Immortal Icon quickly rose to become one of those shows with a cult following of the twelve-to-eighteen-year-old target audience age group. The fans quickly turned into fanatics. Being from a musical theatre only background, I have to admit it threw me for a loop, having never experienced something like that before – it scared me. I wasn’t so good at hiding it. You tried to play it cool. To laugh it off. There were t-shirts and bedspreads and school supplies and cheaply made dog tags and travel mugs and trivia games and oh God, of course there were the CDs, the ITunes downloads that crashed the digital media store because of unmanageable traffic. That was the one thing that you didn’t laugh off. The music. You let yourself care about the music. You weren’t so embarrassed and self-conscious about the music. You didn’t have to try and pretend like you weren’t. You just weren’t.
But it scared you too, didn’t it? All of the attention? The skyrocketing fame? What if you weren’t what the newfound fans wanted you to be? What if you didn’t live up to their expectations of you? What if you really weren’t that angel-voiced boy on all of the posters on their walls? What if you weren’t attractive enough, talented enough, good enough? You thought about all of that, didn’t you? But Topher – didn’t you see how worried I was, too? About different aspects maybe, but I was worried too. I cared about what the fans felt about me, because I wanted to help them. Be a good role model. Be someone who gives hope to the kids out there who were just as destitute as I was. But you didn’t see how worried I was at the beginning, too. Were you to busy pretending, standing there with shaking hands in your pockets, leaning back with truly fabricated ease. You were never at ease – almost never, that is.
You were when you were just with me.
But you could’ve talked to me about it. We talked about everything, especially towards the end – marriage and children and houses in the suburbs and school plays and parent-teacher conferences and perfectly ordinary family life. But you never talked about it, about your fear, about your insecurities, about why the drinking started. Not really, not directly. The way you shoved your hands into your pockets when they shook instead of letting me hold them every time, instead of just from time to time. The way you trusted me, but couldn’t trust the world. Couldn’t trust yourself. Oh, you, you who kept telling me to stop pushing people away. You who kept reminding me that I wasn’t in the Projects of the Bronx anymore, you who kept telling me that no one was attacking me anymore, you who kept saying you loved me. You who kept your fists tight behind your back while lowering mine from my face. Why couldn’t I see it?
Why couldn’t I see any of it?
Why I couldn’t I see the darkness behind the light, the torture inside those hazel eyes, the closed off windows to your soul? Why couldn’t I see the signs, towards the end? The signs that you’d been slipping, losing your ever-quivering grip on our almost perfectly undefined life. I didn’t see how completely desperate you were, how you idolized me more than you ever had before. I didn’t see your shaking hands, your nights out late with Bruno, your stumbling in, your slurring of words, your garbled professions of love, your unguarded crying out for me – your reaching for my steady hand.
And how did I become the steady one, Topher? Tell me that. How did the street-gang princess who sang on the street for pennies become the stable one? How did the well-educated boy from the suburbs of Boston, with the fawn-colored hair and those hazel eyes – undefined eyes of neither an Eden green nor a muddled, corrupt brown – become the one in need of steadiness? But God, Topher, you were my stability, too. I needed you. You reminded me that someone could understand what I was going through, someone that I could really relate to. You always said you admired my strength. My self-made rise from the nothingness around me, to climb the ranks of our society. I’ll never forget what you called it. My “remarkable ability to hope.”
The first time you said that to me, I had taken you up to the tree house. It sounds strange to write it down, but I’d found that old, abandoned tree house while on a run, and after my own exploration of it, decided to take you up there with me. God, it was our own little music box, the two of us spinning in time together like glass dancers, turning on point, never breaking away from the perfect world of wonderful music. And never wanting too. It was as if Eden had been painted around us, in that meadow off the running path where I found it. Rosebushes all around, remember? God, Topher. You know how I felt about those roses. Beautiful, white and red roses. Both kinds embedded with their own thorns. And we used to sit together, for hours – countless hours we spent there, admiring the roses below, connecting the stars above in patterns and constellations, fluttering through the world around us, both of us unable to fathom what the other brought to that world, to our undefined little world.
