Somewhere in California

by Toby Neal

  Jade’s a spooky little thing. Very different from bright Ruby and bold Pearl. She’s her own person, and clearly doing this on her own “time and dime,” as she put it.

  Good for her.

  I look up at last. Jade’s sitting on the chair we set up, her eyes downcast. The spotlight on the crown of her hair shows that it’s definitely brown—but with deep red in it, like cherry wood with a good grain. Her hands are folded primly in her lap. The pale pink of her long sleeve leotard, tights, and flimsy swish of a skirt is just a shade pinker than her skin. She has small, high breasts and a tiny waist bisected by a black ribbon. Her legs, crossed at the ankle, are long, slender, and perfect.

  I’d like to see her naked on a pure white bed, wearing nothing but her hair and that black ribbon around her waist.

  I shake my head to get rid of the intrusive thought and clear my throat. “Welcome to Dance, Dance, Dance, Jade. I’m Brandon Forbes, producer of the show.”

  “Thanks. I’m honored to be here.” Jade’s voice is low. I make a hand gesture for the team to jack up her mic.

  “We were really impressed with your audition, and again with the surprise street performance we caught you and Alex doing. Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself and what brings you here to the competition?”

  “Sure.” Jade folds one of her legs and hooks her interlaced fingers around it, heel in its ballet slipper resting on one of the stool’s slats. “I’m from Eureka, California...” She recites facts woodenly, as if reading from a teleprompter. The charisma that animated her dancing has vanished—she looks like any young, naive contestant with a rehearsed speech.

  Boring as hell.

  I need to provoke the life I’ve seen in her. “Something our audience may not know is that you’re the sister of a supermodel that we all know and love: Pearl. She’s so internationally famous that she goes by just her first name! Tell us, what’s it like to be the kid sister of a woman that’s known as one of the seven most beautiful women in the world?”

  I know I went too far with that last sentence as the delicate color in Jade’s face drains away, leaving red patches on her cheeks. Her eyes widen, large and glittery-hard as emeralds. Clearly, she’s forgotten she’s on national TV as she says, “It sucks. In fact, it couldn’t be worse. And you better not have allowed me on this show because you’re still hung up on her, Brandon Forbes, because if so, I’m out that door.”

  We lock eyes. I feel heat on my neck—as if I’d do something like that! More like I’d cut her because she was related to Pearl.

  I let a long beat pass by—there will be a space in the video where I can have that segment cut from the interview. Stu doesn’t need to be told this part won’t be going into the show. I pick up the thread again, this time with a smile that I hope is gentle and understanding.

  “Let’s both just take a breath and try that again.” Another beat. Jade’s green eyes are still huge and diamond-hard, but I press on. “Something the audience might not know is that you’re Pearl’s little sister—yes, the international supermodel so famous she only goes by her first name. Tell us a little about the talent that runs in your family.”

  Color surges back into her face. Jade licks her lips, a flicker of her pink tongue. Her eyes glance to the left as she thinks of how to answer.

  Damn, I could watch that expressive face all day. Her charisma is back, that ineffable something that the camera eats up and translates into addicting.

  “I love both of my amazing sisters. Ruby is a lawyer. Married with a little boy. She lives in Boston and I get to see her a couple of times a year. She’s always encouraged me in my dancing and helped pay for my lessons, since finances have been hard since our dad died. And Pearl. Pearl is just an inspiration by being who she is.” Jade’s smile is wide and fake.

  She and Pearl clearly don’t get along. I’m tempted to probe but I want to keep the good juju going for the cameras—the last thing I want is for her to storm off the show.

  “You began dancing at fourteen, which as I’m sure you’re aware, is late for a professional career in dance. Tell us more about how it happened that way.”

  “My dad died, is how it happened.” Sadness fills her voice and her sweet, pouty mouth droops. Her lashes cast spiky shadows on her cheeks in the harsh spotlight. I flick my eyes to Stu. He knows I’m looking and gives a thumbs up, zooming in to capture her emotion. We’re getting good stuff now.

