“I need you to come in this morning,” he says. “The good people at ABC Family want to talk to you in person, pronto. You took a look at the script I sent?”
“A look? Are you kidding me? I memorized every word.” I peek out the window. The sun is lifting over the canyon. Today’s the day—I can feel it.
“There’s loads of money on the table. So don’t choke.”
“Define loads.” If I get this, Mom and Dad can sell that Volvo and buy more meat.
“Five grand a week. Give or take.”
I hold on to the fridge. “Five grand as in thousand, as in five of those thousands every seven days, as in twenty of them a month?”
“They’re casting the show this week. They’ll start rehearsing the pilot a week from today and will shoot it in two weeks. If the pilot goes well, the network will order a full fifteen episodes—you following?”
I can hardly believe I’m having this conversation. God, I love the sound of that—shooting the pilot!
“They think you’re perfect and I’m pretty sure I can close this, but dang it, Charlie, you’ve got to nail the audition. I’ll send a car to your school at ten.” He hangs up.
I run back upstairs to change. Pen’s in the bathroom and Felix is putting both legs in one pant hole on his bed.
I pull them off and hand them back. “Two legs, two holes.” I put on fishnets, then the leotard I wore for the photo shoot, and my tutu, and slip on a pair of Converses. Pen comes out, I run into the bathroom, lock the door. Brush teeth, slap on some deodorant, and then I take a moment. I study my face in the mirror.
This is what I know:
• This is the last time I will feel like a loser.
• This is the last time I will send out an invitation and have zero responses.
• This is the last time I will ever, and I mean ever, have to eat in a classroom or a library or a bathroom stall.
• This is the last time I will be defined by what they think of me.
There’s a knock. “I’m gonna pee all over you if you don’t open up.”
I open the door. Felix is still half asleep. His pants are around his ankles. His hands are cupping his privates. He runs past me for the toilet. I close the door.
Mom calls out, “You guys want bagels?”
I head downstairs and pull out a chair next to Pen. “Bagels sound great.”
Mom’s in her nightgown. “My alarm didn’t go off and I’m late, late, late.” She runs to my backpack. “Do you have lunch?”
“I did them last night, Mom,” Pen says. “Felix gets hot dogs. Charlie pizza, Fruit Roll-Ups, apple slices—”
“Whoa! Stop right there.”
Is there anything worse than your sister making your lunch for you? “Don’t do my lunch!” I yell at her. “I hate when you pack our lunches.” I look in mine. “I hate apples, hate Fruit Roll-Ups, and the pizza—by the time it’s lunch, it’s disgusting. Mom, please.”
Pen throws my lunch box at me. I say nothing for fear she’ll open her hairy lips.
I leave it there. “Anyway, I have to get to Chad’s this morning for the audition. It’s an emergency.”
“An emergency?” Her eyebrow lifts up.
“The producers want to see me now. It’s do or die.”
Pen shakes her head.
I want to stab her with a butter knife. “Pen. Can you either mind your own business, or get your own dang life?”
“My life is you, Charlie. Don’t you know that by now?” She squeezes my shoulder. The urge to strangle her is overwhelming.
“What time does he want to see you?”
“At eleven.” I ready myself for her usual speech about missing school.
Of course Mom’s already shaking her head. “Um, well . . .” She winces as she goes through her day in her head. “Your dad and I both have an appointment. I can’t get out of it. Can we do it at lunch?”
“Chad says he’ll send a car.” I have to count to ten to stop myself from exploding at the thought of it. I hope it’s a limo. And more importantly, I hope everyone in the entire school will be there to watch me get into it.
“A car?” Mom immediately doesn’t like the idea. “Oh”—long sigh—“I don’t know about that.”
“I’ll call you the second they pick me up. And I’ll have Chad email you the contracts to look at.”
Pen cocks her head again. “Isn’t that a little premature?”
“No.” I grab Mom’s arm and pull her away from my annoying, nosy-as-heck sister. “Please, Mom, please!”
