The setting sun, combined with the lights that framed the shot, made Charlie’s eyes glow like they were lit from within. Her hair was slicked back, highlighting her fabulous bone structure, and her skin glistened from her having recently emerged from the water. Actually, it was sprayed on glycerine, but it looked a lot like water.
She sat on the beach, her arms wrapped around her raised knees, staring out at the ocean. There wasn’t a word of dialogue. She was simply supposed to be contemplating her future. The assistant director whispered a few words of instruction into her ear, then he stepped back and watched her, a very contented smile on his face.
Piper knew that in a few minutes they were going to clean up, head home on a helicopter, and order room service. But she was almost convinced that Charlie was six years younger, and a castaway, pondering whether to remain one. The kid had chops. No doubt about it.
Everyone was finally happy with the take, and they started to set up for a different angle. Tim emerged from his tent to stand by Piper while the crew ran around like crazy, trying to squeeze another shot into the last minutes of golden light. “Look at her,” he said quietly.
Charlie hadn’t moved. But she wasn’t acting. She was simply sitting on the beach, looking winsome. Knowing her, she could have sat there all day and not complained.
“Do you know why she’s good?” Tim asked.
“Not really. I mean, I know she’s got a lot of charisma—”
“Sure, but that’s not why.” He watched her for another few moments, then said, “She’s good because she can be big or she can be small. Most young actors think they have to go big all the time. Charlie naturally understands that isn’t true. The camera makes small movements look big, so you can go small and convey more than you ever could by ‘acting.’” He continued to stare at Charlie, then quietly said, “Take another look.”
Guys were repositioning lights, others were pulling cable, and the boom operator was adjusting the pole to get the microphone into the perfect spot right over her head, yet Charlie was still exactly where they’d left her. But now a few tears rolled down her cheek, making Piper’s heart clench.
“She’s still in the scene,” he said, clapping Piper on the back, “locked in like a guided missile. She’s special, Piper. Really special.”
Her heart swelled with admiration for her sister and the hard work she’d put in to get this far. “That’s true, Tim. No matter what, she’s special.”
***
Normally, the wardrobe crew would help Charlie get out of her costume, but the woven bodysuit was so itchy Charlie started slithering out of it the second the lights dimmed. She and Piper were in the equivalent of her trailer, here just a tent on the beach. Charlie let out a sigh of relief when she wrapped herself in a bright blue robe, a personalized one with the movie logo on the back and her name over the breast.
When she sat in a director’s chair to allow Piper to remove her hair extensions, she was unnaturally quiet. Normally, when she was quiet she was texting or playing a game on her phone. Not tonight. She was just staring off into the distance, allowing Piper to fuss with her hair without comment.
“You okay?” Piper asked.
Charlie jerked, then turned slightly to look at Piper. “Oh. Yeah. I was really into that scene. Sometimes it takes me a minute to come back to reality.”
She’d never said anything close to that about her work, then Piper realized they’d never been together when Charlie was working on something with any emotional content. “How do you do that?” Piper asked. “How do you just start crying?”
“Easy,” she said, with a sad smile. “I think of losing you.”
“What?” Piper dropped the hank of hair she held in her hand and moved around to face her sister. Putting her hands on Charlie’s knees, she said, “You’re not going to lose me. Never, Charlie.”
“I know,” she said, a smile slowly forming. “But I think about how I’d feel if I did. It works every time, Pip.”
“But isn’t that…?” She struggled to think of how hard it would be to intentionally make yourself sad enough to cry in front of fifty strangers, all while being filmed for the whole world to see.
“Yeah,” Charlie said softly. “Sometimes it’s really hard. It takes a lot out of me.” She slapped Piper hard on the butt, her bittersweet mood evaporating in an instant. “But I know we’re going to live to be a hundred.” Tickling along the underside of Piper’s arm, she teased, “That means you’ve gotta be a hundred and twelve, so eat a vegetable, will you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHEN THEY RETURNED TO THE hotel, Charlie and Delta headed to the balcony to relax in the evening breeze, awaiting room service, while Piper opened up her laptop to check on her mail.
She let her head drop to her chest in dismay when the number began to climb, growing with each heartbeat. Starting with the ones marked ‘urgent,’ she’d just gotten them sorted when Delta raced through the room, barking. She tilted her chin, seeing Charlie go to the door.
“Food here already?’ she asked.
“It’s been a half hour,” Charlie said, giving her a puzzled look. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“Not much,” she lied, not wanting Charlie to feel bad for saddling her with two jobs. But she was going to have to figure out a way to keep an eye on things while also being on a sandy, gritty beach—with spotty Wi-Fi. Either that, or she was going to have to stay up all night, a prospect she knew couldn’t work.
***
Three hours of commuting and fourteen-hour days on set allowed for exactly zero time to explore Hawaii. Piper was sure she’d learn more about the islands and her people from watching a show on The Travel Channel.
One thing she couldn’t complain about was the weather, which was beyond wonderful. Uniformly warm, with lots of moisture in the air, such a gift after the arid dryness of home.
