It's Not Me, It's You

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  Editor’s Note: Adam’s Fall is a drama about a young single father living in the remote Alaskan wilderness, and the sexy lady helicopter pilot he may or may not be in love with. It’s probably worse than Skyward.

  AVERY: We had a lab report due on Monday, and I’d left my notes in my locker. I knew Hutch would kill me if my section of the lab was subpar, or God forbid, missing altogether.

  HUTCH: The first lab report of the school year is absolutely crucial. It introduces your scientific style to the teacher, and also establishes your place in the class order. I didn’t want to just finish out the year the best. I wanted to start off the year as the best. The first lab report of the year is your scientific calling card, and I always want mine to be flawless.

  CRESSIDA SCHROBENHAUSER-CLONAN: The worst kind of scientist is a careless one, and that sorry description fits Avery perfectly. Can you imagine if she hadn’t been able to use her dubious charms to flirt her way into the school? Everyone knows the first lab report of the year is the most important one. If her part of the lab had been missing, Hutch would have had every right to drop her like a molten ball of tungsten. If only.

  AVERY: I didn’t have a plan, exactly. Well, my plan was to drive to school, and then get into the building by any means necessary. While I was bored during PE that week, I’d noticed a window in the gym whose latch looked a little weak. So I guess my plan was to climb the wall like Spider-Man, jimmy open the window, slide on in through it, and drop to the floor with the grace and agility of a cat. I think, even at the time, I realized this plan was most likely impossible, so when a Plan B appeared, I obviously sprinted right at it.

  JAKE: I saw Avery first, because I was staring dramatically off into the middle distance, like I said. But before I could get too nervous, I realized she wasn’t coming for me at all. She sprinted right toward one of the crew guys.

  AVERY: I ran toward the person who had the largest visible key ring—he had a ton of keys clipped onto his belt with one of those carabiner things. I thought he’d be the most likely person to let me into the building.

  JAKE: It was immediately obvious that she wasn’t interested in me, or Skyward, or the shoot, or any of it. How did I know? I could hear everything—something about a lab report and needing to get into the building, like, now. Totally ruined the take. Director was pissed, but I thought it was hilarious.

  AVERY: The guy with the keys wasn’t going to let me in. I couldn’t believe it! So close, and yet so far. He was trying to escort me off the school grounds, when salvation intervened in the hottest of forms.

  JAKE: We were taking five because the shot was ruined anyway, so I came over to see what was happening. Taylor wasn’t going to let her in, but he did when I asked him to.

  AVERY: At first I was so relieved I was getting my notes that it didn’t register exactly who the blindingly hot guy walking me to my locker was.

  JAKE: Avery was cool, man. She didn’t get all weird around me, or act like she was trying too hard to not be weird, which is worse, in some ways. She actually spent most of our walk to her locker talking about her lab partner, of all the random things.

  AVERY: It was right when I closed my locker and locked eyes with Jake’s famous hazel gaze that I knew who he was. I’d seen him brooding at me on my TV the exact way he was brooding at me then, in real life!

  HUTCH: I don’t understand how Avery could have run right past an entire television crew—lights, camera, everything—and not have realized who she was with. I guess it’s flattering, kind of—I’d scared her so badly about turning in poor science homework it superseded any rational powers of observation. Good to know she had her priorities in line.

  JAKE: I hadn’t dated anyone my manager hadn’t set me up with since Skyward came out. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been around someone my age who wasn’t in the industry. Listening to Avery talk about science homework and lab partners and cheeseburgers just felt … normal. It felt good. And she was prettier without makeup than the last pop star my manager insisted I take out was with fifteen pounds of foundation caked on. Avery was real, man.

  AVERY: When Jake Doe asked me if I wanted to get a milk shake, I thought I’d heard him wrong.

  JAKE: We bagged the shoot for the day, and I had my driver take us to In-N-Out. I was hoping no one would bother us since not many people knew we were filming in San Anselmo. And nobody did bother us … then.

