by Amy Brashear
“So you’re in high school?” Tyson asked, trying to make small talk.
“Yes, we’re juniors,” I said.
“And how do you know each other? Friends?”
Terrence tapped me on the shoulder. “We’re brother and sister,” he said, conveniently leaving out the “step.”
Tyson looked at me and then turned to look Terrence. “Don’t you see the family resemblance?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
The look on his face confirmed that he thought we were serious until he shook his head, gave a short laugh, and said, “Funny.”
“We think so,” Terrence said.
Tyson looked back at him and swerved. I screamed, and he course-corrected.
“Oops,” Tyson said.
“Your last word on this earth was going to be ‘oops,’” I said.
He smiled, pushing up his sunglasses with his middle finger. Then he took a deep breath and continued driving down the bumpy road, stopping in front of a trailer. “This is your stop,” he said. He kicked his feet up over the steering wheel.
“Not going inside?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll wait out here.”
We walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. It flew open. “Nuke me!” a man greeted us. He smiled widely. He was balding and pale, with a pencil-thin black mustache. He wore a purple-and-green scarf around his neck and a pincushion on his wrist. “Welcome. I’ll be with you shortly.”
His name was Raymond—pronounced “Ray-MOND”—Sinclair. He encouraged us to repeat his name back to him with “a tinge of hoity-toity.” He said he had worked on Dynasty.48 I loved that show. The shoulder pads were bigger than the egos. Alexis was my favorite.
Terrence and I sat on a couch near the huge window. I caught a glimpse of Astrid, who was getting sized for the “Civic Pride Scene.” I tried not to make eye contact with her, but failed.
“L name, right?” she said, glancing up while picking at her cuticles.
“It’s Laura,” I said.
“Got it—L name. Terrence, right?”
“T name,” he said without smiling.
“He-e-ey,” she said, suddenly sounding very creepy. “Funny man.” She probably meant for it to be very sexy. But everyone with a British accent sounded sexy.
I tried not to think about Astrid, but to concentrate on my role. I could see my pale pink dress with capped sleeves hanging on a rack full of clothes. It was so pretty. I couldn’t wait to try it on. Terrence’s black pants, white button-down shirt, and black leather jacket were hanging right beside it.
Astrid stepped off the stool and walked toward me. “Amateurs are fun, but let’s try not to mess up, ’kay?” she said, unzipping her dress to show her bare back.
Was she trying to be intimidating? Terrence stared, though. Astrid was pretty, I’d give her that, but she most definitely forgot to turn off the bitch switch before coming to our town.
“Laura, we’re ready for you,” said Raymond, placing the tape measure around his neck.
I got on the stool where Astrid once stood, and tried to hold still with my arms stretched out like I was getting ready to take off. They were going to have to take in the boob area on the dress. Apparently Peony Roth was much more blessed in that department than I was. I was taking Peony’s part today, though technically not Peony’s role. Still an extra, but I was going to be on camera.
Astrid laughed. I wanted to cry as each pin pierced my skin.
“Pain is beauty,” Raymond said. “But try not to bleed on the dress.”
I hobbled off the stool and waddled my way behind a partition and somehow got out of the dress without doing any harm to it.
I sat in the beauty parlor chair. It was Kitty’s turn to turn me into a swan.
Kitty Van Pelt, the hair and makeup extraordinaire, wore her hair crimped with pink stripes. Actually, she wore a lot of pink. Tights, skirt, long-sleeve shirt, vest—all pink. Including her makeup. Pink was her signature color. (She was a character. But really sweet.) She spoke at a high pitch, and squealed and smiled as she did her job.
Astrid sat in the beauty parlor chair beside me, filing her nails with an emery board that she had pulled out of her Nuke Me tote bag. I saw that she had two books in there, Eve of Destruction and 1984.
“Oh, I’m reading that for class at my school,” I said. I pointed at the special-edition 1984 anniversary cover. “How do you like it?”
