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  Damien recited the rant like a Shakespearean soliloquy, but Cash’s eyes drifted away from him. His attention was completely captivated by Amy, who had started taking selfies with her phone. Cash couldn’t think of anything more inappropriate to do in the middle of an intervention—it was like ordering a pizza in the middle of a funeral. Then again, he wasn’t surprised. Amy’s narcissism had always fascinated him.

  Once when they were on set, Cash accidentally saw inside Amy’s photo album when he confused her phone for his. Every picture was a different selfie with the same exact pose and her favorite expression—sultry surprise. He scrolled for miles but never found a single picture of friends or family—it was all just Amy. Sometimes he worried Amy wasn’t actually Amy at all, but Amy’s stalker wearing a suit made out of her skin.

  “Cash, are you even listening to me?” Damien asked, and leaned forward to take a closer look at him. “Wait, are you stoned?”

  “Not enough for this conversation,” Cash muttered under his breath.

  This got a serious rise out of his coworkers, especially Tobey Ramous, who was so annoyed he threw his phone aside.

  “This is going nowhere!” Tobey said. “He doesn’t give a shit about anything we’re telling him. I’m supposed to be back in Los Angeles tonight for a night shoot. How much longer is this going to take?”

  Tobey (or Roids McRage, as Cash called him behind his back) was referring to the set of Moth-Man, the multi-million-dollar comic book movie he was starring in. He had bulked up so much for the part, and so quickly, it was a miracle he could tie his own shoes. Moth-Man was an opportunity every actor dreams of and Tobey was using his entire hiatus from Wiz Kids to shoot it. Still, Cash found it very ironic that Tobey spent eighty hours a week dressed as a giant insect yet somehow thought his time was more valuable than anyone else’s.

  “Allow me to wrap things up,” Cash said. “I understand my behavior has raised a few eyebrows, but after nine seasons of playing by the rules, always saying and doing the right thing and never rocking the boat, I think I’ve earned the right to have a little fun. Come on, guys, I’ve been doing this show since I was twelve years old. You’re only young once—I just want to be young while I still can.”

  If the looks being exchanged were any indication, there wasn’t an ounce of sympathy for him. No one gave a fuck about his desire to be young.

  “Unfortunately, your definition of youth is a breach of contract,” one of the male executives said. “You and your representation agreed to the studio’s morality clause when you were hired, and then again during renegotiations in the sixth season. If your behavior doesn’t change, we’ll be forced to take legal action.”

  It was a very serious threat, but instead of trembling where he sat, Cash only laughed.

  “You can only sue me if I’m still under contract,” he said. “And at the rate I’m going, I doubt you’ll be employing me much longer.”

  “So that’s what this is really all about?” Amy said. “You’re trying to get yourself fired? That’s pathetic!”

  “Dude, you’re a fucking idiot,” Tobey said. “If you get fired from the show you’ll never work again and the fans will hate you!”

  Cash was overwhelmed by the love and support coming from his costars. They were nailing this whole intervention thing. He was totally inspired to change his ways so their lives would be easier.

  “Everyone, calm down,” Jim said. “No one is getting fired. We’re here to help Cash, not scold him or accuse him of anything.”

  They were obviously on different pages about the matter, because Damien was giving Cash the most scornful look to date. Not once in nine years had he ever turned down an opportunity to scold Cash.

  “I feel so sorry for you, Cash,” Damien said. “You’re not mature enough to understand how lucky you are. There are millions of people in this world who would kill to be sitting where you are. Like it or not, you’re the lead actor of a network’s highest-rated show—they’d sue you for everything you’ve got before they’d fire you. So you’re going to fulfill your contractual obligations and you’re going to do it on your best behavior. I’d make peace with that if I were you.”

  Cash didn’t know if he should be appalled or applaud him—Damien gave his best performances when he was ticked off. However, his allegations couldn’t be further from the truth. Immaturity and ingratitude were languages Damien spoke, not Cash. The truth was, Cash had made peace with reality—he had made more peace than anyone else in the room could possibly understand.