  COCO: “Jake grabs shake with mystery blond!” That was the first headline. Tamsin Brewer, of all people, FB-messaged it to me. That blond was no mystery to me. I didn’t know anyone else who looked that happy with an In-N-Out shake. I started texting Avery immediately, but she didn’t respond for the longest time. Probably because she was busy gazing into those dreamy, famous hazel eyes.

  JAKE: I didn’t know the paps had spotted us then. I just knew that I hadn’t laughed so much in the past year as I did in the hour getting a burger with Avery, that turned into two hours, that turned into three, that turned into her getting five missed calls from her mom and me having to apologize profusely to her parents when my driver dropped her off.

  PAUL DENNIS aka DAD, father, not a fan of Skyward: The following day, Jake—or whoever his publicity people are—sent us a huge basket filled with Skyward promotional materials. I have no idea why on God’s green earth that boy thought we would enjoy those.

  COCO: And that’s how Avery became a celebrity girlfriend. She was the talk of San Anselmo Prep on Monday morning—Tamsin really spread that “Jake Grabs Shake” article around the school.

  BIZZY: Avery was so obnoxious when she started dating Jake Doe. She, like, wouldn’t talk about it at all, like it was some kind of state secret. Not that I cared, or whatever, because I could not have been less interested in whatever happened on her stupid date with that Z-list “celebrity,” but the way she was being so secretive about it was beyond annoying.

  AVERY: Of course I was excited that I’d gone out with Jake Doe. I mean, it was Jake Doe, for Pete’s sake! But I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone but Coco. Even just from that first day with Jake, I could tell his privacy was really important to him. I didn’t want to betray that. And I got the feeling from him that he wanted to be as normal as possible, even though there was nothing normal about him. But everyone was being a complete freak about it. Well, everyone except Coco and Hutch.

  HUTCH: Oh, yeah, sure, I was pumped about the lab report and the A I knew we’d get—and did—but everything else about that Monday pretty much sucked. I couldn’t even compete with the Robby Monroes and Tripp Gomez-Parkers of the world, and now AD was dating a movie star? I mean, not that I was competing with them. I just mean that no normal guy had a chance. I mean, not that I wanted a chance, it was just a, uh, observation.

  Editor’s Note: Compete?! Chance?! What?! Hutch was normally so lucid, and now I could barely understand him at all. I wanted to understand him, but I was worried I was reading too much into it—I mean, not that I was trying to read anything into it. I mean—oh, forget it.

  COCO: Avery was “Mystery Blond” on Monday. But by the next weekend, she was “Jake Doe’s Girlfriend, Avery Dennis.” The press kept calling it a Cinderella story—movie star sweeps normal high school girl off her feet!—and suddenly, Jake was everywhere. Which meant Avery was everywhere, too. And there is nothing weirder than seeing your best friend on a gossip website.

  BIZZY: I think the most memorable thing about Avery’s first paparazzi pics was that her pores were so enormous I could see them individually. If I knew someone was going to be taking pictures of me, I would at least attempt to fix my face.

  Editor’s Note: Mean!!! I didn’t know someone was going to take my picture! That’s the whole point of paparazzi! I had thought I was going to Starbucks with my boyfriend for an iced passion tea. Do I wish I hadn’t worn sweatpants? Absolutely. But I refuse to waste a moment of brain space feeling regret over my pores, which Coco assured me were not visible in the slightest
.

  COCO: Sure, it seemed like the Avery and Jake thing came out of nowhere, but all of Avery’s relationships had always gone from zero to sixty in like three seconds flat! It was just more visible at this point. Besides, they were basically long distance, and that always forces a fast commitment. LA is practically in a different state from San Anselmo.

  Editor’s Note: On a nonstop flight, it’s only an hour and ten minutes. There are perks to dating a celebrity! Even if the drawback is you usually only see him on the weekends, and only in San Anselmo instead of glamorous LA, because your parents are remarkably lame about supporting a sweet jet-setting lifestyle.

  JAKE: My manager was pissed that I’d basically dropped off the premieres and parties circuit, but I loved going to visit Avery in San Anselmo. And the whole stupid Movie Star Dates All-American Girl angle was getting a ton of press, so my manager wasn’t that pissed.