The room is silent. Mom’s shaking her head. The clock’s ticking—it doesn’t look good. I’m about to plead when suddenly Pen says, “Mom, if she gets the show, she’ll be in a car all the time,” Pen says. “It’s totally normal.”
Say what? I shake my head. Why is she suddenly helping me? Pen keeps at her, stating my case until Mom starts nodding like Pen’s making a whole lot of sense. And then she says the magic word: “Fine. But call us when you get there.” And then she launches into “Tell Chad this will not happen again, you hear me? School is the most important thing.” Mom pecks me on the cheek. “I’ll have my cell phone with me all the time, okay, baby?”
“Okay, Mom.” I give her a big kiss.
“School, Charlie. Now.”
“Just one thing.” I run into the living room for a quick check of all my favorite sites. But Mom follows me. She takes one look at the screen.
“Oh, please! Not at eight in the morning!” She gasps like I’m looking at a village massacre. “You are not allowed on Facebook, Charlie Cooper. That is the rule. No Facebook until you’re eighteen!”
“It’s Instagram, Mom.” I try to inform. “A place where a community of people post their favorite family pictures.”
She’s kinda slobbering at this point. “I hate, hate, hate Facebook. And the little creep who started it. I hate him, too.” She tries to shut the computer.
“But Mom,” I say as reasonably as I know how, “social media is the news of our generation.” I look into her eyes and wonder, When will old people get that? I also wonder how she thinks she can stop me when I know my way around a computer the way she knows her way around a newspaper.
“There will be no generation if you flunk out of school.” She points to the door. “Good luck, baby!”
On our way to school, I’m not even thinking about all the people who hate me. It’s almost like that part of my life is over. I’ve moved on. All I can think about is the audition. The lines. The character named Josie that is so ME. She’s cute and sassy and just the right amount of mean. And then, after I’m done thinking about that, I think about not having to go to school anymore. A tutor on set? Is there any more magical sentence than that? Soon, very soon, none of these people will matter anymore. Not Lillian, or Erica, not Marta or Pickler. Not even Bobby. I’m in my own little Nirvana when Pen’s loud scratchy voice cuts in.
“Wait up!” Pen catches up with me.
I stop. “What?”
“Mom told me you want to cancel the Halloween party.”
“Yeah, well . . .” I’m expecting her to argue, to actually dig and dig until she finds the real reason I don’t want the party.
But instead she looks relieved. “Thanks. I hated the idea all along.”
“You did?”
“How can we throw a party when animals are being killed by greed and bulldozers?” She points to the entrance of Stanley Hill where the megamansions are being built. There’s dirt and water streaming down the hill. “Just look at that.” She points to the river of sludge.
“Horrible.” I toss my water bottle in an open trash can.
Pen runs to reclaim it. She reaches in, finds it, and turns. “Blue, Charlie, how many times have I got to tell you?”
“I’m sorry.” And I am. I swear.
“The canyons are dying,” she says sadly.
“Can we go now?” Felix pushes us from behind. We pass the water house on the right. An entire house built
over the hot springs. Next to it, there’s a vacant lot of boulders and grassy hills. Legend is, the Houdini tunnels go under the street and come through that lot. Just looking at it makes me want to start digging. I walk faster. I can’t wait for this day to end.
One Step at a Time
I walk into the classroom to find Bobby, who looks up from his death drawings to glare at me.
I look down, start rummaging through my backpack, then say softly, “I’m sorry your dad’s having problems—” But before I can finish, he loses it.
“My dad!” he practically spits at me. “What do you know about my dad?”
“Uh,” I stammer, “the drugs, the career—”
“My dad”—he looks like he wants to punch me—“has nothing to do with this. You lied to me. You’re always lying, Cooper. That’s what you do—you lie.”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry, all right?”
He totally ignores me.
TRUE FACT: Forget the marriage. Our friendship is broken.
“Ladies and gentlemen, quiet down.” Mr. L sees what’s going on. I look around and notice Marta’s still not here. “This weekend is Halloween, and with Halloween comes—”
“Cavities!” Marjorie squeals. I’ve heard that Marjorie’s parents give out a pack of toothpaste, toothbrush, and floss on Halloween.