  “We had to leave St. Thomas and move back to the United States.” She tells how hard it was for her mother to keep up the vacation rental business her parents ran without her father’s help, and how they moved back to Eureka where the grandparents lived. Her mother began a new business, managing rentals for the college students at Humboldt State. It was hard for her to make ends meet, and older sister Ruby stepped in to pay for lessons, camps, and outfits for Jade’s dancing. “Ruby could see how dancing helped me. I had some—emotional problems after we got to Eureka.”

  “Tell us about those.” I press forward, though I can see she didn’t want to let that slip.

  “And give away all my secrets in the first interview?” Jade ducks her head and dimples at me. That demure, flirty look goes straight to my groin. I can feel the erection I’ve been fighting ever since I sat next to her in the taxi tenting the front of those damn nylon running pants, and I’m glad of the table that blocks any view from the waist down.

  I laugh politely. “I’m sure we’ll have more chances to get to know you, Miss Michaels—you’re going to go far in this contest if your audition is anything to go by.”

  “I hope so. Thanks so much for the chance.” Jade addresses this comment directly to the camera. Stu zooms in on her rose-leaf cheeks, flashing eyes, and dewy smile.

  “That’s a wrap,” I say, and he shuts off the camera.

  Jade slides off the stool without making eye contact with me, and bounds like a springbok to the bathroom again.

  She’s obviously got issues. The last thing I need is to get involved with another Michaels girl—but another part of me still hasn’t gotten the memo.

  Chapter 5

  Jade

  The only time I’ve ever been to LA was when I was sixteen and Pearl had a fashion show with the other Big Six supermodels. She sent Mom tickets, and Mom wouldn’t take no for an answer on me going. We flew into the massive maze that was LAX and took a taxi to the hotel where the fashion show was being held—and then we spent the next forty-eight hours indoors. I only remember the show as a blur of glossy, passing bodies, sparkling fabrics, and pulsing music. At the awful after-party, I collected pitying glances: Pearl’s awkward little wallflower sister, sitting in the corner, hiding behind thick glasses.

  I didn’t get contacts until I was eighteen, mostly because of my germ phobia. How could I put those bacteria-laden plastic discs in my eyes? But after that LA party, I decided I had to get over the problem enough to wear contacts. My glasses were just too thick for me to keep wearing while dancing, for one thing.

  But the upshot was, I had little idea what LA was like. It felt like I’d never been there before at all, when the plane came down the same afternoon as my uncomfortable interview with Brandon Forbes. The built-up concrete sprawl of the city seemed like its own kind of Amazonian jungle: rivers of cars, tangles of wires, and stands of buildings so thick they blocked out the sun.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I comment to Alex as we get into a taxi for the hotel where the show is lodging contestants.

  He shrugs. “I’ve been down here a bunch of times to do dance battles. It’s where the work is. If you want to dance, better get used to it. This, or New York, is the heart of dance in this country.”

  Looking out the window, I feel my breath shrivel a little in my chest. I can’t see anything but cars, asphalt, and graffiti.

  I missed the cool green redwoods around Eureka with a sudden fierceness. Maybe I was a country girl at heart—but I’d chosen work that called for the city.

  The Marriott
housing us is an older one, right next to the massive studio building where the show will be filmed. Looking at that steel structure, gray and drab in the low afternoon light, my pulse picks up.

  This is so amazing—and it’s happening to unlucky me.

  And it has nothing to do with Pearl.

  At least I hope not. I frown, remembering Forbes’s questions. What a jerk. Like I couldn’t tell he was trying to get a rise out of me—and of course, he succeeded. At least I’d been able to respond appropriately to the second question he posed, and end on a cutesy note that would hopefully play to the audience.

  The taxi dumps us off at the curb in front of the Marriott. I immediately shrug out of the wool pea coat I donned in San Francisco—the sun might be low here, but it’s a full ten degrees warmer.

  “Still up for being roommates?” I ask Alex.