  COCO: I think the weirdest thing about Avery’s relationship with Jake was how normal it was. Mostly, he came to visit us here, because her parents wouldn’t let her fly down to LA to see him unsupervised. They spent most of their time hanging out at Avery’s house, or hanging out with me and Alfie—my boyfriend at the time—at his house. Basically places no one would take Jake’s picture. They’d cruise through the In-N-Out drive-through and roll up at Alfie’s house with bags full of food, and we’d play video games or Ping-Pong. That’s probably the thing I remember the most about Jake—he was surprisingly lethal at Ping-Pong. He and Alfie would get into these, like, hourlong volleys, and then get pissed when Avery finished all the fries. But if you’re dating Avery, you should know that she considers letting French fries get cold a capital offense.

  Editor’s Note: I feel like this history should have devoted more time to the fact that Coco dated a guy name Alfie for a really, really long time.

  JAKE: Those were some of the most fun weeks of my life. I felt like I was finally having the normal teenage experience I’d missed out on. I even got to go to a homecoming dance!

  BIZZY: Oh my God, everyone was being a total freak about Jake Doe at homecoming. Even the teachers kept taking pictures with him, which confirmed every suspicion I ever had about how sad their lives were. He even got crowned Homecoming King. He doesn’t even go here!

  Editor’s Note: Bizzy was so pissed. So was Meghan Gossner, because she’d thought she had Homecoming Queen in the bag, then I won somehow—well, I know how, because I was there with Jake—and juniors weren’t supposed to win at all. But it kind of sucked, because I spent the whole night sitting around while Jake politely took selfies with every single person who went to my school—and yes, some of the teachers, too. But not all of them. Thank you for being cool, Ms. Segerson. The most important part of this story, though, is that Coco was our Homecoming Queen this year, so Bizzy never got that tiara plopped onto her ratty blond head. Hahaha! This is probably why she’s so bonkers about Prom Queen.

  COCO: Avery and Jake really only dated for a couple weeks. Although I wonder how long it actually was in real time, since they usually only saw each other once or twice a week. When you put it all together, maybe they only dated each other for a couple hours?

  JAKE: We’d have dinner with her parents after school sometimes, then hang out with her friends, just doing, like, nothing … it was totally normcore, man.

  AVERY: See, I feel like junior year everyone thought I was dating Jake because of his glamorous lifestyle. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe Jake was dating me because of my not-so-glamorous lifestyle. I wondered if he liked the fact that I was “normal” more than he actually liked me.

  COCO: The official story—the one that broke on San Anselmo Prep’s campus and TMZ simultaneously—was that Avery and Jake parted ways due to the pressures of his lifestyle. That she just wanted to be a normal teen and was tired of the paparazzi. Although, honestly, they like never bothered us unless Jake was there, and Jake was a total hermit most of the time he was here.

  JAKE: Listen, man, I have no hard feelings toward Avery. It’s weird, the way I live—and I know that—and it probably wasn’t fair to her to have a boyfriend who lived five hours away and had to go to a certain number of parties and premieres her parents wouldn’t let her go to. I was sad when she dumped me, but I’d known my sweet suburban escape couldn’t last forever. Besides, my manager said the Avery angle had kind of played out at that point, and it was a good time to date someone more high profile.

  Editor’s Note: He started dating the country singer Camryn Sweets pretty soon after we broke up, and in the next couple months, she had her first crossover pop hit with the single “Blonder Than Her.” Coco swears it’s about me, but I’m not convinced.

  BIZZY: I didn’t believe any of that garbage the Internet was spinning about Jake and Avery’s split being mutual, and I don’t think anybody else did, either. It was obvious he’d dumped her—just look at how fast he started dating Camryn Sweets! I was pretty sure Jake Doe’s whole relationship with Avery had been some kind of poorly planned publicity stunt that had gone on for far too long. His management team was obviously terrible; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been on Skyward.