  “There’s more than one way to get out of a contract,” Cash said.

  A wide grin spread across his face. No matter how much they tried scaring him, Cash knew he wasn’t returning for the next season of the show. There was something he wasn’t telling them—something he would have loved to confess just to prove them all wrong, but he had to be strategic about it. A better time would present itself.

  The stagehand reentered the room very awkwardly, like he was walking in on his elderly parents having sex.

  “Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt,” he said. “We told the crowd we were starting at two thirty and it’s now two forty-five. Are we close, or should we tell them we’ve pushed it to three?”

  “We’ll put a pin in this conversation until we find time to finish it,” Jim said. “We’ve brought our concerns to Cash, now it’s his job to take them to heart. But let me reiterate, no one is getting fired and no one is leaving the show. We’re here to talk about the upcoming season and nothing else. Now, let’s go out and make the fans happy. None of us would have jobs without them.”

  No one objected. Everyone was relieved the conversation was finally over, especially Amy and Tobey. The meeting seemed to have taken a toll on them more than it had on Cash. He almost offered them some of the treats in his pocket, but thought it was probably tacky to offer drugs right after an intervention.

  Jim and the executives left the greenroom to watch the panel from the audience. The stagehand escorted Damien, Tobey, Amy, and Cash to the stage and had them wait behind the curtain.

  “When they call your name, step through the curtain and take your seat at the table,” the stagehand instructed.

  “Oh, is that how it works?” Tobey said, and did an impression of someone with special needs.

  “Yeah, like we’ve never done this before,” Amy said, and took another selfie.

  Cash chuckled, but not at his costars. He thought it was funny how there was hydrocodone, weed, and alcohol flowing through his veins at a work event but he wasn’t the biggest douchebag onstage.

  “Sorry, they make me remind you every year,” the stagehand said, and clicked the button on his headset. “We’re ready back here. Cue the introduction!”

  An energetic announcer was blasted over the audio system and filled the theater like the voice of God.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, extraterrestrials, reptiles and insectoids, people from the past, present, and future, and Wizzers from around the world, welcome to the 2017 ‘Wiz Kids Cast and Creative Panel’!”

  The audience went berserk. If the energy emitting from their bodies could be absorbed, it would power all the homes in Central America for a decade.

  “Please welcome the former star of Who’s the Parent? and the creator of Wiz Kids, Damien Zimmer!”

  The words former star seemed to have sent a sharp pain down Damien’s spine because he twitched uncomfortably. He stepped through the curtain and bowed before the audience. The Wizzers greeted him with warm applause but mostly tried to look past him to see the cast standing backstage.

  “You know him as the goofy anthropologist Professor Fitz Luckunckle! Please welcome to the stage the man who puts the ‘buff’ in ‘history buff’ and the star of the upcoming movie Moth-Man, Tobey Ramous!”

  Tobey leaped through the curtain like a bull released from its pen. His silhouette darted across the curtain as he ran around the stage doing backflips and flexing his muscles for the crowd. T
obey was so amped up an elephant tranquilizer wouldn’t have calmed him down.

  “You know her as the mechanical engineer with the heart of gold, Dr. Jules ‘the Tools’ Peachtree! Please welcome actress turned supermodel and outspoken pescatarian the gorgeous and talented Amy Evans!”

  Amy glided through the curtain like she was on a catwalk. She blew kisses, made heart shapes with her hands, and then took a selfie onstage—but oddly, didn’t include the audience in it.

  “Last but certainly not least, you know him as the lovable, nerdy, and quirky quantum physics expert Dr. Webster Bumfuzzle! Please give a warm WizCon welcome to the one and only Caaaash Caaaarter!”

  Before the announcer was finished, the audience was screaming so loud Cash could barely hear his cue to come out. He stepped onstage and was hit with a tsunami of affection. The audience roared twice as hard as they had for the others. The stage lights made it very difficult to see anything and a tardy spotlight practically blinded him. All Cash could see was the manic flashing of cameras in the audience, as if he were facing an endless, pulsating galaxy.