“Oh,” she said, tracing my eye line to her tote bag. She shook her head. “My tutor gave me the CliffsNotes. I haven’t read it yet.”
I continued to stare at her as she went back to focusing on her hangnail. I wondered if she’d even read Eve. Probably not.
Astrid sighed and pushed herself up from her chair. “I’ll be back. You Americans bore me,” she said, leaving the trailer with the door slamming shut behind her.
“Brilliant,” Kitty said, mocking Astrid’s posh accent. “Now, Laura, we’re going for a natural look. You did win the pageant, after all.”
“What pageant?” Terrence asked.
“What pageant?” Kitty asked, dropping her eyelash curler and placing her hands on her hips.
“I honestly can’t believe you asked that,” Raymond chimed in.
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked,” Terrence said.
“Have you read the book?” she asked.
Terrence shook his head.
“Read the book.” She picked up the eyelash curler and went for my right eye.
“We’re going to go for a special-occasion look. Something strong to hold up the mushroom-shaped crown,” Kitty said.
“The what now?” Terrence asked.
“Read the book.” Kitty brushed my hair and smiled at herself in the mirror. “Well, our little Miss Laura was crowned Ms. Atomic Bomb.”
“Miss What?” Terrence asked.
Raymond rolled his eyes, marched over to Astrid’s tote, and picked out the paperback copy of Eve of Destruction. “Read the book!” he cried, literally throwing it at Terrence’s head.
I tried not to laugh. Terrence gave me a look that said, “Everyone involved in this movie is totally insane.”
“Now, what are we going to do for the radiation scars?” Kitty said, talking to herself as she mixed a couple of eye shadows together.
Poor Terrence. He wouldn’t have felt so lost if he’d only read the book.
* * *
48 ABC soap opera set in Denver, Colorado. It premiered in 1981. It’s produced by Aaron Spelling and stars John Forsythe as oil magnate Blake Carrington; Linda Evans as his secretary/wife, Krystle; and Joan Collins as Blake’s ex-wife, Alexis.
Chapter Nineteen
Now, to be completely honest, I didn’t have high hopes for this film. Yes, the fairgrounds felt extra creepy. But this was the director of Kinship. Ergo: he’d cast an Asian actress, Kai Yu, in the starring role, and she’d died while filming, so instead of suspending the project, he hired a white actress to take her place, Maxie Frey. Maxie the actress always reminded me of Maxie the Pads, which in turn reminded me of horrendous, debilitating cramps. Maybe that’s why I hated her.
Mr. Edman stood in the middle of the barren set—talking animatedly to a man in a backward baseball cap, who was smoking a cigarette and looked like he hadn’t showered in days. Both had wires and Walkman headphones dangling from their necks.
I strained my ears to listen.
“I heard what Bruce and Anthony did,” Director Edman whispered loudly. “A bunch of cheapskates.”
Tyson cleared his throat. That got their attention.
“This is Laura,” he announced. “And this is Terrence,” he added, trying to defuse the tension. “She won the radio contest, and he’s her guest, as guaranteed by the rules of the prize giveaway.”
I frowned.
Mr. E
dman shook his head. “Terrence, buddy, happy to meet you, but you really put us in a pickle.” With that, he turned back to the baseball cap–wearing smoker.
Interesting: The director of Eve of Destruction wasn’t happy to meet me. He didn’t even consider me worthy of being acknowledged. Yet I was the one who’d won the contest “as guaranteed by the rules” . . . blah, blah, blah. Terrence tucked his hands in his pockets, something he did whenever he got nervous or embarrassed. I felt for him. In similar situations I fiddled with one of the two extra scrunchies I always kept on my wrist.
“Listen, Eddie, it has to work,” Norman Edman continued, as if we weren’t there.
Aha! This was Eddie Payne, the so-called wildly charismatic genius. Funny: he looked like a grown-up version of Max, minus the baseball cap and cloud of smoke.
