Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  Except: It seemed like I was the only one who found it awkward.

  “So, tell me about this show of yours,” he said, leading me down to the winding garden.

  Don’t you want to know about me first? I didn’t ask. I had to remember: This isn’t a date. There was no way this beautiful college student would ever be strolling on a date with a high schooler like me. This was business.

  Head, your services are needed. Please leave the clouds.

  Ultimately I reached a compromise with myself: As my mouth told him all about Likely Story and how groundbreaking and amazing it was going to be, my eyes got to catalog his features, doubling and tripling back to his eyes every now and then. I was telling him how my goal was to do something no soap opera had ever done before: namely, the truth. And the truth was that I was trying to figure out what color his eyes were, because they appeared to shift with each bud and blossom he looked at. Sapphire. Opal. Topaz. Agate. His eyes were every birthstone at once.

  “What?” he asked.

  I had no idea what I’d just said. He’d caught me staring.

  “Your eyes are so many damn colors at once,” I blurted out.

  “I know. It’s freaky, isn’t it?”

  Freaky wasn’t the first word that came to mind.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “Staring?”

  Shut up shut up shut up.

  I decided to change the subject.

  “So, do you like Juilliard?”

  He nodded. “It’s fantastic. It opens so many possibilities.”

  I had a feeling he wasn’t thinking of soap operas when he said that.

  “What was the last play you did?” I asked.

  “Chekhov. The Three Sisters.”

  “Were you Andrei or Vershinin?”

  Dallas stopped in his tracks.

  “Do you know, you’re the first person in all of Los Angeles who hasn’t asked me which of the sisters I played?”

  “My mother thinks Chekhov is a ballet dancer.”

  “So you’ve read the play?” he asked.

  “I’ve typed it.”

  That wasn’t the response he was expecting. “What do you mean?”

  I couldn’t think of any plausible explanation but the truth.

  “This is so geeky,” I said as a disclaimer. “But when I was in middle school, I went through this big playwright phase. I figured the way to learn to write like the masters would be to type out all their plays instead of just reading them. So I could hear them better in my head. So I would know what they felt like. To write. I know it’s stupid—”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  “It was a lot of time I could’ve spent watching TV.”

  “I like it,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  And then we just hovered there, near the end of the garden.

  “Hey,” I said, “you never told me which of the roles you played.”

  It was so sweet—he blushed.

  “Actually,” he said, “it was a fringe production. So I played one of the sisters. Irina.”

  “There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there?” I joked.

  “God, I hope so,” he replied.

  I very well could have taken my heart from my chest and said, Here, have this.

  Trouble.

  We went into the galleries and floated from painting to painting. He studied them, and I studied him studying them. At least until I realized that most of the masterpieces were framed with reflective glass. He could see me hovering in each landscape, on every abstraction.

  He spent a particularly long time in front of Van Gogh’s Irises.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “It makes me feel inadequate,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because don’t you ever worry that you’ll never be that good at anything?”

  All the time. Including now.

  When we were through with the art, we went back to the gift shop to have fifteen more minutes of talk before the studio cars came to take us away.

  “Here’s the thing,” he told me. “I think your ideas are great. But they’re asking me to sign a five-year contract. That pretty much blows my mind. Those are the five most important years of my career. I know a lot of people have gotten their start on soap operas—believe me, my agent has given me the full list. But do you understand, Mallory, what you’re asking me?”

  I did, and it made me nervous. How could anything I wrote be worthy of five years of his time?

  “Here’s what I think,” I said. “More than any art form in the world right now, soap operas have the potential to become a part of their audiences’ lives. Every day, five days a week, people tune in to watch a story unfold. Now, usually it’s full of all sorts of wacko stuff and melodrama. But imagine if it was just like tuning in to the lives of a group of people you cared about? What if you connected with them so much that they told you a little bit more about your own life? I know it sounds ridiculous, and I can’t believe I’m even talking about this as if it’s, I dunno, Dickens. But there is an art to it. It can affect people, sometimes in a big way. I know your drama-school friends will probably tell you you’re lame for doing it—although I’d bet they’d be jealous, too, that you’d have a steady job. I know the pace is killer and the demand is constant. And for all I know, my writing is going to be complete crap. But, man, if we do this right—it could be amazing. And it could reach more people in one episode than Chekhov’s plays did in his lifetime.”

  With every sentence I spoke, my self-consciousness balloon inflated a little more, so that by the time I was done, it had taken up the whole gift shop and I had to shut up.

  Dallas twinkled at me. I could tell he was still unsure, but at the very least he didn’t think I was crazy.

  “Plus,” I added, “you can totally hit them up for mountains of money, because they really want you to do it.”

  “So they really want me to do it?” he said, leaning so close I could feel the air around his faint stubble. “What about you?”

  I smiled, so completely nervous.

