Viva skipped out on our lobster dinner—or maybe she’s having it, just not with me. I thought for sure we’d go since Terrance didn’t have a bad thing to say about scene 15, but it didn’t happen. “We don’t have to go now. We can go any night,” is what my mother said. I’m not holding my breath. Most times when she talks about doing something it’s just daydreaming; the planning is usually the best part.
All week the crew has been barbecuing at the public beach across from the hotel, so I’m walking over to see if Chris is there. My head is swimming with things to tell him after scene 15, like how he was so good I almost cried, even when I wasn’t on camera, and about Norah being disappointed with me.
I can’t find Chris anywhere at the bonfire. Jericho is here, but he’s with his dad. They don’t need my company; it looks like they’re having a good time taking selfies in front of the fire. That’s what it’s like on a first movie—everything’s exciting, and maybe you’ll never get to act again, so you take a picture of the craft service table because you’ve never seen so many snacks before in your life. And you take pictures of each other in front of the fuzzy boom microphone or a wardrobe rack. Me and Viva used to go nuts with that stuff, too.
One picture we still do on every job is of me in front of my trailer. I stand beside my character’s name that’s taped to the door: first Tallulah Leigh and then Yoli and then Margaret and now Norah. Some moms measure their kids and mark their height inside a closet. I think of each dressing trailer as the way Viva measures me.
Someday we’ll print the pictures out. In houses on TV there’s usually family photos framed on a staircase wall. Once we get stairs I’d like to do something like that. But for now our pictures live inside the computer.
Jericho’s dad has a real camera (not just a phone). He wears it around his neck like the paparazzi. Jericho said that they’re going to make a slideshow for his mother and his little sisters who are home in Chicago. I bet their whole family will eat popcorn and watch the slideshow together on their big-screen TV and talk about what a fun hobby acting is. And isn’t it a bonus that now they have some extra fun money for vacation? Lucky them.
I really miss my movie dad, Brian, from Hit the Road … my Pops. We took lots of pictures together with his scratchy beard against my cheek. Viva says it’s good to miss someone; it means that you cared and so did they. But you gotta move on in life. “Say goodbye quick like a bandit,” is her advice. I cried for a week when I wrapped Hit the Road but for only a few days after Buy One, Get One and just a couple hours after Zany Aces. Letting go of stuff is a skill to work on like any other.
The beach is divided with movie folks around the bonfire and a new gang of local kids along the shore. I stare at the real locals: the girly types are in short skirts and fluttery bikini tops, strolling in a clump with their arms linked, watching the sporty boys toss a spiraled Nerf football that whistles in the air. It looks like sports sacks are popular here—those drawstring bags you can wear on your back. Some have initials on them; that probably costs extra.
The Montauk girls are giggling up a fuss. I follow their eyes and see Chris scrounging around for something in the tall reeds.
“Go, Arianne. Go!”
“Omigod, omigod, omigod!”
The local girls push their friend forward—the one in the group with boobs, not little boobs pushed up high, but real-sized ones that jiggle on their own.
The boys stop tossing the ball to nudge each other and laugh at Chris. “Hey, check it out. It’s the Crapper!”
In his movie Camp Magaskawee, Chris had diarrhea against a tree. The Montauk boys are ripping on him about it, but the girls sure aren’t turned off. Arianne fans her face with her hands. Then she does a stupid sashay up to my movie brother.
These girls probably think they know Chris, all because they’ve seen him in Sixth Period Lunch. How shocked would they be if they found out that Chris is nothing like that role? He’s quiet and shy, not cocky. And he hasn’t got moves or pickup lines. He’s got worries and wonderings. Suddenly I want to talk to Chris about Rodney, even if I’m not positive Rodney is a full-blown creeper.
But Chris is being polite to Arianne; he’s letting her babble on and on, while the whole time he’s kicking up sand and looking past her shoulder. She keeps flapping her hands, probably to make up for Chris saying nothing. If I have to tell the truth, she is sort of pretty. But Chris is an actor, so he’s used to movie-star pretty. To him Arianne might only be average.
“Hey! This is you, right? Joss Byrd?” one of the local boys asks. He holds his phone to show me a picture of me wearing my specially made multicolored designer Betsey Johnson dress.
