“Zack Bryce,” I told Adam, “is who you are playing in this movie of yours. Well, except so far he hasn’t had any ghosts smack around his conscience.”
His hands in the pockets of his jeans, Adam stared at the sign. “Zack Bryce, huh? That’s cool. I want my character to be relevant.” His gaze drifted in the direction of the library, the clump of classroom buildings near the cafeteria, and the theater, a sad, plain building in need of a paint job.
I explained to him that Zack Bryce was the oldest son of Travis Bryce, who was the son of Don Bryce — a chain of cash, at least by Little’s standards. Adam could probably buy them all before lunch and then fly a private jet back to L.A. “The Bryce family owns a good chunk of this town. Travis Bryce donated the stadium to the school. You know” — I shrugged — “so his kid didn’t have to play on a crappy field.”
Adam nodded. “That was awesome of him.”
I frowned. Maybe he really wasn’t going to see the connection. How did you describe Zack to someone just like him? Rich. Entitled. Ridiculously good-looking. If you were into the kind of boys who spent longer staring at their own reflections than you did. Which I wasn’t. “Yeah, I guess his dad’s pretty generous. Donates to a bunch of local charities and stuff. But Zack’s sort of a jerk.”
“Still, the school got a sweet track out of it.”
This wasn’t going well; he was missing my point. “I guess Zack doesn’t know how to be anything other than what he is,” I conceded.
Adam looked sideways at me. “Do any of us?”
“What?” My stomach flipped. I wasn’t used to him looking directly at me.
“Know how to be anything other than what we are?”
“I guess not.”
Rubbing his hands together, Adam took a step toward the picnic basket. “What do we have for eats?” He flipped open the lid, digging around inside until he came out with a couple of sandwiches, some chips, and two sweating bottles of lemonade. I recognized them as Little Eats Treats and To Go items, the premade things we kept stocked in a low refrigerator case in the café for people who didn’t want to wait for made-to-order food. He handed me a sandwich. “Hungry? These pesto ones rock.”
I blushed. “I made those.”
“For real? They’re good.” He peeled off the white paper and bit into one. “What do you use for the cheese?” He plunked down onto the grass, kicking his legs out in front of him, and inspected his sandwich.
“Gruyère.”
“Tasty.” He took another bite. “So, where’s this Zack?”
I scanned the track. “There.” I pointed to the lone figure stretching at the edge of the track. Zack practically lived here, so I knew we’d see him. “He trains a lot.”
Adam gave him a little salute. “Good to have discipline. I don’t have that sort of discipline. Just parties, girls.” I wasn’t sure if he meant his character Scott or himself.
I unwrapped my own sandwich. “Oh, Zack does plenty of that.”
“But there he is.” Adam motioned to the track. “Running his laps.”
“He’s just not very nice,” I mumbled into the white wrapper of my sandwich.
Adam scanned the expanse of Little High below us and gave a small shudder. “Man, school looks a lot like jail.”
“It’s not too bad.” I settled next to him, popping open a bag of barbecue chips. Little High was deserted except for Zack’s lone journey around the track. Funny how schools turned into graveyards in the summer, all the busy day-to-day energy gone, the space left humming with emptiness. “Have you ever gone to school?”
“I’ve had tutors,” he said, shrugging, his face guarded again. “The show kept me pretty busy. And now movies.”
“Do you ever wish you’d gone to regular school?” I imagined Adam wandering the halls of Little High, waltzing into algebra, going to football games. It would probably seem pretty lame to him. And they’d make him put his phone away.
“I don’t think about it.” Then he seemed to do just that. “I mean, I probably would have thought it was cool at first, the whole high school thing — parties, football games, dances. Of course, none of those things are really school, I guess.” He took a drink of his lemonade. “Actually, I don’t think I would have liked it at all. It sounds boring. Always having to be somewhere every minute, packed into rooms too small for half that many people. Always having to ask permission to do anything.” He shook his head. “Yeah, no — I would’ve hated that.”