  “Are you really going to make me say it?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Fine,” I said. “I really want you to do it.”

  As we held there for a moment, in that teetering silence, I thought someone could have easily come in and painted a portrait of us.

  Moment of Decision, it could have been called.

  Or maybe just The Start.

  “How’d it go?” Keith asked me that night on the phone.

  “I think he’s going to do it,” I said calmly, almost guiltily.

  “How’d it go?” Donald asked me five minutes later.

  “I think he’s going to do it!” I said, not really believing it.

  “How’d it go?” Amelia asked me five minutes after that.

  “I THINK HE’S GOING TO DO IT!!!” I screamed, abandoning all self-control.

  The next trick, of course, was to get Amelia cast as Sarah.

  “I’ve seen the effect she has on guys,” I told Richard the next day, digressing from a conversation we were having about my script. “She can’t walk into a bar without some guy buying her a drink. Even if it’s a salad bar. I swear.”

  “But that doesn’t always translate into acting,” Richard pointed out.

  “It’s even more intense when she’s onstage. This one time, this guy got so infatuated with her when he saw her as the lead in her junior high school musical that he ran out and bought her flowers during intermission. And she was playing Mary Poppins.”

  “I hate to point out,” Richard said, not hating it at all, “that guys aren’t really the gender we’re trying to attract with a soap opera. With a side blessing to the gays, it’s really the females we need to lure.”

  “But that’s the thing!” I went on. “Girls should hate Amelia. But they don’t! They love Amelia.”

  “Okay okay okay,”
Richard said, putting his palms up, relenting. “I’ll talk to Annie Prue and make sure Amelia’s on the short list. You have a pic?”

  I pressed the first speed dial on my phone and a photo of Amelia grinning over an ice cream cone popped up. Richard took the phone out of my hand and had a long look.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  From Richard, I figured this was pretty good.

  There were definitely glamorous parts to the job—talking to reporters, visiting the studio, looking at Dallas’s photo over and over and over.

  And then there was the less glamorous part: the one that involved me at my laptop, typing away.

  JACQUELINE

  We’re clear on this, right?

  Ryan loves me … not you.

  I’ve seen the way he

  looks at you.

  I’ve seen the way you look at

  him. But I’ve also seen the

  way he looks at me—and I know

  what I know.

  SARAH

  I never meant to—

  JACQUELINE

  You never meant to what?

  SARAH

  I have no idea.

  JACQUELINE

  You have no idea?

  SARAH

  I mean, Mallory has no idea.

  She just keeps typing. But

  she has no idea what I should

  say yet. All that she knows

  is that in the next scene

  Ryan is going to be getting

  out of the pool.

  JACQUELINE

  Another shirtless scene for

  Dallas?

  SARAH

  This time he’s dripping wet.

  I think she might even say,

  “Rivulets of water course

  down his chest.”

  JACQUELINE

  Oh, honey, she’s got it bad.

  MALLORY

  Excuse me? I’m right here. I

  can read you.

  SARAH

  But, Mallory, what about the

  boyfriend you already have?

  JACQUELINE

  He’s not her boyfriend,

  remember? He’s still

  with that crazy girl.

  SARAH

  Oh yeah. That sucks.

  MALLORY

  Stop it! I’m telling you, if

  you don’t stop,

  you’ll be wearing tracksuits

  in this scene. Orange

  tracksuits. XXL.

  SARAH

  (silence)

  JACQUELINE

  (silence)

  SARAH

  (silence)

  JACQUELINE

  I’m just asking, how are you

  supposed to know what we

  should say when you don’t

  even know what you’re

  supposed to say?

  MALLORY

  But giving other people words

  is much easier!

  SARAH

  So where were we?

  JACQUELINE

  You never meant to what?

  SARAH

  I never meant to do anything

  that could mess everything

  else up. I never meant to

  fall into something I had

  no control over. And I never

  meant for you to see that.

  JACQUELINE

  But don’t you see … I

  know you too well.

  “Why is your name in there?”

  I hadn’t noticed Amelia creeping up behind me. She was supposed to be doing my Ethical Questions homework so I could finish my fourth draft of the pilot episode. Both the homework and the script were due the next morning.

  “I think I may be going insane,” I confessed.

  “Well, in that case, you’re in good company,” Amelia comforted. “Hollywood is no place for the sane.”

  She went to her kitchen and came back with a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels.

  “Brain food,” she explained, handing the bag over.

  “I hope my brain has an appetite,” I said with a sigh. “I need it to be obese.”

  “I’m not letting you go to sleep ’til you’re done!” Amelia warned.

  “I’m a total fake,” I told her. “Why did I ever think I could do this?”

