by Jen Calonita
“What was that about?” Liz asks, but before I can guess, Lori walks to the edge of the circle and pulls a guy I recognize from Clark’s basketball team onto the dance floor. The next thing I know, Austin is standing in front of me.
“May I have this dance?” he asks.
“But you’re supposed to dance with Lori,” I point out. “It’s okay with me. I know it’s tradition.” I don’t want Austin to think I’m the jealous type, even though every girl is a little.
Austin smiles. “Well, I’m starting a new court tradition. It’s my birthday and on my birthday the only queen I want to dance with is my own.”
I blush furiously. I don’t know what to say to that. It’s terribly romantic. I take his warm hand and let him lead me back into the spotlight. Liz and the gang are cheering, but I can barely hear them. I don’t even care that Lori is still glaring at me. I close my eyes and rest my head on Austin’s shoulder as we move ever so slightly to a slow song.
I haven’t felt this free, this relaxed in . . . I don’t know how long. I feel like Cinderella. The only difference is that at midnight, I’ll turn back into a tabloid-plagued TV actress instead of an enslaved housekeeper.
“Tonight has been amazing,” I murmur. “The only thing that would make the evening even more perfect would be if I had a birthday present to give you.”
“Would you stop?” Austin says. “I told you earlier. I don’t want you to buy me anything. All I wanted for my birthday was you and you’re here.”
Aww . . . my boyfriend is amazing. “Okay,” I say because I don’t know what else to say after that. “So what about you? Are you enjoying being royal?”
“It’s not too shabby,” Austin says. “But I think my queen is enjoying it even more than I am. I’ve never seen you this calm before. Burke, do you realize we’re having a tabloid-and Hollywood-free night?”
I laugh. “Shh! Don’t jinx us,” I joke. “Can’t I just enjoy a completely normal, totally un-star-related high school experience like the rest of my peers?”
“You’re not like the rest of us, Burke. And it’s more than just your star status,” Austin says seriously. “That’s what I love about you.”
WAIT A MINUTE. Did Austin just say love as in LOVE LOVE? Or does he mean he loves different things about me?
I can’t breathe.
Seriously, I think I’m going to need oxygen or something.
Any minute, Austin is going to realize I’ve stopped breathing. I can hear a whooshing sound in my ears like I’m going to pass out.
OH GOD. Am I supposed to say it back? I don’t know.
I really, really, REALLY like Austin, but do I love him? The seconds are ticking away. If I’m going to say it back, I have to say it right NOW.
NOW.
Say it NOW, Kaitlin.
I don’t say it.
But Austin said it! Right? He said he loved me!
I think.
I don’t know. This is very confusing.
In my head, the music stops. The room is quiet. My heart is beating out of my chest, but my mouth feels dry and I can’t speak.
SAT. 10/26
NOTE TO SELF:
Ask Liz 2 download dance pics.
Look up SAT definition of love.
Order pics A’s mom took predance from Snapfish!
Mon., Tues., Wed. call times on set: 6 AM
FA2007 “Playing the Angel” (CONTINUED)
12 INT. BUCHANAN MANOR — FOYER — AFTERNOON
DR. BRADEN
(out of breath) Thank you for agreeing to see me. I didn’t think we should discuss this over the phone.
PAIGE
Of course. Is something wrong? Did you find something on one of my tests?
Dr. Braden hesitates. He fumbles with his leather portfolio, looking for the right papers.
DENNIS
Please, Dr. Braden. My wife and my family have been through so much. Don’t leave us in suspense. Whatever it is, we can handle it.
In the doorway, the viewer can see the outlines of Sam, Sara, and Colby.
13 INT. BUCHANAN MANOR — DINING ROOM — AFTERNOON
SAM
What’s going on in there?
SARA
(spying) It’s Dr. Braden. Mom was on the phone with him an hour ago and he rushed over. Something must be wrong.
COLBY
Do you think we should be spying on them? Maybe it’s something they don’t want us to know.