  “I don’t know if they’ll let us share,” Alex is wound tight, bright and alert as a parakeet in a gold satin warm-up jacket and teal pants with black Converse sneakers. The lobby is filled with knots of talking young people. Their clothing and bodies mark them as fellow competitors. I pull out a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer and rub my hands together thirteen times as Alex sees someone he knows and goes off. I head straight for the check-in counter.

  “Reservation for Jade Michaels. I’m with the Dance, Dance, Dance show.” I extract the voucher in my Golden Ticket envelope. “Can I room with my friend, Alex Rodriguez?”

  The clerk types rapidly. Her eyebrows rise into a fringe of curled, dyed-red bangs. “You have an upgrade on your room to a two-room suite, authorized by the show’s producers. Alex Rodriguez has one room, you the other.”

  So Forbes followed through. I have to admit, I’m shocked. I look around for Alex and wave him over to tell him the news.

  “He’s got the hots for you.” Alex throws an arm over me as he makes a kissing motion with his lips.

  “Ugh, no! My sister’s sloppy seconds!” I realize, with a stab of unexpected pain, that I really wish it was me he liked—but how could that ever be? Pearl eclipses me in every way. “He’s still hung up on my sister Pearl. You know, the supermodel? They dated.”

  “Holy shit! Pearl? The Pearl? She’s your sister?” Alex does a good imitation of the kid in Home Alone, his mouth and eyes wide in a comical scream. “And Forbes got his hands on that? Well, yeah. Is he hoping to get her back or something? Cuz I heard she was married—to like, some huge special ops guy built like a tank.”

  “She’s married, all right. Very married.” I actually like Magnus, her husband. He’s a good guy, if a little scary. And Pearl’s been nice to me for years now—those old bullying days were ages ago, when Dad was alive and she was experimenting with drugs. Now she’s just internationally famous as one of the world’s seven most beautiful women. Her attempts to “help” pitiful me by giving me makeup tips and such have just made me feel worse.

  Pearl and I avoid each other now. She can’t help being who she is, and she does what she does to me just by being who she is.

  I almost can’t bear it that Brandon Forbes is so attractive, and in charge of the show, and even has a nice side. I’d be daydreaming about him right now, worse even than my Baryshnikov fantasies, if he weren’t Pearl’s ex. With her for comparison, though, there’s no way he’ll see me as anything but Pearl’s weird little sister who spends a lot of time in the bathroom.

  “Forbes doesn’t seem like he comes in second at anything, and if I thought there was a chance in hell he swung my direction, I’d take a bite of that,” Alex goes on. “But whatever. I’m glad I’m along for your ride, as far as that elevator takes me.”

  The elevator, it turns out, takes us to the penthouse floor at the top of the building.

  LA can look beautiful when the sun’s going down. The lights come on like a million scattered stars spread in a glittering blanket. Sitting in a comfy chair, sipping on a tiny bottle of vodka from the hotel bar with a good friend, I toast to the first day of the rest of my life.

  Brandon

  Everything’s in place for the show, and that means the set is total chaos. We have two hundred contestants, and the judges’ unenviable task is to cut the herd by at least fifty a day until we have our final top twenty couples. They cull the herd by putting them into big groups and teaching some complicated routine with a couple of dance instructors. The judges walk around and through them, cutting the ones that aren’t catching on fast enough, that crowd others, that can’t pick up on a new style, or that just look shitty for whatever reason.

  A steady flow of emotionally wrecked young men and women flow out through the doors that admitted them this same optimistic morning.

  My job is to oversee everything and be about ten steps ahead of everyone else. I’m glad of the glassed-in viewing office this film studio features. I can work on my shit from the sanity of my quiet desk and phone, and still have a look down at the carnage whenever it suits me.

  I’ve kept the area in front of the glass window clear so I can pace back and forth and talk on the cordless phone. I’m haggling with one of the studio heads about next season when I spot Jade in the crowd below.

  She’s in what I’m coming to think of as her “trademark” outfit, that pale pink ballet rig, and this time her hair is in a French braid that comes to the middle of her back. I bet her hair almost touches her waist when it’s down. I’ve never seen it down.

