Tangled

by Carolyn Mackler

  “I can help you blow out your hair, if you’d like,” she said.

  “I’m wearing it curly.”

  “Didn’t you say that Pete Fesenden seemed to like it better straight?” My mom gestured to the hall table, where she’d tucked a manila envelope into my bag. “You were even going to bring along the straight hair headshots. I think we all agreed that Corey isn’t a curly haired character.”

  “Maybe she’s not,” I said, shaking some cereal into a bowl. “But I am.”

  I hopped a cab down to Tribeca. I ended up with this driver who kept jerking the brakes. When we arrived at Greenwich Street, I handed him some cash and stepped onto the sidewalk. Sweat was pooling under my arms, soaking my shirt. As I pushed through the doors into the lobby, I felt terrified. In my seven years of acting, I’d never been to an audition without my mom.

  I took the elevator to the ninth floor. There were two other girls waiting in chairs, reading scenes to themselves. It was even hotter up here, and the air was still. I took a shallow breath and signed in. I was about to get the key for the bathroom when Kara came out, glanced at the sheet, and said, “Skye? Can you come with me?”

  I followed her through the office. There were fans everywhere. As soon as we walked into the casting room, Kara wilted into a chair. Steve stood up, shook my hand, and said, “Thanks for coming back, Skye. Sorry about the air-conditioning. We have a guy working on it right now.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “You remember Pete,” Steve said, gesturing across the room. Pete glanced up from his laptop and saluted me. “And this is Heather Stein. She’s an executive producer on the project.”

  I reached over and shook hands with a woman sitting in the chair closest to me. She had glasses and brown hair looped into a bun. As I sat down across from Kara, Steve aimed the camcorder at my face.

  “Anytime you’re ready,” he said, mopping the sweat off his forehead. “We’re thinking let’s start with the first scene from before and do the new one next.”

  I was leaning over to get the scenes out of my bag when Pete cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “what’s your background?”

  I looked up. “My background?”

  “You’re half-Caucasian and half…”

  “Brazilian,” I said.

  “Brazilian is good.” Pete nodded at Steve and Heather. “We’ve already cast the dad and he’s white, but we could do anything with the mom. She’s a small part. Who do we know who can look Brazilian?”

  As they began tossing around names, I zoned out. My dad killed himself, I thought. I’d always believed it was an accident. But he wrote a note and crashed his motorcycle. The crazy thing is, I know what he was going through, how he felt so sad he didn’t think there would be an end, so numb that death didn’t seem scary.

  “So you’re ready?” Steve asked me.

  I looked up. My mouth was really parched.

  “Are you okay?” Steve asked, but his voice seemed far away. “It’s this heat. Would you like some water? Kara, go get some water for Skye.”

  Kara stood up and disappeared from the room.

  “You know,” Pete was saying, “I do like her hair curly. I was thinking that the other day too.”

  I grabbed my bag and stood up.

  “You want water, right?” Steve said. “Just wait a second. Kara is getting you water.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t do this.”

  And then I walked out.

  By the time I hit Vestry Street, my phone was vibrating. First it was my mom. Then Talent, Inc. Then my mom again. The second time Talent, Inc., called, I picked up.

  “Thank god!” Janet exhaled. “Are you okay? What happened? Did you panic?”

  I didn’t say anything. The sidewalk was tipping beneath my feet.

  “Steve Golde called,” Janet said. “He said you looked upset when you left.”

  I crossed Desbrosses. There was traffic everywhere. An SUV honked and swerved around me.

  “Where are you?” Janet asked. “Your mom is in a cab on her way downtown. Just tell me where you are, so I can tell her.”

  I was halfway across Watts when my knees buckled. I wondered if I was going to faint, like I did that day at school. Somehow I made it across the street.

  “Skye,” Janet said, “you’re having a bad day. Everyone understands that. Steve said they can see you on Monday afternoon, give you another chance.”

  “Forget it,” I said quietly.

