by Lark O'Neal
“I made tea,” I say.
“Ta.” He smiles. “You remembered which cup I like.”
“That’s what comes of waiting tables for years.”
“Oh, years, is it? You’re such an old bird.”
I lift one shoulder. “Four years. Started my first restaurant job when I was fifteen, and I’m going to be twenty pretty soon.”
“Well, twenty. That’s pretty old.” He sips tea, eyes glittering, and I realize I really enjoy his company. It’s easy to be around him.
“It feels like a lot more,” I say honestly. “Tyler always says I’m an old soul.”
“Tyler is the boyfriend?”
“Sort of. Yeah.”
“You miss him.”
I nod, ducking my head to pluck off the rubber band at the end of my braid. “I do, but mostly I’m worried that he’s going to worry about why I haven’t been in touch.”
“The Internet will come back up in a day or two. We’ll be in Nelson tomorrow. Probably somebody will have access.”
“I’m not going to ask to get on the Internet while we’re on set.” My hair is wet and heavy, and I use the towel I brought with me to squeeze some of the water out, then unweave the braid and do it again. “Are you nervous? About tomorrow?”
He shakes his head. “They wanted us. We’ll be fine.” He’s watching me combing out my hair. “Isn’t it kind of a headache to have all that hair?”
“Sometimes.” A little corner of my heart is stung that he’s not impressed with it. Most guys are, friends or not. “But I think it’s the hair that landed that commercial, so I’m glad I haven’t cut it yet.”
“It wasn’t your hair,” he says. “You’re a natural. Remember that tomorrow.”
I laugh a little. “Okay.” The fire jumps and quivers, and I’m getting sleepy, but it would be nice to see my dad before I go to bed. “How old are you, Kaleb?”
“Twenty-two last June. Time to be on my own, but I’m saving for uni.”
“And learning a trade, too. That seems wise.”
“Yeah, lots of wineries around here. Plenty of work. But I want my own label in time, my own vineyard.”
“What will you call it?”
He shrugs. “I have a few names in mind. Nothing sure yet.”
There’s the sound of a car outside, then voices, and then Darcy and my dad are coming through the door. Darcy’s curls are untamed and springing up all over her head, and she has circles under her eyes. With an air of exhaustion, she comes into the family room, plops down beside Kaleb and puts her head on his shoulder.
“You all right?” he asks quietly.
She nods.
My dad is sitting at the kitchen table, untying his shoes. Leaving the siblings some privacy, I carry my cup into the kitchen. “You want tea, Dad? I’ve mastered the camp stove.”
“That’d be lovely, lamb.” He drops the second shoe and rubs his beard, and then his cheeks above it. “Been driving eleven bloody hours.”
I fill the kettle and settle it on the camp stove. “Did you guys eat?”
“We did.” He smiles at me. “Sit, girl. What’d you get up to today?”
Sliding into the chair across the table from him, I lace my hands around my cup. “Kaleb showed me the greenhouse and let me do some grafting.”
“Is that right? You like it?”
“I love plants. Do I get that from you?”
“Could be. It’s the science I love, the way you can rely on chemistry and the natural world to behave in predictable ways—except when you can’t.”
“I like seeing things grow, making them grow. Did I show you my Rex begonia, that big plant with the cool leaves?”
“You did. A beauty.”
“I gave it to Electra to take care of.” He grunts, but I’m hungry to talk to him. “Did you get caught in the rain?”
He nods wearily. “For the last couple of hours. Wasn’t coming down hard, but the dark makes it tough to see what you’re doing on those narrow roads. Were you out in it?”
“We went to…” I frown, forgetting the name of the town. “A town not far from here? To see if we could get the Internet.”
“Blenheim, likely.”
“That’s it.” The kettle starts to whistle, and I stand up to make the tea. “Do you have a cup you like?”
“Any one will do. Mug, though, if you would. Three sugars and milk.”
I smile to myself, because that’s pretty much the same way I drink it. Dropping a tea bag into a mug, I say, “We went to the bay, too. Names aren’t sticking tonight. Sorry.”
