“You have been going on a lot of first dates lately,” Liz said. “Not to say there’s anything wrong with serial dating.”
“Except for all the Fruit Loops you meet along the way,” I said. Like she knew anything about serial dating. She was a serial monogamist. The queen of relationships all through middle school and high school. At the start of every school year, she’d begin dating a new guy. It would be months of bliss, until about mid-April when the guy realized that—after spending every weekend hiking through the Santa Monica mountains, skiing in Big Bear, and dirt-bike riding in the desert—going out with Liz could be exhausting.
Every guy she ever dated tended to break up with her before the year was out. She kept saying how she didn’t mind since she liked to take the summers for herself, but I knew that she was ready for a serious long, long-term thing, even though she hadn’t even turned eighteen yet.
I understood how she felt. I’d never had a real relationship before. Sure, I’d had boyfriends. I’d been going out with a real sweet guy named Scott at the start of senior year. He was the longest relationship I’d ever had, and we didn’t even make it to Christmas. After a while we both realized there was no spark and ended it … blandly.
The first-date syndrome seemed to be a recent development. In my post-Scott world I was so busy getting ready to graduate from high school and start my life that guys always seemed to take the backseat. It was almost like I would give up on a date before I’d even started, because none of those guys seemed to fit my picture for the future. I wasn’t in some great rush to settle down or anything, but I wasn’t really seeing the point of random dating when everything else I was doing was planning for the long term. Not that I had any clue what my life held in store for me beyond college. I hadn’t even settled on a major yet.
“If only these dates were more … well, just more,” I said.
“Not every first date can be a candlelit dinner at the Griffith Park Observatory,” Liz said.
“True,” I agreed with a sigh.
Liz was talking about what my parents did on their first date. Dad was an astronomy student at the time. He’d given up an entire month of his life to help one of his professors rewrite the manuscript for a textbook about the universe. The professor’s editors had hated the first draft.
After Dad gave it the once-over, it was accepted by the publisher and much congratulations were heaped on the professor for the amazing work he’d done revising it. The professor thanked Dad by getting him access to the famous Griffith Park Observatory after hours so he could take the woman who would one day become my mom there on a date. Spending an evening alone together looking at the cosmos is a pretty impressive way to start off a relationship.
And it was just the inspiration I needed.
“I think it’s time I fell in love,” I declared, slamming down my bottle of Sobe tea to punctuate the statement. It felt like the moment required a dramatic action. We were at a movie studio after all.
“Always a good way to pass the time,” Liz agreed with a smile. That smile dropped when she saw the look on my face and realized I was being serious. “Tracy?”
“Hear me out,” I said. “I’m spending so much time thinking about the future that I’m missing out on the present. And the thing I’ve been missing out on most is a good guy. I’ve got to stop worrying about all that future stuff and just let myself fall in love.”
Liz nodded. “Okay, yes, that’s a good point,” she said. “But should falling in love really be a goal? It’s not something to put on a to-do list.”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “I don’t have to worry about school until the fall. I don’t have to worry about my future until after that. I can spend my summer finding the perfect love.”
Liz cocked her ear like she was listening for something.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Waiting for the music to swell,” she said. “If this were a movie, this would be the point where the sappy romantic music hits a crescendo.”
I flicked a sesame seed at her.
“Ladies!” a familiar male voice said from behind me.
“Hey, bro!” I said as Dex sat beside me. Technically, he was Liz’s brother, but I’d been calling him “bro” since before I found out it was actually lame to call anyone “bro,” and it kind of stuck. “Thanks for the light effects earlier. The tourists got a kick out of it.”
“Any time,” he said with a smile. “Now maybe you can help me. I’ve got a bet with the guys on the light crew. I need to know what the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture was. They’re telling me it was a Sovereign Studios film.”
“Ha!” Liz and I spat out in unison. Even in its earliest days, Sovereign Studios was never known for quality films. Huge moneymaking blockbusters? Yes. But award-winning works of art? Not even.
“I’ve got a case of Jones soda riding on it,” Dex said. “Bubble gum flavor.”
“Eww,” I said, sticking out my tongue. “Too sweet.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You’re sweet too.”
I smacked him on the shoulder. Dex was actually the first of the Sanchez siblings that I had met back in kindergarten. He and Liz are twins. They look a lot alike actually, with the same straight black hair and green eyes, and this beautifully tanned skin they get along with their Mexican heritage.
Dex and I probably would have become best friends the moment he offered me his chocolate milk on the first day. I mean, come on, he was gifting me with chocolate! But he was a yucky boy so it was only natural that Liz and I would be friends while he followed us around pretending to hate us.
“Wait a minute,” Liz said. “A bunch of union guys made a bet for bubble gum- flavored soda?”
Dex blushed. “Well … if they win I give them beer money. If I win I get bubble gum soda.”
His sister tried her best not to laugh. She failed.
Dex is only an apprentice in the studio’s lighting department since he just got out of high school. He’s not a full-scale union guy, but he doesn’t really want to be doing that for the rest of his life like most of his coworkers have been. He’d much rather be an actor. Dex took the job because his dad works on the studio’s light crew and Dex needed the money for college. The guys are always making fun of him because he’s so young.
“You know the answer, right?” Dex asked.
I stole a french fry off his plate. “The first film to win an Academy Award was Wings. It was produced by Paramount Pictures in 1927.”