Our undefined little world. Our multiverse. Our window into each other.

But at first we were friends – or, whatever it is we were. Not quite friends but not quite more than friends, either. The first season of the show was spent with critics wondering whether a ‘staged reality show’ would work on television. We spent the first season becoming friends, getting used to the new world around us. Our first red carpet – not counting the Immortal Icon up fronts, rolled out by Richard King and his top-notch team of producers themselves, because that wasn’t a televised event – was a teen-voted award show that featured musical performances by the hottest boy band and most auto-tuned pop singer of the minute. We were nominated for one award: Best Brand-New Series. We didn’t win, of course. People were still acclimating to us in the beginning, I guess. Everyone was afraid the show wouldn’t catch on. That the reality show fascination of the general public would not translate to that of a false reality.
Richard himself was more afraid that we – the cast – wouldn’t catch on. To be honest, we all were. There were seven of us, including you and I, in the main cast, and five in the recurring cast, making twelve cast member altogether, not including guest stars. We were a…varied bunch to say the least, the seven players of the main cast. There was Scarlett Parish, Tawny Claret, and Bruno Reynard, who for one reason or another saw themselves above the rest – though each reason had something to do with money, rather than talent. There was Benji Gorman, and Juliet Darling, who were both sixteen and had these pure blue eyes – eyes that looked upon the false red world of Hollywood, rapt as a baby when they first blink, viewing something so extraordinarily aesthetic as a new world for the first time.
And then, you and I. We were the outsiders.

We hadn’t worked in Hollywood yet. We weren’t from California. We weren’t from wealthy families. We were here, as close to a position of royalty as America can get, because we got ourselves there. With hard work, and determination, and talent, and drive, and will. We climbed a mountain and made it to the top while Scarlett, Bruno and the rest of them – even Benji, sweet little Benji – were born on top of it. They didn’t appreciate it like we did. They didn’t hone their crafts, they didn’t have sleepless nights of bettering themselves, they try because they didn’t have to. The American Dream used to be about independence, equal opportunity. Then somewhere around the Jazz Age it became about wealth, flash. Now, it’s all about one thing: fame. Sure, in America we don’t have aristocracy. We don’t have kings and queens and figures we bow before. But we do have stardom. Corrupt, immortal stardom that millions of young American dreamers in talent shows and beauty pageants and high school plays everywhere can so easily become addicted to. More intangible than currency, but much more effective. Maybe it doesn’t buy you anything – not directly, anyway. But that’s no matter. It makes people look at you, see you, notice you, listen to you, follow you, want to be you. It makes people love you. And this is precisely why so many actors are born with three words in their heads: “please love me”. You fell victim to “please love me”, Topher. It happens to the best of us.
It kills more actors than alcohol.
∞

The show started to catch on when they first decided to have us sing together, on the mid-season finale of season one. And I guess that’s when we first started to catch on, too. It felt like fire melting away a deep, dreadful snow that had been iced over for far too long. I can’t tell you exactly what happened, when we first recorded that duet. I can’t describe it in the correct words, exactly. All I can say was that it felt as if I were trapped, and someone had finally let me go free. You know my background was questionable. Being born in Italy and, at the age of five, relocating to a neighborhood with one of the highest crime rates in The Bronx. Family ties to the Italian Mafia. At the age of ten, the fact that it netted me a scholarship to a fancy-shamancy Manhattan school was the sole reason I was allowed to play Annie and make my stage debut. I went by my full name then: Celia Moriarty, rather than the nickname my material grandmother gave to me, Lia, and her last name, Speranza. Lia Speranza, the now household name, literally did not exist. So I guess you could say I made a name for myself. That’s something we had in common – you no longer went by Christopher Nix, but shortened your first name. Topher Nix was someone completely new, someone you could start over with. I felt the same way – new name, new reality. No more horrors long behind you dragging you down into the deep snows of your past. But that was still far away when I was twelve and Annie closed down. My father’s tolerance did the same – dreaming of being on stage was never exactly supported. My mother kept quiet. She always kept quiet, until the day she was killed in the crossfire. My father wouldn’t look at me after that. Then I really did become an orphan. It was the hard-knock life for me.
