Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  “We know, Dallas. Javier, Francesca, and I—we know about you and Alexis.”

  “How?” he asked, wanting answers.

  I was not about to admit to our little covert operation, so I decided not to answer.

  “We just know. That lodge wasn’t as spacious as it seemed.”

  Dallas was over by the counter now, pacing back and forth. “I know that this doesn’t really help matters, but I didn’t sleep with her. I only kissed her that one time, and it was only because our characters were supposed to be in love, and I just wasn’t feeling it when we were acting. I thought if maybe I felt something for Alexis, then Ryan would feel something for Sarah.”

  Dallas was right. That didn’t help.

  “This is all beside the point,” I said dismissively, because if he went on about it more, it would only get worse. “What were you saying about the misunderstanding?”

  Dallas put his hands on his forehead and ran them through his hair as he collected his thoughts.

  “I was trying to be your Gandhi.”

  Actors. It’s like they speak their own language. It sounds like English, but it doesn’t make any sense.

  Before I was forced to ask for a clarification as to how, exactly, Dallas was in any way like Gandhi, he continued. “I was trying that whole nonviolent protest thing. I figured if I threw my weight behind you, the network would have to return your creative control. But things kind of backfired and I guess I ended up messing you up more than Richard or Frieda Weiner or the network. I just wanted them to follow through on their promise to let you have your show. Otherwise, why are we doing this? We signed on to do something of our own, not a retread of every other show that’s ever been on.”

  I didn’t really know how to respond.

  “So what are you saying, Dallas?” I asked.

  He took a breath. “I like you, Mallory. I really, really like you. And I used to like this show. I’m sorry it all went down this way. It’s not what I wanted. I wish we could start all over.”

  “Me too,” I said to him, and then, more to myself, “Me too.”

  Dallas stepped closer to me, close enough for me to feel his hot breath on my neck. He was invading my personal space, but somehow I didn’t mind, like he was D-Day and I was Normandy. Storm me, I thought. It sent a quick shiver down my spine. I had to tilt my head up to look at him.

  Suddenly, he seemed to become aware of our unnatural proximity and he backed away. He nervously ran his hand through his hair again and said, “I’ve got to get going.”

  “Yeah, you probably should,” I said, breaking the lingering trance. “I’ll walk you out.”

  The afternoon had turned from damp to wet. I put the hood up on my sweatshirt as Dallas and I dashed down the driveway. The rain was cold and the wind had picked up. It blew the drops straight into our faces, but it felt good against my still-blushing cheeks.

  I punched the code to open the gate. When his path was finally clear of wrought iron and steel, Dallas strode out of the gate and presumably out of my life forever. Sure, there would be a few days remaining on the set. But then he’d be off to New York, and I’d still be here. We’d never be together again.

  I took a breath. Get a hold of yourself, Mallory, I thought. You’ve got to stop letting yourself get all moon-eyed every time he comes within ten feet of you.

  He wants to leave.

  Let him leave.

  Dallas turned around to face me. He started walking back toward me.

  “Can I have a hug?” he asked.

  I nodded. And then I embraced him.

  When his mouth made its way to my ear, he said something I wasn’t expecting.

  “Don’t kill me, Mallory. Let’s fix this show. We’ve been working against each other, but now we can work together. We can save both the show and our integrity.”

  “How?” I asked. “How do we get it back?”

  “You’re the boss. You tell me.”

  I was just about to tell him he was crazy, that we’d never get it back and that it wasn’t worth trying. Integrity was for suckers in this town. I was just about to pull away from his embrace and walk back into the house to face Anna Karenina and her lousy lot. But before I could do any of those sensible things, the worst possible thing happened: I heard the familiar guitar chords of Tom Petty and I knew without having to look that Keith had just pulled up to discover me in the arms of another boy.

  Needless to say, he wasn’t pleased.

  “What the hell was he doing here, Mallory?”

  Keith was fuming. And, seeing it through his eyes, I knew he had every right to be mad. But, still, he wouldn’t let me explain.

  “Calm down!” I yelled, slamming the front door behind me.

  Dallas had made a quick exit after Keith arrived. He didn’t leave me in the lurch—it was clear he would have stayed to fight it out with Keith if he’d had to—but that was the last thing I’d wanted. So I’d told him to go. And he’d gone, leaving me with Keith and his suspicions. Admirably, Keith had said little to nothing in front of Dallas. He was clearly saving it for me.

  “Just last night you said he was out of your life,” he said angrily. “Or was I just imagining that?”

  “If you would stop for a second, I could explain that I fired Dallas today.”

  “You did?” Keith asked. That shut him up.

  “Yes, I did. And he was here to discuss it. Okay?”

  “Promise me you’re not in love with him.”

  I looked him right in the eye and said, “I promise.”

  It felt wrong. But the alternative seemed more wrong. Sometimes the dice are just gonna come up snake eyes no matter how hard you blow.

  Keith nodded but said nothing. I led him into the living room and he started banging out some chords on the piano.

  I came up behind him and ran my hands down his chest while nuzzling him. “I’m sorry.”

  He turned and took my face in his hands.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he mumbled between kisses.

