Extra Credit #22

by Melissa J Morgan

  “What? Why did you lug all that junk here?” Sarah interrupted.

  “Sometimes there might be a need for a special skill on the set. I wanted to be prepared. Because if you and your skill get used—even in the background—you get a SAG voucher.” Brynn realized she was talking faster than she usually did, too fast to really enunciate even, but she couldn’t slow down. Even her tongue was excited about being on a movie set! “If you get three of the vouchers, you get to be a member of SAG.”

  “I feel a ‘huh’ coming. Yeah, here it is. Huh? SAG?” Sarah repeated.

  “Screen Actors Guild. It’s a union. You can’t be a professional actor unless you’re a member of SAG.” Brynn looked down at her duffels. “I also brought some magazines—with quizzes—because being an extra involves a lot of waiting. I’m going to try and spend the downtime networking, but I thought you and Nat might want them.”

  “All I brought was lunch. And some homework. But I got most of it done on the train,” Sarah said.

  “Food’s a good idea, although they’ll feed us. But there are always long lines,” Brynn answered.

  “Okay, tell me. How many hours have you spent Googling to find out all this stuff?” Sarah asked.

  “Uh, how many hours has it been since Natalie sent out that post?” Brynn asked.

  Sarah laughed. “That’s what I thought. Speaking of Miss Natalie . . .”

  “I know. Where is she? Being late is a complete extra no-no.” Brynn looked down the line, then across the wide, green quad that stretched out on either side of it. The movie—at least this part of the movie—was shooting on a college campus that was standing in for a boarding school—the school Sam Quinn’s son was supposed to go to. A lot of the movie took place there because Sam Quinn was searching for his son at the school in several different time periods.

  Brynn squinted her eyes—no Natalie.

  “I’m going to call her.” Brynn pulled out her cell. “Hey, Nat. It’s Brynn and Sarah. We’re in line to get fitted for our costumes, and you’re not. Where are you?”

  “The fun can’t start until you get here!” Sarah called out in the background.

  “See you soon, we hope,” Brynn added, then hung up.

  “Some of Nat’s shoes aren’t designed for fast walking,” Sarah pointed out. “Or even walking at all. That could explain the lateness.”

  “True,” Brynn agreed. “Although every pair she wears gives me shoe envy.” She and Sarah shuffled a few feet closer to the gym/wardrobe center entrance. “So you want some other extra tips? They’ll make you the equivalent of an old camper.”

  “Then definitely,” Sarah answered.

  “All right, let’s go over some vocab. The honeywagon is a trailer with changing rooms and a bathroom. It’s not a place for food, even though it sounds like it should be.”

  “Honey doesn’t equal food. Got it,” Sarah said.

  “You don’t start acting—you know, doing your background stuff—when the director says ‘action.’ You start when she—our director is a she, which is cool—or the assistant director says ‘background.’ ”

  Sarah nodded. “Background, because we’re in the background. Makes sen—”

  “I don’t know any of that. But I do know where the snack shack is set up. Actually, it’s not a snack shack. It’s more like a Starbucks in a tent.” A voice interrupted the girls’ conversation. Brynn jerked her head toward the direction of the voice—and saw a cute boy, make that very cute, smiling at Sarah. Brynn looked over at Sarah, waiting for an intro. She figured Sarah must know the guy from school. In fact, Brynn wondered if she herself knew him as well. There was something awfully familiar about his face.

  “Come on,” Very Cute Boy urged. “I can tell you need a caramel macchiato.” He turned to Brynn. “Look at her eyes. Don’t you think it’s almost gotten to be a medical condition? That’s what my stepmom calls it when she needs caffeine—a medical condition. I just like caramel.”

  Brynn looked at Sarah’s eyes, which were wide with surprise. Brynn started to think that maybe Sarah had never seen V.C.B. before. “Uh, well, we’re getting pretty close to the front of the line . . .” Brynn said.

  “But the coffee is very close,” V.C.B. said. “And we’ll get one for you, too. You’re reaching a medical crisis yourself. I can see it. So you save our place, and Sarah and I will go get coffee.”

