This is the first book in the series, A Rockstar Has Exploded.
For the introduction novella, read the first chapter of A Student Has Drowned.
For Book 2, read the first chapter of An Actress is Missing.
For Book 3, read the first chapter of A Fiancé Has Flatlined.
Chapter One
Luce
Luce and Huds were tucked so close behind the column that his breath tickled her neck.
“Is that her?” he whispered.
She followed his gaze to a wandering student—a pretty but ordinary girl, her brown hair tied back into a loose ponytail.
“Nope—her letter from the July issue said she cuts her hair into a bob every summer and lets it grow out during the year. Remember? That’s why he didn’t recognize her at the mid-winter party.”
Huds stared at Luce with a mixture of confusion and admiration, then peered through his camera’s viewfinder and adjusted some settings.
“Do you think we could move next to the dumpling stand?” he asked. “I kinda wanna backlight them as much as possible. Make them look like angels or something. I think that would be more romantic.”
Luce kept her eyes on the dozens of students milling around in the university cafeteria, talking, laughing, eating—being young and carefree, and blissfully oblivious to the multitude of injustices lying in wait for them in the outside world. In a few minutes, they would witness an inspiring celebration of love, orchestrated by Luce Sharp via Seen in Silverbridge, the magazine she ran. Well, the magazine she and Huds ran. The publication had run for almost four years now, a new issue every month, and had accumulated a following of about eighteen thousand readers. While their social media presence had ballooned in previous weeks, Seen in Silverbridge’s presence was still defined largely by the printed magazine.
This stunt would absolutely skyrocket Seen in Silverbridge’s popularity; Luce just knew it. Right in time for the final issue … but she didn’t want to think about that right now.
“Let’s not move. It’s gonna happen soon,” Luce said. “Trust me.”
She could almost hear Huds rolling his eyes, a standard response to her request for trust.
“Ooh—there! That girl. She’s got a bob. Is that a bob?” Huds turned to Luce. “Okay, I’m going to be honest here and admit I don’t know what a bob is.”
Luce sighed theatrically but smiled.
For the whole lunch break, they had waited for two students who had been corresponding all year through the “Letters to the Editor” section of Seen. The students—known only by their non de plumes of Hagrid91 and CelineSunrise—had met during a party at the University of Silverbridge’s orientation week, but hadn’t traded social handles or last names. CelineSunrise claimed there had been an immediate spark. Hagrid91 swore they were soulmates. It was all disgustingly saccharine.
Instead of putting them in direct contact as any normal person would have, Luce had drip-fed the couples’ letters into the monthly issues. What had started as a simple ‘Can you help me find this person?’ had turned into a year-long saga of the printed correspondence of long-lost lovers yearning to be reunited. They were a reader favourite, and Luce knew that she had been right to hold off their long-awaited reunion until the end of the year.
She had set a time and date, and now she and Huds were prepared to document a spectacle (hopefully) worthy of the front page.
“That’s not her, either,” Luce said, checking the time on her phone. “They’re late.”
They watched in strained silence for a few moments.
“Hey, I have an, um … a question,” Huds said. “After exams are done, do you want to come over for dinner?”
“To your house?” Luce asked, surprised.
Huds blinked rapidly. “Not a big deal. It’ll just be my family. Not, like, the whole crew,”—Luce relaxed; Huds came from a very loving and involved Niuean family—“just Mum and us kids.”
Luce groaned.
“What?”
“Come on, Huds. You know what. Your mum hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you! She doesn’t hate anyone … I don’t think the capacity for hate is in her DNA.”
“She has a very strong aversion toward me,” Luce clarified.
Huds grimaced. “I would say you’re in a fortunate position … you have the opportunity to show her your true personality. I’m sure she’ll come around once she gets to know the real you. The ‘you’ deep down … like, subterranean deep.”
Luce shoved Huds in the arm, eyes still on the cafeteria. A dull sadness tugged at her stomach, but she couldn’t pinpoint its source.
“So—this will be the final issue,” Huds said. The empty feeling in her stomach intensified.
“Yup,” she said.
“It’s gonna be dope.”
“I hope so.”
“It will.”
Somewhere in the cafeteria, a tray toppled and was met with cheers.
“It’s a shame we can’t keep it going,” Huds said, and Luce recognized his attempt at nonchalance. Neither of them wanted to let on how they truly felt about shutting Seen in Silverbridge down. It had started as nothing more than a fun project to take their minds off their studies, but soon, through the job of writing trivial gossip and provocative opinion pieces, they’d found themselves with thousands of passionate readers. In the four years they’d worked on Seen in Silverbridge together, they’d grown close, much closer than they’d been in high school. Luce doubted she was alone in lamenting the impending end of it all.
If she were to be honest with herself, Luce was enjoying the modest degree of infamy she’d acquired among her fellow students. Sure, it had the drawback of evoking a standoffishness in social settings, a concern that whatever Luce was a party to would find its way into publication, or onto Seen’s social media, but that was a small price to pay.
On the flipside, Huds had determinedly remained anonymous.
“You were the one who said Seen in Silverbridge couldn’t survive outside of uni. I wanted to keep it going!”
Huds threw his hands up. “I know, I know, I’m just saying.”
Luce hissed through her teeth at Huds. He kept his gaze fixed on the cafeteria.
“Huds, you’re about to graduate with a degree in graphic design, with no intention of pursuing a career in the field. And I’m about to graduate with the most pointless degree in the history of education, and bugger off overseas to work for some random friend of my parents’. Seen is over, okay?”