  I led him over to the couch so that we might be more comfortable during the make-out session I was envisioning—that kind of sexy but angry kissing when you’re not sure if you want to marry or murder the other person?

  But when I pulled Keith on top of me, he backed off. Not off me, exactly, but away from me.

  “I hate what this show is doing to us, Mallory. Do you ever think about … um … cutting back your workload?”

  “You mean, like quit the show?”

  “No, not quit, but like, maybe do a little less work? I mean, you work sixty hours a week on Likely Story and at least another twenty on schoolwork. I don’t want to be just another thing you have to check off the list.”

  He had a point. Why was I doing all this work? Sixteen-year-olds do not need to be breadwinners. My mother, though no pillar of thrift, had lots of money tucked away in savings accounts and investments. We were not in danger of being sent to live in a paupers’ prison. And my fantasies of going to an East Coast college with ivy-covered stone buildings were probably not being aided by my CliffsNotes-assisted analysis of Russian literature and my C-minus grasp of trig.

  “I don’t know, Keith. I do it because it’s there.”

  Keith shrugged. “Maybe that’s not such a good reason.”

  Maybe he was right. I refused to wallow, though. That was one thing my mother had taught me (even if she often forgot to follow her own advice). Instead, I got off the couch and changed the subject.

  “How about some dinner?”

  Our Hunter-Gatherer dinner was a staple of the latchkey kid diet: Paleozoic-era fish sticks I found at the back of the freezer next to the frozen woolly mammoth. I even whipped up a makeshift tartar sauce. (Thanks, Food Network!)

  Keith and I had finished eating and were lounging at the kitchen table when my mother breezed into the room with a weary flair perfected over decades of attending charity events.

  “Hello, princess,” she said, as if she’d always called me thi
s. “Did you get your homework done?”

  She was in a strangely good mood. “There are some fish sticks left over if you’re hungry,” I offered.

  “Oh, no, I’m on the liquid diet. They say I can lose twenty-five pounds in twenty-five days,” she said brightly as she poured vodka into a health shake.

  “You don’t need to worry—you look great, ma’am,” said Keith, working hard to ingratiate himself. He knew as well as I that this was a rare mood for her.

  “Why, thank you, Keith,” she cooed. Then she turned to me and said, “This one’s a keeper, darling.”

  Okay. My mother was pleasant, remembered Keith’s name—heck, she even remembered I had homework. Had she switched her meds? It was either that or there was a new man in her life. I knew the patterns well.

  Keith stood up. “I should probably get going,” he said. “I have my own homework to blow off.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” I said.

  When I got back to the house from delivering Keith to his car, I discovered my mother in the living room playing an old ABBA album. Yes, literally an album, on a turntable and everything. Can you hear the drums, Fernando?

  I couldn’t get one part of Keith’s and my earlier conversation out of my head. Why was I working this hard? Maybe he was right. Maybe I should cut back. If the network was just going to undercut everything I was trying to do, what was the point of showing up? Let them have the show; I’d collect my royalties and fly to the Mexican Riviera for spring break.

  I decided, against my better instincts, to engage my mother in conversation.

  “You’re in a chipper mood,” I observed. “You haven’t played ABBA since your last Emmy nom.”

  “I saw a commercial for Mamma Mia! today and I haven’t been able to get ‘Waterloo’ out of my head. Besides, I’m excited for next week’s premiere. Aren’t you?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. I guess. To be honest, it all seems to be spiraling out of control. Every time the network forces another change down my throat, I feel like I’m getting further and further away from the reason I even started this thing.”

  My mother slurped her spiked shake and asked, “What was that reason again? Fame and fortune? Attention? Revenge against your mother?”

  “I can barely remember. I mean, all those other things would be nice, but really I wanted to make a show that reflected the lives of real people. People I knew. But with that murder plotline it’s like I can barely recognize my own show.”

  “Hmmm, that is a pickle, isn’t it?” she said as she gulped down the last of the alcoholic slurry. “You know, one of the head writers of Good As Gold was in just such a predicament years ago. It was back in the eighties, when armed South American militants were all the rage. The network wanted my character to be kidnapped by a Colombian drug lord, but Manny Hiroshima was totally against it.”

  “What did he want to write about?” I asked.

  “The ever-changing dynamics of couples in committed relationships. In other words—boring. But he wouldn’t listen to anyone’s advice. The network forced him to produce the Colombian storyline, but he secretly wrote a second script to his liking. We also filmed that. Then he showed the execs the scenes they wanted but edited in his scenes for broadcast. No one realized he’d switched the episodes until it was too late.”

  “Wow,” I marveled. “That’s courageous. What happened to him?”

  “Oh, he was fired that day and never worked again.”

  “And the Colombian storyline?” I asked.

  “They aired it the next day.”

  “So, was this supposed to be an inspirational anecdote?” I snapped.

  My mother shrugged. “It was just a story. Take from it what you will.” She paused, then asked, “What time is it?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Eight-thirty,” I said.

  “Oh—time to take my diet pills.”

  I put my hand on her arm and said with genuine concern, “Mom, should you be taking those if you’re doing the liquid diet thing? Isn’t it dangerous to mix and match?”

