Dia of the Dead

by Brinson, Brit

  “Can someone open this?” I grunted, moving back while Missy thrashed against me growling. The door opened and I pushed her out into the arms of the security guard. She was his problem now.

  I ran back to check on Amber. She stood in the corner trembling slightly. Her hair was tousled and her arms were covered in reddening scratches.

  “Amber, are you okay?” I approached her slowly.

  “Yeah. Yeah,” she breathed, standing up and checking her arms.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t. . .I don’t know. It all happened so fast.” She shook her head. “One minute she was passed out,then she was up and acting really weird—for her. She got this wild look in her eyes and they changed colors, turning darker like the pupil had overtaken the blue, and she started shouting nonsense. Then she attacked me.”

  Amber held up her arm for me to look at the scratches Missy left on her forearm.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “I know. She didn’t do too much damage. I’ll be fine. Can you help me get Missy’s things?”

  I helped her collect Missy’s things off the floor and put them back into her bag. I came across a baggie filled with small tablets similar to the ones Mason had earlier.

  “Do you think these are the reason she’s acting so weird?” I walked over to where Amber stood, holding up the baggie.

  “Huh?” Amber put down the paper towel she used to dab at her wounds in the mirror and turned to me.

  “Do you think Missy took some of these?” I shook the baggie again.

  “Oh. Those. She took some in the car on the way over. She was already wasted, but she mumbled something about wanting to take the party to the next level.”

  “Do you think they could be why she flipped out?”

  “I dunno. Probably. Missy’s a human pill disposal. She’ll take anything if she thinks it’ll help her party and then she’ll wash it down with as much booze as possible.” Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell anyone I said that!”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good.” She turned back to the mirror where she continued patching up her wounds and smoothing her hair into place. She gathered her clutch from the counter and turned around.

  “I guess I have to go check on Miss. I gotta make sure she doesn’t end up in jail again. Her career can’t take another hit like that.”

  I handed her Missy’s purse.

  “Thanks for your help, Dia. Maybe we can grab lunch sometime. My treat.”

  “Really? I’d like that.”

  “Great. I’ll call you to set something up.”

  “Don’t you need my number?”

  “Nah. There are people.” She checked her appearance one more time. “I better get going. See you around.”

  She flashed a tired smile and left. I exited shortly after her, hoping to salvage the rest of the night and maybe even have a little fun.

  FOUR

  “I can’t believe she kicked us out. I didn’t even get to dance with Mason,” Kaci pouted. “What did you do?”

  She glared at me from her seat in the back of our hired Town Car. I didn’t think Reagan would actually follow through on her threat but apparently I was wrong.

  “I didn’t do anything. Brendan and I went to get help for Missy and she ordered the security guard to escort me out when he was finished tossing out Missy. I didn’t think she was serious.”

  “You were with Brendan Baker. Of course she was serious. Didn’t Taylor tell you about that? I didn’t think you’d listen to me since you think I’m just a silly airhead—“

  “—I do not.”

  Kaci flashed me a look.

  “Seriously, I don’t,” I said defensively.

  “It’s all a part of the game, Dia. We’re actors. We pretend for a living. On-screen and off. It’s how Hollywood works if you want to have a successful career.”

  Her expression was serious. I’d only seen her this way when she was in character. Addison Appleby was the catty queen bee of Romero High—she had to be serious while plotting Dia Muerto’s downfall. Kaci, on the other hand, was always joking around or flirting with Mason on set. “Airhead” was the first word that came to mind when someone said “Kaci Miller” though I’d never tell her that. She could be flighty at times…okay pretty much all of the time, but she had good intentions and a kind heart.

  Her expression softened and she continued, “Since you’re new to this and as your best friend at Bixby, I thought I’d just go ahead and have your back. I told Taylor to give you some helpful tips about show stuff. Surely she gave you the deets on the Brendan Baker Debacle.”

  “‘Brendan Baker Debacle’? She told me Reagan had a crush on him. I didn’t know it had a name.”

  “She told you about Lola Matthews, right?”

  “She mentioned the name—“

  “— you didn’t hear this from me.” Her cheek twitched and her eyes lit up. It was the look she got when she had a really juicy bit of gossip to share. “Reagan and Brendan used to date.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. For like a week. They broke up for whatever reason then Brendan started dating Lola Matthews who played Maddie’s sister Megan onOMG!”

  “OMG!was one of my favorite shows a few years ago. I watched like every episode. I don’t remember Maddie having a sister.”

  “She was written out of the show after the pilot was filmed. They told her the character wasn’t working but the truth is once Reagan found out about her and Brendan, she had it in for the poor girl.”

  “Wow. Were they like really dating? Her parents let her date-date an older guy?”

  “He’s not that much older than her.”

  “My mom would never let me date an older guy. I’m not even sure she’ll let me date at all even though she said I could when I turned sixteen. I’ve been sixteen for two months and my mom hasn’t mentioned anything. My crush on Brendan is just a crush.” I sighed longingly. I caught myself drifting away on mushy thoughts of Brendan and sobered up quickly.