  “How do you know my name?” Sarah asked.

  Yup, Brynn was right. V.C.B. was also A.T.S. A Total Stranger.

  “I know it by basically eavesdropping,” V.C.B./ A.T.S. admitted. “My name is Chace Turner, since you didn’t have the chance to eavesdrop on me. Not that either of you would eavesdrop. I’m sure you’re much too nice for that.”

  Brynn was glad he told them his name. All the initials she’d assigned him were getting confusing.

  “So you can save our place, uh—” Chace hesitated. “I wasn’t eavesdropping long enough to hear your name.”

  “Brynn,” Sarah told him.

  Chace’s smile widened. “Brynn. So Brynn will save our place in line and we’ll get her—” He glanced at Brynn, who glanced at Sarah, trying to figure out what her friend wanted to do. “Some coffee would be good,” Sarah said. Which was code for “he’s cute enough for you to leave me alone with him.”

  “Mochachino,” Brynn said, and without another word, Chace and Sarah were off. Brynn stared after them. She felt a little like she had brain whiplash.

  Sarah felt a little like she had what Brynn would call brain whiplash. She’d been standing in line with Brynn, basically getting a vocabulary lesson. And now she was walking across the green lawn of a college campus, past a big, gurgling fountain, with this guy who looked almost too cute to be real.

  What had just happened?

  It’s not that she’d never had a guy notice her. She’d had boyfriends, even. Yeah, her very first summer at Lakeview, Sarah had been one of the girls who had zero interest in boys. But she’d definitely grown out of that.

  This was different, though. There were tons of girls here today. Lots of the glam wannabe-actress kind of girls. But this guy Chace had walked right up to her. It’s not like he knew anything about her. That he wanted to hang with her because he liked the same books she liked or was a Red Sox fan, too. Sarah peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. Why me? she thought.

  “Sam Quinn is paying for the coffee tent,” Chace told her. “How cool is that? He’s this megastar, and he’s shelling out for coffee for everybody, even us extras. I guess I kind of think of big stars as being in their own worlds, not thinking of anything but themselves. But it turns out they can be pretty cool, huh?” He winked at her.

  Winking . . . that was a pretty cheesy move. Right up there with using your fingers as guns. It looked good on Chace, though. There probably wasn’t much that didn’t look good on him. He was almost impossibly good looking, but in a very familiar sort of way.

  “It was cool of him to give free coffee to everyone.” Sarah could smell the coffee now, and when they rounded the corner past the library, she could see the tent. It was huge, red and yellow striped, with people all around, talking and laughing.

  “Yeah, especially because I bet he had to take a hammer to his piggy bank,” Chace joked as they joined the line. “So was I right about you? Are you a caramel macchiato girl?”

  “Um, yep, that’s me,” Sarah answered. Actually, she was more of a Gatorade girl. Orange juice, grape juice, apple juice, even bug juice. Or soda. She’d only had coffee once and she didn’t like it. She liked the smell, but not the taste. How could she say that now, though? She’d come over here with Chace to get coffee, and wasn’t coffee more, well, adult than the other stuff?

  “Me too. Except a guy. I’m a caramel macchiato guy,” Chace quickly added, and they both laughed.

  “Yeah, I realized the guy part,” Sarah told him.

  “Ah. A smart girl. I like,” Chace said.

  “And I like a guy who eavesdrops,” Sarah t
eased. “I don’t think I said anything smart when you were eavesdropping.”

  Chace winced. “I should never have admitted that. I should have said I was psychic. Or that you just looked like a Sarah or something.”

  They reached the front of the line and Chace ordered their coffees. Chace handed Sarah hers, and then he stared at her for a minute. Sarah began feeling kind of jittery. What was he staring at?

  “You have caramel macchiato eyes,” he said. Then he snorted. “I can’t believe that came out of my mouth. I sounded like a total cheeseball. But I just noticed that your eyes are really awesome.”

  Awesome was a little much. Sarah had seen her eyes a million times. They were just your basic brown.