I guess you could say it made me jaded, that even working on stage full-time didn’t completely cure me of it. But now, it was different. California – Hollywood – was like an entirely separate world. A window into another reality that was not the society around me now, but a still new, deep green wonder of yet unfathomable promise. And there you were, the only one who was experiencing something similar to what I was – awed confusion. There you were, with your supportive words and your kind hazel eyes and your crooked smile. There you were, who started out being my best friend, who spent hours with me elevated towards the real stars in that tree house, talking about anything and everything, laughing about God knows what, letting me forget what I’d seen and done and bringing me into a new dawning world of hope.
The second half of season one and the start of season two brought the raging fans, and the flashing lights, and the larger budgets, the paparazzi. The first time we got followed by TMZ, you didn’t know enough to hide how proud you were, and you kept that first magazine cover we were on, I know you did. Then there were the CD signings, the tour, the DVD movie, the special guest star episodes, all of it. We were in the height of fame, the belly of the beast, the eye of the storm. Together. We started to hold hands, and go on dates, and eventually do awkward couple-y things that got blew up and reported on by all of the entertainment news shows and magazines. Fan-run blogs speculated on our relationship for, wow, it had to be months on end. But they couldn’t call it anything official, mainly because we couldn’t call it anything official. But it never really was, from the beginning. It wasn’t anything official, it was something special between us, only known to us, something beautiful and baby blue and delicate.
Finally one day we were sitting in the tree house, I was looking at my script, trying to work, and you kept interrupting me, hands shaking, half-smile wavering, words fumbling to form statements and trailing off into mumbled fragments, until I noticed and asked what was wrong. And you replied while looking down and shoving your hands into your pockets that what was wrong, exactly, was that you were trying to ask me to be your girlfriend. My initial reaction was to say no. It wasn’t you, Topher. It wasn’t us, either. It was everything around us, Hollywood, what our world would turn us into that caused me to hesitate. See, in the multiverse, we’ll never have to deal with that problem – we could create our own perfect world, wherever and whenever we want. Of course, in reality, I soon after agreed. And for a brief, beautiful period, everything was seemingly perfect. We were simply, wholly, happy. The rumors started to heat up, the entourages started to grow, the paparazzi started to become more and more fierce. We were so happy – we didn’t even care. Well, I didn’t care, and you told me you didn’t care. Now I don’t know what you really cared about or didn’t care about. Maybe even me. You always liked me, then loved me, then turned me into an icon. But was that out of desperation? Desperation not to backslide again? Why did you feel the need to hide it from me, until you couldn’t keep it hidden any longer? We had been so happy…
We’d been together for half a year when season two started. Once the second season’s tour started up, during the hiatus, our one-year anniversary came around. We were in New York, playing that night at Radio City. There was something about being at home, and being with you, and being so happy…I’ll never forget that night. It was right around Christmas, and the snow was falling in crystalline, reflective white flurries. We decided to get away from the others, out to a nice dinner before the show. Though our conversation was as naturally flowing and varied as always, after a while you insisted that we confirm our relationship to the public, soon. You said you didn’t care about the fans, or the tabloids, or anything else. You said you didn’t think that being a “celebrity couple” would change anything. You said you didn’t care, Topher. Back then I believed you. Now, I’m not so sure. Of course, I knew you were self-conscious, nervous, that I had to help you be brave. I didn’t know it was as bad as it was, having started from childhood, from a broken family that never believed in your dreams, from older brothers who capitalized on your talent, from always trying to prove yourself worthy. I should’ve known that’s why you’d been to rehab before you were even legal drinking age. It was nearly your twenty-fourth birthday, on our year anniversary. You were already so old at twenty-four, Topher. You were always an old, poetic, lost soul, searching to find your place in the world in which you felt you needed to prove your place in. That night you said you loved me. I said I loved you too. You said it would be okay, no matter what happened, because we had each other. It was okay. But what about now, Topher? I’m not okay anymore.
