HDU #2: Dirt (19 page)

“Massive bully?”
Ian guessed with a wince.
 
Amanda
eyed him warily, hoping the Casey talk wasn’t too heavy for him.

Harper shook her
head.
 
“Not to us — to the
teachers.
 
She could screw with us
too easy, she liked showing that she could own the grown adults who were
supposed to be authority figures.”
 
She shook her head and laughed.
 
“You know how mafia bosses have cops on their payroll? Casey had
teachers on hers, she just wasn’t paying them.
 
I don’t know what she even had on them, but they were
totally wrapped around her pinky.
 
They just…
did
whatever she
told them to do.
 
We used to pay
her or give her things so she’d work her magic and get us grading curves or
test dates pushed back.”
 
Harper
pursed her lips and shrugged.
 
“Since we didn’t get automatic A’s the way she did.”

Amanda and Ian
exchanged looks, surprised but at the same time, not really.

“There was only
one teacher who didn’t bend over backwards for her and she ended up getting
fired for lying about something on her job application.
 
Some stupid thing, like where she went
to school.”

“Casey probably
dug that up,” Ian muttered quietly, staring down at the neon jogging visor he
tossed around in his hands.

“More like
definitely.
 
She told us that she
hired someone to find dirt after this woman like, told her to shut up during
class or something.”

Amanda chewed
her lip as she eyed Ian, whose eyes were suddenly cast over with a dark
look.
 
Harper’s stories were
starting to sound far too familiar.
 
Luckily, Harper noticed at the same time.

“Point is, she
totally has narcissistic personality disorder — but who doesn’t when you
go to The Cabot School?” She shrugged and threw her hands in the air before
putting a plate together for Ian and changing the subject to her homemade a
ç
ai
bowls, which were apparently delicious enough to divert his attention completely.
 
At least for the time being.
 
Amanda frowned, remembering how good
Ian was at pretending nothing was wrong.
 
She couldn’t help wondering if Harper’s Zen methods were only healing
him on the surface.
 
While Harper
understood his addiction, only Amanda really understood what Casey had done to
him.
 
But she suspected she wasn’t
in the right state to coach him through any sort of repressed anger or hatred
because she was holding back feelings either similar or more extreme —
considering all she could think about were two things:

Liam and Casey
— how much she missed Liam and how she couldn’t wait to find some way,
any way to give Casey a taste of her own medicine.
 
But in order to do that, she needed to keep her place in the
industry, to guarantee her job at a powerful company that presented even the
tiniest opportunity to bring Casey and her career down in any sort of way.
 
Of course, it’d be nice to have some
help but since she seemed to have none, she’d simply have to plot out a scheme
on her own.

Picking up her
phone, Amanda decided to text Wendy and speed up whatever meeting she was
having with Tom about her employment.

Wendy.
 
I want and need this job more than anything.
 
Please tell Tom that I have an idea that’ll be a win for all
of us.
 
Xx - Amanda

Chapter 11

“Once upon a
time, I loved the girl.
 
But this
means war.”

Wendy’s smirk
was meant to be playful but Amanda could tell there was real resentment hidden
underneath as they stood outside the Waltman Global building, next to which a
twenty-five by seventy-five foot billboard had risen — advertising the
September Thirteenth premiere of
Legacy
on Cinereel.

Strewn across
the sign were two early twenty-somethings, one blonde, one brunette and both
open-mouthed with bare, pierced midriffs.
 
They were the two unknown stars of Casey’s show and they were more than
likely compelling the daily Midtown passerby to whip out their phones on the
sidewalk and Google “
legacy show
actresses
.”

“I… figured we
were the ones who had this billboard,” Amanda murmured as she stared up at the
massive advertisement for their rival TV show right outside of
Leadoff’s
offices.
 
The billboard had been blank for the
past few months and it only made sense that ZINC would snatch it up to market
their latest one-hour drama by Tom Vogel.

“We thought we
had it,” Wendy sighed as she ushered Amanda toward the front doors.
 
“But Casey went into her own pocket and
outbid us with one hell of a crazy number.”

“Shouldn’t ZINC
have as much money as Casey?” Amanda asked with a little laugh of disbelief.

“Eh.
 
ZINC won’t up the marketing budget for
Leadoff
because they already spent forty
million dollars shooting the first five episodes.
 
And since Tom and I can’t afford to go into our own pockets
like the Mulreed family can,
this
happens.”
 
Wendy shrugged, flipping
off the billboard before entering the building, trying to casually pull Amanda
away from the shaggy, bearded man selling newspapers near the door.
 
But it was too late — she had
caught a glimpse of one of the front pages.
 
It was one of the gossip rags that tabloids like Pop Dinner
even scoffed at but she couldn’t help reacting.

“Seriously?”

