Three months passed the way good months do — quietly, without fanfare, each day adding something small to the total.
Liam got the job at the gaming company in mid-January. He'd been working toward it for a while — concept art submissions, a portfolio he'd been quietly assembling during breaks, applications sent with the cautious optimism of someone who wanted something badly enough to be afraid of wanting it. When it came through he told Chloe about it at the register, trying and failing to contain the size of his smile, and she'd felt something genuinely warm on his behalf, the uncomplicated pleasure of watching a person move toward something they deserved.
"Congratulations," she said. "You'll be good at it."
"You think?"
"You alphabetised the snack aisle by brand name and then subcategorised by flavour profile without being asked," she said. "You have a system brain. Games need system brains."
He laughed. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Don't push it."
He left Lucky Mart at the end of January with a handshake for Mr. Patel and a hug for Mira and a long, hopeful look at Chloe that communicated, with the patient clarity of someone playing a very long game, that his departure from the premises did not constitute a change in his general position on the matter.
He still came by twice a week. Sometimes three times. Ostensibly for snacks. The snack consumption was implausibly high for one person of his size but Chloe had decided not to examine it too closely.
"You could just say you want to see me," she told him one afternoon, in late January, while he deliberated with unnecessary thoroughness over the crisp selection.
He looked up. "I do want to see you."
"I know."
"So why won't you — "
"Liam."
"Yeah?"
"Salt and vinegar or plain. Those are your options and I have customers."
He bought the salt and vinegar. He came back three days later for the plain. She pretended this was about crisps and he pretended to believe her and the arrangement continued, comfortable in its own way, a kind of warmth she'd learned to accept without letting it become something she didn't know how to hold.
February 10th arrived on a Friday, which felt appropriate.
The Distance Between opened in theatres across the country with the modest expectations of a mid-budget romantic drama — the kind of film that critics tended to describe as "earnest" and "quietly affecting" and that audiences either discovered and loved or walked past entirely. Marcus Webb had a reputation. Jordan Ellis, the lead, had a following. The marketing had been measured and tasteful.
None of this accounted for Nina.
The first wave came from the Friday night audiences — the couples and the friend groups and the solo viewers who'd taken a chance on something that looked like it might be good. By Saturday morning it had taken a shape on the internet: scattered comments, then clusters, then the particular velocity that happened when enough people said the same thing in the same approximate moment.
Who is the girl at the end.
The girl in the third act I'm not okay.
I need to know her name RIGHT NOW.
Nina. Just Nina. That's all I know and it's enough.
The posts multiplied with the specific energy of people who had seen something and needed to confirm that other people had also seen it — that they hadn't invented the feeling, that the screen had actually done that thing, that she was actually real. Jordan Ellis was praised. The script was praised. Marcus Webb was praised. And then, cutting through all of it with the clean insistence of something that couldn't be argued with:
But that girl though.
It took the internet approximately thirty-six hours to find her.
The first correct identification came from someone who recognised the Lucky Mart sign visible for half a second in a behind-the-scenes production photo posted on the film's official account. From there the geography narrowed quickly — Bronx, commercial strip, discount goods store — and by Sunday afternoon a photo taken through Lucky Mart's front window was circulating with a caption that needed only four words:
Found her. She's real.
Monday morning announced itself differently than previous Monday mornings.
Chloe became aware of this at approximately eight fifty-two, eight minutes before her shift began, when she turned onto the block and found a small but determined cluster of people outside the store. Not a crowd, exactly — maybe fifteen people — but fifteen people who were clearly not there for the bulk snack deals, arranged with the specific purposeful energy of people who had somewhere to be and had decided this was it.
She stopped on the pavement and looked at them.
Several of them looked back. Then several more. Then one person said her name — not loudly, just the fact of it, Chloe — and something rippled through the group.
She walked to the entrance at a normal pace. People moved aside. Someone asked for a photo and she said she had to start her shift but thank you for coming in, which three of them did immediately and two more did shortly after.
Inside, Mr. Patel was standing behind the counter with the expression of a man who had opened his store this morning and found a different store than the one he'd left the night before.
"You saw?" he said.
"I saw," she said, hanging up her coat.
He looked at her for a moment. "You're going to need a raise," he said, in the tone of a man updating a spreadsheet.