“Well, not all of us can be calling our own shots at age eight.” I stared at my uneaten sandwich, noticing his was already gone. “You still hungry?” I motioned to where my sandwich sat on its white paper in the grass.
“You sure?”
“I’m not very hungry.”
He eyed me for a minute. “You’re not one of those girls who doesn’t eat, right?”
“Oh, believe me, I eat. I’ll split it with you.” I plucked half the sandwich off the open paper, grabbing a stray tomato slice before it fell.
He polished off his half in three bites. “I dated this actress. She ate, like, wheatgrass and tofu cubes. Disgusting.”
A shiver went through me. He meant Ashayla Wimm, real-life Disney princess. They had dated for a while, and then, according to Celebrity! he dumped her in a horrible, public way. At a Lakers game, if I could remember Chloe’s recap of it accurately. She’d told me she’d almost taken down all the pictures of him from her wall when she’d read about the Lakers game breakup. Almost. It was weird to sit here with the guy whose pictures were plastered all over Chloe’s wall. Right now, he seemed almost normal, but he could sneeze and it would be news on some online magazine.
I swallowed the rest of my sandwich. “My dad runs a café. You can always count on me to make food a huge priority.” I cleaned up our wrappers, stuffing them into the picnic basket.
He leaned back on his elbows. “I’m glad I didn’t end up having to fake-date some starry-eyed idiot, speaking of boring. Not that I’m glad your brother’s in trouble or anything, but at least you had to take our offer.”
My skin iced over. “What do you know about my brother?”
He must have sensed the temperature change, deciding to tilt his head toward the sun instead of answering me.
I let a minute slip past, then stood and gathered the picnic basket together.
“Where are you going?” He sat up.
“It’s probably been forty-five minutes.” I found the trail, my eyes trying to focus on the ground, the sun hot on my back. “I’m not sure this was really that helpful,” I called behind me. “I don’t know anything about acting.”
He followed me down the path, so when I turned, trying to still my heart, he almost crashed into me. I didn’t like him thinking he knew something about John. He didn’t know him. Or me. And we weren’t some plot point in Parker’s stupid script. “I would prefer we didn’t talk about my brother. That’s one of my rules.”
He put warm hands on my shoulders. “Okay, whoa.” A breeze rustled the grasses around us. “Relax, okay?”
His hands sent a warm wash through me, and I held tight to the basket as if it could steady me. Up close, I noticed that spicy scent again from his trailer, and it struck me that you had to be really near someone to smell them. Nearer than I wanted to be right now. “You don’t know him.” I slipped out of his grasp and started back down the path.
“Carter?” He called out to me, silhouetted against the bright sky. “For what it’s worth, I know what it’s like to have people assume they know you. In my experience, they’re almost always wrong.”
downtown was the opposite of Little High; this time, the hum came not from empty space but from the pressed-in bodies of hundreds of people. Apparently, everyone from Little had shown up to watch the filming and brought along about five extra friends. Mik had trouble maneuvering the Range Rover around the throng at the base of Gold Street, but finally, two men let us through a barricade and onto Main Street. At that point, they’d roped
off the sidewalks so the crowd wasn’t allowed onto the street.
As we moved up Main Street, I recognized two girls from my Spanish class, half the football team, and Beckett Ray, Little High’s own version of a movie star. Beautiful, out of touch with real life, and a total pain in the butt. She often told people, “R-A-Y, like a ray of light,” in that whispery, high voice of hers that was some sort of Marilyn Monroe derivative. Now, she had her pale, willowy legs planted in the street near Mountain Books — I could spot that spill of black hair anywhere — chatting with a young police officer who had somehow decided the roped-off areas did not apply to Beckett Ray.