  “What? Why? Skye, where are you? I’ve got your mom on hold on the other line. She’s really upset. She said a friend of hers called this morning. Her daughter read something you wrote and…will you please just tell us where you are?”

  “I’m nowhere,” I said. And then I hung up.

  I was on the corner of Canal, a wide, busy street. There was no crosswalk here, no traffic light. Only cars racing in and out of the Holland Tunnel. I dropped my phone in my bag and stepped off the curb.

  JULY:

  OWEN’S STORY

  one

  On the afternoon of the first day, I called my brother and I said, “Man, you’ve got to save me.”

  “Save you from what?” Dakota asked.

  I glanced around the conference room, with its plastic plants, vine-patterned carpet, and long table heaped with Pop-Tarts, jars of Cheez Whiz, and whatever else they thought would simulate typical teen interactions. There were twenty of us, plus two facilitators, Jason and Abby. As far as I could tell, they were taking their summer jobs far too seriously.

  I slid my tongue over my retainer and tried to figure out how to convince my brother to drive two hours to this towering hotel in downtown Syracuse. But then Abby spotted me. She clutched her clipboard to her chest and marched over to where I’d attempted to camouflage myself behind a hedge of fake palm trees, which was tough given that they were five feet tall and I’m six three.

  “Save you from what?” Dakota asked again.

  Abby stood in front of me, tapping her toe against the carpet. During orientation, she told us she was going into her senior year at Duke, majoring in psychology, and she wanted to be a therapist someday. She was medium height, blond, and pretty in this all-American way that made my saliva evaporate whenever she looked in my direction.

  “Are you still there?” Dakota asked. “What do you need me to save you from?”

  Abby pointed to my phone and then held out her hand, flat and rigid like she was feeding carrots to a horse.

  “Everything,” I said, before clicking the end button and surrendering contact to the outside world.

  “Thanks, Owen,” Abby said. I watched as she wrote Owen Evans: silver Nokia slider on her clipboard.

  I wondered how she knew my name already. Then I remembered, oh yeah, I was wearing a preprinted name tag that announced: Hello, my name is Owen Evans. I can’t wait to be your friend! Exclamation point and all. Definitely not a proud moment in my life, but name tags were a requirement here. That, and no phones or computers. My mom actually confiscated my laptop before we got in the car.

  I swallowed hard. “When can I have my phone back?”

  Abby sighed. Orientation had just ended and we were having a fifteen-minute munchie break, as Jason had deemed it. A few people were talking but mostly everyone was eyeing each other cautiously, breaking corners off Pop-Tarts, submerging corn chips in fluorescent-orange cheese spread.

  “This is your time to live, Owen,” Abby said. “That’s the point of being here. To engage, you know?”

  I’ll readily admit that, back home, I’m not exactly deejaying parties and scaling cliffs and living my life to the fullest every second of every day. But if and when an exciting life ever tumbles into my lap, I have a feeling it won’t involve fake plants and Cheez Whiz.

  “You can have your phone back on Sunday,” Abby added.

  Today was Thursday.

  “Now,” Abby said, nodding for me to come out from behind the tree, “let’s go find yo
u some friends.”

  I was in exile.

  Two weeks ago, my mom took me to an Olive Garden in a strip mall. In retrospect, I should have been suspicious. My mom tends to drop bombs in public places where you can’t protest at any decent decibel. Also, there’s another Olive Garden in Rochester, much closer to our house. But, no, she hauled us a million miles out there. Another classic Mom move, to take you so far from home that if you needed to storm away, you wouldn’t make it far. Especially if you’ve just turned sixteen and don’t have a license and your sense of direction is only one notch up from that of an inebriated, senile, visually impaired person. Depressing, but true.

  We were digging into our appetizers. My mom, perpetually on a diet, got the garden fresh salad. And I, perpetually attempting to amass body fat, ordered the Italiano sampler, a glorious mountain of deep-fried calories.

