“Oh, Mallory,” Amelia said, full of sad sympathy, now that they were going, now that they were almost gone. I wanted to tell her I was okay. I wanted to tell her I was devastated. I wanted to tell her I was angry.
But all I felt was hollow. This complete emptiness. I envied the women in soap operas, who would have no doubt fainted at the sight. Or screamed. Or fainted while screaming. A character in Good As Gold wouldn’t just keep heading to Quiznos.
“I don’t know why I’m so bothered,” I told Amelia. “I mean, I knew this was happening. She is his girlfriend. I’ve never been.”
Amelia didn’t argue, which I appreciated. She didn’t say, Dump that jerk or You’re so much better than she is or You deserve better—if I wasn’t going to dramatize the moment, she wasn’t going to, either.
It wasn’t until we were sitting at the food court over trays of subs and sodas that Amelia said, “Maybe it’s a sign.”
I shook my head. “It’s not a sign. A sign represents something else. This was exactly what it was.”
I couldn’t accuse Keith of being dishonest; he was always honest with me. Sometimes painfully so. He’d never hid the fact of Erika from me; he’d just left its meaning ambiguous. I’d known he had a girlfriend when I first kissed him. He’d told me. I’d kissed him anyway. Wasn’t this what I deserved, then?
The whole time we ate, I kept my eye on the crowds. Waiting for the two of them to reappear. Preparing to ignore them if I had to. Knowing if Keith showed up, I’d have to let him walk by. I would have to make myself invisible. Which wouldn’t have been too hard … since it was exactly how I felt.
My self-imposed invisibility continued the next day at school. Keith texted me a few times and wanted to meet up, but I made excuses. I told him I was busy, even when the only things busying me were my rapid-fire thoughts.
Scooter saw I was gloomy and tried to brighten things up.
“Maybe Ryan is carjacked, and when he manages to pull off the carjacker’s ski mask, he finds out … it’s his own grandmother!” he whispered to me between first and second periods.
“Or Jacqueline can hit her head on a rock and spend a month thinking she’s a fairy named Gaiety” was the suggestion between third and fourth.
Lunch brought “Surely someone had to be handcuffed to the steering wheel of a runaway go-kart?”
Then, between sixth and seventh, “I know alien abduction’s been done, but what if the whole town is abducted by illegal aliens?”
“Scooter,” I had to tell him, “if you’re trying to distract someone, usually you try to do it in the direction away from what she’s thinking about.”
“Good point,” he said. “Unless that distraction happens to be a blimp armed with an explosive device that’s about to devastate the Deception Pass prom!”
When Scooter wasn’t plot-twisting me, it was like I slipped into a waiting time. Waiting for Annie to return from New York with the rest of the audition tapes. Waiting for the latest round of comments on my script. Waiting for Amelia to get the job, for production of the pilot to actually start, for Dallas to fly back to California.
Most of all, though, I was waiting to figure out what to do with Keith. As if the answer could come from somewhere outside of me. As if it wasn’t my decision at all.
To make matters worse, Mom had a week off from work. This meant she had time to make “appearances”—at local shopping-mall openings, at soap fan conventions, at low-level movie premieres. And even, every now and then, at our house.
I tried to stay in my room, writing. But I guess this hiding place was too obvious, since she found me there every time.
That Saturday night, at around midnight, she stood in my doorway and watched me typing away.
“You look horrible,” she said.
This was her twisted way of showing concern.
“It’s been a long week,” I told her.
She angled to read what was on the screen. I blocked her.
“Fine,” she said.
“It’s not final,” I told her. “I haven’t even read it through myself.”
“Oh, you writers! I remember your—” She stopped. It wasn’t like her to stop in the middle of a story.
“My what?”
“It’s nothing.”
It occurred to me then.
“Were you about to say father? Your father?”
Mom looked genuinely surprised.
“No, I was not about to say your father. What a silly thing to assume. I was about to say I remember your first novel. Do you remember it?”
I shook my head.
She continued, “You were in first grade. You came home from school and said, ‘I’ve written a novel.’ When I got home from work, the maid told me this, and I went straight to your room and asked if I could read it. At first, you didn’t want me to. You said nobody at school had read it, not even Mr. Morris. I told you I would be honored to be your first reader. Then you reached under your pillow—it was under your pillow—and handed it over to me. It was three pages long. Do you remember what it was called?”
And the strange thing was, I could remember it now.
“The Cat Is Bad,” I said.
Mom smiled wistfully and nodded. “Yes, The Cat Is Bad. If I remember correctly, it was about a cat named Cat that kept hitting people. Until it met a dog named Rufus, which I believe you spelled with a ph. I don’t think you said as much, but I believe they fell in love. The end.”
“The end,” I repeated.
We just sat there for a moment. I stopped blocking the screen, but she didn’t look at it.
“I wonder where I put that story,” she said finally. “I’m sure the PR department would love to see it.” She stood up and patted the back of my chair. “Don’t stay up too late. Even writers need their sleep. It’s the nectarine of life.”
