Eamon scrubbed his messy hair. “Why aren’t your parents here then?”
I laughed. He waited, and I finally added, “Let’s say they have other priorities.”
Turning to go inside, his voice stopped me. “I’m in that caravan over there with about five crew guys. If you need anything, knock.”
“Ah, thanks.” I glanced over his head at the light inside Julian’s trailer.
“Nice meeting you, Iris.”
“Sure.” Even Julian’s pacing profile had star quality.
“Don’t forget to breathe, Iris.” Eamon walked away.
Who was Julian on the phone with? His agent? His mom? I’d looked him up on IMDb about forty times since we met on the Vantage lot. Acting since he was fifteen, star of half a dozen films—three blockbusters, including Alien Army—and best of all, no current girlfriend. I remembered the way he’d grabbed my hand in the restaurant, and my fingers tingled.
Cliché, Iris, my dad’s voice chipped in.
I looked down at my hands. “But I’m tingly. Literally.”
Stepping inside, the trailer was claustrophobic and covered with sterile white plastic, but it smelled okay. There was a small sink and bathroom, a tiny sitting area, and in the back, two narrow beds. One contained a whimpering Ryder. Eamon was right; my brother was a sleepy, emotional mess. I didn’t even try to get him in his pajamas.
“I feel weird,” he whined, his eyes tightly shut. “I’m going to throw up.”
“No, you’re not. You’re fine. Sleep.” I kissed his forehead and collapsed on the other bed. I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes, and I’d check on him. This was programming left over from when he was a year old. Sleep training, his doctor called it. I had been ten, old enough to know that my parents were not following instructions. They kept picking him up, which made him cry even harder and for longer. So I piled my pillows outside his door and set the kitchen timer on my knee. “You can’t go in,” I told my dad when he sleep-stumbled toward Ryder’s door. “He has to cry for fifteen minutes. Then we check on him, but we don’t pick him up. Then we set the timer again.” He looked at me like I was nuts. “I was at his doctor’s appointment too.”
It had felt brilliant to care for my little brother that night. Like love and family done right. But it’d felt significantly less than brilliant to keep doing it for the next seven years.
Ryder quieted down, and I took out my phone and sent my father a message, not caring how much the roaming charges would be. He’d want to know that we made it. Most likely.
Sleep wouldn’t come, and I felt deeply disconnected from reality. I was trying to sleep on an island off the coast of Ireland while my friends were getting home from school. Tomorrow they’d be creating Benedict Cumberbatch GIFs in study hall—a.k.a. CumberHour—while I watched nerds run circles around actors wearing glorified bathrobes. I pictured Shoshanna and Julian in such getups and flinched. They were great. Talented. Gorgeous. Why did they even want to be in this movie? Maybe I could convince them to quit. That’d shut down this nightmare. And then, having saved their careers, maybe we’d all become friends. Real friends.
I snorted into my pillow. Friends with movie stars? Now that was a true fantasy. I rolled over and scribbled lyrics and possible chords for the song that had been in my head all day. A tune about breaking out of your bubble only to find yourself hopelessly underground.
“Great,” I murmured. “One day on set and I’m writing about hobbits.”
IRIS & RYDER
Film: Elementia
Director: Cate Collins
On Location: Day 2
Aran Islands, Ireland
Filming Notes:
Morning establishing shots on the west end of the island. Afternoon shots with SEVYN. No dialogue.
Etc. Notes:
BRILLIANT CRAIC
Because It’s Not a Story Set in Ireland without It
Ryder woke me up, hopping around the trailer like a cricket. He pushed a note card in my face. “What is this?” I asked.
“Film stuff. Henrik said it’s the side for the day.”
“Okay, but why are we getting one with our names stamped on it?”
Ryder shrugged, and I commenced my daily battle to dress, groom, and get Ryder out the door. The picnic tables outside were bustling with crew members having breakfast. We collected some food from a small buffet, and Ryder beelined for Eamon and Roxanne, who were deep in conversation. I tried to sit silently, but Ryder yelled, “Hey, guys!”