After a week of shooting every day, Piper watched the gorgeous Pacific, still dark and fathomless, as they flew over it on the way to work. In only a few days, she’d begun to think this was a perfectly normal way of commuting. Of course, it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. But the experience reminded her of how easy it was to take something for granted—even something extraordinary. In a few months, she’d once again be going to work in an SUV, crawling along a clogged expressway. Even though the chopper often scared the poop out of her, she had to admit it was a thrill to cover a bunch of nautical miles in just a few minutes.
They landed in their usual spot, then a wave of heat hit them when they opened the doors, surprising everyone.
“What’s the deal?” Tim asked, looking up at the sky like the answer was written there. “Where’s our nice cooling breeze?”
“Stopped,” one of the guys who helped them from the chopper said. “Calm before the storm. We’ll be lucky to get a full day’s work in.”
It was too dark to see if there were clouds in the sky, but the day had an odd feel to it. Not very Hawaiian at all.
As usual, they were in a Jeep with Tim, while Zandra and Delta and the DP rode in another. Piper often wondered if the DP wanted to knock her off so he could have a few more minutes with Tim, but he was consigned to ride with the dog, something she was sure he really appreciated.
Tim was in front with the driver, directing him just like he did everyone else. Charlie had the sides in her hands, trying to read through them in the dark. “Mmm. The birds are going to be on set,” she whispered.
Piper just looked at her, not commenting. Words were kind of a waste since Charlie would know exactly how she felt. Anxious.
The first scene was scheduled for the platform in the treehouse. It was a pretty cool set—from a distance. Up close, you could see all of the brackets and braces and wire and plaster and epoxy that held the thing together. It was still cool, though. Piper liked to stand back and imagine what it would be like to live in a treehouse you and your fellow settlers had built with nothing but your own hands, some tools your ancestors had carried to
the island fifty years ago, and a ton of ingenuity.
The platform was too small for everyone to jam onto, so Piper and the other stylists had to run up and fix hair, makeup, and clothing every time Tim yelled “Cut,” then run back down again. Piper didn’t mind, though. Being mostly on the ground meant she hadn’t been forced to interact with Haley much, given she was up on the platform with her birds.
The scene wasn’t terribly complex. Charlie’s character was meeting the settlers’ parrot for the first time, and he had to scare her by doing a couple of tricks and calling her names. Piper had been surprised to overhear that parrots weren’t indigenous to Hawaii, a fact the author of Eden 2.0 hadn’t been aware of, since she had a bunch of them in the books. Tim was such a detail-obsessed guy that he had pared it down to just one parrot, a beloved family pet one of the original settlers’ kids had smuggled aboard their boat. Because of that switch, the parrot had to be old—even for a parrot. He was going to kick the bucket in a future scene, one of the emotional turning points in the story. Haley had probably been working her butt off in the aviary, as they called her cabin, training the bird to die on cue. Given how hot it was today, he might jump the gun.
Since a storm was brewing, they were really pushing it, trying to cram a fourteen-hour day into seven. At eleven, Tim called the lunch break, saying, “Catering is bringing food up to us, people. Try not to wander off. We’re under the gun today.”
That elicited a bunch of groans. When you were shooting outside all of the time, the crew needed their lunch break to cool off and chill out a little. That was easy to do in the dining hall, but not so easy today. There was some shade, but not nearly enough for everyone to avoid the hot sun.
Charlie walked down from the platform, the usual spring that infused her step entirely absent. “Hot up there,” she said, sweat rolling down her flushed face. The makeup artist had dried her off and added powder so many times she was starting to look a little clownish.
“Right this way, Ms. Summers,” an earnest young production assistant said, leading Charlie away from the gaggle of people. Piper followed along, grinning when she saw the crew had set up a few tents, just like they’d done on the beach. Inside, a generator powered a portable air conditioner, cooling the air and making it much, much drier. “Fantastic,” Charlie groaned as she went inside.
One of the wardrobe assistants was there in a second, efficiently removing her costume and gently placing a thin, cotton robe over her shoulders. As the young woman left, Charlie gave Piper a wry grin. “I kinda like not having to dress myself.”
“Don’t get used to it. I stopped that years ago, and I’m not interested in starting again.”
Someone tapped the door, asking, “Would you like a massage, Ms. Summers?”
“I’m too hot to think of having anyone touch me. You?” she said, tilting her head toward Piper.
“Thanks, no,” Piper said, repulsed by the thought of hands on her overheated body. When they were alone, she yanked off her wet T-shirt and lay face-down on the massage table. “I’m going to stretch out here for a while. Running up and down that staircase sucks!”
Another rap on the flap had Piper tiredly say, “Yes?”
“I have your lunch, Ms. Summers.”
“Be right there.” Charlie walked over and flung the flap open, and a guy entered carrying a tray laden with fresh fruit, attractively arranged jumbo shrimp, a papaya salad and two sweating glasses filled with water and slices of lemon, Charlie’s favorite drink. The flap was wide open, bringing Piper nearly face to face with Haley, who was sitting on an apple box, a sturdy wooden box the lighting crew used for everything from making a short actor taller to allowing a tired bird-trainer to rest her aching feet. It looked like she was eating a peanut butter sandwich that had been made a while ago, with the edges of the bread curling up from the humidity. Her hair was drenched, and plastered to her forehead after having a baseball cap on. A too-large crew T-shirt, ocean blue with Eden 2.0 in the distinctive font clung to her body, the collar and armpits dark from sweat. If you’d had only one word to describe how she looked, it would have been “miserable.”
