marlow’s head, bossing her through her device. They let her choose things for herself, but they also closed off plenty of options. It was a little like being a mouse in a maze. She could run as fast as she wanted, but she wasn’t picking the turns.
It took Marlow a long time to see that this was how she had come to marry Ellis. The network had nudged him into the path they knew she’d have to take, a lonely corridor she had been racing down since freshman year of high school, when Hysteryl started sponsoring her and the network began forcing kids to sit with her at lunch. Marlow knew her classmates’ parents had threatened and cajoled them—be nice to her or we’ll get a fine, next semester you’ll be back with your real friends—and the kids always listened. They were always kind. But she could feel the resentment over their assigned seats rising like heat from their skin. No one had sat with her just because they wanted to since Grace. No one had been her friend out of choice since the night she became, as the network put it, “a good fit” for the Hysteryl campaign.
After graduation, everyone else in Marlow’s class was issued their vocational arcs—outdoorsy chef, promiscuous nurse—and sent off for their year of training. But all Marlow got was a memo, telling her she was free to spend her days in any way that kept her happy. So she trailed her mother to the spa. She rearranged the furniture in her room and pretended that it meant she had a flair for interior design. She kept going to ballet class, even though every year the girls got younger and younger than her. Marlow never liked the actual dancing but loved posing in formation with the others. She loved the tiny heh of the shared breath they took just before they started moving, the synchronized thunk of their pointe shoes as they finished a combination. She would let herself imagine that these girls were really her friends, standing close to her on purpose. After class, she would pay attention as the other dancers rolled their tights up to their knees and talked about their classmates. Over time, she learned all the names, all the stories, every corner of an ecosystem she was not a part of. Sometimes, when she was out, she would recognize someone from the ballerinas’ gossip, someone she had never met but felt like she knew so well, it was hard not to say hello. It was the first time she understood the way her followers must feel about her, and the line that came into her mind, as she gazed at these strangers, was always the same: Oh, it’s one of you. From my collection.
Finally, Marlow turned twenty-one and was eligible for real romance. Twenty-one was the age at which the young talent’s random dalliances with each other were replaced with dates staged by the network: amber-lit restaurant dinners of vibrant food that sat untouched, lest the sounds of chewing muddy the audio of the two stars at