Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  “It’s a little early for amnesia, but I do like the alien baby idea. It’s been years since we’ve seen that on a soap,” Frieda Weiner offered.

  “See—it’s been done. Help me out here, Richard,” I pleaded. But he remained silent, so I was forced to fight the bees and the bears myself. “I thought the whole point of this was to do something new. Something the viewers haven’t seen.”

  “Blah, blah, blah, originality,” Holly said dismissively. “We are in the business of selling what people want. And what people want is what they expect. On soaps, this means sex, scandal, and suspicion. No one cares if Marco finishes his book report on time. We have canceled one of the longest-running and most successful soap operas in history in order to give yours a shot. Don’t make us regret dropping Good As Gold. We’ll throw on repeats of test patterns if they get higher ratings than Likely Story.”

  “You’re threatening to cancel the show? We haven’t even aired yet!” I slammed my hands down on the table in exasperation.

  Across from me, Richard was finally getting worried. “I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot,” he said. “Obviously Mallory is very passionate about this show. As am I. As are you.” He gestured to all the idiots around us. “With all this passion, I’m sure we can find something we all agree on.”

  Webster breathed in deep. Everyone waited to hear what he would say next. After an exaggerated silence, he finally spoke. “Let me be frank—we don’t like the first episodes and we don’t think the audience will, either. Ryan’s initial storyline has him working hard to save up money in order to take Jacqueline on a fancy date, even though the person he really wants to take on the date is Sarah. That’s nice, but I want murder. Blackmail. Abduction. I don’t care what—but it had better be thrilling. And I want it to include Dallas and Alexis. These are your stars, and they need a star storyline.”

  He hit the table with his Montblanc pen the way a judge bangs a gavel. Webster Strong had spoken. I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked to Richard.

  “That’s a great idea, Webster,” Richard said.

  What was a great idea? He hadn’t suggested anything remotely great. It was all recycled cheese.

  Richard continued, “Mal and I and the writers will get together and brainstorm. We’ll come up with something a little bit spicier for our first episode. We’ll reshoot some scenes later this week and lay them in—no problem. Right, Mallory?”

  This was it—the moment of truth. But what option did I really have? I knew what Richard was doing: He was getting us away from the table as soon as he could so we could make some changes on our own terms instead of having them dictated by the suits. If I refused to do it, I would seem as immature as they wanted me to be. Threatening cancellation was serious—and I knew Webster wouldn’t be able to do it if he didn’t have Trip backing him up. I’d confirm it later with Greg, but just from the way he looked, I knew: Trip was in on this. So it wasn’t a question of whether anything would change or not—it was just a question of how much. And Richard was trying to give us as much control over that as possible. Or so I had to hope.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Webster Strong and Holly Hughes looked pleased. Too pleased.

  “I can’t tell you how excited we are about this,” Holly said.

  “So excited,” Webster added.

  What had I just done?

  “You hung me out to dry,” I said to Richard as we walked to the writing office.

  “You did that all by yourself,” he replied. “You didn’t need my help at all.”

  “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “No, Mallory—I’m supposed to be on the show’s side. Although in this case, I did you a favor.”

  I stopped and glared at him. “How?” I asked. “How exactly did you do me a favor?”

  “Because I agreed with them,” he answered simply. “Not about the alien babies or even about turning Deception Pass into a hotbed of free love. But the boring part, Mallory. I agree about the boring part. I kept silent, because I knew if I’d agreed with them in there, you would have been majorly outgunned.”

  “So what do we do now?” I asked, completely deflated.

  “Fix it, Mallory. You go in there and fix it.”

  The plotline of Likely Story was meant to be pretty simple: Ryan and Sarah are in love with each other, but things keep getting in their way. So Ryan goes off with Jacqueline (Francesca’s character), and Marco immediately moves in and snaps up Sarah. Everybody is with the person he or she shouldn’t be with, pining for someone he or she can’t have. Basically, realism. Life, I figured, was dramatic enough. Why add alien babies?