Roxanne pointed to her plate. “You know they call this ‘breaky’ here? And this is somehow ‘bacon.’” She held up a thick piece of ham on her fork.
Ryder was shocked. “But that’s not bacon!”
“That’s what I’ve been telling Eamon.” Roxanne looked glorious this morning; she’d paired gold eye shadow with a dark hoodie. Man, I wished this girl would give me lessons.
“Yesterday Eamon taught me about ‘the toilets’ and ‘slagging,’” I said, enjoying the way his ears—his real ears—turned red. Without the elf prosthesis, he no longer looked ridiculous, and I confirmed what I had suspected yesterday: he was, underneath the nerdisms, cute.
“Do you guys want to see the costume trailer?” Eamon asked. “It’s great craic.”
Roxanne snapped her fingers. “I know this one. Craic means fun.”
“I want to have some crack!” Ryder shouted.
Roxanne laughed against the back of her hand while I gave Eamon a withering look. “Real funny,” I said. “You can explain to my dad that he’s not talking about hard drugs.”
“What?” Ryder asked. “I can’t go?”
“Eat,” I said. “And you can go as long as Eamon promises to watch you.”
“You don’t want to come?” Eamon asked.
“I’m going back to bed. It’s dead o’clock back in LA.” I turned to my brother. “Listen to Eamon.” My brother waved me away, and I grabbed my cold toast and headed toward our trailer.
When I passed Julian’s, he popped his beautiful head out. “Hey, Iris, get in here. We’ve got real lattes.”
“And a fruit plate!” Shoshanna yelled from inside.
Cue epic morning with Hollywood stars. If I’d written an honest email to my parents about my second morning in Ireland, it would have been all exclamation marks. I didn’t, of course; they did not deserve to know how amazing it was to hang out with Julian Young and Shoshanna Reyes.
Last night, around the second hour of why am I so tired and yet cannot sleep, I’d looked up Shoshanna’s IMDb page. She was eighteen and had three times as many credits as Julian. Mostly indies, but also a lot of TV shows. In short, she was a pro. They both were. And I spent an entire morning swapping favorite YouTube videos with them.
At some point, I tried to ask why they’d agreed to do a movie they clearly weren’t into. I must’ve messed up the phrasing though because Julian got excited to show me the first cut of the teaser trailer. “They’re going to add music, but it’s pretty hot already,” he said, pulling it up on his laptop. “Cate thinks we need to leak this early to rev up fan support.”
“Brilliant move,” Shoshanna said in a rather giddy Irish accent. When Julian and I looked doubtful, she added, “What? I want to beef up the special skills section on my résumé.”
“Keep working on that accent, Shosh,” Julian said dryly.
Shoshanna hit him with a pillow.
Julian used a remote to turn off the lights, and Shoshanna scooted in on one side of Julian while I claimed the other. The laptop screen lit up with a video. Black screen first, followed by Shoshanna’s icy voiceover: “I was cursed by lightning at birth. Untouchable.”
I snorted, and they both glanced at me, troubled. On screen, two hands appeared through the black, and I recognized Julian’s long, lovely fingers. The hands almost touched, but then Sevyn’s—Sho
shanna’s—crackled with static sparks, and Evyn’s hand recoiled.
“That was only the beginning.”
“That shot seemed cheesy,” Shoshanna whispered. “But it looks good.”
Julian shushed her as a montage of a rustic kingdom and a foul-faced king thundered across the screen. There was a deer in the woods, and then Sevyn was running, angry, branches tearing at her clothes. She fled through a tunnel, coming out behind a mammoth waterfall. Evyn appeared behind her, pleading, but a great, clawed hand reached through the veil of water. Julian’s best acting face filled with dread in the moment before he was ripped through. Gone.
It was pretty affecting, to use Dad’s favorite word, and when the screen went black, I had a bizarre urge to whack the computer to make it keep playing. “That’s it?” I asked. “Evyn was kidnapped? Is that why Sevyn ends up on a quest?”