“Cloudy Bay,” he says. “And probably Rarangi Beach, was it?”
“That’s it.” I think of the way I felt, overwhelmed and weeping, when I saw the water, but it seems like too much to share when he’s so tired, and I don’t even know how I’d put it into words anyway. That it was home? That it was the best thing I’ve smelled in my life?
“And? I get the feeling you’re not saying something.”
Stirring the tea bag around in his cup to speed up the brewing, I hesitate. “It was…” I close my eyes and I’m transported back to that moment when I stood in front of the waves, listening, smelling, tears running down my face. “I don’t know how to explain it. I just felt like…my bones and my…blood recognized it. Not that place, exactly, but the way the air felt and the sound of the water swishing over the beach, and the cry of a seagull and just—the way it smelled. Oh, my God, it smelled so good.”
A kind smile has bloomed on his face. “That’s my girl.” He touches my face, sweetly. “You were always an ocean baby, from the minute I put your wee toes in the water.” He winks. “Now that you got from me. I was a surfer, you know, from the time I was a tiny boy.”
“Maybe you could teach me.”
“I’d love that. We’ll make a plan.”
His tea is ready, and I put it down in front of him.
“Ta, Jess.” He stands and kisses my head. “You need anything tonight? Katy’ll be late.”
“I’m good. But how are we going to wake up on time tomorrow? I’m worried about that.”
“I’ve got a windup alarm clock. I’ll set it for us right now. They’re picking you up at 6 am, so get to bed early.”
“Wow, six?”
He claps my shoulder. “It’s going to be a lot of work, love. But worth it.”
I nod. When he heads for his bedroom, I wander back into the family room. Darcy has her head on Kaleb’s thigh, eyes closed, but they pop open when I come in the room. “What’re you going to wear tomorrow?”
“I was just thinking about that. Surely they’ll have things they want us to wear, right?”
Kaleb shrugs. “Maybe not, if we’re all just a bunch of backpackers.”
“Right.” I think about my limited wardrobe. This is always, always the bane of my life. “I guess jeans and t-shirts, then, right?”
“Don’t worry,” Kaleb says. “We’ll sort it out.”
For a minute I stand there, unwilling to intrude. “I guess I’ll go to bed, then,” I say.
“Night,” Darcy says.
“Thanks for everything today, Kaleb.”
He salutes me, and I head upstairs to my lonely bedroom without my phone or internet, and crawl into my cold bed in the utter quiet. I’m afraid I’ll lie awake staring at the ceiling forever and then look like death tomorrow, but all the fresh air did the trick. I’m out cold in two minutes flat.
Chapter EIGHT
I’m dreaming about my mother. Her hair is long, long, long, like mine, and it’s loose over her shoulders, and she’s wearing a tiny bikini on her skinny body. Her back is to me, and I somehow know she’s really sad. I call out to her, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” but she doesn’t hear me, and I can’t seem to get any closer. I scream as loud as I can, “Mom!” and she looks over her shoulder.
She’s very angry. “Leave me alone!”
My dad is shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, Jess,” he says.
I blink at him, o
utlined by the light in the hallway. It takes me a while to come back into my body, to remember that I’m in New Zealand.
“Bad dream?”
“Yeah.”
“You were calling for your mother.” The words are gentle. His hand moves kindly on my shoulder.
I nod. “It happens all the time.”
“Anything I can do?”
“No.” I realize the significance of the light in the hallway. “The electricity is on!”
“Yeah. No Internet yet, but that will come.”
I sit up and rub my face. Before he leaves, I say, “Dad, I think my iPad got broken during the earthquake. It’s not working at all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, lamb. Let me see it. I’ll take it to town, have Johnny give it a look.”
It’s been sitting there on my table, sad and quiet, since two days before. I give it to him and realize how upset I am about it. I have to blink back tears. It’s typical—I never seem to be able to hang onto nice things.
He kisses my head. “It will be all right, sweetheart. If it can’t be fixed, we’ll see to it that you get another one.” He squats down to look at me, our faces level. “You are not alone now, you hear? I’ve got your back.”