  As I followed Richard into the writers’ room, I had to remind myself that none of these people would be here if it hadn’t been for my initial idea. There was no denying, though, that once the show went into production, the idea became much more of a collaboration than I’d ever imagined it would be. I mean, there was no way I could write all of the episodes myself. We needed a staff of writers in order to do five shows a week.

  Luckily, I’d been able to hire one of my friends to be on the writing staff. Tamika and I had met in drama camp when I was a kid. She was older—she’d been an eighteen-year-old counselor, which seemed like a woman of the world to a ten-year-old camper like me. She was the only person at the whole camp who respected that I would have rather been sent to the pound than be in the camp’s production of Cats. Not that there was anything wrong with Cats (okay, there was), but I just wanted to be setting the stage rather than walking across it. Her father was a big-time music producer, and she’d therefore been raised in the same off-kilter world of semi-celebrity as I had. She understood that I’d gone to drama camp because the only other option my mother had given me was fat camp. (I wasn’t fat; my mother argued that it was “a preventative measure.”)

  Neither Tamika nor the other seven writers seemed surprised when I told them what had happened in the meeting.

  “What was wrong with the original story about Ryan and Sarah’s breakup?” asked Rita from the breakdown corner of the room.

  We had two different types of word whizzes on the show: breakdown writers and scriptwriters. The BWs were responsible for writing the detailed outlines of each day’s episode. Once those were approved, we passed them along to the scriptwriters, who then spun that magic into dialogue. I, as head writer, was responsible for the overarching stories that drove the show. In other words, I dreamed up the big stuff and the staff filled in the details.

  I leaned back in my chair, unconsciously mimicking the same pose and tone Webster had affected earlier. “The brass thinks it’s boring. Not splashy enough,” I said.

  Tamika played with the long scarf wrapped around her neck, twisting the fringe. “How ’bout we stick Dallas and Alexis on the foggy bridge and have them spot a dead body on the black-sand beach below?”

  At first, I thought she was joking. But then Rita asked, “Who’s dead?” and Tamika said, “Maybe somebody from their school.”

  A couple of the other writers actually oohed at that.

  “What do you think, Richard?” I asked. He would put his two cents in eventually, so I figured I might as well get it now.

  He didn’t even look up from the BlackBerry he was jabbing at with his thumbs. “Everyone likes murder. Worked for Desperate Housewives.”

  A guy named Chase picked it up from there. “Who said it was murder? It could be anything—a real mystery.”

  “Of course it’s murder—it’s always murder,” Richard said matter-of-factly.

  “Do you think this is what the network wants?” I pressed.

  “It’s a hell of a lot better than a geography test. No one will tune in to watch actors take tests.”

  “Having a character stress out about a test isn’t the same as watching him take the test,” I argued. Then I realized the fact that I was arguing meant that I had to be losing. “You approved those storylines. Besides, this is what kids do. They take tests. And
tests are a big deal when you’re in school.”

  Richard didn’t even have to roll his eyes. I was drowning in my own quicksand. And I had to admit that he was right: Everyone does like murder. Or at least they do when it’s confined to a fictional town.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s see where this goes. Who died? A student? It seems it should be a student because that would implicate any number of our characters.”

  Rita bounced her pencil on the pad of paper in front of her. “What kind of student? A cheerleader?”

  Tamika interjected, “That’s been done. It’s more interesting if she’s a bad girl.”

  Ronald, a doughy scriptwriter I’d salvaged from Good As Gold, spoke up. “Of course she’s a bad girl. But if she’s all-American at first, it will give us more to play with. Everyone thinks she’s perfect, but then we begin to peel away the layers and we discover that she was a bad girl masquerading as a good girl.”

  I groaned. This was starting to sound like every story ever written. “Are you sure this hasn’t been done to death? Pardon the pun.”

  “For my money, I always like to see some bitch get dead,” cracked Tamika.

  I sighed. “I suppose as long as we agree that whoever killed this good girl is not suffering from schizophrenia, we should be fine. No double personalities on this show. I hate double personalities.”