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s so cool. That was at the Oscars, right?” He keeps asking questions about the red carpet, but in my head his voice shrinks into the background because I’m busy watching Chris, who’s walking off with Arianne. They’re close now, so close that his arm rubs against hers each time he lifts his right foot off the sand. “… Did you get to meet Robert Downey, Jr.? How about Mark Wahlberg? He’s, like, my favorite actor. Who’s yours? Ever see The Fighter? It’s wicked good.”
Some of the guys from our crew are waving Chris over to the bonfire. “Christopher Tate, you dirty dawg!” A greasy-haired guy called Slim, who works the sound for us, pulls Chris over to the side. “Look at her. You should. You have to.” Slim is pointing at Arianne. Then he whispers to Chris in secret, elbowing him like he’s giving sex advice, while Chris shrugs and smiles at the ground. Right about now, I hate Slim. “She’s practically begging for it.” He raises his voice again. “That’s an easy in. You want to, don’t you? Well, don’t you?”
And Arianne—while the crew is chanting, “Stud! Stud! Stud!”—is mouthing to her girlfriends for them to take her picture with Chris when they walk by. What a sneak. She isn’t the girl for Christopher Tate. Arianne’s friends are getting their phones ready, holding them real low, as if no one can tell exactly what they’re doing.
The sound guy runs back to the bonfire and grabs a six-pack of beer; I hate him so much. I look around for a real grown-up, a responsible one who might care. But that’s not as easy to come by as the beer. I’m not sure what Damon does after we wrap on set every night, but he’s never come to the bonfire. Chris’s own guardian, his Grandma Lorna, reads large-print books and naps all day in the trailer and then goes to bed at eight.
“Slim! Not a good idea,” says our wardrobe girl, Monique. Maybe there’s hope. “Leave the beer here.”
I knew I liked Monique from the start. When we first met her, she was nice enough to listen to my mother ramble about her business idea for dancewear that doubles as shapewear.
“The kid asked me for it!” Slim says, pointing at Chris. “Are you about to say no to number one on the call sheet?” On a film shoot, each actor has a number on the call sheet. I’m two. Number one plays the most important character in the movie.
“Yes, I am, when number one on the call sheet is fourteen years old and his parents are a thousand miles away,” Monique says, grabbing at the beer.
“Well, I’m not.” Slim pulls the six-pack away and hustles it up to Chris.
“This one is on you, Slim! Don’t come crying to me if something happens to that kid!” Monique calls.
And that’s that.
Chris holds the beer against his chest as he thanks Slim—it looks like he really did ask for the beer. Now I hate Chris, too, I really do. Obviously he doesn’t have Doris Cole for an agent. If he did, he’d know that the other thing that can ruin a child actor besides puberty is a trip to rehab.
Chris is carrying the beer down at his side. Then right in public, in front of people we work with, people who load film into our cameras and hand us our paychecks, he lifts his other arm and drapes it over Arianne’s shoulders! How could he? How could he even be so hypnotized by boobs when I really need to ask him: If I tell you something private about Rodney, will you keep it a secret?
“That’s our boy!” someone yells from the bonfire as if we’re all watching Chris in Little League, up at bat.
The Montauk boy is still talking to me. “How’d you start being an actress?” he wants to know. “Is it the funnest thing ever? Because it looks like it is—auditions and fans and the E! channel? Joss?”
I’m thinking about Rodney and his chest hair poking through his holey undershirt. But the Montauk boy wants a shined-up interview answer about awards shows and limos. He doesn’t want the honest truth about all the unscripted parts of my life.
“It’s the funnest,” I say, finally looking at him.
“Cool.” He smiles. “Does this movie need any extras? Like, to walk by on the beach or to sit in a restaurant? I can skateboard.”
“Uh, I don’t really know.”
Chris and Arianne disappear past the sea grass. My neck isn’t long enough to follow them any farther. There goes all the stuff I need to say. And for the first time, I don’t want to play a child forever; I want to grow up already and be a hot girl.
“Hey, can I ask your professional opinion? What do you think of acting classes? I mean, are they a good idea or … because there’s a workshop here on the weekends. But if you think it’s lame…”
“I don’t take classes,” I say.