  I set my retainer on a napkin next to my plate. I was just trolling a mozzarella stick through red sauce when my mom mentioned that she and some girlfriends from cardio-dance were planning a girls’ trip to Key West in the middle of July. I was like fine, whatever. Ever since my parents divorced, my mom had adopted girl-speak. Friends were now girlfriends. Going to a movie became girls’ night out.

  As my mom raked at her lettuce, I noticed she had a guilty look on her face. I assumed she was about to tell me I’d have to stay with my dad while she was in Florida. That’d definitely suck. According to my dad, I’m a colossal disappointment. He’s a Monroe County sheriff, all tough guy and scented aftershave, still riding high from his supreme jock status in high school. Varsity football, varsity wrestling, varsity baseball. And here I am, his skinny asthmatic son who flinches when someone spirals him a football, who’d rather shoot himself than go on the annual deer-hunting retreat, who works at the library, who cries at the end of movies. Not that I’d ever let my dad see the tears. He already thinks I’m a wimp. I’ve heard him say as much to my mom, heard him joke about my spinelessness with my brother.

  At least my dad has Dakota. My older brother can bench in the triple digits. Major relief that I don’t go to Brockport High School with him, that my whole life isn’t, “You’re Dakota Evans’s little brother? What happened?” When my parents split three years ago, my mom and I moved into Rochester and she put me in an alternative school where we call teachers by their first names and do yoga instead of any sport involving a ball. Even so, I’m not exactly the center of the social hub at Alty. I have my people, a few guys, some techie girls who join our lunch table now and then. But the problem with descending from parents who were ultra-popular in high school is that they can’t seem to understand why people aren’t chanting my name and parading me around a football field on their shoulders.

  When my mom didn’t say anything, I asked, “Am I staying with Dad?”

  “Your father will be on a fishing trip.” She speared a cherry tomato.

  “So what are you going to do? Have Dakota stay here?”

  That had to be the reason my mom was looking so guilty. For most of our lives, my brother took pleasure in beating me up, usually for a wiseass remark I made at his expense. If my mom was around, she’d ground Dakota on the spot, gathering me into a hug and saying things like, “My sweet baby! Did you get hurt?” Which only made it worse because as soon as we were alone, Dakota would proclaim, My sweet baby! My little lamb! And then—bam!—a searing charley horse to the thigh.

  But recently things have been different. It’s hard to say when it started changing exactly. Maybe when Dakota returned from my grandparents’, where my parents sent him in May after he got into trouble at school. Around that time, he and my mom went to some doctors in Rochester to treat his ulcer. It was weird to find out that my brother has a bleeding stomach because I’ve always viewed him as invincible. After his doctor’s appointments, he’d sleep over with us. And then he started coming around on weekends. Once my mom went to bed, we’d stay up together. As it got late and our eyes were glazing over from too much Coke and too many video games, he’d pull out a deck of cards and teach me some poker. I have to admit it made me feel good that he wanted to hang out with me, though I tried not to be obvious about it.

  “No, you’re not staying with Dakota.” My mom wiped her mouth with her napkin and folded it carefully in half. “I’ve enrolled you in a seminar in Syracuse. That’s where you’ll be when I’m away.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Karen at work told me about it,” my mom said. “It’s called ReaLife to a Real Life. They’re offering it in six cities around the state this summer, but only Syracuse had openings.”

  I gaped at her.

  “Please try to keep an open mind about this.”

  “Sorry,” I finally said. “I meant to say, what the hell are you talking about?”

  My mom unfolded her napkin and spread it across her lap. “Karen’s daughter went over Christmas break and she’s been raving about it ever since. It’s for kids in your generation who spend all their time online. It’ll be a chance to get away from that and really live.”

  “Since when did you become a self-help brochure?” I asked.

  My mom ignored that remark. “You’ll stay in a hotel. You’ll have a roommate, but you get your own bed.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” I said. “I’m so happy I don’t have to share a bed with a strange guy.”