In bold caps,
the headline had screamed “
AMANDA’S LIES
”
before listing such comically outlandish bullet points as,
“Married and divorced twice!”
“Aspiring
actress!” “Shy girl? Her past life as a burlesque dancer!”

“Oh, bah!” Wendy
gave a good-natured wave of her hand as her Louboutins clicked across the
marble lobby, Amanda’s off-white Converses padding alongside them.
 
“Nobody actually believes any of
that.
 
I mean, burlesque dancer?
Divorcee? Come on.”

Amanda smiled quietly
to herself.
 
Wendy had purposely
left out the middle bullet point because thus far, it had been the one that
most people had accepted as the truth — that she had been a
gossip-obsessed wannabe starlet who plotted her trip to New York as a means to
finally pursue acting.
 
Eyeing
Amanda, Wendy seemed to read her mind.

“
I
know you’re not some publicity whore
who’s trying to break into the acting business.
 
I still recognize small town me in you,” she said, referring
to her own past as an “awkward” industry newbie who met her own Hollywood
giant, Tom Vogel.
 
“We just need to
convince the rest of the world that you really were and still are a girl who
came here without a clue and then made something for herself.
 
Because let’s be honest here, that’s
the reason Tom hired you to
Leadoff
— aside from my bugging him about you pretty much twenty-four seven.”

Amanda tried not
to frown at the reminder that she hadn’t exactly been given her job based on
merit.
 
She’d been hired based on
her then-image, the publicity she would garner for a project with a hero whose
TV show arc matched her real-life story.

But despite
Wendy’s unintentional slight, Amanda forced herself to smile.
 
How she got the job was no longer
relevant to her — it was what she did to keep it so that she could do
well at it.
 
Well enough to cement
her place in the industry and find some sort of way to bring Casey’s career
tumbling down.

Suddenly chipper
again, Amanda grinned at Wendy as they stepped into the mirror-lined
elevator.
 
“Don’t worry, we will.
 
Like I told you, I have an idea.”

~

“Don’t tell me
she’s still working here.”

Amanda ignored
the incredulous comment from the writer whom she remembered to be a Brown
University alum.
 
On this day, he
wore a stain-free blue T-shirt, which qualified him as the best dressed person
in the room.
 
Next to him, the
lanky one laughed, his giant Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he also chewed
on a pen cap.

Standing in the
doorway of the writers’ room, she waited with Wendy for Tom to gather his
things and follow them to another room for their private meeting.

“At least she
got the memo on the dress code,” said the one in the ratty Yankees jersey, who
apparently owned no other piece of clothing.

“Ignore the Joes,”
Wendy said loudly.
 
“They get off
on giving women a hard time.”

“So many jokes I
could make about that phrasing,” the Brown alum grumbled.
 
Wendy snorted as Tom shot him a warning
look before getting up and leading the women out into the hall.

“The Joes?”
Amanda whispered curiously as they walked several paces behind a brooding Tom.

“Those three
stooges are all named Joe,” Wendy explained with an eye roll.
 
“So we call them Skip, Fish and
Bird.
 
Skip because he used to be a
skipper — managed minor league baseball.
 
Fish because his last name is Fisher.
 
Bird because… well.
 
He looks like an ostrich.”

Amanda snorted
as Wendy giggled.
 
Immediately, Tom
spun around, deep wrinkles knitting under his frameless glasses.

“There’s nothing
to be laughing about right now.”

Amanda and Wendy
promptly quieted though Wendy dared to break the silence first.
 
“Honey, didn’t I say we’d figure this
out? Don’t look so worried.”

“You always
think you can figure things out but
Leadoff
is currently in a situation that’s more fucked than any other I’ve been in, so
hopefully you’ll excuse me for looking worried.”

As he tore the
glasses off of his face to massage between his eyebrows, Wendy ushered Amanda
into the room, whispering in her ear.
 
“He doesn’t mean just you.
 
The show’s in a little bit of trouble right now.”

She had suspected
as much, considering Casey’s billboard outside.

“So,
Amanda.”
 
Tom plopped down onto a
chair, his posture sloppy as he leaned back, still rubbing his head.
 
Amanda had never seen him so without
poise.
 
“My wife is still smitten
by you, don’t ask me why.
 
I’m not
so much because apparently you have a lot less in common with Milo than I
thought,” he said, referring to the fictional star of
Leadoff
, whom Tom had compared Amanda’s case of overnight fame to
when he had first hired her in March.
 
“Which does me no good because I’ll admit my show is in desperate need
of publicity right now, especially thanks to your friend, Casey.
 
But I certainly don’t want the kind
you’re giving me right now.
 
People
liked you because they related to you, Amanda, the same way I need them to
relate to Milo.
 
Now, all they see
is another wannabe actress who lied about everything so we would like her and
want to help her.”

Amanda
swallowed.
 