  Ronald piped up again. “How about triple? Do you mind triple personalities?”

  “Triple personalities who fall in love …,” Rita said dreamily.

  I looked to Tamika to be my one remaining link to sanity.

  “One person, one personality,” she said firmly.

  And so it went as we batted around the idea of a murder in Deception Pass. Eventually, we settled on the idea of a character named Michelle, the student council president, who is found dead. No one knows who did it. And neither did we … yet.

  The death immediately started to take on a life of its own.

  I believe the chain of events went something like this: Richard told the network what we were thinking; the network told Frieda Weiner, the consultant; and then Frieda Weiner, the consultant, decided to consult everybody else on the set about it.

  By the time I got to the shoot for the cast photo, you could feel the body count in the air.

  The worst thing was, I could tell that most people were actually excited about it. This, they felt, was real drama … even if there wasn’t anything real about it.

  Alexis looked concerned when she came up to me.

  “I’m not going to be the one who dies, am I?” she whispered.

  “No,” I assured her, “you’re the lead. We don’t kill leads. At least not in the first year.”

  She exhaled, relieved.

  “I don’t know how I’d ever explain being killed to my mother,” she confided. “She’d be so disappointed in me.”

  “You’re not dead,” I told her.

  “You’re the best,” she said. Then she gave me the kind of hug a little girl gives her dad when she discovers a puppy with a birthday ribbon in her stack of presents.

  Francesca and Dallas didn’t seem as huggy. At least toward me. They didn’t say anything until we were posed next to one another for the big group photo.

  “Hi, guys,” I said as Sal, the photographer, adjusted my stance.

  “Hey,” Dallas said, but his voice wasn’t really into it.

  “Dallas has something to ask you,” Francesca said. “Isn’t that right, Romeo?”

  “C’mon, Francesca,” he mumbled.

  (Francesca, I noticed, was never Fran or Franny or Franc or Cesca. Always Francesca. I wondered whether it would catch on if I started calling her Rances.)

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I dunno,” he hemmed.

  “Romeo?” Francesca prompted.

  “Well …,” he hawed.

  “It’s this whole murder thing,” Francesca finally said. “We just didn’t see the show going in that direction.”

  “No talking!” Sal shouted, then flashed a few bulbs in our faces.

  When I got my sight back, Sal shouted, “No blinking this time!” and unleashed a new barrage.

  “Man!” I groaned. Then I looked at Francesca and Dallas next to me and Javier and Alexis at their sides. None of the actors had a problem with the blinking thing. How, I wondered, do you learn not to blink?

  Finally, when Sal said it was okay to move, I explained, “The murder is something the network wanted.”

  “Yeah,” Francesca said. “But we didn’t sign up for the network’s show. We signed up for yours.”

  “It’s still mine,” I said. “Nothing’s happened that I didn’t want to happen.”

  I was wondering what else to say when I noticed my mother had come onto the soundstage, ready for her close-up.

  “All right!” Sal announced. “Javier and Francesca, you can go. Alexis, go put on the white dress. Dallas, let’s get that shirt off of you.”

  Dallas looked a little stunned. “What?” he asked.

  Sal gestured to Dallas’s torso. “The shirt. Take it off.” He held up a little spray bottle. “Don’t worry—I can make you glisten.”

  “I think my shirt will stay on,” Dallas said. “I don’t mind if it’s an important part of a scene. But not on a photo shoot.”

  Richard had now walked in and was standing next to my mom, who was loving every minute of this.

  “I’ll take off my shirt,” Javier proclaimed, and proceeded to do so. “There!”

  Alexis ran off to wardrobe, no doubt shocked by the whole spectacle.

  “You just want to see him with his shirt off, Javier,” Francesca said acidly.

  “Oh, honey, I’ve already seen it in wardrobe a hundred times. And let me tell you, he has hair in all the right places.” He paused. “But then you’d already know that, wouldn’t you?”

  Okay, this was way too much information.