  “They really are the same color as caramel macchiatos. But in the center, around the pupil, there’s a slightly darker ring.” Chace leaned in so close that Sarah could feel his warm breath against her face. Sarah didn’t feel like she could breathe at all. She wanted to back away and, at the same time, she had this impulse to close the small distance between them. So she stayed exactly where she was.

  “No, not a ring exactly,” Chace continued. “The edges aren’t smooth. It’s more like a starburst. And actually, the outside of your eye does have a ring—a smooth, perfect ring, of the same darker color, all around it.”

  No boy had every looked at her this way. This closely. This intensely.

  Her ex-boyfriend David would have cracked up if he’d tried to stare into her eyes this long. She would have cracked up.

  But Sarah didn’t feel like laughing now. Actually, she felt kind of dizzy. Kind of dazed. Kind of . . . crushed.

  Natalie walked into the four-story townhouse mansion that was the Henri Bendel department store. She thought maybe one of their signature brown and white bags might cheer her up a little.

  Bendel’s wasn’t one of her usual shopping spots, but it felt right for what her mom called “retail therapy.” It was so elegant, so completely New York. But standing there surrounded by the glossy, dark-wood makeup counters, Natalie wasn’t feeling her happiness meter go up.

  What she was feeling was her teeth aching from the new braces. What she was feeling was an unwillingness to open her mouth and let the junk on her teeth be seen. What she was feeling was miserable.

  Maybe she needed more than the cosmetics and candles on the first floor. She loved new makeup, but maybe this round of retail therapy required more serious shopping. Natalie climbed the curving staircase, with its black wrought iron railing, up to the second floor—fashion, jewelry, and fragrance.

  The Memoire Liquide section caught her eye. The shelves held more than one hundred old-fashioned, little bottles with stoppers. Each one contained a perfume oil, and the oils could be combined into a bespoke perfume, a perfume that was made especially for you.

  Natalie had been wanting to get her own perfume made for a long time. Maybe today was the day. A specialist would help her select the oils, and then Memoire Liquide would keep her perfume recipe on file so she could buy more whenever she wanted it.

  She took a step toward the rows of little bottles waiting for her, then hesitated. She didn’t really feel like talking. At all. And she wouldn’t be able to concoct her perfume without talking to the specialist a little. Plus, the whole point of the perfume was to reflect your personality and emotions. Natalie didn’t think she wanted to smell the way she was feeling right now.

  Instead, she veered over to one of the fashion areas. It was soothing, the new smell everywhere, all the clothes perfectly folded or hung neatly. She found an Alice + Olivia tank dress with a cute ruffled and embroidered hem. Her size, too. As she took it off the rack, her cell rang.

  It was Brynn. Again. Natalie still didn’t feel like talking, but if she didn’t pick up, Brynn would probably send out a search and rescue team. She sighed, punched Talk, and said, “Hi, Brynn.”

  “That’s not what you say. You say, ‘Brynn, I’m stuck on the train’ or ‘Brynn, I’m in the emergency room because I chipped the polish on my big toe!’ ”

  “I’m sorry. I should have called you and Sarah before,” Natalie answered. “I’m just not in the mood for the extras thing.”

  “In the mood?” Brynn’s voice went up an octave with each word. “It’s not like people get this chance every day. Did you read that article I sent—the one about Ember Davis? This could be our start. And I know you say acting isn’t your thing, but I also know that you were all ready to go to that improv class your dad wanted you to take before we all decided on Walla Walla this summer.”

  Natalie caught sight of herself in one of the store’s many mirrors and flashed a sarcastic smile. Yes, that would look lovely on-screen, she thought. I’m sure anyone who saw me would immediately realize I should be a star just like my dad.

  “Nat. Hello? I know you’d be late if you left now. But your dad knows the director and everything. You can still come. Opportunity of a lifetime,” Brynn coaxed.

  “Not really. At least not for me,” Natalie answered, saying the first thing she could think of to get Brynn off the phone. “My dad can get me an actual part in a movie any time I want one. I don’t really have to start as an extra.”

  She’d just come off as exactly the kind of movie star’s kid she hated. But no other excuse had come into her head, so she rolled with it.

  “Oh. Okay,” Brynn told her. “Yeah, of course, that makes sense.”