"I wasn't going to argue," she said.
He made a sound that was not quite a laugh but lived in the same neighbourhood, and went back to his office.
The week was instructive.
The cluster outside became a fixture — varying in size, peaking on the weekend, never entirely absent. They were, on the whole, well-behaved in the way that people tended to be when they felt they'd found something genuine and didn't want to ruin it. They bought things. They were polite. A few of them were simply shy and came in and bought a bottle of water and looked at her with the particular expression of people who'd seen something on a screen and needed the confirmation of physical reality.
She was patient with all of them. She answered questions when she could, deflected gracefully when she couldn't, and maintained the same quality of attention behind the register that had made people linger before anyone had known her name. The only difference was scale.
The film's DVD pre-orders, she learned later, had spiked significantly the week of release. The studio's social media team had leaned into the mystery with a series of posts — Nina. Coming to DVD March 12th — that had performed beyond any comparable campaign in the film's marketing history. A critic at a major publication wrote a piece titled The Most Magnetic Screen Presence of 2010 You've Never Heard Of, which was syndicated widely and which Mrs. Okafor brought in, printed from her nephew's computer, and placed on the counter in front of Chloe without a word.
Chloe read it. Set it down.
"It's a bit much," she said.
"It's accurate," said Mrs. Okafor, firmly.
The call came on a Wednesday evening in late February, while she was in the back room eating rice and watching the small television Mr. Patel had installed when she moved in, which she suspected had not been there before and which he had never directly acknowledged providing.
The number was unfamiliar. She answered it.
"Chloe." Marcus Webb's voice, unhurried and direct, the same quality as in person. "I hope I'm not interrupting."
"You're not," she said. "How did you get this number?"
"Greg is very good at finding people," he said, which she accepted as sufficient. "I have a project. I want to talk to you about it."
She set her fork down. "What kind of project?"
He described it — broad strokes, early stage, a different kind of story from The Distance Between. A fuller role this time. More weight, more complexity, more time on screen. He spoke about it the way he'd spoken about Nina — precisely, without inflation, making the case plainly and letting it stand on its own merits.
She listened to the whole thing before she said anything.
"I work at a store," she said, finally.
"I know."
"I'm not an actress."
"You keep saying that," he said. "The footage keeps disagreeing with you."
She was quiet for a moment. Through the thin wall she could hear the familiar sounds of the store settling into its evening quiet — the refrigerator hum, the distant sound of Mr. Patel locking the front door, his slow footsteps moving toward the back.
A knock, then his voice through the door: "Chloe. Dinner's getting cold."
She almost smiled. He had taken to doing this — finding small ways to make sure she was eating, was warm, was accounted for — with the gruff consistency of someone who had decided she was his responsibility without ever saying so directly.
"One second," she called.
Into the phone she said: "Can I call you back tomorrow?"
"Of course," said Webb.
She hung up and sat for a moment in the small room with its hotplate and its plastic table and its television that had appeared without explanation, turning the call over in her mind the way she'd turned the business card over three months ago.
She knocked back on the wall.
"Coming," she said.
She told Mr. Patel over dinner — the rice she'd been eating plus the additional food he'd produced from somewhere, as he tended to do, in quantities that suggested he wasn't entirely clear on how much one person ate or simply didn't care.
She laid it out plainly: the call, the offer, the fact that she didn't know what to do with it.
He listened without interrupting, which was his way. When she finished he was quiet for a moment, working through something at his own pace.
"When I opened the store," he said finally, "my brother told me it was a bad idea. Wrong location. Too much competition. He had twelve reasons." He ate. "The store is eleven years old."
Chloe looked at him.
"Reasons to not do something are easy to find," he said. "They're everywhere. You can always find them if you're looking." He pointed at her plate. "Eat."
She ate.
"You have something," he said, after a while, in the direct and slightly awkward way he said things that mattered. "I don't know what to call it. But I've watched people come into this store for eleven years and most of them I forget before they reach the door." He paused. "I haven't forgotten a single day since you started."
She looked down at her plate.
"Call the man back," he said. "Eat your dinner first. Then call him back."
She finished her dinner.
Then she called Marcus Webb back.
End of Chapter 5