  “Not that I want to like date him or anything. I mean, if he was interested then I guess maybe but—“

  My rambling was cut short by Kaci’s giggling.

  “Your crush needs to stay a crush.” Her smile faded until it disappeared completely. “Haven’t you learned anything from tonight? Reagan’s crazy. Especially about Brendan. I won’t say anything about this to anyone but you have to be careful. We’re already screwed.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “We’re leaving a party at 11:30 that, according to the invite, is supposed to be over at “question mark”. We’re totally effed.”

  “I’m sorry, Kace.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Just be prepared to pack up your dressing room if Mr. Bixby announces the show’s getting canned tomorrow.”

  I sighed and looked out the window.

  The rest of the trip back to Burbank was quiet. Kaci wasn’t chattering away; instead, she spent most of the ride sighing or checking her phone. The driver dropped her off at her apartment building then headed to mine.

  I didn’t wait for him to come around to open my door when the car pulled up in front of Helena Gardens. I thanked him for the excellent service and headed inside. The lobby was quiet for a Friday night. Usually a few residents—fellow actors and actresses at Bixby—hung out in the lobby’s sitting area, running lines in front of the indoor waterfall. But the chairs were empty and the waterfall babbled quietly by its lonesome. Guess everyone else wasn’t thrown out of BB’s party.

  I walked across the lobby toward the elevators, bypassing the desk where Alicia the apartment manager sat during the day. It was well after the regular nine-to-five business hours so an old episode ofCumberland Heights had to keep an eye on things from the TV mounted on the wall behind the desk.

  We lived in a spacious two-bedroom on the sixth floor. The place was practically free, a perk of being studio talent. The building was owned by The Bixbys and housed others who h
adn’t quite had their big break. The place was clean and well kept. It was definitely an upgrade from the crap apartment we had back in Santa Barbara.

  Mom was waiting at the door when I arrived.

  “Hey sweetheart, how was the party?” she asked with a smile on her round brown face.

  “Blerg,” I grunted, trudging inside.

  I threw my clutch onto the dining room table, took off my jacket, and draped it on the back of one of the chairs. I dragged my feet across the hardwood floors of the large room that served as the kitchen-living-dining room to the cream pit sofa. It was obvious mom had spent most of her evening there. Besides greeting me at the door in a pair of ratty sweats and one of my old community center day camp tees, her favorite blanket was balled up on the sofa, a bowl of popcorn sat on the coffee table and the TV above the fireplace was on some sappy romcom.

  I crashed on the couch, waking a sleeping Frank. He popped his head up, looking at me, sighed, and curled back into a reddish-brown ball.

  “Hello to you too, Dia Michelle,” Mom said as she closed the door. “How’re you?” Her tone said ‘you better use your manners, girl.’

  I straightened up from my slouch.

  “Hi, mom. I’m fine.” I tried my best to sound cheery but a lingering sigh was still present in my voice.

  “How was the party?” She plopped down on the sofa next to me, her brown eyes bright with anticipation as she waited for me to tell her how I crashed and burned.

  “The party. . .” I paused and let out a heavy sigh. “Was. A. Disaster.”

  “A disaster? What happened?”

  I recounted what took place at the party, skipping over the more grisly deets like the color of the puke that covered the bathroom floor.

  “Hm. I see,” Mom said, her hand resting thoughtfully on her chin. “That sounds like a lot of drama for one party.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed again.

  “As your momager, where should I start? As a mom, should I ask about this Benjamin Baker? Or as your manager, should I address the nonsense Kaci told you?”

  “It’sBrendan Baker, mom.”

  “Oh, well excuse me.Brendan Baker. Since it seems like you want to talk about him, who is he?”

  “This guy.”

  “You’re blushing. Seems like more than just ‘this guy’.” She nudged my arm with her elbow.

  I couldn’t hold back my grin any longer. “Okay, this guy that I have a huge crush on. He played Luke onOMG!” I spilled.

  “How old is he?” Mom wasn’t exactly wearing the same smile she wore when we spotted cute guys on Rodeo.

  “Age is nothing but a number, mom.”

  Mom raised a brow, frowning.

  “How old is he?” she repeated.

  “Eighteen,” I mumbled.

  Mom cuffed her hand over her ear. “ I didn’t hear you.” She leaned in closer. “Sounded like you said ‘eighteen’. Did you say ‘eighteen’?”

  I muttered, “yes.”

  “So he’s an older boy or should I sayman?”

  “He’s only a few years older than me, Mom.”

  She frowned. “That may not seem like a big age difference when you’re sixteen but it’s a HUGE difference! Trust me, I know. Your dad was eighteen when I met him.” She was beginning to take the tone she used when she delivered long, embarrassing speeches about sex and junk. I wasn’t up for one of those. Not tonight.

  “I know. I know. He was eighteen and you were sixteen. You guys dated for a couple months then he vanished never to be heard from again when he found out that you were pregnant with me. Even though you don’t like talking about Jamie Diaz, you sure love telling this story.”

  Mom’s expression soured.

  “Brendan is just a crush. Not a big deal. He asked me to dance, not on a date. It’s not like I could date him or anything anyway. Reagan has dibs on him,” I rambled on.