  She sounded hurt. Why wouldn’t she? Natalie had basically just given her an I’m-better-than-you smackdown. “You and Sarah have fun, though,” Natalie quickly added. “And I want to hear everything.”

  “Me and Sarah, right,” Brynn answered. “She completely ditched me for this cute boy. Okay, this very cute boy.”

  A very cute boy, Natalie thought. Wonder when one of those will ever look at me again.

  “Why don’t you come hang out with me? I have magazines. With quizzes,” Brynn bribed.

  “I can’t. I’m shopping. Go become a star. I know you will,” Natalie said, then hung up before Brynn could reply. She rushed into the nearest changing room with her dress. She needed this retail therapy to kick in stat.

  Natalie shimmied out of her clothes and slid on the silky tank dress. Cute. And with her lime pumps, very cute. From the chin down.

  She yanked the dress off over her head and dropped it to the floor. What was she doing? The point of a cute dress was to get people—especially boy people—to notice you. And if anyone noticed her right now, it wouldn’t take them very long to see the horror show that was her mouth.

  Natalie left the elegant store as quickly as she could without breaking into a run.

  chapter FOUR

  Go slower, Brynn silently ordered the wardrobe line. In about three steps she would be inside the wardrobe area—and Sarah and Chace still weren’t back. She wasn’t going to be able to hold their places much longer. Go slower, line.

  Clearly her mind-control powers were being jammed by evil forces, because two seconds later the line jerked forward. Brynn took one . . . two . . . three . . . four steps. And she was through the doorway to the gym. She peered behind her, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sarah and Chace, the now-more-annoying-than-cute boy, running toward her. But no.

  And the line kept on moving. Two more steps and she could almost reach out and touch one of the dozens of rolling racks of costumes. Which was so cool. Except Sarah wasn’t here. Natalie, either.

  What was with Natalie, anyway? Brynn wondered. Her friend had practically hung up on her, and that was after going all my-daddy’s-a-movie-star-and-can-get-me-anything-I-want, which so wasn’t Nat.

  A lot of the time, Natalie didn’t even tell people she was Tad Maxwell’s daughter right off. Like at Walla Walla during the summer, Nat hadn’t told any of the girls who didn’t already know her from Camp Lakeview about her dad. In fact, Sarah had told her whole tent that Tad Maxwell was her father, and the truth didn’t come out until the end of the summer, because Natalie didn’t go around talking
about how she was movie star spawn. So how come Nat had—

  “You’re up, petunia,” a twenty-something girl called to Brynn, pulling her away from her thoughts about Natalie’s bizarre behavior.

  Brynn hurried over to her. “Hi, I’m Brynn. I’m an extra, but, duh, you know that, because here I am.” Brynn’s tongue had slipped into excited overdrive again. Her feet, too. She couldn’t help giving a couple toe bounces. “Is my hair okay? Because it could be a different color. With wigs. From in there.” She pointed to one of her duffel bags.

  The girl laughed. “Hey, Brynn. I’m Dax, one of the wardrobe assistants. And your hair is fine. Beautiful, actually. I love red hair.” She started flipping through a rack of pants. “You really brought wigs?”

  Brynn nodded, biting her tongue. She didn’t want to start another babblefest. So not professional.

  “Good call. Most first-timers don’t know to do that, but sometimes we do need different hair on people for different scenes. Or maybe just because an extra’s hair is too similar to one of the stars’,” Dax commented.

  Brynn flushed, a little out of embarrassment, a little out of pleasure. Embarrassment because it had been so completely obvious to Dax that Brynn was a first-time extra. Pleasure because she’d made the right move—the professional move—by bringing the wigs.

  “I’m thinking these.” Dax handed Brynn a pair of hip-hugging brown corduroy pants with huge bell bottoms. “With this.” She turned to another rack and grabbed a crocheted vest with a yellow, green, and purple butterfly on the back, then added a thin, purple turtleneck. “Now you need shoes. I’m going to get you a pair of Famolares. Everybody your age—well, girls—was wearing them in the ’70s. The soles had these big, funky waves that were supposed to be good for—”