Shoshanna crossed her arms. “If we’ve made M. E. Thorne’s anti-fantasy granddaughter curious, we’re golden, Julian. This is going to be the big one. I told you.”
“Shosh…” He winced as she gave him a murderous look. “…anna, the trick is not to get your hopes up. I’ve shot scenes covered in blue slime, which felt like the end of my career, but then Alien Army was twice as popular as Starship Troopers. You can never tell, but don’t jinx it.”
“Blah, Julian. You sound as paranoid as Cate Collins.” Shoshanna kicked her feet up. “Why haven’t they called us yet? Did something else go wrong? There has not been a single seamless day on this production.”
“Yeah, and talk about the lack of press interest,” Julian muttered.
This was my chance to drill up some negativity, which according to my dad was my specialty—but he wasn’t here and I wasn’t actually Jaded Iris. “What’s the special skills section on your résumé?”
“Well, normal stuff like riding a horse, juggling, foreign languages,” Shoshanna said. “And also odd stuff. Like the ability to flip your eyelids inside out or speak pig Latin.”
“I can make my pecs dance to ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’” Julian said. “I got a commercial once because of it.”
Shoshanna sat up, way too excited. “Show us. Now.”
“Only if you sing,” he said. And that’s how Eamon and my little brother found us, sitting in the dark in Julian Young’s trailer, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Light Star” while a shirtless Julian made his pecs dance. Eamon clapped a hand over Ryder’s eyes.
Julian clicked on the lights and started texting. God, he was a ninja texter. One minute he was talking, the next: BAM. Forty messages fired.
“What, Ryder? We’re busy.” I braided my hair, hopefully looking less conspicuous.
“They’re filming out on the west end of the island. Cate said we could go watch. I got these out of your bag.” My brother held up my hiking boots—and my heart stopped.
A pair of lacy underwear was stuck to the Velcro of one boot. Not just any pair either.
I lunged, but Shoshanna was faster. “Julian!” she shrieked, thrusting the skimpy cloth in Julian’s still-texting face. “Your face is on Iris’s undies!”
Julian dropped his phone in his lap and grabbed the lacy abomination.
“Those aren’t mine!” I shouted. “My school friends gave them to me as a joke because they knew I’d be hanging out with you. See? The tag is still on them. I wouldn’t wear them!”
Julian and Shoshanna slumped on the couch in hysterics while I died of embarrassment. I closed my eyes, picturing my headstone:
IRIS MAE ELLEN THORNE
2001–2018
KILLED BY NOVELTY PANTIES
After a minute, Julian surprised me by handing the underwear back. “This is not the first time I’ve seen underwear with my face on it, Iris. It’d only be a problem if you were wearing them and wanted to show me.”
Oh my God.
I turned fast, pushing Eamon and Ryder out of the trailer. Shutting the door behind us, I threw the underwear in the nearest trash can and stomped toward my brother.
“Say, take a breath, Iris. He didn’t mean to do that,” Eamon tried.
“Shut it, elf.”
“Certainly, mistress.” He bowed, and I almost kicked him in the shin. Ryder did have a rather paralyzed look on his face; he hadn’t meant to embarrass me. That didn’t help though. And something else caught my eye. I ruffled his hair back, finding fake elf ears. “Ryder! You did not ask to do this. What if you have a reaction to the chemicals?”
“They’re not glued!” my brother said. “I told Roxy about my skin sensitivity.”
“He did,” Eamon said. “It’s double-sided tape.” I cooled; that actually was rather responsible of Ryder, even if he was now the spitting image of yesterday’s Eamon. Today’s Eamon pointed at one of the production vans. “We’re headed to the west end. Come with us.”
I looked back at Julian’s trailer. “Ryder can go, but watch him. I’m staying here.”
“But it’ll be brilliant,” Eamon said. “You’d trade that in for Hollywood brownnosing?”
Aghast. I believe that’s the right word, Dad.
Even worse, Eamon was holding a small camera. “What is that?” I asked, pointing.
“I’m making a video blog of the production. Cate said it will help get fans excited. I’ve already got twenty thousand subscribers on my YouTube channel.”