Dex gave his fist a pump in the air. “Yes! I can’t wait to tell those guys. I will totally split the soda with you.”
“That’s okay,” I said. Really.
“So, what was the topic of conversation before I got here?”
“Tracy and her guy problems,” Liz said casually.
“Liz!” I shouted through clenched teeth. Luckily the teeth clenching and the volume of the conversations around us kept my voice from carrying.
“What?” Liz asked, all innocent-like. “If you can’t talk to your brother-substitute about guy troubles, who can you talk to?”
But I wasn’t about to talk to anyone about anything, because at that very moment the door to the commissary opened and he walked in.
If my life were a movie, this would be the part where the film went into slow motion as the dusty blond-haired, blue-eyed, stylishly-dressed-in-a-suit-two-levels-above-his-paygrade guy of my dreams entered the picture: Connor Huxley.
Connor was a summer intern in the motion picture marketing department. I’d met him when I gave the orientation tour on his first day at the studio. Every Monday a tour guide takes the new employees around to give them a little background on the studio and point out the necessary places, like the commissary, credit union, infirmary—that kind of thing. Sovereign Studios covers over seventy-five acres in the heart of Hollywood so it’s not like your typical office place. New employees can get lost just looking for a bathroom.
During the one
hour mini-tour, I learned that Connor was going into his sophomore year at USC as a marketing major. We hit it off pretty well in spite of the fact that I was about to start at UCLA in the fall, which made us natural enemies because of our rival school choices.
We’d both been so busy with our summer jobs that we’d hardly talked since then, other than saying “Hi” as we passed while I was giving a tour or he was running an errand. A couple of times I thought he was going to ask me out, but then a tourist interrupted, or he got a call from his boss on his cell phone and had to run off. I thought about asking him out too, but considering how unlucky I’d been with love lately, I didn’t see the point.
“Where did she go?” Dex asked, waving his hand in front of my face.
“I don’t know,” Liz replied. “But she always goes there when Connor’s around.”
I had a sneaking suspicion that they were talking about me. “Excuse me?”
“You’re all dreamy-eyed,” Liz said.
“I am not dreamy-eyed,” I replied, blinking pointedly at her. “I was thinking.”
“About Coooonnor,” Liz said in a singsong voice that made both Dex and me roll our eyes.
“Him again?” Dex asked. He always hated when we got all girly, talking about guys. I guess there are some subjects guys are uncomfortable about hearing from their sisters—or sister-substitutes.
“Abrupt subject switch,” I announced, hoping to derail the topic of conversation before it got started. “Do we know how long this movie’s supposed to run? I don’t want to be stuck on VIP transport all night.”
“You got shuttle duty?” Liz asked. “That sucks.”
“One of the biggest movie premieres of the summer and I’m stuck driving the guests back and forth from the theater to the dining room all night, and I don’t even get to see the movie.”
“But you probably get to meet celebs,” Dex said. “Maybe hang with Christy Caldwell.”
“Ha!” Liz and I said—again—in unison. We’d both done VIP transport before. We knew full well that shuttle duty was the last place anyone got to interact with the glamorous glitterati.
“The celebrities all get personal handlers escorting them,” I explained to Dex. “Shuttle duty is for the executives who think they’re somebody—”
“Well, technically, they are somebody,” Liz said. “They do kind of run the studio.”
“What are you doing for the premiere?” Dex asked his biological sister.
“Ushering,” she replied. “Which means I’m stuck inside watching this drivel.”
Dex shook his head. “What is it with you two? We get to work at Sovereign Studios, one of the oldest motion picture and TV lots in Hollywood.” He looked at me. “You’re going to be rubbing elbows with some of the biggest power players in town—”
“More like carting their butts around.”
He turned to his sister. “And you’re going to be one of the first people in the world to see what everyone is saying will be the blockbuster romantic comedy of the summer. You are both way too young to be so jaded.”
“When did he become the voice of reason?” I asked Liz.
“Always been that way,” Liz replied. “It’s damn annoying.”
Dex was right, though. And we weren’t seriously upset about working the premiere. We just like to whine sometimes. It was kind of exciting to be involved in a big movie premiere with movie stars and the Hollywood elite—even if I was nothing more than a second-rate chauffeur. But you never want to look like you’re excited about those things. That would be tacky.
Jaded is the Hollywood version of excitement.
“Are you sticking around for the premiere?” I asked Dex.
“Can’t,” he said. “I’ve got an audition for a play in a little theater on Santa Monica.”
“Break a leg,” I said. I wanted to ask him more about it, but Dex didn’t like talking about roles until he had them. Like everyone else in Hollywood, Dex had aspirations for something beyond his day job. Well, like everyone but me. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew that tour guide was not a career option. At least Dex wasn’t going the typical route of being a waiter while he pursued his acting dreams.
“Hey,” Liz said. “Here comes lover boy again.”
I willed myself not to look up from my salad, but I could see Liz’s body shift as she turned toward the kitchen. I silently repeated to myself, Don’t look. Don’t look. But the salad could only hold my interest for so long.
My head popped up to catch a glimpse of Connor as he elbowed his way out the door of the commissary. He was loaded down with about a half dozen to-go containers, heading back to the office with his bosses’ meals, I guessed. I bet I’d see him at the premiere later.
Suddenly, my outlook on the event was a lot less jaded.
The Secret Life of a Teenage Siren Page 17