“Nectar, Mom. It’s the nectar of life.” I couldn’t believe I was correcting her clichés.
“That’s what I said. Now get some shut-eye.”
I promised I would. Then I stayed up another four hours, trying to figure out Sarah’s and Ryan’s and Jacqueline’s lives since I couldn’t figure out my own.
At about four in the morning, I heard Mom walking around, filling the house with insomniac noise: tiny, restless steps and quiet, unhappy movements. Usually she slept well—perhaps the only person in Hollywood who did so without the help of pills.
I wondered what was keeping her up now, but wasn’t about to ask.
That was my own way of expressing concern.
Once Mom jetted off on her weeklong soap junket, things settled down a little—if settled down can mean daily meetings with your executive producer. Every day, a studio car would pick me up after school and take me to meet with Richard as we put Likely Story together. (Luckily, Donald had snuck title approval into my contract, so Likely Story stayed Likely Story and didn’t become Shadow’s Light or Evil’s Good Points or Hate’s Love or Stupidity … Today.) The studio car was just a plain Lincoln Continental, but from the way some people in my school reacted, you would have thought it was a stretch limo. I could see the popular girls shoot me resentful looks, barely containing their envy. Scooter was so excited about it that I started giving him a ride home … until Richard chided me for being late. I did not enjoy being chided. Which made it hard to work with a chider.
I think Richard expected me to be overwhelmed by all of the things that needed to be done. Luckily, growing up on a soap-opera set had prepared me to be at least familiar with all of the things that went into putting a show together. Most of the things—scenery, sound editing, boom operating, catering—were ones I wasn’t going to get involved in; I freely admitted to Richard that I knew as much about sound editing as I knew about how a plasma screen actually worked. I was happy just to press the power button and let other people worry about how the picture got there.
It was the creative decisions—like casting and set design—that I wanted to be involved in. Annie was returning on
Tuesday with the casting material, which left Monday for Richard and me to concentrate on all the inanimate objects. Together, we looked over the set designer’s models. It was so strange to see Deception Pass coming to life—suddenly Sarah had a bedroom and Jacqueline’s house had a living room. I felt like I recognized them, and at first I wondered how the set designer had managed to sketch out something that had existed in my head. Then I realized that I did recognize the sets—and not from any creative space deep inside my mind. I recognized them because I’d been seeing them my whole life.
“Don’t these look a lot like the Good As Gold sets?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Richard replied with his customary care. “These look nothing like Good As Gold.”
“Not the actual furniture. Or the colors. But the sets. That bedroom looks like Diamond’s bedroom—the windows and the door and even the bed are in the same place. And that living room has the same exact dimensions as the one in the Netherlander mansion. I think the couch is the same couch.”
“It’s not the same couch.”
“It is the same couch. I’ve played hide-and-seek behind that couch for as long as I can remember. I know that couch. Can’t we get a lime-green couch or something different?”
I didn’t know why I was being so insistent. But I sensed there was something Richard wasn’t telling me.
“Look,” he said, “if you want me to ask Monica to change it up, we can change it up. But you have to understand that sets are pretty much all set up the same way. You need to give the cameras room to maneuver in, and that limits your options. If you want to be innovative with your writing, go for it. But we can’t be too innovative when it comes to the couches.”
“Okay, Mr. Sunshine,” I replied. “I was just making a simple point. I’m not asking for all the beds to be converted into bunk beds.”
He grunted at that and kept looking at the sketches.
I wondered what Richard was like at home. I could picture it as one of those places in a style magazine—pathologically tidy, everything matching, each shirt evenly spaced out in the closet.
I couldn’t picture anyone else living there with him.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked now.
Richard didn’t even look up as he said no.
“A boyfriend?”
Again, eyes on the sketches and “No.”
“A dog?”
Now he looked at me.
“A show,” he said. “That’s what I have, Mallory. A show.” He shuffled some of the sketches around. “I guess I have a show, too,” I said. He didn’t even nod.
“Well,” I said, “I still wouldn’t mind a frickin’ boyfriend.” That made him smile. Then he asked me if I thought Jacqueline would prefer drapes or shades in her bedroom. There were important decisions to be made.
Francesca Moore.
Annie brought back many casting videos from New York, but most of all she brought us Francesca Moore.
Her name was the first thing off Annie’s lips when we met that Tuesday.
“Francesca Moore. If she isn’t a star, then I’m going to retire and take up pottery.”
It got worse: Francesca Moore was a classmate of Dallas’s at Juilliard. He had recommended her.
“Are they friends?” I asked Annie.
“Why, I didn’t ask,” she replied.
Then it got even worse: Her audition video was fantastic.
“She’s Jacqueline,” I said when it was all over.
“Not Sarah?” Richard asked.
“No. Jacqueline. She’s exactly how I picture Jacqueline.”
“So who’s Sarah?”
“I told you—it’s Amelia. It’s been Amelia all along.”
“What about Alexis?” Annie asked.
“Or Genna?” Richard chimed in.
I looked at Annie’s assistants Phil and Tracy.
“Help!” I said.