When she saw me in the Range Rover, her mouth actually dropped open. I’d never seen that before. Only read about it in books. But her jaw went slack. I saw teeth. Her dark blue eyes followed our passage up the street, her mouth never closing, and I couldn’t help but smile. For the most part, I got along with pretty much everyone, but something about Beckett Ray brought out the dark bits in me and I wanted to start hurling knives. Ever since she’d moved here in seventh grade, she didn’t miss an opportunity to remind us she was just biding her time until she could get out again. She hated Little, constantly told us what a prison sentence it was to live here and how she couldn’t wait to leave for the real world (aka Los Angeles), which seemed about as real to me as Neverland. Once, in sophomore English, our teacher, Mr. Gomez, pointed out that Shakespeare’s Dark Lady “probably had hair a lot like Beckett’s.” She’d flipped her glossy mane over her shoulders and said, totally seriously, “Oh, probably not, Mr. G. I put a lot of time into it, and they just didn’t have the product then that we have now.” So, yeah, I took just a tiny bit of pleasure in watching her stare after our car, Adam Jakes at my side.
Mik pulled onto the side street near the bookstore, away from the crowd, and jumped out to open Adam’s door. Turning, Parker studied the swarm of gawkers behind us. “Your people don’t have anything better to do on a nice day?”
“My people?”
Adam already had one leg out of the door, mumbling, “Parker can fill you in on the schedule,” as he scrambled out of the car.
Before I could open my door, Parker turned in the passenger seat to face me. “I need you to not change up the schedule like that again.”
My hand paused on the door handle. “What?”
Parker’s chilly stare rivaled the air-conditioning. “That little visit to the high school. No more improvising. Stick to the script. If you want to make a change in the future, run it by me, okay, love?”
I dropped my gaze like a scolded child. “Okay.”
He dug through his bag and handed me a white envelope. “Here. Some cash to hold you over. You’ll get the rest at the end.”
Peeking in, I could see a thick stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. Parker pushed open the driver’s door. “And some advice: Don’t get too attached.” He didn’t wait for my response before he slammed the door and disappeared up the street.
I’d never held that much money in my hands before.
It felt awful.
Later that night, I felt even worse. After finding my way out of the crowd in town, I had tracked down T.J. Shay. He met me at the back of the Taco Bell parking lot, whipping his white Honda into the hot shade of a tree. He rolled down the window, a smile playing at his lips as I handed him the envelope. He counted the hundreds. “Does that cover it?” I’d asked. “For now,” he’d said, already putting the car in reverse. I had expected to feel lighter after paying him, elated, but I only felt a sour squeeze in my stomach as he drove away.
Now, I pinned the phone between my shoulder and ear, calling my mom. As it rang, I reached for a bowl for my Raisin Bran. Like father, like daughter. I guess I shouldn’t give Dad such a hard time about his Wheat Thins.
She picked up on the third ring. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Hi, Mom.” I could hear the sounds of traffic behind her voice. She must have been standing on a street somewhere. “Is the world a better, shinier place yet?”
She chuckled. “Hardly. Though we’re making good progress with some of the local legislators.”
“Excellent.” I poured cereal into my bowl.
“You doing okay?” Her voice sounded weird. Motherly.
“I’m good.” I tried to sound light and airy.
Her voice told me she wasn’t buying it. “Is Mr. Movie Star behaving himself?”
“He’s fine. You know, when he’s not being a narcissist.” Which is nearly all the time. I opened the fridge and took out the milk.
“Figures.” I heard someone sidle up and talk to her. She held the phone away to mumble something. “Well, keep an eye on him,” she said to me.
“That’s what they’re paying me for,” I told her with a hollow laugh.
“I’m not sure how funny I think that is yet.” But her voice was smiling. “Oh, and, Carter?”
“Yeah?”
“You tell me if you need me to come home, and I’ll drop everything and come home. You know that, right?” She sounded serious, the way she got when she was talking to the city council about garbage in our parks or something.
Warmth flooded me. “I know.” Then, I said good-bye before she could hear the threat of tears in my voice.
Extra Pickles was not behaving himself. Adam and I walked my dog on the small loop near my house at Hawkin’s Pond, an oblong stretch of still water shaped like a kidney bean. A couple of years ago, a local conservation company put in a trail and small signs detailing the history of the pond and the wildlife that made it their home. We, however, had only made it a few hundred feet down the trail, Extra Pickles straining against the leash, zigzagging and doubling back, and once almost yanking me into the pond in pursuit of a squawking duck he’d flushed out of a low bush.
