The Real Real (19 page)
“Grow up, Kara, they’re fine.” Fletch jumps to his sneakers and turns to us. “Aren’t you fine? Melanie?”
“Yes?” She freezes by the potted palm.
“Aren’t you fine? I mean, it got rough for a few minutes, and you lost some shit, but it’s insured and nobody’s dead, right?”
Melanie looks from Trisha, who circles an ashtray like one of the crushed butts might morph into a fresh Marlborough and land lit in her bruised mouth, to Nico, who continues to run her hands across her bare wrists and fingers.
“I guess,” Melanie says quietly. I watch as Jase notices Nico’s distressed gesture. He reaches out to touch where her Rolex and Tiffany links should be. She looks at him for a moment, and he pulls her into his chest. I cast a sidelong glance to Drew, but his face is unreadable.
“Actually . . . ” Rick trails off, his hand swiping his bangs where the cupped brim of his Yankees hat should be.
“Yes?” Kara nods. “What did you want to say?”
“We’re done.” Go, Rick.
“Yes.” Fletch nods in agreement. “Thank you! So, chill out, Kara, and let’s get—”
“No.” Rick clears his throat, resting his hands where 189
his sunburned hip bones peek out from his shorts. “I mean we’re really . . . ”
“Done.” Nico crosses her arms over her sleep tank.
Fletch tilts his head, his eyes squinting in confusion.
“I think—” I stand up. “What Rick is trying to say is that we quit.”
Fletch grins like Tom Cruise, a bracing blend of rage, hysteria, and glee. “I beg your pardon?”
“We quit.” Nico stands to her full height in the hotel slippers we’ve been given. “No more filming. We quit.”
“You quit filming?” he echoes.
“Yes,” Jase affirms with his arms around Nico’s waist.
The rest of us chorus in agreement.
Kara stares at Fletch, her breath held along with ours.
Fletch studies each of us as we wait to hear which direction that grin is going. And then he doubles over laughing.
Laughing. “You’re done. You
are
done.”
We look at each other—are we declaring our independence to an idiot?
Kara throws her hands up and stalks out to the driveway.
“Do you need us to explain this more . . . slowly?”
Drew stands up uncertainly.
“No!” Fletch wipes his eyes. “You quit something that’s
over
. Shoot’s done. Spring break is the last episode.
You’re done.”
We’re done. The information sinks in. I root my slippers to the tile to keep from running over to grab Drew’s 190
shoulders and screaming,
We’re done
!
“Okay.” Kara reappears in the tiled archway, the morning sun streaming in behind her, her hand cupped over her cell. “Mr. Hollingstone called in a favor. Someone from the embassy will meet us at the airport and allow you to board. And someone from XTV will meet us at Immigration with the Xerox copies of your passports that I left in New York.”
“So we can leave?” Nico asks from her reclaimed nook in Jase’s arms.
“We can leave.”
THE REAL REEL
“
A
ttention, Target shoppers, don’t forget to ask your sales
associate about all the exciting benefits of applying for our
REDcard when you check out. Happy shopping!”
Two weeks later, I’m slumped over a red plastic cart in the towel aisle while Mom labors over a wedding present for Dad’s cousin. Norah Jones resumes crooning from the loudspeakers, returning me to feeling like I’m covered in muffin glop. Like none of it ever happened. Which, if I squint, it almost never did—Nico and Jase are permanently lip-locked, Nico and Melanie have closed the Trisha hole with an inseparable seal, and Rick is, well, Rick. None of which bothers me—it’s as if we were in the same class or homeroom or lab section and now we’re not. Weird, maybe. Melancholy, perhaps, but not troubling. Which is 195
the opposite of whatever it is I feel when Drew pretends not to notice me as we pass in the halls. And double that whenever I see Caitlyn, who, despite my obvious solitude, refuses to even break stride for my hellos.
“White or cream with little flowers?” Mom asks from where she’s surrounded by piles of both on the linoleum.
“
Mom,
” I moan into the crook of my elbow. “I don’t know. I don’t know what their bathroom looks like. We’ve been doing this for an hour. Just pick something.”
“I think I remember them saying something about a seashell motif.”
I push away my hair from where it’s fallen into my face.
“Then get her the cream.”
“With flowers, though? Will that go with the shells?”
I whip my head up and shrug.
“Hey, you wanted to come.” She points the folded terry cloth at me. “Make yourself useful.”
Being done is simultaneously euphoric and not. Euphoric, because I don’t have a perma-parameter of cameramen. I can go where I want, do what I want, with nothing adhered to me—hair, nails, mike packs. And not, because I have no perma-parameter of cameramen distracting me from the fact that the two people I want to go anywhere or do anything with think I’m a Capital A asshole. After weeks of reserving so much energy for the eightieth take of my reality, I’m lost without the direction.
At least in school the bells have been my Kara
. Jesse!
Go to English! Jesse! Go to Spanish! Jesse! Go to physics!
But when the three o’clock bell rings, the afternoon stretches 196
into the evening with no Prickly Pear to go to, no Caitlyn to talk with, leaving me way too much time to replay Cancun in nauseatingly slow motion.
“How about a light green or blue, like the ocean?” I roll the cart with my forearms slowly down the long aisle.
“Carol? Is that you?”
We both look up to see a mink-encased Mrs. Cortland striding toward us with her uniformed maid in tow, pushing a cart brimming with clinking glassware.
“Hi, yes!” Mom darts her hand to check her hair.
“I’m throwing a dinner for the McMillans at my house Easter weekend—they’re bringing the children, so I’m stocking up on the non-crystal this time.”
“Very smart. Mrs. Cortland, you remember my daughter—”
“Jesse, of course! Everyone’s talking about this new show that’s been shooting in town. And I hear Jesse is one of the stars. How fabulous for you, Carol. I don’t have to look for a new cleaning girl, now, do I?”