  “Mal, Mal, Mal-Mal, Mal.” Amelia looked at me sweetly, the sister I’d never had. “Don’t you get it? Everyone feels like a fake. Everyone feels like they’ve gotten themselves into something they can’t handle. Everyone’s overwhelmed. That’s just life. And here it’s life times ten. Even if you feel like a fake, you just have to fake the best you can, and eventually you’ll understand it isn’t fake at all.”

  “Somebody’s been reading a little too much O magazine,” I mumbled. But really I felt better. Not that I was more confident in myself. But at least I had Amelia to be confident in me.

  “You can do it,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “That’s what friends are for.”

  And I thought, yeah, she was probably right. The thing was: I’d never really had friends like that. With all the moving. With all the school swapping. With all the cliques I hadn’t mastered. With all the secrets I’d never learned. I’d never had a friend to show me what friends were for.

  And now, I saw, I had just that.

  It felt good.

  I finished and e-mailed in the script at 7:59 in the morning. One minute early.

  Such a pro.

  Then I dragged myself through school.

  Amelia had tried to stay up with me, but at about three I found myself talking to someone who’d fallen asleep on the floor, her face a centimeter away from the keyboard of her laptop. I tried to move her into her bed, but she just mumbled, “Here’s fine” and went back to sleep.

  When I got to school, Keith saw the state I was in and got me a venti-sized iced coffee—a caffeine booster shot—with just the right amount of milk and sugar.

  “You are my savior,” I told him.

  “All in a day’s work, ma’am,” he replied, tipping the brim of an invisible hat.

  I gave him a blurry pre-caffeine kiss, then stumbled off to homeroom.

  Normally, a coffee run on Keith’s part would have made me giddy for the rest of the day. Amelia and I would have examined and cross-examined it: What does it mean? Is he ready to dump Erika? He wouldn’t get coffee for her, would he?

  Now it felt like old news. Or not even old news. Just news I already knew.

  Richard had told me that Dallas was already on his way back to New York, returning to school while he waited for the casting process to really kick in. I imagined him walking his halls the same way I was walking mine. Did he feel a little different now than he did before? Would I cross his mind at all? I had no idea where Juilliard was in New York City or what it looked like. So instead I relied on my own imagination. I pictured ballet dancers practicing their moves on wooden railings set up in the hallways. I pictured drama students in black turtlenecks holding fake skulls and reciting Hamlet. I pictured both gayboys and straight girls turning their heads as Dallas passed by, completely oblivious to their involuntary attraction. He was smiling, thinking of our future together….

  On the show, I forced myself to add. Our future together on the show.

  “Are you okay?” Scooter, a class-friend of mine, asked when he caught me daydreaming in Unified Sciences.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “Just writing in my head.”

  What I didn’t tell him was that I was trying to write the future, not fiction.

  Silly, silly me.

  At lunch that day, I took out my cell phone and found three messages from Richard.

  “Love the script,” the first one said.

  “The network’s got it,” the second one said.

  “Can you skip school to get comments on Friday?” the third one asked.

  Skip school? I would hop, skip, and jump it. It was starting to feel like I’d already l
eft.

  I called back and told him there wouldn’t be a problem.

  When I got home, I found my mom on the couch. But instead of watching her TiVo, she was entertaining herself in another way. She had my script in one hand. And a big red marker in the other.

  “What are you doing?” I cried.

  “Oh, just reading,” Mom said, as if this was one of her favorite pastimes.

  “How did you get that? You broke into my computer, didn’t you? How dare you? That’s my private—”

  Mom held up a hand. “I did no such thing. You seem to have forgotten that you’re working for my network. All I had to do was ask.”

  “Trip would never …”

  Mom laughed. “Do you think Trip Carver makes xeroxes of his own scripts? What a stupid girl you can be. Rule number one of television, darling: Always get the secretaries very good gifts.”

  “That’s not fair!” I protested. Then I walked over and put my hand out. “Give it to me. It’s not meant for you to read.”

  “Too late!” Mom proclaimed cheerfully. “I’m already finished. And it’s a good thing I did.”

  I knew I should have been walking away. I knew I should have been ignoring her. She had nothing to do with this. Her opinion didn’t matter.

  But, at the same time, I couldn’t help myself. I cared what she thought.

  “Why is it a good thing you did?” I asked. Even as it angered me that she’d made me ask.

  She stood up, as if to give me support, although deep down I knew she was only doing it so I wouldn’t be standing over her. Mom was all about the power dynamics.

  “Sweetheart,” she said sweetly, but without heart, “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “What is it, Mom?”

  “You know how much I care about you.”

  “Mother!”

  “It’s a wonderful thing for someone your age.”

  “But …”

  “But it’s horrible daytime television. Absolutely wrong!”

  I was not going to cry.

  “How can you say that?” I asked.

  She laughed again. “How can I say that? I think even you, Mallory, can admit that I have a head full of daytime television.”