“But what about your grand plans to expose the conspiracies of Silverbridge? About the common New Zealander deserving to know how the country really works?”
Luce felt her heart rate climbing.
“You know there’s more going on in this city than we know about,” Huds continued. “And if we don’t expose it, who will?”
“Dude, nobody even reads our serious political stuff,” she snapped. “We sell more copies if we put a local celebrity on the cover. Your grand illusions of moral triumph are just that—illusions. Plus, we agreed to call it quits!”
“I know we did,” Huds said. “But I’m allowed to complain, aren’t I?”
“No—because I hate talking about it. Now shut up.”
Huds checked his watch. “Where are they? I have to get to a lecture.”
The feeling in Luce’s stomach hadn’t eased, but the sight of a bob hairstyle pulled her attention.
“There.” She pointed.
A button-nosed girl with a small mouth and a tidy bob hairstyle sheepishly approached an empty table. She looked around at the cafeteria, her cheeks rosy pink.
“CelineSunrise,” Huds said, raising his camera to his eye. He snapped off a series of photos. “Aw, she looks nervous.”
“It’s been a whole year,” Luce said. She tapped her phone and started recording a voice note. “CelineSunrise arrives a mite after one p.m., looking nervous. Apart from going a little bit heavy on the eye makeup, she is pretty in a ‘sneak in through my bedroom window and let’s pretend to study together, while I pretend not to notice the way my nipples point out of this shirt’ kind of way.”
Huds adjusted a knob on his camera and snapped more photos. “I think her eye makeup looks nice. I’m trying to frame out that Ripe For Picking concert poster but—”
“Shh,” Luce reprimanded. She raised her phone and lowered her voice. “She looks around, forlorn, begging the universe not to steal away her chance at potential happiness. It’s been almost a year since she and Hagrid91 first laid eyes on each other at the Pihema’s New Year’s Eve party and subsequently lost contact, making do with increasingly lengthy notes sent to each other through this very magazine. Who knows how many lonely nights she’s spent thinking about this moment? About how it will feel to finally be in Hagrid91’s arms? How many minutes has she spent fantasising about the penis of someone whose moniker refers to a fictional giant from a children’s book series?”
“Do you have to bring everything back to sex?” Huds interrupted.
“Everything is about sex, Huds. Grow up. Ooh, is that him?”
A tall, lanky boy that Huds hadn’t noticed earlier wandered among the tables. He ran a shaky hand through his shoulder length hair, pushing it back behind his ears, then stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Oh no, he’s hideous,” Luce said, unable to keep some guilty glee from her voice. “This is fantastic.”
Huds’ camera shutter clicked faster and faster. “He’s an acquired taste.”
“She can do so much better than him. Oh no, she’s looking around … she’s seen him … make sure you get her reaction.”
To Luce’s surprise, when CelineSunrise finally locked eyes with Hagrid91, her face betrayed no underlying shock or disgust. Instead, she shone. She suddenly looked ten times more confident—and beautiful, if Luce was honest—as she strolled toward him.
The click of Huds’s camera sounded triumphant. So far, none of the students seemed to have noticed them.
CelineSunrise and Hagrid91 closed the gap between each other. They began talking at the same time, laughed, and when Hagrid91 extended his hand awkwardly intending to shake, CelineSunrise batted it away and pulled him into a hug. They stayed hugging longer than Luce would have expected, and Huds’s camera clicked again.
“I wonder what they’re saying,” he said.
Luce grinned. She hadn’t told him yet, but she’d recruited a student from her human geography workshop to record the interaction using his phone’s microphone. She could see him seated near the happy couple and knew he’d be capturing everything they said. She would transcribe it later and add it to the piece. Maybe they’d release the audio file on social media … if that wasn’t illegal. She’d have to check.
“It’s a nice moment,” Luce said. “Perfect end to the story.”
Huds murmured agreement. “Feels poignantly understated—just two people in a cafeteria. No bells and whistles.”
“Yeah…” She stepped out from behind the pilaster and waved her hand at another student from her environmental science class. The student, a stout guy called Vern who always wore heavy metal band shirts, nodded and pulled a cable.
Above the cafeteria, a large canvas banner unfurled with a sound like wind whooshing through a forest. The crowd of a hundred students in the cafeteria turned to look.
Congratulations CelineSunrise and Hagrid91! Together again at last!
The words stood out in garish pink lettering. Vern tossed a handful of confetti over the couple as the watching students cottoned on to what they were witnessing. One by one, they began to applaud. Soon, the whole cafeteria was filled with a cacophony of cheering and wolf whistles.
Luce felt Huds gawking at her, but she avoided his eye and motioned to the couple. “Keep taking photos. You always miss the money shot!”
As Huds acquiesced, Luce spoke into her phone, hoping her voice would be heard over the clamour of the students’ cheers. People had begun to stamp their feet like they were at a sporting event.
“As many of us approach our exams with the sense of an ending, we must also recognise that with an ending comes the chance for new beginnings. Delete that, that’s lame. Um … okay, how’s this: as the year culminates in laborious study and exams for many of us, there are a lucky few who will be easing their frustrations with a much more satisfying climax.”
“Charming,” Huds muttered.
Hagrid91 and CelineSunrise made a perfunctory bow to the clapping students, their smiles wide and bashful. Huds and Luce watched on, complicit yet removed, and Luce felt sure Huds was thinking the same thing as she: the spectacle was a perfect way to end Seen in Silverbridge, but what a shame to end it at all.