In the multiverse, we’ll always be okay.
And, of course, you know what happened next. We played the show to a sold-out crowd. It’s the last song of the night, and we’re all tired, hungry, our throats throbbing, our heads pounding. One by one, we each run out to take bows, in ascending order. First Bruno and Tawny, then Juliet and Benji, Scarlett, and you and I. We came out and bowed, and waved to the audience. What happened after that would become the most re-tweeted picture on Twitter that year, circulate through countless online blogs, and be blown up and plastered on countless magazine covers. As the lights dimmed, when you thought no one could see us – at least, that’s what you told me afterwards – you kissed me in front of the rest of the cast, and an audience that, unbeknown to you and I, could still see our silhouettes in the fading stage lights. Then the news broke. For the first couple of weeks, it was everywhere, all over entertainment news, the Internet, social media, everywhere. Ratings boomed and bolstered to some of our highest numbers in the show’s history. We had just accidentally confirmed what the then ardently dedicated fanbase had been speculating on for so long, and it had worked out in our favor. The two of us – well, mostly me, as you insisted it didn’t matter and you wouldn’t care if it did matter anyway – were afraid that the show would experience repercussions; the opposite happened, and everyone – namely, Richard and the rest of the producers – were thrilled.
Our relationship quickly became chronicled for all of the enthralled fans to follow as closely as they wanted to. When we went out for your birthday, just a few weeks after the big reveal, it started. There were pictures of us out to dinner, articles about our moving in together a year later, blogs dedicated to the puppy we adopted, baby rumors circulating in another year, before they even had the grounds to. Our relationship was romanticized to the extent of royalty, of a fairy tale.
As if we didn’t have the bumps that every normal couple did. Me wanting you to hover less, you wanting to protect me more, you slowly letting me in on how much the opinions and tones of the articles meant to you. It was starting to get to you, to be too much for you. If any single word had been written in a bad light, it would bother you. You would keep bringing up what we should do next to improve the fans’ opinions, or to boost the ratings. When they started to dip somewhere between the third and fourth seasons, you blamed yourself. You started to blame yourself for everything, for the way the paparazzi treated me, for our not being able to have a normal life one day, like we would talk about. But I would tell you that it wasn’t true. That you had nothing to do with how anyone treated me, and that one day, if that was what we wanted, we could have a normal life. You were obsessed, most of all, with what the fans thought, and what the critics thought. You wanted to be better for them, to be more talented, more musically gifted, more attractive, more entertaining. Better, better, better, more, more, more…
I think that’s when the drinking started up again.
You used to ask me why it didn’t bother me, what they all thought. To be honest, it never mattered to me what they thought of me. I care about them, Topher, not what they think. I want to be there for them as an icon. To leave a legacy. To give them someone who’s a good role model, a good influence, someone positive, someone to look up to. Someone that some little kid getting beat up in a bad neighborhood just like me can see on their TV at prime time and think, “if she can make it, so can I.” It’s more than just the show, or the fans, or the stardom. It’s what I leave behind, because of all of that. I want to leave a star in the sky, Topher, a rose among thorns, a green light in a dark reality, for them. I want them to love me for their benefit. Not my own.
But it got to you, when the show started to go down hill by season four. It had nothing to do with you. I tried to explain this to you, so, so many times. It had nothing to do with you, or with me, or with any of us. There was nothing we could have done. All stars fade, Topher. And our show’s star burned so brightly for a longer time than anyone could have predicted. We could’ve gone on to other shows, to movies, to musicals, to albums, to anything we wanted to do. There was still so much more new, green potential in this unforgiving, red world, if we could have only utilized it. I didn’t know you’d been drinking again. No one did, other than Bruno, who too was addicted but unlike you, could never be strong enough to take responsibility like you did for so many years. Then there was that night you came home drunk, that night I begged you to stay strong, that night I begged you to go to rehab. And next came the swirling headlines, addiction stories, pictures of us saying goodbye. Weeks later, pictures of me visiting, of smiling faces, of me bringing a now humbled Scarlett, a now stunning Juliet, and a now taller-than-any-of-us Benji with me to see you, of support and belief.