  When his eyes finally adjusted, he saw Wizzers shaking, crying, and jumping hysterically throughout the theater. He politely waved at the crowd, only causing the commotion to magnify. Cash found his seat at the table beside his coworkers, but the audience continued cheering until their voices went hoarse.

  “Please welcome the panel moderators. From Entertainment Weekly, Jennifer Smalls; from The Hollywood Reporter, Terrence Wallem; and YouTube personality Kylie Trig.”

  Lights came up on the front row of the audience, where the moderators sat. Each had a handheld microphone and a Wiz Kids notepad with their questions.

  “We’ll start the panel questions with Jennifer Smalls,” the announcer said.

  “Thanks for having me, WizCon,” Jennifer Smalls said into her microphone. “First off, it’s so wonderful to be back at WizCon!”

  If there was one thing the cast of Wiz Kids agreed on, it was that Jennifer Smalls was Satan in black leggings. Before she reported for Entertainment Weekly, Jennifer worked for a website called Gotcha, a gossip blog devoted to outing closeted gay actors, breaking up celebrity couples, starting pregnancy rumors, leaking nude photos, and making life as difficult as possible for anyone in the public eye.

  When Cash bought his first home, Jennifer Smalls posted his address online, which was practically an invitation for paparazzi, Hollywood tour buses, and five very delusional people who refused to leave. It cost Cash hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire full-time security for his property and to expedite restraining orders. Needless to say, he wasn’t Jennifer Smalls’s biggest fan. The only reason she was invited to WizCon was because in 2004 she wrote an article claiming Damien Zimmer was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor Emmy nomination for Who’s the Parent?

  “You’re always welcome here, Jennifer,” Damien said into his microphone.

  “My question is for Cash,” she said. “We’ve noticed there is more and more stunt work each season. I was wondering what it was like to film episode 908—‘Atlantis Falling.’”

  “It was wet,” Cash replied—and that was all she got.

  His shortness was not just a tactic for Jennifer’s questions, but for the convention in general. The less he spoke, the fewer pictures would surface of him in midword—those always made him look like he was having a stroke, and also seemed to be the only photos publications used with their articles anymore. Luckily, the audience found his shortness very amusing and no one was the wiser.

  “Now we’ll go to Terrence Wallem for the next question,” the announcer said.

  The Hollywood reporter from The Hollywood Reporter aggressively flipped through his notes as he formed a question. He was in his late sixties and one of the most feared television critics in Los Angeles. Terrence was infamous for finding something to dislike in everything he watched. He said Game of Thrones was “too soft,” Downton Abbey was “juvenile,” and The Big Bang Theory was “an insult to intelligent people.”

  Judging by the irritated look on Terrence’s face, he would rather have been having a colonoscopy with no anesthesia than be sitting at WizCon among the Wizzers.

  “My question is for Mr. Zimmer,” Terrence said. “With all due respect, this show is all over the place. In the same episode your characters were swimming in the rivers of Ancient Mesopotamia during one scene, and then hiking through the craters of Mars in the next. What exactly inspired you to create this show?”

  “I’ve always been a huge fan of science fiction and history, and no one had intertwined them yet—at least as well as I thought I could,” Damien said, and ran his fingers through his hair. “Originally I wrote it for myself to star in, but once I began developing it with the studio, I decided the part wasn’t right for me. I told them it would be better for the show if I stayed off camera and put all my creative energy into the writer’s room.”

  “Right,” Terrence said, and made a note of it. So far, the creative side of this panel wasn’t impressing him.

  “Our next question will be from Kylie Trig,” the announcer said.

  The audience cheered for YouTube personality Kylie Trig as if she were an actor in the show. Kylie stood and waved to her admirers like a pageant contestant. She was in her late teens, had bright blue hair, and wore cat’s-eye glasses and a rainbow tutu. Even before she opened her mouth, she was a lot to take in.

  “Helloooo, Wizzers!” Kylie said into her microphone with the energy of a coked-out toddler. “It’s so good to be back at WizCon!”