  She’s in one of the big groups, learning a ballroom step with interchanging partners. My voice trails off as I see one of the judges, unmistakable in one of the bright yellow Dance, Dance, Dance logo T-shirts we issued them, advancing toward her.

  “Holy shit, is she getting cut?” My hands go sweaty. It never occurred to me she might get cut in the first round.

  “What’s that, Forbes?” The blowhard studio exec yells into my ear.

  “Nothing.” A gusty sigh of relief escapes me as the judge taps her ill-fated partner on the shoulder.

  Jade stares after the woebegone young man as he leaves. She slips her hand into some sort of pocket, pulls out a little vial, squirts something into her palm, and rubs her hands together in swift, economical gestures. I can see her mouth moving.

  What is she doing? Some sort of good luck charm? A hex of some kind? Maybe it’s just hand sanitizer—but the middle of the dance floor seems like a weird time for that. Maybe this has something to do with the ‘emotional problems’ she hinted at in yesterday’s interview. I’m wondering if they have anything to do with Pearl. Having a sister like Pearl would mess any girl up.

  Jade rejoins the second milling pack of fifty, waiting nervously on the sidelines for their turn to be sifted. This process will go on until we have the top twenty, ten women and ten men, and then we’ll run them in combined pairs through the various styles, letting the public decide who advances, until the final winners are left standing.

  Jade finds and speaks to her friend Alex. The two make a nice-looking couple, and I hope they’re enjoying the surprise of the suite I reserved for them. I shouldn’t be so relieved Alex is gay. It’s none of my business who she hooks up with. Though she doesn’t really seem the kind for hooking up...

  “So what, Forbes?” The exec booms at me, and I leave the distraction of the window and refocus on keeping the show going.

  I resist the urge to call my assistant producer and get Jade marked forward to the top twenty. I could justify that move by the ratings she’ll generate in the finals with the ‘sister of Pearl’ angle—but if anyone ever found out I did, it would smirch her reputation.

  She’d hate getting any advantage because of Pearl. She’d hate me. And I don’t want her to hate me.

  Chapter 6

  Jade

  I’m so tired by the end of Day One of the show that I realize that I’ve never really had to work this hard at dance before. Even when I started, as late as everyone keeps harping on, I was the fastest to pick things up in every class. I’d see a move done, register what it was, count and analyze the s
teps or move, and could almost always reproduce what I saw. I had good, solid instruction in ballet, modern, and jazz styles from Jo-Ann Curtola, the mistress in charge of the Eureka Dance Studio. She’s been a mentor for years, and I her star pupil—eventually teaching classes at the studio, as well.

  What I’ve never experienced before is a competitive dance situation with peers. For the show, I’m surrounded by people my age who’ve been dancing their whole lives, and their passion to succeed burns as bright and hot as mine. It’s intense to be in the same room with so much talent, and to see the contestants getting culled right and left. Everywhere, the cameras, on rolling stands, move among us: capturing the smiles, the tears, the sprained ankles, and the drama.

  I’m terrified that the cameras are going to catch me cleaning my hands, hiding a tiny bottle of sanitizer in my waistband and stealthily using it.

  Five judges move through and around the groups of dancers, cutting people right and left. They aren’t the same ones, the famous ones that I performed for, seated behind a table at the tryouts. No, these are seasoned dance instructors, and they’re ruthless.

  I never spot Forbes even once as the endless day unwinds, and I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. He’s the show’s main producer, so I’m sure he has more important things to do than pay attention to this level of the competition.

  Even Alex’s golden complexion has gone sallow with stress and fatigue by the end of the day, as we ride the elevator to our suite.

  “That was a little slice of hell,” Alex flicks imaginary sweat off his forehead dramatically. “I had no idea we’d have to fight so hard just to stay in the running on day one. There are some damn good dancers on this show.”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow’s going to be much the same—they got rid of a hundred people today.” I bend over and set my palms on the floor, stretching my aching lower back.