I can’t speak for the knot in my throat but manage a nod.
“Get dressed now. They’ll be here soon.”
The three of us convene in the kitchen, sleepy and quiet, where Katy hands out yogurts and Thermos cups of tea. The cat weaves between our legs as we wait, me-ow-ping every so often.
Darcy bends and picks him up. “Silly Neko,” she says. “You can’t go with us.” Every single one of her nails is bitten to the skin, that picked-at, brutal nothingness. The cat licks her nose, and she laughs. She and her brother share the same blunt nose and elegantly shaped mouths. Watching her with the cat, I wonder what it’s like to lose your house in an earthquake, to lose your whole neighborhood and town and everything that made it what it was.
A horn van honks outside. She gives me a wide-eyed look of excitement. “Let’s go!”
We pile in the van with a couple of other people who say hi and settle back into the silence. There’s music playing, something I don’t recognize, and it’s still dark out, so everyone dozes all the way into town. Every time I think about the day ahead I start to get so nervous that my stomach is upset, so I take myself back into the greenhouse yesterday, grafting grapevines. The thought of the soft green light, the smell of earth and plants, calms me. I wonder if my grafts will take.
In fact, the memory calms me so much that I fall asleep again, leaning against Darcy’s soft shoulder.
* * *
“Listen up, everybody!”
We’ve been dropped downtown, near the cathedral I saw when we were here the first day. It’s a bright, clear day, and there’s a whole area roped off for us. One tent houses a mobile cafeteria with food and coffee, while the other seems to be a staging area. Darcy, Kaleb and I grab doughnuts and coffees in the first tent, then head outside to the sets, which seem to be the parks and shopping area around this end of town. The director, Ian Redding, is in deep conversation with the camera people and a woman with a clipboard, who bustles over when she sees us.
“Hello. I’m Gin, Ian’s assistant.” She holds out her hand to shake mine. “You must be Jess Donovan, right? And you’re Kaleb Te Anga and…” A slight scowl marks her forehead. “I’m not sure?”
“Darcy Te Anga,” Darcy says, tucking hands in her back pockets. “Ever so important extra.”
Gin grins. “Good to meet you, Darcy. I’m going to send you over there, with the other extras, to wait for your calls. Jess and Kaleb, come with me.”
Darcy waves cheerily. I was afraid she might be upset, but she seems happy to do whatever they want. I give Kaleb a glance as we follow Gin to the second tent, and he takes a very visible deep breath, lifting his hands as his lungs inflate.
I exaggeratedly take one, too, and it actually helps.
Inside the tent, Gin sends him to one end and takes me to the other. There are racks of clothes, and a couple of chairs with mirrors and strong lights.
A thin woman with short, spiky black hair and tattoos around her wrists says, “Hiya, Jess. I’m Mika, and I’m the stylist for the shoot.” Her dark eyes are friendly.
“Hi.”
Gin passes me off to Mika. “In front of the cathedral at 9:30.”
“Got it,” Mika says. Then, to me, “Why don’t you come over here and let me look at you? I’ve had a chance to meet everybody but you and Kaleb.”
I gingerly sit on the edge of a chair. She moves in close and puts her hands on my face. I jump.
“Relax,” she says, smiling. “I won’t bite.”
“Sorry. Just a little nervous.” Scooting back in the chair, I add, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“It’s going to be great.” She smooths her fingers down my cheeks, across my forehead. “Oily skin?”
“Very.”
“It’s clear, though. That’s, that’s good. You take care of it.”
“Not really. Soap and water, that’s it.”
“Oooh, not soap?”
I blink, but I can’t deny it.
“Never mind. We’ll get you on a good regime. You’ve just arrived here from Colorado they tell me, so your skin might go through some adjustments now that you’re in a much wetter climate.”
She makes some notes, then takes me over to the clothes. “Mostly we’re doing very casual stuff, but they’ve got the wardrobe they want. Hope you’re the same size as Morgan.”
“Who’s that?”
“The girl who cancelled. She landed a juicy film lead.” She holds up a plain white blouse. “You look a lot like her, though you have a more innocent look. It’ll be nice for the Elvin bits.”