  It wasn’t long ago that Kylie was just another Wiz Kid superfan following the cast from airport to airport, hotel to hotel as they traveled the country on press tours. Kylie started vlogging about her brief encounters with them (stretching the truth from time to time) and developed a following of her own. As the show gained an audience, so did Kylie’s videos.

  Today, she was one of YouTube’s most watched personalities and had become a New York Times bestselling author when HarperCollins published her debut memoir, Confessions of a Fangirl: A Wizzer Love Story. According to Forbes magazine, Kylie Trig was now worth more money than the whole cast put together.

  Interestingly enough, the success of Wiz Kids went to Kylie’s head more than it went to the head of anyone officially attached to the show. The girl who used to wait outside in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of Cash, Amy, or Tobey would now only go to Wiz Kid events if she was paid six figures and flown private. In Cash’s opinion, Kylie Trig was the American Dream for a new generation.

  “My first question is for Cash and Amy,” Kylie said. “What is the fate of Peachfuzzle? And do you love Peachfuzzle as much as the Peachfuzzlers?”

  Cash stared at Kylie like she was speaking another language, but he consciously kept his emoting to a minimum so his face wouldn’t be turned into an obnoxious meme later.

  “Huh?” Cash asked. “What’s a Peachfuzzler?”

  Kylie playfully rolled her eyes as if he had asked her if blue was her natural color. “The shippers who ship Dr. Peachtree and Dr. Bumfuzzle,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve seen the hashtags.”

  “I thought they called themselves Bumtrees,” Cash said.

  Kylie shook her head. “We changed it.”

  Terrence Wallem looked from side to side in a daze. He had no clue what the hell anyone was talking about. Whatever Peachfuzzlers or Bumtrees were, they couldn’t be appropriate for the children in the audience.

  “Cash and I couldn’t be more thrilled so many people care so deeply about the relationship between our characters,” Amy said, desperate to say something before the panel was over.

  “So will they be on or off next season?” Kylie asked. “Cash?”

  This was a very tricky question, especially since Cash didn’t have an answer. The “shippers” were the most passionate group of the Wiz Kids fandom. If Cash said something they liked, his social media would be flooded with pictures, videos, and GIFs of Dr. Bumfuzzle and Dr.
Peachtree kissing or looking lovingly at each other. If he responded with something they didn’t like, his social media would be bombarded with pictures, videos, and GIFs of decapitated animals, human feces, and militants destroying priceless artifacts. He had to be careful.

  “Well, they’ve been on and off since season five,” Cash said with a nervous quiver in his voice. “So, since they were mostly off last season, I would assume they’d be back on next season.”

  His answer was music to the Peachfuzzlers’ ears. The shippers throughout the audience stood and applauded. It was an emotional moment of triumph for them, as if the football team from their hometown had just won the Super Bowl.

  “For the next question, we’ll go back to Jennifer Smalls,” the announcer said.

  Jennifer leaned back in her seat, retracting her head like a snake about to strike. Cash mentally braced himself for the venom coming his way.

  “My next question is also for Cash,” Jennifer said. “Over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten hundreds of tweets from people saying they’ve seen you stumbling out of bars or dancing erratically in clubs. Has the stress of Hollywood caught up to you? Is it true you’re hanging up your role-model cape in exchange for a pair of bad-boy boots?”

  The entire convention went dead silent. Apparently you could take the girl out of Gotcha, but you couldn’t take the Gotcha out of the girl. To Cash’s horror, Damien spoke on his behalf before he had a chance to respond.

  “People forget Cash is just a normal twenty-two-year-old when he’s off set,” he said. “As long as things don’t get out of hand, he has every right to have a little fun while he’s still young.”

  Cash snapped his head toward Damien so hard it was a miracle his neck didn’t break. He had never heard something so kind and backstabbing uttered in the same breath before. Cash was tempted to splash Damien with water just to see if he would melt.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Cash said. “Work hard, play hard—that’s my motto.”

  “The next question will be from Terrence Wallem,” the announcer said, trying to change the subject.