SARA
How do you think we find out stuff around here, Colby? Watch and learn. Whatever it is concerns all of us.
SAM
Mom and Dad have been so stressed over those tests Dr. Braden gave us. I don’t know what they’ll do if he finds out any of us have the same gene that caused Mom’s blood mutation.
14 INT. BUCHANAN MANOR—FOYER—AFTERNOON
DR. BRADEN
According to the results of the blood work conducted on your daughters, not all three girls are a match for Paige’s DNA.
DENNIS
Are you saying Colby is not Paige’s daughter?
DR. BRADEN
(pauses) The opposite, actually. I think Colby is her daughter.
PAIGE
(hugs her husband tightly) I knew it! I could feel it. She’s come back to me, Dennis.
DR. BRADEN
There’s more—according to these results, Sam and Sara might not be.
PAIGE
What? That’s impossible!
DR. BRADEN
According to our tests, the fraternal twins share the same genetic makeup, but neither of them matches your blood type, which leads us to believe that your girls may have been switched at birth with the Moxley twins, who as you may remember went missing in a boating accident.
DENNIS
You must have mixed up the bloodwork! Why would someone switch our girls? We had tight security on the hospital at the time because Paige was receiving death threats.
DR. BRADEN
Yes, I remember. But that doesn’t mean someone from the inside couldn’t have made the switch. Natalie Bennett, one of the night nurses, feuded with Paige for years before her car went over the Summerville Bridge. Maybe she . . .
PAIGE
No. This can’t be! No. NO!
DR. BRADEN
I’m so sorry, Paige. But according to this, it looks like the girls you’ve raised as your daughters are not your daughters at all.
Sara lets out an ear-piercing scream. She’s inconsolable. Dennis runs to her and holds her.
DENNIS
Don’t listen to him! We’ll have them retested. We’ll figure this out.
Sam faints and Colby rushes to help her up.
SAM
What’s going on? Was I dreaming?
Colby brushes her hair and shushes her. There’s a contented smile on her face.
COLBY
Actually, princess, I think you’re finally waking up to a whole new world.
Twelve: Read It and Weep
“So do you think he meant he loves me or he loves being with me?” I’ve just finished telling Nadine what happened at Homecoming and am waiting to hear what she thinks about Austin’s use of the L-word. I bite my lip anxiously. It’s been almost a week since he said it and I still don’t know what to think. Not that I’m counting.
Nadine looks reflective. She’s been out sick the past few days herself (I think I gave her whatever bug I had), so her milky white skin is still beyond pale. “So he said, ‘That’s what I love about you?’” I nod hurriedly. She looks perplexed. “Well, it’s not a clear-cut ‘I love you,’ but it certainly sounds like that’s what he meant. You know boys. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to say what you want to hear.”
I’m not sure if I should jump for joy or cry. “But I didn’t say ‘I love you’ back,” I say regretfully. “Now Austin probably thinks he made a huge mistake saying that he maybe loves me!” I bury my face in the script I’m memorizing.
“Do you love him?”
Nadine asks.
“I think so, but how do I know for sure?” I ask my script. I’m so freaked out by this entire topic that I can’t even look Nadine in the eye. Love. Do I possibly love Austin? Does he love me? How do you know for sure? Suddenly our six-month relationship seems a lot more complicated.
I hear a swoosh sound and look up in time to see a set of crisp white pages fly under my dressing room door.
“I thought you had this week’s script already,” Nadine mumbles as she munches on an Oreo. They’re our favorite go-to cookies in times of stress and deep reflection and this is definitely one of those times. If Alexis stays put or this love thing gets more complicated, Nadine and I are going to have to order Oreos by the caseload.
“We already started shooting, but maybe there’ve been some changes,” I tell her, scanning the first sheet.
HOLLYWOOD SECRET NUMBER TWELVE: As detail-obsessed film director Hutch Adams taught me, a script isn’t final until it airs. (And even then, they can tweak things for years to come on director’s cut DVDs.) I’m used to tweaking dialogue on set in the middle of shooting. Melli is famous for correcting the writing staff when they give her lines she doesn’t think Paige would say. But major script changes, like the eight pages I just received, are pretty rare.