“That’s only if you
believe the tabloids, which I can promise you aren’t true,” she said steadily,
taking a seat across from Tom.
 
She
calmly folded up the sleeves of her white linen button up.
 
“I was,” she laughed quietly, “And, to
some degree, still am that shy girl from the middle of nowhere who Wendy met in
January.
 
I knew I’d get some sort
of attention when I got here from being Liam’s girlfriend but I promise I
didn’t come here to be an actress.
 
I came here to escape my crappy situation back home and to start a new
life, which I know is the same reason Milo ran off to New York because I’ve
read the scripts from cover to cover all summer,” Amanda said, studying Tom to
detect any change in his emotions.
 
Thus far, there were none.
 
Sitting up, Tom gave Amanda a look of exasperation.

“Just cut to the
chase and give me a proposal.
 
How
are you going to convince me and the world that you’re not just another
fame-hungry actress? That you didn’t come here and lie about your whole story
for publicity?”

“I’ll show the
world why I actually came here, even if it involves sharing every last humiliating
detail of my past.”

“My, what a
detailed plan.”

Wendy shot a
glare at her husband.
 
“Hear her
out.”

Amanda laughed
quietly, taking a deep breath and folding her hands in her lap.
 
“The true story about me is actually
more embarrassingly relatable than anyone even knows.”

“Really.
 
How so.”

Ugh.
 
“Well.
 
I grew up the town pushover and graduated onto being the
town hermit.
 
The highlight of my
life before coming here was being a receptionist in St. Louis.
 
From elementary school to high school,
I was my best friend Megan’s personal assistant because I didn’t want her to
ever stop liking me.
 
After she and
I went to community college together, we moved to St. Louis where I met my
first boyfriend, Brandt.
 
He
cheated on me with Megan seven months later and Megan kicked me out of our
apartment so he could move in.
 
I
went to live back home in Merit again and that was the life I was desperate to
escape before I came here.”

Tom blinked
slowly at her.
 
He lifted his
eyebrows.
 
“That’s actually an
interesting story, Amanda,” he said.
 
“But no one is going to believe you at this point.”

“They will if I
get someone from Missouri to back my story.”

“And who would
do that? The folks from Merit don’t seem too crazy about you.”

“They’re
not.
 
But there’s someone in St.
Louis whose barista job probably doesn’t pay enough.”

Tom squinted,
fighting the smile curving one corner of his lips.
 
“Your ex?”

Amanda
nodded.
 
“Megan dumped him a few
months ago.
 
From what I remember,
he’s always had money issues.
 
He
bought me a necklace from a vending machine for my birthday last year,” she
said, only feeling bad about the fact that she didn’t really feel bad for
sharing the embarrassing story.
 
Especially since it drew a hearty laugh from Tom.
 
“I have old pictures of myself with him
and with Megan, too.
 
And if you
need yearbook photos from my embarrassing high school days, I’ve got them
too.
 
They’ll be further proof of
everything aside from whatever Brandt tells us — which, if the price is
right, will be whatever we ask him to tell us… however we asked him to tell
us.”

“What do you
mean
however
we ask him to tell us?”

Amanda gave a
bit of a sheepish laugh.
 
“Over the
years of moderating a celebrity gossip site, I’ve noticed that people feel the
need to choose sides when it comes to scandal.
 
Team This or Team That.
 
If we get Brandt to sound cold and remorseless for the
interview, they’ll unconsciously side with me.”

Tom blinked at
Amanda for a few dumbstruck seconds.
 
Yep, that sounded absolutely batshit
and now I seem like a diabolical freak.
 
But before Amanda could get too self-conscious, he raised
his eyebrows, impressed.

“Alright.”
 
He straightened up in his seat.
 
“So you want to buy the world’s
sympathy back by showing them what a horrific mess your life was before you got
here and you’re suggesting we pay the broke barista for some quotes to back you
up?”

“Yes.
 
And since Fleur Magazine already spent
time and money on my interview, we can make it up to them by giving them this
scoop to publish,” Amanda said.

“The magazine
should be coming out in days.
 
It’s
probably already printed,” Tom pointed out.

“Honey,” Wendy
interjected.
 
“In case you forgot
that your wife used to work at June Magazine, I can tell you that I’ve seen
issues entirely reprinted days before being sold.
 
I think Fleur would be happy to do that for this.
 
‘The
Actual
Story Behind Amanda Nathan’s Contract with Liam Brody:
Amanda Tells All,’” she said with pizzazz.
 
“Getting cheated on by the boyfriend with the best friend,
being the town leper.
 
Adultery and
bullying.
 
People go through
similar things on a daily basis, they should understood the need to do
something drastic to escape.”
 
She
shrugged with a little grin.
 
“And
if not, they live vicariously through Amanda’s drama, which puts her right back
in their hearts.”