  “Let’s just keep the shirt on,” I said. “I don’t think it would make sense for Mom, Alexis, and me to be wearing what we’re wearing while we stood next to a bare-chested guy.”

  Even saying bare-chested made me blush.

  Sal looked miffed. “Do you have a no-nudity clause in your contract?” he asked.

  Dallas shook his head.

  My mother chimed in: “More people will watch the show if you take off your shirt.”

  Alexis—quick-change artist—reappeared in the white dress.

  “Just take the pictures,” I implored.

  “Fine,” Sal grumbled, returning to his camera. He didn’t look very happy. And neither did Dallas.

  What was he thinking?

  I had no idea. And that bothered me.

  “Who’s going to be murdered?” my on-set tutor (I know: lame) asked me.

  “Can we stick to trigonometry?” I replied. This was not a request I’d ever thought I’d make.

  “Suit yourself,” Miss Julie said, miffed. I was pretty sure she was only using me as an excuse to be on the set. Usually, they try to screen out any wannabe actors from being tutors. But this woman was a wannabe viewer. I had no doubt that every word I said to her would end up on a blog someday. I had quickly discovered that I was better off with Wikipedia than I was when Miss Julie was in a soap-struck haze.

  As soon as I could, I headed off to a better teacher—Gina, the woman who’d been my mother’s makeup person since before I was born. One of the only saving graces—okay, the only saving grace—of having my mom on my show was that she brought Gina along with her.

  Gina often knew set gossip before I did. So the recent turn in Likely Story’s direction was old news by the time I stopped by my mother’s dressing room.

  “They always start with murder,” she told me. “Have they brought up Shakespeare yet?” I shook my head. “Oh, honey, they will. ‘Hamlet starts with a murder,’ they’ll say. And Macbeth. ‘Who are you to argue with Shakespeare?’ they’ll say. And the murder goes in.”

  Hearing Shakespe
are’s name made me think of Francesca calling Dallas Romeo.

  I decided not to wonder about it. I focused back on Gina.

  “Once the murder goes in, they start to use that as an opening for other things. Fights over money. Shipwrecks. Suicide pacts. Mistaken identities. And each time, they can say Shakespeare, until you completely lose your will.”

  “Nobody’s said Shakespeare,” I assured her.

  “Well, be on your guard anyway.”

  “And there are no alien babies in Shakespeare, right?”

  Gina shrugged. “At this point in my life, I get Twelfth Night confused with Guiding Light. Who knows?”

  This was not the pep talk I’d been hoping for. No doubt sensing this, Gina started to rub my back.

  “If anyone can do it, I know you can,” she reassured me. “You were raised by soaps. You know how it works. Beat ’em at their own game.”

  I was so exhausted by the time I got home that I don’t think I could’ve beaten an infant at a game of arm wrestling. Mom went straight for the Pom ’n’ Goose, while I went straight to my room.

  When I turned on my computer, there was an immediate blipping noise—Keith IM’ing me.

  rocketboy: hey, ariel.

  malcontent: hey, generic Disney prince character whose name I can’t remember right now.

  rocketboy: eric.

  malcontent: really? eric? how do you get from ‘prince charming’ to ‘prince eric’?

  rocketboy: dunno. u just getting in?

  malcontent: yup. long day.

  rocketboy: me too. only got home from cpk a few minutes ago.

  rocketboy: who wants to go for a dip in your pool?

  rocketboy: I do!

  malcontent: I’m afraid I’d only sink if I got near a body of water.

  rocketboy:

  Now, usually when I see an emoticon, I want to slap it across the face. But this particular sad face just made me feel bad. Keith had just spent six hours working at CPK, carrying crates of shredded mozzarella cheese up from the basement, cleaning up little kids’ spilled drinks as their parents yelled at them, and getting assaulted on all ends by cooks and waitstaff who were just as stressed as he was. It made no sense that I was the exhausted one. I didn’t need to be on my feet all day. I wasn’t in desperate need of the money (most of which I wouldn’t get until I turned eighteen). By all rights, I should’ve been wide awake. But instead, all I could be was sorry.