I got closer to him than I’d ever been. Not face-to-face. Face-in-face. His eyebrows rose up into his tousled hair, and I was glad I’d stunned him. “My brother and I don’t show up on your blog or you will learn the wrath of Henry T. Wittmeijer, my family’s lawyer.”
Eamon’s scowl was his cutest look. I could give him that. “What is your problem?”
I grabbed my little brother’s chin. “He’s not an actor, Eamon. He’s eight. He’s trying to have a normal life. Don’t put an X on his back for all the crazy fans to target.”
Eamon understood. Maybe. He stepped back at least.
“Does this mean I can go?” Ryder asked.
“Only if Eamon promises to watch you,” I said.
Eamon gave a stiff nod.
I pretended like I was inspecting Ryder’s ears, adding, “Remember what Dad wants you to think about while we’re here?”
He nodded and sighed like a forty-year-old.
They headed for the vans, and Ryder regained his bounce after a few yards. Eamon dropped his camera in his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. From behind, Eamon was so skinny I couldn’t figure out what was holding up his pants. And then I had to chastise myself for spending any amount of time contemplating Eamon’s butt. Where’s your head, Iris?
• • •
I couldn’t step back in Julian’s trailer after the underwear nightmare. I went to mine instead, where a short nap made me feel even worse. I turned to Annie.
My all-black Martin was the best thing I owned. I’d tuned each peg down three turns for the plane ride and fixing her back into singing shape took a little fussing. Annie felt hesitant, but then, I knew that was my hesitation. Two things always happened when I picked up my guitar.
One: I felt at home. Two: I felt like an impostor.
Logic might say these sentiments don’t coexist, but logic is useless when it comes to art. My dad had been demonstrating that for me since birth. I was younger than Ryder is now the day my dad sat me down and said, “Iris, passion is just an obsession with the thing you can’t seem to get better at.”
I wished I were a great songwriter, and somehow with that driving desire came the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t good. That I never would be. To date, my best song was about how I could hear my dad’s voice in my head. How it confused me. Told me I was wrong. Which explained why I couldn’t play it for him—especially because my dad wasn’t a bad guy. He was preoccupied and obsessive, but he wasn’t cruel.
The dad v
oice in my head, however…that guy was after me. He was the one who told me I wasn’t going to break out from my family’s shadow. He was the one who reminded me that all this fantasy crap was my own personal, and yet somehow universal, nightmare.
The chords I’d been strumming died away. How thick were the trailer walls anyway? Someone might hear. Looking around, my eyes caught on a movie poster that Ryder must have just hung up over his bed. A huge lightning bolt split a dark picture: Sevyn’s angry, powerful face on one half and Evyn’s fire-lit expression on the other. I could barely recognize Shoshanna and Julian in those images—the emotion was too strong. Too dire.
“Fantasy,” I cursed.
Eamon/Nolan didn’t make the poster. Did that bother him? My eyes trailed the silver Elementia title treatment, followed by Based on the novels by M. E. Thorne.
“How’d you do it?” I asked the dead air in the trailer. “How’d you write your heart into those books and then share them with everyone?”
No answer.
I’d be the shadow of the shadow of M. E. Thorne, and with the advent of this stupid movie, that shadow would be more like a permanent gloom. I nestled my face into the curve of Annie’s side. You should give up, Dad said on cue. Think about how happy I’d be if you became a literature professor.
When Eamon rushed into the trailer, I tossed my guitar on the bed and started yelling. “What’s wrong with you? You can’t just burst in here!”
“He’s gone.”
“What?”
“Ryder. He was with me one second. Then he was gone.”
IN WHICH I SPROUT GRAY (OR GREY) HAIR
Eamon and I jumped in a production van and raced down the narrowest road in the world. Seriously, Siberian summer mud roads have nothing on the Aran Islands—which was actually what I was thinking about because I couldn’t let myself imagine Ryder wandering off a cliff or being taken by… No way. That guy would be living in an institution in New Jersey for two more years.
Now a Major Motion Picture Page 4