“No. I didn’t think so. I mean, of course not. Okay. So, wait. No workshop?”
“Well, if you want.” What does he care what I think? If he can read then he’s already miles ahead of me. And if he wants to take a workshop, then he should take a workshop. If he doesn’t, then he shouldn’t. Who am I to stop him from becoming his favorite flower?
“Ray! Hey, blowtard!” When I turn around, I see the surfer girl from the parking lot with her shorts low and her attitude high. “Keri’s lookin’ for you—Keri, your girlfriend,” she says, adjusting her dozen bracelets. One of her thick leather straps is branded: GWEN.
“Do you know who this is? I’m talking to Joss Byrd, from Buy One, Get One,” Ray says, as if I’m not standing right next to him. “She’s worked with the coolest actors and she’s not owned by Disney, which is, like, career suicide.”
“So?” Gwen shrugs.
“Whaddaya mean, so? Buy One, Get One was nominated for Best Picture!” He lifts his phone, showing her my photo. “At the Academy Awards! Dang it, Gwen, you know I’ve always wanted to be an actor.”
She smirks. “Since when?”
“Since always. High School Musical.”
“Pfft.”
Gwen is so cool she doesn’t even care about being cool. If she did, she’d probably comb her hair or redo her nails before they chipped down to dirty bits of black polish. Gwen would crush the kids back in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, who only think they’re cool. I’d love to have a head-to-toe makeover to look like Gwen. I bet if I went back to Tyrone looking just like her, they’d never stuff my backpack with sweat socks again. What would be best would be if I had the makeover and then switched schools. My new classmates wouldn’t know me any other way. I would start cool. A cool actor.
“Nice meeting you, Joss,” Ray says.
“You too,” I answer, even though he never actually introduced himself.
“Can I get a picture?” he asks. Before I even answer, he holds up his phone, scooches beside me, and snaps away. I wish I’d had my makeover already. “Thanks.” He checks the picture before running off. I probably look goofy in it. He didn’t even let me see.
Gwen looks me up and down. She’s judging me without even trying to hide it. “I’ve never heard of you.”
“Well, I haven’t really done movies that kids watch, just dramas and stuff.”
“Huh.” She flips her hair over her shoulder.
* * *
“Where’s your project?” Bella Pratt thinks she’s so great because she always brings her homework on time and always remembers which days to bring an art smock and which days to bring gym clothes. I can’t keep those days straight; I’m not around often enough to get them right.
“I dunno.” We had a project due?
“You didn’t make your electrical circuit?” Bella shoves her wooden board toward me, showing off cardboard buildings with lightbulbs and wires and switches: Bella Pratt’s City of Lights!
“I missed the unit because I was on set. I had books but not bulbs and stuff.” I don’t mention that I forgot my books at the studio and production will have to mail them to me overnight. In my backpack is just lunch and my sweatshirt.
“What do you mean, you were on set?”
“A movie set. It’s a movie called Zany Aces. I filmed it in Los Angeles.”
“You’re full of it,” Bella says, as if I could or would lie about being in a movie.
“Why would I lie? You can just look it up.” If she’s so smart, she should know how to use the Internet.
“I’ve never seen you in anything,” she says while her friends gather around with their lightbulbs on trays, in boxes, or glued to poster board. “None of us have.”
“Just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” I say. I should steal one of her wires so that the bulbs won’t light up when she presents her project. I think I will.
“Yeah?” Bella puffs up her chest to play tough in front of her friends. “Well, maybe if you didn’t miss so much school for nothing you wouldn’t be so stupid,” she says.
* * *
“Ray’s my best friend’s boyfriend, you know,” Gwen says as Ray catches up to a girl with long, dark braids and hugs her. He sinks his hands into the girl’s back pockets. Braids look so childish on me. I could never pull them off; I’d look like I’m five. But on that girl they’re stylish. The fashion channels would call her “hippie chic.” Ray and Keri remind me of stuffed monkeys Velcroed together. “They’ve been going out three months,” Gwen says. I’m impressed, I guess; three months is the whole summer, plus part of an entirely different school year. “So, what, you think that just because you’re making a movie you can come to Montauk and take over our beach and talk to our guys?”
Me? That guy wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Joss Byrd: friend of Robert Downey, Jr.