  My mother smiled. “You can never trust a doctor these days—with all the threats of malpractice swirling around, they’re too afraid to give you the truly useful advice. You have to make it up on your own.”

  She toasted herself and laughed like she’d just landed a zinger on Conan. Then she ambled out of the room to the tune of imaginary applause.

  I went back to my room, listened to the Smiths, and thought about dyeing my hair black. I kept trying to delve back into the Russian realism of Anna Karenina but was distracted by the NASCAR track my mind was racing around. I wanted to date Keith and be a normal girl. The constant bickering and drama was wearing me down. What was the point of all this work when the final product wasn’t something I was going to be proud of?

  I tossed Anna Karenina across the room, where she landed on the pile with David Copperfield, Mockingbird, and the other heroes of fiction that I had no time for. It was time to be the hero of my own life, even if it got me exiled from Hollywood.

  I took a breath and started scribbling a whole new scenario on my yellow legal pad. Things were about to get dirty in this dry-clean-only town.

  Even though I’d told Richard I would never sacrifice the show for a relationship with anyone, I was convinced that this was the only way to save the show. Caution be damned, Dallas needed to stay. If I wanted anyone off, it was Alexis. I was not going to lose the one person I thought could make this show pop. Not if he wanted to stay.

  I knew I was breaking one of my promises to Keith. It was going to take an intricate dance of rationalization and pleading for forgiveness for him to understand what I was doing. Hopefully, if I kept my other promises (being with him more, being with the show less, not being with Dallas at all), this one would be okay to break.

  The plan was simple, if you call crazy and little hope for success “simple.” It only involved duping the crew members, conspiring with the cast, blackmailing the editor, and “disappearing” Richard, my mother, and Frieda Weiner. (“Disappearing” is Hoffa-style Teamster slang for “getting rid of”—but we would be doing something a little less drastic than pouring them cement shoes for a walk off Santa Monica Pier.)

  When I first arrived on set, I went straight to Dallas. If he wasn’t on board, our ship was grounded. I knocked on his trailer door. He answered in his boxer shorts and nothing else. I tried not to look anywhere but his face.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  He ushered me inside and looked outside the door to make sure no one had seen us together. I didn’t think this was necessary, but I liked that he sensed the covert nature of this operation from the get-go.

  “What’s up, Chief?” he asked.

  “After our street-side conversation last night I wrote some new pages. I’m thinking we’d shoot these instead of your death by blade on Friday.”

  I slid the script pages across the table like they were top-secret government files. Dallas paged through them, scanning the contents.

  “So I won’t be killed off.”

  I nodded. “Are you in?”

  He said nothing while he re-read parts. He looked up at me, and then back at the script. He tugged at his boxers nervously. I tried not to look.

  “Based on real life much?” he asked.

  “The world is my inspiration. Things like this happen—and it’s a lot more real than teen murder rings.”

  Dallas took a deep breath and said, “I’m in. But will Richard let you do this?”

  “No. That’s why I’m not planning on telling him.”

  “You could be fired. We could both be fired.”

  “You were already fired,” I pointed out. “But you don’t have to agree. We could all get our futures handed to us in the form of pink slips. It’s a risk. But I think it’s our only chance to grab control of this show before it’s too late.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “So what can I do to help?”

  I leaned back
in my chair and played with his iPod. “I need you to get Alexis on board.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  I shrugged. “Do you need me to paint you a picture?” I looked his body up and down. “What you’re wearing will be fine.”

  With Dallas on board, my next stop was the makeup trailer. I knew that three other vital members of my black-ops team would be there: Javier, Francesca, and Gina.

  Javier was gingerly holding a hot roller in his hair so that his curl would flip just so for that morning’s scenes. Francesca was reading a book on Northern California camping.

  “You camp?” I said, surprised.

  “Totes,” Francesca replied. “I was a Girl Scout. It’s not all cookies, you know.”

  Gina entered the trailer. “What are all my Easter Peeps doing in here?” she said jovially.

  I went to the door and locked it with the flimsy latch. I turned around and held my back against the door.

  “What I’m about to propose may shock you, and any of you can opt out, no questions asked. But I need your help.”

  Javier immediately perked up, sitting forward like Lassie with his ears pointed forward. Francesca took a Bette Davis pose and reclined with an upraised eyebrow that murmured, I’m intrigued.

  It was only Gina who clucked with a reserve of worry that surfaced in a disapproving, “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “Just hear me out. I’ll take questions at the end. I think we can all agree on two things: One, this show is off-track like Sudan is off Broadway. Two, we need a change.”

  I took a breath and raised some script pages, dangling them like carrots.

  “Someone who is scheduled to die on Friday isn’t going to. It’s simple, really, going back to what the show was supposed to be about. Francesca, you’re going to leave Javier for Dallas. And he’s going to leave Alexis for me. I mean, you. He’s leaving Alexis for you.”

  “And how does Dallas feel about this?” Francesca asked, arching her other eyebrow.

  “He’s on board,” I told her. “He wants to do this. Are you okay with that?”

  “I have no problem if he has no problem,” she said.