I look over to see if Bobby rolls his eyes like he normally would. But he’s gone, his hood pulled up, just a profile.
“The one day of the year when the spirits emerge from the underworld and meet us in ours. It is a time when we can walk with them and talk to them.”
“I don’t believe in them,” I state plainly.
“Which is a good thing,” Erica points out. “God knows there’s enough live people who hate your guts.” Everyone laughs.
Ha, ha. “Keep laughing.” Soon I’ll be schooled on the set with all the other big-time celebs and I’ll never have to listen to their little voices again.
“You think you’re gonna be a big shot?” Lillian fills the silence. “Don’t need any of us, is that right, Cooper?”
She doesn’t know how right she is. I look up at the clock. One hour and fifteen minutes. That’s all I have left of my miserable life.
When the snack bell rings, I get up and stretch. “Time to go,” I announce to the back row. “My limo is waiting.”
They laugh like I’m a liar.
Bobby grabs his ball and starts bouncing. His friends gather around. “Yo, Cooper, where do you think you’re going?”
Thank God they ask, because I so want everyone to know. “Hollywood,” I say. “And I’m never looking back.”
“Limo, huh?” Lillian grins like she knows something. “Can I see?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” I grab my backpack. “See ya, Mr. L. Thanks for everything.”
“Sure, Charlie,” he says, clueless that this just might be the last time he sees me.
Erica gets to the door before me, an unusual smile on her lips. “No hard feelings?”
“None at all.” I blow into her face. I hope my breath stinks. “I have to go. Car’s waiting.” She steps aside. I can feel their eyes on my back. I can feel their jealousy, and I have to say I love every minute of it. Bobby’s bouncing the ball. “Hey, Bobby.” I give him one last try. “You want to come see?”
“Limos are not my style.” He shakes his head and walks away, like he couldn’t care less if he ever sees me again.
That’s the last time I beg. I pull my shoulders back and I focus on all the good that’s about to come my way. Why? Because I worked for it. “My limo awaits,” I call out to the world. “Look out, Hollywood, I’m coming!” I walk across the upper yard, slowly, hoping to gather as many people as I can. I want their last memory of me, Charlie C. Cooper, to be getting into a limo. I turn around. The crowd is huge. I pull open the door leading to the parking lot. One look at my black, shiny, major-swag limo with the TLC in white cursive and the dude in the black suit and cap, and they’ll forget every bad thing they’ve ever heard. They rush to the door.
The parking lot’s a boring sea of eco-conscious Priuses.
Babs giggles. “Where’s the limo, Charlie?”
My face gets hot. I’m sure it’s red. “He’s probably grabbing Selena Gomez on the way,” I announce fearlessly. I look around the lot, and lean back against the wall.
Five minutes later, a broken-down junkyard car pulls into the lot. Dark-gray smoke is shooting out of its dragging exhaust pipe. The driver looks right at me and hits his fist against the horn. Beep! Beep! He waves.
I gasp. No! No! It can’t be for me.
The driver gets out. His belly is falling out from under his dirty brownish-white tank top. Tank top! He’s covered in dark curly hair. “Anyone know a kid called Charlie?” He looks down at a crumpled-up sheet of paper. “Charlie Cooper?”
I turn away. It can’t be.
Lillian has the look of sweet victory. “Charlie”—she points right at me—“your limo awaits.”
The crowd laughs. Erica yells out, “Hey, everyone, come and check out Charlie’s limo.”
“It’s a mistake.” It has to be a mistake. He loved the head shots. He said I was going to be a huge star.
“No, Charlie.” Erica pulls out her cell phone and snaps away. “It’s exactly what you deserve.”
I walk toward the car. Everyone is huddled in the doorway, watching, waiting for that moment when they can see me in the car.
His accent is thick and bored. “Get in. I still have to get lunch.” He falls into the driver’s seat and doesn’t even lift a finger to help me. I get in. They laugh. But I don’t give them the satisfaction of looking back. From this moment on, I only look forward. I’m going to have it written into my contract that I will never accept a ride from this man again.