Piper realized how it must have looked, her lying on the massage table, her shirt off, probably waiting for someone to start rubbing her, an air conditioner blowing cool air out the flap, and a plate of top-notch food waiting to be devoured. She jumped to her feet, struggling back into the wet T-shirt, but by the time her head popped out of the neck, Haley was gone. Piper raced out of the tent, searching for her, but she was nowhere to be found. Defeated, she went back into the tent and lay down on the table, too grumpy to even think about eating.
Charlie took a towel that had been soaking in ice and placed it on her forehead. “Want a cold drink?” she asked, gazing into Piper’s eyes with tender affection.
“I’m okay. I think I’ll try to sleep, all right?”
“Okay, Pip.” She bent over and kissed Piper’s cheek. “If you want to talk…”
“I know,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” She closed her eyes, unwilling to see the worry that shone clearly in her sister’s eyes. A worry she shared. Despite her claims, she wasn’t at all sure that was true.
***
The storm held off until two, but when it came, it came fast and hard. Half of the crew, including Haley and her birds, had been released not long after lunch, but Tim wanted to finish a scene with Charlie and the leader of the settlers, a sweet older guy Piper had seen in dozens of movies, none of which she could name. There were hundreds of people like him in the business, guys whose names you never learned, but who made a good living toiling away anonymously.
As the rain began to pelt them, they raced to the Jeeps to no avail. They were drenched to the skin in moments. Production assistants tried to cover actors with ponchos, but it was so hot no one wanted an extra layer, especially a plastic one, next to their skin. There were lots of official drivers, but Tim liked to ferry Charlie back to the lot most of the time. Piper thought he simply liked the adventure of driving in rough conditions. After he jumped into the driver’s seat, they started off while a very dedicated PA attempted to jog alongside, holding a massive umbrella over Charlie.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just rain.” The kid tripped, righted himself, then slid across wet roots and foliage, valiantly trying to keep that damned umbrella over Charlie’s head. “I don’t mind being wet.” Then the kid took a header, falling hard, mucky water flying out of the hole he landed in. “Stop!” Charlie yelped, jumping out to squat by him, checking to make sure he was all right. Piper watched the kid look up at her like she was an angel who’d swooped down from heaven.
Tim had obviously seen the look on the guy’s face. “I think your sister has a fan,” he said, chuckling.
“He’s not the first. Think he’s okay?”
“Oh, sure. See?”
Charlie helped him up and he tried to brush some of the mud off, only managing to smear it. Then she patted him on the back and returned to the Jeep.
“Thanks for the help, losers,” she said, giggling as rain sheeted down her face, streaking her foundation.
Piper had to laugh. How could you not love a woman who didn’t have a qualm about calling one of the most famous men in the world, who was also her boss, a loser? But you had to love her even more for giving a damn about an anonymous production assistant falling in the mud.
Tim continued on, inching along. The Jeeps were powerful, with big, studded tires that crawled over just about everything, but it was hard to see with the rain rolling down the windshield. He slowed down significantly when he got behind a woman who looked like a peasant coming in from the rice fields during a monsoon. Wearing a black, shapeless tunic, she was bent over slightly, with a long stick across her shoulders, gray pails hanging on either end, carefully balanced.
“Where are we?” Piper asked. “I thought this island was uninhabited.”
“I did too,” Tim said, sounding uncharacteristicall
y unsure of himself. That only lasted for a moment. “I know it is. I’ve been on every inch.”
He was at a crawl, and they all turned to stare at the woman as they passed. She was shoeless, and mud covered her legs all the way to the knee. The path was so sodden she had to yank each foot from the quagmire with difficulty, but she soldiered on. Then Piper squeaked out, “Haley!” as she saw those weren’t pails. They were birdcages, covered in plastic bags, and she wasn’t actually wearing a tunic, just a trash bag that she’d cut holes in for her head and arms to poke out of.
“I’ll send someone to pick you up,” Tim shouted as a rear tire caught a puddle wrong and sprayed mud into the air, landing on Haley like a filthy shower.
She didn’t say a word, standing there in the muck, slop dripping down her trash bag, blinking repeatedly to be able to see past the rain rolling down her filthy face.
Piper reached out and grasped Tim’s shoulder. “Can you stop?”
He turned around to look at her like she was crazy, but he did. “What are you…?”
“I assume we’re flying back soon?”
“Not soon,” he said, looking up at the deluge. “We’ve got to wait until this calms down.”
She took her phone from her pocket and handed it to her sister. “Don’t wanna ruin this,” she said, hopping out. “Go ahead. We’ll catch up.” Then she started to walk back to Haley.
Once she reached her, she stuck her hand out to remove one of the cages, but Haley said, “They’re actually easier to carry this way. Don’t upset the apple cart.”
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