  “This sounds like drama you don’t need to be involved in.”

  “I don’t want to be involved inanyoff-screen drama, but Reagan saw Brendan and I holding hands while we were trying to find help for Missy—he took my hand and dragged me off to find a security guard, by the way—then she had me and Kaci tossed out of the main entrance. We had to pretend to be heading to another club for the paparazzi. It was super embarrassing.” I looked at her for a minute. I could feel tears on the horizon. I blinked them away.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Mom.” Tears threatened to escape again.

  “I know you’re not giving up so quickly.” She raised her brow.

  “I’m—I’m not giving up it’s just….” I trailed off and sighed. “This is a lot harder than I expected it to be. I thought that once I got a role, I’d be able to just do what I love—act. But no. There’s always something more. Something extra. I have to be careful who I hang around. I have to figure out who’s friends with who. Who are enemies. Who has a crush on so-and-so. Who I should stay away from. Who I should be besties with. There are all these unspoken rules and I just…I just don’t think I’m going to be able to keep up.” I sank further into my seat and quickly wiped away a few tears before she could see them.

  “Calm down, sweetheart. Take a breath.” Mom scooted closer, wrapping an arm around my shoulder—pulling me near her—and rested her cheek atop my head.

  “You worked really hard to get where you are. I know that it can be a little much for a sixteen-year-old to handle. Hell, sometimes it’s a bit much for me to handle. I’m thirty-two and I’m not even the one in the spotlight.” She released me from the half-hug and pulled away a bit so she could look at me fully.

  “I know you have a lot on your plate at the moment but do you remember when you told me you wanted to be an actress?”

  “Yes.” I nodded, wiping away a few more tears that somehow escaped.

  “Do you remember what I said that day?”

  “You asked me if this was what I really wanted to do.”

  “Uh huh. And what else?

  “You gave me all these warnings about Hollywood and stuff.”

  “Do you remember what you said?”

  “I said I knew it would be tough but I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”

  “That was all I needed to be convinced. There’s something inside you, Dia. A light. It lit up and shone through in those beautiful big brown eyes of yours when you talked about acting. I’d never seen you as passionate about anything before. I sacrificed—we sacrificed a lot to get here. Remember how we slept in the car our first week here?”

  I nodded as more tears fell.

  “Look where we are now.” She motioned a hand toward the apartment. “IfDia of the Dead gets picked up—great. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too. You still have that light, dear. We’ll find another opportunity to let it shine. You know I have a plan B.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She got up from the couch and disappeared toward the back of the room, where her home office took up the entire corner across from the kitchen. She returned with a stack of papers and dropped them in my lap.

  “They’re scripts. Allen sent them over earlier. There were more but I narrowed them down to these. The rest were trash.” She sat on the couch, tucking her leg under her butt.

  I picked up the one on the top of the pile. “Angela” was written in mom’s messy handwriting on the title page.

  “Allen didn’t send it over for you to read for the part of Angela but I felt like you could. It sucks that not many parts are written for young Afro-Latinas, or young women of color at all. And the pickingsare slim for roles thataren’t stereotypes.” She paused and sighed.

  “You’d think things would be different now but things are just as difficult for actors and actresses of color as they were in the past. There are fewer roles and more hoops to jump through. You have to go over and beyond to prove you’re just as—if not more—talented than your peers. You lucked out with Dia Muerto but that’s not to say there aren’t other roles out there for you.
We just have to find the right one. One that representsus well.”

  I knew her “us” meant more than just Trisha and Dia Summers. She was referring to the rest of the girls in the world that looked like me. Little girls that had begun sending fan mail my way saying they couldn’t wait to grow up to be like me. I moved the stack from my lap and onto the coffee table.

  “Plan B is to start auditioning again?” I asked.

  “It’s time to start thinking about the future. If I learned anything from your Grandma Claire, it was to always have a plan. It doesn’t hurt to start working on something.”

  “I guess it doesn’t.”

  “Dia of the Dead’s ratings are good enough. You’re probably doing all this worrying for nothing.” Her smile made me feel a little better.

  “You had a long night. Why don’t you go get some rest. Since filming has wrapped on the show and you don’t have to be at the studio until the afternoon for the announcement, I thought that we could spend the morning hanging out—the two of us. We haven’t done that in a while. I’ll make pancakes and we can relax.”

  “Blueberry pancakes?” I perked up.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “I do!” Just the promise of Trisha Summers’ blueberry pancakes made from scratch was enough to make me mope a little less.

  “I think I’m gonna try to get some sleep.” I picked up the script mom gave me and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Goodnight, sweetie.”

  “Night.” I headed off to my room and hoped that everything would be better in the morning.

  *

  The sweet smell of batter woke me from a restless sleep. Mom came through on her promise of blueberry pancakes. Though I couldn’t catch the quality of z’s I needed, I knew the pancakes would make things at least 60% better. I hopped out of bed and followed the smell down the hall and into the kitchen. My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten in forever. Mom stood in front of the stove, spatula in hand.

  “That smells so good!” I said, taking a seat on one of the bar stools at the island.