I back myself into my cozy leather club chair and start reading. The scene being rewritten is the one where Dr. Braden gives the Buchanans the results of Colby’s blood test. Oh. That’s nothing. Since next week’s episode was supposed to be Alexis’s last, the original script had a scene where Dr.
Braden determined Colby was not Paige’s daughter. Now that Alexis is sticking around a little longer, the writers probably rewrote Dr. Braden’s results. They can milk the Colby character for a few more episodes by ordering new-blood work, having the results get lost or stolen, and keep Alexis around indefinitely. I shudder at the thought.
But . . . hmm . . . this new scene is really different.
“Your mom and Laney want you to do a chat with E! Online,” Nadine reads from her BlackBerry. “It’s the Vegas story again, but you haven’t talked to them about your side and Alexis was just interviewed by them and hinted that you and Sky caused the fight. You definitely have to speak up. Sky should too.”
Sky and I are united in our determination to get rid of Alexis, but so far, the positive press and the interviews we’ve done on the subject have still been separate. We haven’t said this to each other, but I think we both still think we’re better off tackling the Alexis issue — and how it affects our careers — on our own.
“Fine.” I read faster and faster, glossing over small phrases and lines to reach the outcome. When I get to Dr. Braden saying “the girls you’ve raised as your daughters are not your daughters at all,” the pages slip out of my hands and fall to the floor. “WHAT?” I can’t breathe. “THIS HAS TO BE A JOKE!”
“What does it say?” Nadine asks in a panic. “Kates? What does it say?” Nadine dives to the floor and scrambles to put the pages back in the right order.
I grab the empty Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf bag from this morning’s latte off the table and breathe slowly into it, but it makes me cough. The bag smells too much like Colombian roast.
“Oh my God,” Nadine whispers as she finishes reading. It’s official. I wasn’t hallucinating. The writers are cutting Sam and Sara out of the family and adding Colby into the fold. After all I’ve given this show, this is how Tom treats me? He can’t even tell me to my face? They’re keeping Alexis and not renewing Sky and me? How can this be?
I grab the script back from Nadine and bolt from the room before she can block me. “Kaitlin, wait!” she yells. “We’ve got to get Laney and your mom on the phone. Don’t do anything rash till I call Tom!” she says.
“Do you hear me? KATES!”
“TOM!” I yell.
“TOOMM!”
“TOOOOMMMMMMM!” I screech again as I run down the hallway. “I need to find Tom!” I grab a scrawny P.A. by his Dane Cook comedy tour T-shirt. “WHERE IS TOM?” I bellow. His blue eyes grow wide in alarm, but I don’t care. “I need to see him immediately.”
“I don’t think he’s here,” the young guy squeaks. “He’s barricaded himself in the postproduction office to finish next week’s show since we’ve had so many delays. He isn’t taking calls.” I grab his shirt tighter. “But I could be wrong.”
I let go of his shirt and run in a new direction. I know how I can find out if Tom is here. I can have the receptionist page him over the intercom. I run toward the FA studio’s main entrance. I can barely see where I’m going because my eyes are glazed over with hot tears. I’m in the middle of screaming “TOM!” again when . . .
Smack!
Boom!
Groan . . .
I’m lying flat out on the floor looking up at the fluorescent overhead lights. I cradle my aching head and try to sit up and look around. The receptionist desk is empty. WHOA. I feel dizzy. I look over to see what I crashed into.
But it’s not a what, it’s a who. Sky.
Sky sits up and I see mascara is running down her cheeks. She looks like a ghoul on the way to a Halloween party.
A lump starts to form in my throat. This is real.
“You read the new script, didn’t you?” I ask Sky tearfully, unable to hold back my emotions.
Sky nods and gets choked up too. “They can’t be real,” she sniffs, not caring for once that the person she’s crying to is, well, me. “They can’t be choosing not to renew our contracts. They just can’t! They can’t be writing us off the show. Why would they pick Alexis over us?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Melli would never let them get rid of us, would she? She has our back.”