“I could see her as Jacqueline,” Phil said.
“This,” Tracy said, “is why we have another round to go.”
Sure enough, this took the pressure off. We narrowed it down to five actresses—Amelia, Francesca, Alexis, Genna, and Stacy (who’d auditioned for Jacqueline’s role)—and decided to have them read for both of the lead female parts.
“We’ll get the contracts out tomorrow, and hopefully we can fly Dallas in for the scenes next week,” Annie said.
Dallas. Next week.
The enormity of everything was hitting me like, well, enormity.
Richard brought the audition tapes to the VPs for our next meeting.
“I really like Amelia for Sarah,” I said.
Everybody looked at me, not caring very much. I realized this was probably the wrong moment to speak up.
“We’ll see how the next round goes,” Trip Carver said. “We’re still finalizing all the casting.”
Something about the way he said it made me wonder if there was other casting going on that I didn’t know about.
After the meeting, when we were safely back in our temporary production office, I talked to Richard about it.
“I thought we were casting Sarah, Jacqueline, and Ryan first,” I said. “Right?”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” he replied. “That’s the plan. But we still have to look at the bigger picture.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“What bigger picture?” I asked.
“Mallory, you have to be ready to compromise.”
I really didn’t like the sound of that.
“Compromise about what, Richard?”
“Have you been listening in these meetings?”
“Yes,” I said, annoyed that he thought I wasn’t listening. “We talk endlessly about demographics and advertisers and how to sell the show. I’m aware of all that.”
“Then you realize they want the show to skew older. To adults.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the plan. The reason they agreed to do this in the first place was so they could get a younger demographic. Teens don’t watch soaps anymore. This will get them to watch. It’s the anti–Good As Gold. It’s Bad As Basalt.”
“Basalt?”
“It’s a rock.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
“Basalt aside, Mallory … you say you want it to be radically different, but it can’t be radically different.”
“Why not?” I challenged.
“Because there aren’t enough teenagers at home after school to give us high ratings. That’s the reality, Mallory. You’re a teenager—you should know this. What are most teens doing at three o’clock? Are they at home watching TV? No! They’re playing sports. Or rehearsing for the school play. Or working at the mall.”
“They can record it and watch it later.”
“And how often do you do that, Mallory?”
“So you’re saying we need to appeal to adults, too.”
“It’s inevitable.”
“But adults will watch something about teens.”
“Absolutely. That’s why we’re doing this. You’re right about one thing—we don’t want to end up like Good As Gold.”
Something about the way he said this made me feel defensive. Not even for my mother. For Gina, really, and everyone else I’d grown up around.
“How many changes am I going to have to make?” I asked Richard.
“Some.”
“You’ve talked to them without me there?”
“What do you think I do during the day? Wait for you to show up?”
“There are some things I won’t do.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know yet,” I answered honestly. “But I’ll know when you ask me to do them.”
“Compromise, Mallory. It’s all about compromise.”
“Do you know how patronizing you sound when you say that?”
This time Richard actually put his hand on my shoulder. Not gently.
“You have to realize,” he sai
d, “these people are our patrons. I am your patron. We are allowed to be patronizing. We have the money, and we’re the ones who lose it if this fails. Know your place and you’ll be fine.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. It’s a warning, not a threat. Patrons aren’t the enemy, Mallory. They’re actually your biggest supporters.”
“Thanks,” I said, not meaning it at all. “I feel a lot better.”
We got back to work, but my heart was nowhere near it. I kept hearing the same words over and over: Know your place and you’ll be fine.
I felt I knew my place, all right.
And it pretty much sucked.
I knew that even when my mom was away, Gina still had to work. After I was done with Richard, I sat in the parking lot and leaned against one of the back wheels of her car, waiting for her to come out from the studio.
She didn’t seem surprised to see me—just like she never seemed surprised to see me hiding in the backseat when I was younger. But she did look concerned.
“What is it, honey? Rough day?”
“Is it always this hard to be a grown-up?” I asked.
Even though she was wearing her nice work clothes, she sat down next to me and leaned against the car.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “Especially when part of you is still a kid.”
“I thought I knew what pressure was before,” I confessed to her. “But this makes the SATs look like a book report on Goodnight Moon.”
Gina put her arm around me, and I could smell her perfume. That scent might as well have been called Comfort—ever since I was a little girl, that’s what it meant to me. It couldn’t protect me from the nighttime fears, when I was home alone with my mother. But it could definitely help me with all the daylight worries.
“You’re always here,” I told her now.
“That’s right,” she said, squeezing me a little closer. “Sometimes it’s not that complicated. Sometimes you just know what to do and you do it.”
“But what if I’m wrong?”
“Then you’re wrong, and you admit it, and you make it right. Look, it’s not usual for a girl your age to have a job like this. It’s wonderful that you have the opportunity. But you can’t take it home with you. You can’t let it run your life. That’s what your mother, bless her, does. She made her choices, and I’m not saying they were the wrong ones for her. But you have so much ahead of you. You can’t let these things get to you.”
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