“What’s the matter?” Gwen leans back as if she’s making room to put up her dukes. “You don’t know what to say without a script?”
I don’t know what to say with a script. “I’m just here for work,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “It’s … my job.”
“It’s your job to hog our waves and to hang out on the beach with an older girl’s boyfriend?”
“He was just asking if he could be an extra.”
“An extra? Ha!” Gwen scratches her head and mumbles under her breath, “High School Musical.” I can see the bonfire reflecting in her eyes—two flames roaring back at me. Gwen lifts her phone, which is vibrating and lighting up in her palm. “Arianne and Chris Tate are hooking up in shed,” she reads. She taps to open the photo and scrunches her face. “Gross.” She swipes the picture away. “She didn’t waste any time. But I’m sure your friend will be very happy with her services. She is Montauk Point’s employee of the month, every month.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean she does a lot of jobs. You know—hand and blow?” Gwen says, motioning each job with her fist. “Arianne is foul. We’re in eighth grade. What’s she gonna do when we get to high school?”
I can’t imagine what Chris is doing or what Arianne is doing to him in that picture. I don’t ever want to see it. I’m dying to see it.
“‘Check out how hot I am! I messed around with an actor in the shed next to a bucket of live worms.’ I’ll have to listen to that romantic tale for the rest of my life, now.” Gwen rolls her eyes and sends a text back. “See? This is exactly what I mean…” She glares at me again, fires raging, as if this is my fault, as if I wanted this to happen.
The phone lights up again in her hand. Every flash makes me imagine something worse—Chris kissing Arianne, her shirt up, her hand down his shorts—I can’t stop picturing stuff. This isn’t the Golden Age of Hollywood. It’s modern times. I know that clothing is optional and the action doesn’t fade after kissing.
“It’s always the same. You movie people take our bonfire and our waves and turn our town into Whoretauk Point.” Gwen stuffs her phone into her back pocket as she walks away. “Some very good work you’re doing,” she grumbles. “Keep it up, everyone!” she calls to the crew with her thumbs up.
For no reason, I walk over to the food and fill a plate. I don’t want anything. I lost my appetite one whoretauk ago. My stomach hurts just looking at the barbecue chicken. The glaze is too orange, and I’m not sure it’s cooked all the way through; it’s too dark out to tell. But there’s nothing else to do but eat while I’m waiting for Chris to finish his not-so-secret rendezvous, so I take my barbecue chicken to a quiet spot and make the best of things.
I thought that my stomach couldn’t get queasier, but I was wrong because Rodney is heading in my direction with a plate and a drink. Why’s he coming over here? There are plenty of other people he can talk to—people who aren’t twelve-year-old girls.
Don’t look at him. That way he won’t feel invited. Can’t sit here! I pick up a reed and play with it, as if it’s the most fascinating reed that’s ever sprouted. I should’ve stayed with the crowd. How many times have I heard about safety in numbers? That’s another one of my problems. I don’t think of important things until it’s too late.
Finally, Chris is on his way back. This isn’t the time for me to dwell on Arianne when Rodney’s on the prowl. Hurry, Chris, hurry! Chris has his hands in his pockets; he’s just strolling along, as if my safety isn’t at stake over here. The closer he gets, the clearer I see his guilty, doofy expression.
Jericho runs at him, and then he laughs and jumps on Chris and rubs his head. All that’s missing is a cooler of Gatorade.
Rodney has stopped to watch, too, as Slim rushes over to meet the boys.
“Really? Yeah? Yeah?” Slim yells. He slaps Chris on the back and shakes his hand. Chris lowers his bright red face.
When Rodney sees Chris walking my way, he turns toward the trail back to the Beachcomber. That was close. I must’ve been tensed up this whole time because now all my muscles are relaxing. I could roll over and fall asleep here and now.
“Hey,” Chris says.
Why am I embarrassed? I haven’t done anything, but I feel embarrassed anyway. I don’t look up, can barely look at him. But really, all I want to do is look—at his face, his hands, his body. Did he get a job? Or something more?
“What’s up?” he asks, all innocently. He really is a talented actor.
“Nothin’.”
Chris takes a seat beside me on a hollow log.