Of love. Of hope.

Oh, God, I had so much hope for you, Topher. I never doubted you.
You’d gotten better, recovered, and soon we were back to a beautiful blue happiness. It was as good as it could have been. You no longer focused on the faults, on the things going wrong. You could see how happy I was – we both were. The ratings, the fans, the stardom no longer mattered so much to you. You would smile again, and sing to me again, and we would spend hours in the tree house talking and laughing and smiling and singing, just loving being together. So, wholly, happy. It was then when it really seemed as if all traces of Christopher – the nervous little boy who tried so hard to impress, so hard to not care what others thought of him, so hard to live up to what he thought he should be rather than what he wanted to be – was gone. It was then when you were truly, simply, just Topher Nix. We started seriously talking about marriage after three and a half years together – and, unlike when you first asked me to be your girlfriend, I didn’t hesitate. You changed me, Topher. I didn’t have a trust problem anymore. I could separate my independence from our happiness. And that was okay. It was okay to be happy.
In the multiverse, we’ll live like this forever. Our window is wide open.
We hadn’t been engaged for a month when I found out I was pregnant. When exciting talks of a son or daughter one day turned into a reality. Then came the questions. Should we get married right away? Should we elope? Should we move out of Los Angeles, away from the spotlight? Where would we go? New York? Boston? Somewhere completely new? There were dream-like ideas thrown around about a large house in the suburbs, a big yard with a swing set and an in-ground pool, a large dog and good school system and abundant space for children to run and grow and thrive.
And then, all the bright, beautiful colors of our life shattered before my eyes.
You were gone at just about 3:12 in the morning. I got that phone call in the middle of the night. Alcohol poisoning, the police said. Then Richard called, not a minute after, to clarify the unbelievable. You had been on the set of your new movie – your and Bruno’s new movie. He took you out to a bar, with the movie cast, trying to impress. That was it. That’s what killed you, Topher. Trying to impress.
I didn’t react well to the news – I’m so sorry that I have to tell you this. My vision went blurry and the room was spinning, and God, I couldn’t breathe, it was so hard to breathe…my body went into shock, Topher, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry that I have to tell you this. I lost the baby.
So we never got that big house in the suburbs. We never got to get married. We never got to meet our son or daughter. We were treated like royalty, but we never got our happily ever after.
But don’t you worry, Topher. If you were still here, you’d understand. No one here understands. They think I’m not thinking clearly, that I’m sick, that I need therapy and sedation and my hands restrained. But they don’t understand: see, I’m going to make everything just as perfect as it was before. I’m going to fix everything. If the window won’t open, I’m going to break it open, force it open. We have the multiverse. I’m going to make it even better than the thought of perpetual parallel universes together. I have hope.
We’re going to be together again. Not now, maybe, not tomorrow. See, the fans, Topher, they’re so broken up – there have been memorials and tributes and even a commemorative ceremony on the filming lot. They couldn’t handle any more loss now – see, they need me now more than ever. They need a positive voice who has been personally affected by your tragedy to assure them that it’s going to be okay. And maybe they won’t heal right away – but in six months? A year? It’s going to be okay, Topher. It’s okay. I promise. I’m going to make everything just the way it was before. We’ll be so, wholly, happy. You, me, and the baby. Together. We’ll have everything we ever talked about, everything we ever dreamed about, and more. I’m going to open the window again, Topher. There’s the multiverse – layers upon layers of realities for us to be together. And soon, we’ll be together again. I refuse to accept that we are completely severed from each other. It’s going to be okay.
I have hope. “A remarkable ability to hope.”

Love, your angel,
Lia