“Do you know what the storyline is?”
“You haven’t got a script yet?”
“No. I just saw a little bit of it when I auditioned.”
She swears and stomps off. “Danny, go get me a couple of scripts.” Someone says something to her that I can’t hear, and she says, “For all of them. Our leads have no idea what they’re doing.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” I ask, nerves rising again.
“No, love, it will be fine, but you should have had them when they signed you. This whole thing has been so chaotic, and then we had the earthquake and—” She blows out a noisy breath. “Never mind.” Squaring her shoulders as if heading into battle, she pulls out a shimmery green and blue dress. “This is the Elvin dress. We don’t need it for a few days, but I’d like you to try it on and make sure it fits, in case I need to make alterations.”
“Okay.” I look around for a place to change.
“Right there, sweetheart.” She points to a screen. “Hang your things on the hooks. No bra.”
It’s dark and pretty cold behind the screen, but I shimmy into the dress with no trouble. It has long tight sleeves, a plunging v-neck, and a practically non-existent back. The top fits closely down to my hips, then falls away in silken softness. I can’t resist swaying to feel the fabric against my bare legs. I’m a little embarrassed, because my nipples are extremely obvious, and I cover them with my hands for a minute, trying to warm and soften them before I go out, but they’re stubborn.
“Come on out, let me see you.”
It’s a little too long, so I lift the skirt and pad barefoot around the screen.
I hear a soft intake of breath before I look up and see Mika cover her mouth. “Oh, Jess, you’re beautiful.”
“It’s so pretty!” I swing back and forth, and the full skirt brushes my legs. It feels weirdly wicked, like wearing a sexy nightgown out in public, but I like it anyway.
“We need to take up the length a bit,” she says, and grabs a pin to mark it. “Stand straight.” She pins the hem in a couple of places, then stands up and pulls at the fabric of the bodice. “Need to take it in a little through the waist, too, I think.” She frowns and puts
her hands right under my boobs.
I blush, trying to keep a sophisticated blank expression. I’ve watched enough America’s Next Top Model to know your body doesn’t exactly belong to you under these circumstances.
“Too tight in the bust, but not so much we can’t fix it. Take a deep breath.”
I breathe in, and the fabric constricts across my chest, squishing my breasts.
“Good.” She makes another note in her little book. “You’re a solid size 6 New Zealand, I reckon, but maybe an eight in the bust, which everyone applauds. Good cleavage, too. Perfect for TV ads.”
“How many are there?”
“Depends.” She grabs my braid and takes the rubber band off, starts unweaving it. “It was supposed to be ten, but we’ve scaled back to five on the South Island, three on the North.”
“I thought we were only filming on the South Island.”
“For now.” When my hair is loose, she says, “Wash it in the mornings, then leave it, all right? Your hair is so long it will take a lot of time to get the waves out.” She starts brushing it. “Very good condition, which isn’t always the case with long hair. You don’t color it?”
“Nope.” I find myself smoothing the fabric over my belly, admiring the color of it against my skin. It makes me think of mermaid scales.
“Okay. I have what I need on this. Let’s get you ready for the shoot today.”
A big guy in a tan shirt with pockets and a grizzling of beard pops into the space carrying a pile of bound papers. “Here you go, Mika.” Seeing me, he stops and whistles. “Wow.”
I smile, flattered.
Mika gives me a little nudge. “Don’t get distracted. Slip out of that dress and I’ll bring you the clothes for today.”
Back behind the screen I slide the dress over my head and stand there holding it against me, waiting for the other outfit. A wind whistles under the tent and blows up my legs. I wonder if Kaleb is getting the same treatment down at the other end of the tent and peek out around the screen. He’s nowhere in sight, but I see a second stylist area. Maybe, like me, he’s changing behind a screen.
“Here you go,” Mika says, handing me a plain white shirt and cargo pants. “Get comfortable. You’ll be in this outfit a lot. We’re spending a fortune on locations, so we’ve gone very light on crew, accommodations and wardrobe.”