Maybe he’s messed around with a lot of girls, and this is just a day in the life of Christopher Tate. If that’s the case, why would he care about what I have to say about Rodney or Norah or anything else? I trace circles in the sand with the reed until it breaks. Then I throw the pieces into the dunes.
“Why are you being weird?” Chris asks.
Because it is weird. Because you just did stuff with a whoretauk, stuff I can’t even talk about, and right now I need you to be my movie brother. “I’m not being weird.”
He laughs as he watches Jericho gabbing away with the crew. “Jericho’s nuts. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about half the time.”
“Yeah.”
“You think he’ll keep acting after this?”
“Probably.” Nobody ever leaves unless they’re forced to leave—puberty or rehab.
“Don’t tell him I told you this, okay?” Chris says.
“What?” I look up at him without blinking. Maybe he didn’t do anything with Arianne after all. Maybe she wasn’t his type or maybe she said something idiotic or had bad breath.
He leans his shoulder softly against mine. “I used the drops.”
“You did?” I stare, surprised that he used them and even more surprised that he’s telling me.
“I tried not to, but I couldn’t make it happen.” He shakes his head.
“Wow,” I say. “It was the best scene so far, though. I think Terrance wanted to cry. I know I almost did.” The drops don’t change a thing, if you ask me. Tears you can fake, but you can’t fake pain.
“Long day.” Chris sighs. “Anyway, I’m glad it’s over.”
He doesn’t even know about Norah or Rodney. “Same here.”
“Hey, I found you something.” Chris digs into his pocket and hands me a piece of purple sea glass, an almost-perfect triangle that fits right between my thumb and pointer finger. It’s warm from his body heat. “Thought you’d like it.”
I hold it up to my eye; it glows against the fire. “I do.” How long does it take for all the sharp edges to wear down until it’s this smooth? Months? Years? “It’s like a guitar pick,” I say. Sometimes I hear Chris strumming a guitar in his trailer. I wish I could play. Brian, my Pops, wanted to teach me during Hit the Road, but we never had time. “Where’d you find it?”
“Right along the grass there.” He points to the spot where I watched him disappear.
“Just now?” I can’t help but ask. I don’t want the sea glass to be tainted by Arianne. It’d be gross if it was in Chris’s pocket when he fooled around with her.
“Uh, just … before.”
“Oh.” Heat rushes to my cheeks as I try not to imagine him and her doing who-knows-what.
I rub the sea glass into my palm till it feels like it’s about to melt into my skin. I guess it shouldn’t matter when he found it. The point is, he cares about me. I found you something … I found you something … And he could’ve given the sea glass to Arianne, but he didn’t. He gave it to me, his movie sister.
“Hey, Chris?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell Jericho, okay?”
He scrunches his eyebrows. “What?”
“I met the real Norah, and she hates me.” I frown. “She thinks I’m the worst actress ever.”
Chris sucks in his breath.
“And … there’s something else. It’s bad.”
Doris would say it’s unpleasing to talk about a costar. But the way Chris is looking at me makes me sort of proud to have something major to tell him. “It’s about Rodney. He might be a perv for real.”
“What? Why?” He looks at me with wild eyes. “What’d he do?”
“He came into my schoolroom and skeeved me out. He went like this.” I grab my shoulders and cringe. “I wasn’t sure it was anything. But just now he was trying to come over here, except you came.”
Chris’s mouth drops open. “Oh, shit.”
Telling Chris makes Rodney more real. But I’m not afraid. I’m relieved. Across the beach everyone else is still eating and drinking and talking nonsense, which is so strange when we’ve got serious stuff going on here. There’s even a song playing, “Lifting me up, baby, higher and higher…” I’m glad there’s music, though. This way no one can hear us.
“And Chris?” If I confess one last thing, maybe I’ll feel relieved about it, too. “Remember that day when I kicked you guys out of my schoolroom?”
“Yeah,” he says. The bonfire is blazing in his eyes.
Viva would say it’s a mistake to tell him. It’s too big a risk. But I lean closer now because it’s also too big a secret to hide any longer. “Well, the truth is…” I rub my thumb against my sea glass for a moment. “I’m not a ‘big deal,’” I whisper. “I’m not Joss Byrd. I’m an unofficial dyslexic.”