The door handle is covered with sticky grease. The seat is plastic and ripped. He guns the engine; thick pollution shoots from the car. The kindergartners and first graders run to the back fence and look out.
“There’s my sister Charlie!” Felix screams through the chain link fence. “Where’s she going?”
I duck as low as I can.
“Jail, I hope,” answers a little girl. “They say she’s super mean.”
What a little brat, right? I close my eyes to avoid looking into anyone else’s as we drive into Beverly Hills. I’m almost home.
Moment of Truth
He drops me in front of the Holy Grail, the William Morris Endeavor offices on Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Put it this way: if I had to die, I’d do it right now, in front of all those mirrors reflecting nothing but the heavens above. I stand before the sleek double doors, like Dorothy before Oz, and am humbled. Not even the flowers dare to droop. All buds are exactly aligned, damp, and ready to open. Perfection. This is how I want my world to look. I push open the door, and the moment my foot crosses the threshold, I catch someone jumping out of the bushes to wipe off my fingerprints. Efficiency, thy name is Hollywood.
I feel like I’m in the engine room of the great movie-making machine. It’s cold and quiet, too, which is strange, because it’s full of people talking and walking fast from one place to the next like there isn’t a second to lose. I feel the intense electricity, and man, oh, man, do I like it. At school all we do is waste time. It’s a goal—like, let’s see how fast we can make the day go. But here, every second counts. I dig that.
“Charlie.” Chad’s suddenly in front of me. He puts out his hand to shake mine. He’s all business. “Great to see you. I’ll have my assistant call your parents to let them know you’re here.”
I follow him down a curved white hallway and into a large, cold conference room. I stop and stare. Boy, oh, boy, does this place look like a funeral home or what? It’s as cold as a freezer. There’s a massive flat screen on the wall that glows against the white wall. The table is long and oval, and there are six super-old and grumpy-looking people sitting there. They look like they’ve never cracked a smile. Please te
ll me that these are not the people I am basing all my hopes and dreams on.
Chad pushes me forward. “Charlie, meet the team behind the show Off the Beam.”
Suddenly I feel like everything is riding on this moment.
Slow my heart.
Slow my heart.
Slow my heart.
They lean forward. Their chairs squeak. Their pencils are armed and ready to take notes. To examine me. “Hello, Charlie.”
I gulp and wave. My heart is beating so fast, I’m more scared and nervous than I have ever been. I pull my pair of lucky black lens-free glasses out of my pocket and pop ’em on my nose. I mush up my hair and fix the pink sequin skull-and-crossbones barrette. And then, my peeps, I go for it. I am on.
“Hello, Hollywood.” I look at each and every one of them. Their eyes are on me like they’re eating me up. They jot down notes, whisper, write a little more. “The name’s Charlie C. Cooper, and I am a middle child.” For the first time in my life I announce it with pride. “I can act, sing, and I’m”—I take a deep breath—“great at gymnastics.”
They smile and take notes. They look pretty pleased.
“Exactly how long have you been doing gymnastics, Charlie?” Chad asks.
“I started when I was one,” I say with complete confidence.
“One?” He gives me a weird look.
“Hi, Charlie, my name is Bernice.” Her face folds into a thousand wrinkles. “I’m the creator of the series.”
“Hi, Bernice.” I maintain eye contact and wave sweetly. Grown-ups love that.
“Now, on a scale of one to ten”—Bernice gets her pencil ready—“how much do you value friendship?”
I know what this is about. And I am ready for it. “Ten. All the way, ten.”
“And the truth?”
Say what? Is it hot in here?
“The truth, Charlie,” she repeats.
“Ten.” I blurt out. “Can’t have friends without it, right?”
“Now, Charlie, we normally don’t take kids who have zero acting experience.” She leans back, lets her glasses fall to her big chest. She’s got them on those librarian ropes. “But you caught our attention. You know why?”
Watch Out, Hollywood!: More Confessions of a So-called Middle Child Page 8