Mine by Delilah S. Dawson
Lily Horne was dying. Literally dying. Okay, maybe not literally. But very, very theatrically. “This is the end!” she gasped, swooning as much as her seat belt would allow. “World…going dark. Can’t breathe…” She took a moment to try out various moaning and gagging sounds, making sure she had the absolute attention of her audience, before naturally pivoting into the dramatic death that always made her cry. “I was aiming for the sky,” she sang, low and questioning, following it up with a sputter. “Oh God, no more Hamilton,” her mom moaned. With a final gasp, Lily went rigid, eyes flown wide in shock and terror, then exhaled and let her bones melt so that her body went limp and unnaturally twisted, held up only by the constricting seat belt. Waiting for a reaction, she kept her breaths completely silent, her chest barely moving—a trick she’d learned from a video by a corpse actor on YouTube—a guy who actually got paid to pretend to be dead. A little morbid, maybe, but it helped her land the part of Juliet last summer—and gave her a new possible career goal.