Eddie’s eyes flashed to Terrence. He dropped his cigarette and stomped it out under his Converse high-tops. “Shit. It is what it is,” he said. (More croaked than said. Eddie sounded like Mr. Welsh, our math teacher, who had a carton-a-week habit, or like an evil frog villain from a fairy tale who also smoked a carton of cigarettes a week.) He vanished into one of the trailers.
Mr. Edman sighed and approached us. “I’m Norman Edman,” he said.
It occurred to me that he hadn’t introduced himself to me at the welcome party. Not that he had any reason to; it was just interesting that I hadn’t officially met him.
He extended a hand to Terrence.
“You want to shake?” Terrence asked, folding his arms across his chest.
“Pardon?” Mr. Edman said, his Hollywood smile intact.
“You know, with me being not white and all.”
I cringed but bit my lip to keep from laughing.
Mr. Edman’s Hollywood smile faltered. “Excuse me?”
After that I closed my eyes. I could envision how this would play out. Terrence would get us kicked off the movie set. Which was probably all for the best in the long run, except that I wanted to see Freddy White again. (I’ll admit that here. Best just to get it out of the way.) But when I opened my eyes again, I saw that Terrence had accepted the handshake.
“It is what it is,” Terrence said in a dead-on impersonation of Eddie Payne.
Now Mr. Edman looked as if he were about to vomit. He still tried to be sunny. “I’m not racist,” he said, pulling away. “I have plenty of black friends.”
“Good for you,” Terrence replied. “I have hardly any.”
Then I actually did laugh. I couldn’t help it. My stepbrother laughed too. That made things better. It got rid of Mr. Edman, at least.
At 11 a.m. I commented—very quietly, to nobody in particular—that we’d arrived at 8 a.m.
Terrence’s stomach growled. He’d been too busy earlier this morning trying on different clothes to eat breakfast. I, on the other hand, had eaten breakfast and was hungry just the same. Another vice of mine—when I was nervous I liked to eat.
A very ominous “it’s time” was yelled over a bullhorn. That was meant for me. I got up, everyone staring, and walked over to the set like I was walking down the green mile.
Astrid climbed into the 1954 cherry-red Chevrolet convertible beside me and snickered. “Thank God you won Miss A-Bomb. I don’t have the upper-body strength to hold that thing up.”
I could be wrong, but it sounded like a clever way of calling me fat. I smiled. I was going to take the high road all the way to hell if I had to.
“Now, just wave,” Norman said to us. “Just wave to the crowd when they’re here. Just wave, smile, and wave, like you have no care in the world. You just won, Laura. Astrid, you came in second.”
I gave a short laugh. No laughing, Laura, I said to myself, because when I did, the pins holding this monstrosity dug into my skull. I was going to have to wear this all through breaks. Kitty would come and do a touch-up, but I was instructed not to move. If I did, there would be bloodshed—as in my own.
“Don’t be all high and mighty. I asked Norman to give someone else this part. An extra. I did not want to wear that godawful thing,” Astrid said, poking at the mushroom cloud that was possibly digging into my brain. “Think of my poor head. My hair. I’m good with coming in second.”
“Lunch!” someone screamed, and everyone stopped what they were doing and, like a hog heading for a trough, they ran.
Just like in the school cafeteria, everyone sat in their respective cliques. Crew on one side. Production on the other. Talent ate in their trailers. Terrence and I? Well, we found a picnic table next to the Porta Potties. We liked to keep it classy. Individual boxes filled with sandwiches and a little package of potato chips, a pickle, and a cookie. Terrence and I each grabbed a lemon-lime soda from a cooler.
“You’ll enjoy tomorrow. Sloppy joes,” said a scruffy-looking man. His gray hair went every which way, his beard was unkempt and looked like a Dalmatian’s, and the dark circles under his eyes were large but were slightly covered by huge black-rimmed glasses. “I’m Dylan Paige,” he said. “Cinematographer. You’ll see me around. Usually with a handheld.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“You too,” he said. “You two seem to have manners, unlike some people.” He looked over his shoulder down the lane toward the trailers. “But I’ve been around worse.”