  “It’s supposed to be fun. There’ll be dances and a field trip to a bowling alley.”

  “Listen, Mom,” I said, popping a fried calamari into my mouth. “I’m not going to spend the weekend in Syracuse with a bunch of losers. That’s just not my style.”

  “So what’s your style? Staring at the computer all day while everyone else your age is out in the sunshine, enjoying summer vacation?”

  The way my mom described it, the teens of Rochester were doing synchronized swimming, or spinning on mountaintops, singing about how the hills are alive with the sound of music.

  “I’m enjoying my summer,” I said defensively. “I’ve seen some kids. And I’ve been working a lot.”

  “You’re shelving books at the public library,” my mom said, picking up her fork. “That’s hardly what I’d call socializing. Owen, you’re sixteen.”

  Owen, you’re sixteen. What was that supposed to mean? Yet another example of the hell you have to pay when your parents were popular teenagers. It’s not like I’m thrilled with the state of my social life this summer, but I was doing fine, thank you very much. I’d been hanging out with a few guys from Alty, snarfing McDonald’s and talking about girls we wanted to ask out but never had the nerve. And sometimes I even had lunch with Faye, the sixty-year-old librarian where I work. Not like I’d advertise it to my mom. She’d probably find a seminar to cure me of that problem as well.

  The crazy thing is that I’m not even a ReaLife addict. Sure, I have a page, but I hardly ever go there. What my mom doesn’t know about me is that I’m a blogger. I’ve been doing my blog since the summer after eighth grade. So whenever she sees me at the computer and assumes I’m friending all of Monroe County, I’m most likely posting on Loser with a Laptop. That’s the name of my blog. Lame, I know, but I meant it to be ironic, like how people can see you for five seconds and think you’re a loser but really have no idea what’s going on in your head. The best part is that no one knows about my blog, not even my friends at Alty. I change all identifying names and places. That way, I can be completely honest, can say the things that get stuck in my throat in my real life.

  “I’ve already paid for the seminar,” my mom added. “It’s nonrefundable.”

  “Maybe you should have run it by me before you wasted your money.” I pushed my plate away. “I’ll stay with Dakota while you’re gone. Or I’m sure I can find someone else, maybe Nigel. Or Pauline and Bill. You just sent Dakota to them. Why can’t I go there?”

  When I said that, I could see my mom flinch. I happen to know that after Dakota got back from our grandparents’ he wrote my mom an email a
bout how he was going through some difficult stuff and it didn’t help for her to ship him away, pretend he wasn’t feeling things. She never would have told me about it, but I found it open on her screen one day when she was at work.

  “This isn’t optional, Owen,” my mom said after a moment. “July eleventh through the fourteenth, you’re at that seminar.”

  I shoved back my chair and stormed out of the restaurant. Once I made it to the curb, I realized I didn’t have my wallet. Not to mention that my retainer was still on a napkin inside. Even so, I stared at the half-empty parking lot, imagining this grand escape where I hitched a ride away from here and when my mom came out she’d be stunned to see I was gone. Then she’d learn not to register me for some stupid seminar. I mean, it’s one thing for kids at school to think you’re lame. But when your own mother decides your social life needs saving? Then you’re really in trouble.

  So here I was, two weeks later, tossing back Ritz Bits and trying not to make eye contact with anyone, lest they believed the sentiment on my name tag. I can’t wait to be your friend! More like, I can’t wait to get the hell away from all of you. Especially the guy hovering over the Chips Ahoy, humming to himself. I could hear it from the Ritz Bits—a gusty buzz, like a computer about to crash.

  I hoped he didn’t turn out to be my roommate.

  My god. What had I done to deserve this? So I tend toward the quiet side. So I clam up around cute girls. So I feel more comfortable expressing my feelings to a keyboard than a person. Does that really justify banishing me to this place, forcing me to bunk with a psychotic buzzing roommate who’ll strangle me with his laptop cord in the middle of the night? Because if I get assigned to this guy, I swear that will happen.

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