“Does she?” Sky asks as she stands up. She dusts off her stockings and clingy black mini using her lace fingerless gloves. I decide to face the music too. My black trousers have Swiffered the floor, but my satin Belle Gray cami made it out of our crash unharmed. I collect my missing Bally black pump and put it back on my foot.
“Of course she does.” I hope I don’t sound as unsure as I feel.
“K, she’s not speaking to us,” Sky points out, not that she has to. Her dark, puffy eyes say it all: We’re doomed. “Tom is barely talking to anyone. The writers’ room is agitated. Almost everyone here, including your brother, is still under Alexis’s spell. The press is having a field day with the drama and all they can write about is someone getting axed over what happened in Vegas. Even Vanity Fair is doing an exposé.”
I knew the tabloid drama had hit rock bottom when Laney showed me Hollywood Nation’s latest issue. I thought last week’s In the Know piece was the worst, but this week they ran a four-page article on the Vegas melee and included a one-page article called “She Said, She Said — The Scene of the Crime.” It was an artistic reenactment of how the Tao fight went down, using eyewitness accounts. Nation drew a picture of the Tao balcony and placed Sky’s, Alexis’s, and my heads on stick figures to show where we stepped, what we supposedly said, and who hit who first. They also polled readers on whether or not they were turned off by FA after what happened. Seventy-six percent said they were. Gulp. Then they asked whether someone on FA should be fired for causing all this drama. Eighty-six percent said yes. Double gulp. I was thankful they didn’t ask them who should be axed. I guess now it doesn’t even matter.
“So that’s it then,” I say, absentmindedly pulling my long, curly hair off my neck. “After all these years, they’re getting rid of us both.”
“Don’t wallow, K,” Sky snaps. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not going down without a fight. Especially when kicking us off doesn’t make sense. Even if Alexis keeps blaming us for feeling alienated, the ratings are up despite all the hoopla, which would make them want to keep all of us bickering babies around.”
“Do you think the script might be fake?” I ask hopefully.
“Wake up, blondie.” Sky rolls her eyes. “Even Alexis couldn’t pull off a move this big. Thi
s thing comes from above her.”
Before I can even imagine which coworker besides Alexis would be scheming against us, the intercom crackles to life. “FA cast members in the Buchanan Manor foyer scene report to set immediately for taping,” the voice tells us.
“Oh God, the new scene.” I freak and start to hyperventilate again. Where is a paper bag? I need a bag!
Sky’s icy hand grabs mine. “Relax. It’s probably just a rehearsal,” she says. “They wouldn’t tape the scene without a rehearsal first.”
“We’ve got to find Tom and bring him to his senses before the cameras roll,” I say.
We’ve only taken ten steps before encountering a setback. Sky shrieks. When I look up, I notice that what was once a blank, slightly dirty white wall next to the FA cast portraits is now home to a new picture of Alexis. Her red hair is windblown and her face has barely a stitch of makeup, allowing you to connect the dots with her faint freckles. Her eyes and smug smile seem to gloat, “Good luck getting rid of me now.”
“I think I feel faint,” Sky says.
I glare at Alexis’s face and feel a newfound determination. “Come on,” I grunt, pulling Sky’s arm. We teeter down the long hallway, our heels clicking and clacking on the slippery floor, slowing down before we reach the large soundstage. Please, please let that P.A. be wrong about Tom. He’s got to be here.
But he’s not. Alexis is standing in the foyer set and Matty is reading her lines. Since he isn’t in today’s scene, Matty’s dressed casually in ripped jeans and a navy thermal T-shirt. Alexis, on the other hand, is in super-tight black leggings with a long bright purple V-neck sweater gathered at the waist with a fat black belt. As if she can sense the rays of hate, she looks up, sees Sky and me, and snickers.
After what happened in Vegas, Matty told me he was forcing himself to stop liking her. So what’s he doing with her now?