  COCO: I don’t know how to say this without it sounding creepy—but I’ll try. In some ways, I feel like Jake Doe was the first of Avery’s boyfriends who could actually match the force of her personality. He is beyond charismatic. I think, if we’re trying to mine these old relationships for subtext, that’s what I see here. Jake was confident enough to stand on his own, driven enough to keep up with Avery, and also let her do her own thing. Jake came to her tennis matches, even if it did cause a lot of problems with all of the moms trying to take pictures with him. Overall, Jake was probably one of Avery’s best boyfriends. And maybe he’d matured enough now that he’d be less obsessed with being a normal high schooler and more obsessed with just being Avery’s boyfriend. I wondered if he was single—I’d seen online that he’d been spotted out to dinner with Emmanuelle Oliveira, from Adam’s Fall, but that was just dinner. And who knew if that was real or just a publicity thing anyway—they were on the same network, after all. Maybe this would be a chance for Avery and Jake to rekindle things! Yes, I know Avery’s sworn off dating, but there’s gotta be some kind of movie star ex-boyfriend exception clause to that kind of thing, right?

  Editor’s Note: There is absolutely not. I am D-O-N-E done with dating until we finish this. I don’t care if Jake Doe is available.

  HUTCH: I know Avery had said she was going to prom on her own, but part of me was waiting for Avery to ask Jake Doe to the prom. It would be hard to resist a celebrity, right? Seems like that’s the kind of guy who would make anyone break a no-dating vow. He’s professionally handsome, after all. That is literally his job.

  Editor’s Note: If I was going to break my no-dating vow for anyone, it certainly wouldn’t be Jake Doe …

  COCO: I didn’t think it would hurt to ask Jake about the prom. We already knew he looked great in a tux, from that time he had to go to a black-tie ball at the Supreme Leader’s Mansion in order to stop an assassination attempt from a misguided group of rebel space banditos, because even though Jake was also trying to take down the government, the rebels had to be stopped, for some reason that I can’t remember.

  HUTCH: AD did ask someone about prom, but not the person I thought she was going to ask.

  JAKE: It was pretty weird when Avery asked me if Emma was free on Friday—they weren’t exactly friends. I know Emma was supposed to go to some new bottled-water launch, but she’d probably skip it if I asked.

  HUTCH: It took Jake a while to figure out what AD was asking—I think he’s kind of slow—but I knew what she was doing immediately.

  JAKE: But then again, I wasn’t that surprised when Avery asked if I thought Emma would go to her prom. Everyone’s in love with Emma. Even my ex-girlfriends, apparently.

  HUTCH: I had never seen anything like this. I had never felt—uh, I mean, I’d seen AD do a lot of cool things th
ese past four years, but this might have taken the cake.

  AVERY: I’d gotten to know Hutch’s friends since I started this project, and even though they may have said they didn’t want to go to prom, I realized that I wanted them to go to prom. I liked them, and I wanted to spend time with them, but more importantly, they were part of our senior class, and I wanted us all to experience this final high school rite of passage together. Besides, I knew once I got them there, they’d have fun. And I’d have fun hanging out with them, too.

  HUTCH: AD got Emma Rajpur—Emma Rajpur!—to agree to go to the prom with my best friend, perpetually single Liam Padalecki. This was proof that miracles happened.

  AVERY: Jake put me on the phone with Emma Rajpur’s manager and I lined up the whole thing—apparently, bottled water is bad for her brand now anyway, because we’re all supposed to be using glass water bottles. Plus, “celebrities going to prom with regular people” is still really hot right now, even though it’s played out to ask on Twitter.

  HUTCH: No, of course I wasn’t mad Liam was going to prom! I would never stand between Liam and his dream girl. She is literally his dream girl—Liam has a poster of Emma Rajpur on his ceiling. Of course I wanted him to go to prom with her. Sure, Ultimate Game Night would get pushed back a little bit, but Michael and Alex and I could play some more casual three-player games until Liam came over. Who knows, maybe Emma would come after prom, too. She might be secretly into RPG. She’s been at Comic-Con for the last few years, after all. She might have picked up a thing or two.

  AVERY: The whole thing was going to be an amazing surprise. All Hutch had to do was make sure Liam got into a tux—which Coco and I would rent from somewhere—then a limo would pull up with Emma Rajpur inside. I couldn’t wait to film it and then remix it to an inspirational mash-up that included the Skyward opening theme. See, this is what prom is about—dreams coming true! Not some stupid plastic tiara.