“How many movies have you worked on?” Terrence asked.
“Thirty or so,” he said. “But I’ve only been on this job for the last five or so in my career.”
“That’s impressive, man.”
“Well, I did take a pay cut to work on WarGames.”
“So you’ve met Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy?”
He nodded. “I was hoping that they’d be in this too instead of the talent we have,” he muttered quietly. “They’ve got attitude problems.”
“Yeah, they’re not that friendly,” I said.
“Except Freddy,” Terrence said.
“Oh, yeah, Freddy’s nice,” Dylan said. “And Owen at least keeps to himself . . . But the girl.” He shook his head. “Sometimes stereotypes are true. We’re already taking bets on how many takes it will take for Astrid to die. I’ve got my money on six. You want in?”
Terrence and I looked at each other and nodded. We decided to go in on eight.
By the time we got back from lunch, we were already behind schedule according to Tyson, who kept on relaying that message from Norman, the director. Well, I guessed he could be annoyed. It was his picture, after all. But Astrid was in a mood and took it out on anyone she came in contact with. (Kitty, Raymond, Eddie—even Norman. They could do no wrong, but she was right. All the time, or so she claimed. A lot.) Like the guides say to tourists on African safaris, don’t make eye contact. She was a predator and we were her prey.
But like the tabloids screamed with their headlines, Astrid Ogilvie was an entitled whiner with unreasonable expectations for life. I rolled my eyes but didn’t move anything else for fear of decapitation. I looked like a fool sitting here in my pink dress and Miss Atomic Bomb crown. Astrid didn’t. She wore white—or, as she called it, virginal white.
“It pays to come in second place,” she said, snickering.
I wanted to lean over and send the full force of my mushroom cloud over her head. But I didn’t. I had self-control, and my body physically wouldn’t allow it without doing bodily harm to myself.
We sat in a bus at the end of “Main Street,” which in real life was Sixth Street. Terrence sat beside Freddy. Astrid didn’t want to sit by me, but it being the only seat, she had to. Sometimes we had to do things we didn’t want to do to get from point A to point B.
Astrid and I didn’t talk. I tried talking to her, but she didn’t find the need or the desire to. When Astrid got on the bus she made it all about her. She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Owen has jumped the shark49 as a human being.”
I laughed
, and she did too. That would be our only interaction.
Owen wasn’t in this scene technically. He had one shot where he was seen from the crowd. The crowd. Extras were lined up and down the blocks. They were dressed in attire from the 1950s. Stereotypical clothing: white blouses, poodle skirts, house dresses, ladies’ suits, low heels, black-and-white saddle shoes, and the bad-boy leather jackets, jeans rolled up, short-sleeved shirts—it was June, of course.
Terrence was in the scene as well, in the crowd on the opposite side as Freddy to give the illusion of a diverse town. It was Pikesville, after all, but Pikesville did look a lot like Griffin Flat.
Half the school was here. But Max wasn’t. He thought this movie-making business in our town was stupid and wouldn’t end well.
Kitty came up behind me and literally used a whole aerosol can of Aqua Net before she pulled another can of Aqua Net out of her utility belt, shook it, and sprayed my beehive into place.
Then she touched up my makeup. And Raymond straightened my pink dress and buffed my white leather Mary Jane shoes. I looked like an overgrown toddler.
“Laura,” Astrid said.
“Hey, you got my name right.”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she said, smiling and waving occasionally to the crowd.
“Quiet on the set. Quiet on the set.”
“And action!”
* * *
49 Meaning to show how brave he was or how hard he was trying. Like how the Fonz wore swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket and literally jumped over a shark while on water skis. Two thumbs up. Ayyy. It was absurd because Fonzie already proved how brave he was by jumping over tons of barrels with his motorcycle in a previous episode. Honestly, I was only watching Happy Days because of how cute Ron Howard is. He has great thick red hair. Though I stopped watching when Ron left the show in 1980. The show was never the same again. It was canceled back in September.