“Can’t he just walk next to us?” Adam glanced around nervously, most likely for signs of paparazzi (who, frankly, would most likely welcome taking pictures of me trying to control a ninety-pound Lab while Adam wandered helplessly beside me).
“He’s not used to the leash. We usually just let him run on the Liberty Trail.” I gave too hard a yank and Extra Pickles sat suddenly, his eyes wide and wounded. “Maybe we should just turn around. I think this is hurting his feelings.”
Adam crouched down beside him. “Hey, guy.” He gave Extra Pickles’s head a rub. “You need to chill out so we can get some good pictures, okay? Stop being such a jerk.”
“Don’t call my dog a jerk!” But Extra Pickles just wagged his tail in the dust of the trail.
Adam cupped his hands around my dog’s face. “See, you like it, don’t you, jerkface?”
Before I could defend his honor, Extra Pickles wrested his head out of Adam’s hands and leaped after a blue jay that had landed several feet in front of him, dragging me a couple of feet forward. “Whoa.”
“Let me do it.” Adam took the leash.
“Fine.” I resisted the urge to push Adam into the pond. “Though I feel I should mention being mean to my dog is not winning you any points in the public eye.”
“Naw, we’re instant best friends,” Adam said, starting along the path again. Within seconds it was clear he wouldn’t be faring any better than I had with the ninety pounds of spaz on the other end of that leash. Finally, when his arm socket had clearly had enough, we stopped at a wood bench. Extra Pickles happily took the chew bone I handed him and settled down next to us.
“See, he loves me.” Adam stretched his arm along the back of the bench. I leaned against it, feeling it graze against my bare shoulders. What a nice picture we must be, a new couple relaxing on a breezy summer day. Even if I couldn’t see them, I could hear the snapping of cameras. The paparazzi layered the woods around us like ninjas. This whole outing was, after all, for their benefit, carefully crafted in Parker’s script.
I felt a stab of guilt. How many pictures showcased this sort of lie? How many made the viewers imagine a fantasy? Not just for Hollywood but for regular lives, too. Every year, people
mailed holiday cards, posted on Facebook, pulled pictures from wallets — millions of faces grinning into a lens. How many of those smiles were true? Did that family in the smiling Christmas card mostly scream at one another? Was that couple with the small baby getting any sleep at all? Did that little dancer in the pink tutu really want to be dancing? I tried to push the watery feeling down, bury it away in the back shadows of me. Maybe we grinned into cameras in the hope that we might remember we could be happy.
Maybe it just helped sometimes to have a reason to smile.
“He seems good now.” Adam nodded at Extra Pickles, who was absorbed in his bone.
“See, not a jerk.” I leaned down and patted his head. “Well, most of the time.”
Adam shot me a sheepish smile. “I was mostly kidding.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t. He was just so … so …” He caught my eye, and we burst out laughing.
“Annoying?” I finished for him. “It’s fine; he is terrible on a leash.” A small sliver of the strangeness between us melted. “Maybe your next movie should be about a regular guy who has to train some sort of clearly untrainable animal. Like a sloth? Or a platypus?”
He grinned, his body relaxing into the bench. “Very nice. You could do development for studios.”
I made a face. “No, thanks.”
He gave me an odd sideways look, one that made his eyes crinkle at their corners. “You don’t like Hollywood very much, do you?”
“Oh, no — I like movies,” I started.
“Not movies,” he interrupted. “Hollywood. Our world.” He rested his forearms on his legs. “It’s pretty clear you don’t think too highly of me.”
I watched a duck dive into the center of the lake, gliding into a bobbing float. “I don’t know you.”
He gave me another lopsided grin. “Look, don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just … unusual for me.” He stared out over the pond. “I’m used to people clamoring to get close and, well, you’re just really guarded. You haven’t asked me anything about … well, anything. I’m not used to that.”
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