“We’re very proud.” Mom smiles. The maid just barely rolls her eyes.
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to call you. We’re planning a fund-raiser tea at the Maidstone this summer, and it’d be such fun to have Jesse come and speak.”
“At your club?” I ask. This is a woman who used to make Mom leave me in the car with a coloring book so as not to “upset” her cat. Mom darts her eyes to me.
“That sounds great.”
“Fantastic! I’ll be in touch. Oh, it’ll be such fun!” She 197
claps her gloved hands together, her ostrich bag swinging back and forth off her elbow.
“Fun!” I echo.
“Well, I’m off. Bye, you two!” She strides past us, and her maid follows with a withering gaze at Mom.
“Seriously?” I turn to her.
“Never thought I’d see that day,” she murmurs, stunned.
“The day you’d see Mrs. Cortland in Target or the day you’d see Mrs. Cortland in Target and she remembers my name?”
“All of it. Wow, Jesse.” She turns to me like she’s not sure if I’ve been replaced by a pod person.
“What am I going to talk about at her club?”
She opens her eyes wide and then rubs her hand down her face. “You can think about it while you pick out a wedding card for your cousin.”
“Me?”
“Yes. And then you can think about what you’ll say when she asks you to join her club. Leave the cart, and I’ll meet you at the register after I pick a damn towel set.”
I salute her and, shoving my hands in my jacket pockets, weave through the familiar aisles, wondering when things will get back to normal between her and me. Between anybody and me. Out of habit, I cut a quick left and duck into the makeup section, where Caitlyn and I have logged a quarter of our lives trying samples that might reinvent us as runway stars. I catch sight of myself in a sliver of Maybelline mirror, startled by my unmade-up face. I pull 198
down my bangs and push forward to the card aisle as instructed.
“Cheesy or sarcastic?” I ask, holding out the two options as I shuffle-jog up to where Mom is unloading cream towels onto the conveyer belt.
“
Jesse O’Rourke?
Oh my God, are the cameras with you? Are they filming?” Sara Brady leans out of her register corral to look wildly past me. “
Nathan!
” she yells three registers down to Nathan Lozario. “
XTV is here!
”
“Oh no—” I wave the cards in front of me. “Nope, it’s just . . . me, actually.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders fall. “NEVER MIND!” she informs a frantically preening Nathan.
“Sorry,” I say, placing the cards atop the towels.
“That’s okay!” Sara recovers. “It’s just cool to see you!
In person, I mean. I see you constantly on the commercials. The premiere’s this Sunday, right? So psyched! Hey, let her pass,” she orders the old lady ahead of us and her ten cans of Fancy Feast.
“Oh no, that’s fine, we can wait.” Mom waves the lady on.
“No! Seriously, come up. Come on, Jesse,” she says, pulling the bewildered lady’s cans to the side and holding them hostage until Mom moves her towels forward and we reluctantly squeeze past.
“I don’t understand.” The woman snaps her coin purse shut. “Are you closed? You didn’t have a sign up. Is there a sign up?”
“Lady, just wait,” Sara says through gritted teeth that break into an ingratiating grin as she scans Mom’s towels.
“You can always jump ahead on my line, Jesse. Seriously.
And tell Nico and them it’s cool.”
“Thanks.” I dip my chin into the top of my coat, trying to remember if we ever had a class together. Maybe gym?
Ninth grade? Eighth?
“Do you think you’ll be back?” she asks, handing Mom her credit card.
“To Target? That’s pretty much a sure bet.” I go to take the bags from her, but she holds firm.
“Oh my God. I can carry these out for you, please.”
Mom and I look back at the fretful old woman staring at her cat food. “That’s okay, it’s pretty light.” I have to wrestle the plastic handles from her hand.
“Are they filming in the parking lot?”
“No.” Mom takes the other bag.
“Oh.” Her shoulders slump. “Well, bring them in, okay, Jesse? You can use my employee discount if you bring them to this register!”
“Sure!” I wave as we hustle toward the electronic doors.
“I should have told her we’re done filming, but I didn’t have the heart.” I turn to Mom, who’s officially over it.
She passes off her bag and pulls the keys from her purse.
“I’ll get your limo.”
Early Sunday morning, I shut the car door and lean down to give Dad a last wave good-bye.
“We’ll be watching at the restaurant!” he shouts with a big smile, doing a K-turn on the tarmac to exit through the metal gate of East Hampton Airport’s private runway, not a place I ever imagined I’d be in a million years. Tucking my hands in my down vest, I cross to our familiar trailer, parked beside its corporate twin, a small plane with the neon XTV logo emblazoned on its side.
I climb the steps to find Kara sitting with Diane on one of the benches, sharing their morning coffee. “Hey, stranger! How ya been?” Kara greets me, wearing—not a peasant blouse.
“Kara! You changed.”
“What? Oh.” She looks down to where the black wrap dress ties at her side. “Diane hooked me up.”
“It looks great.”
She blushes. “Thanks to the stress of running this little operation I now have a waist. Premature gray hairs. And a waist. Nervous?”
“Kinda.”
“You’re the first to arrive.” Just like the first day. “Let’s get you into wardrobe.”
Diane stands as the door opens, and Melanie hops up the stairs, ready to roll—hair wet, face clean and prepped.
“My pro.”
I’m about to give her the same small smile and tentative wave that have encompassed all our interaction of late when she throws her arms around me. “Jesse! Isn’t this exciting?!”
Within twenty minutes, the van is filled with the seven of us, girls hugging, boys roughhousing, everyone trading camera phones to capture our last tour of duty and egging one another on to greater layers of MAC foundation.
Despite the estrangement of the last few weeks, I allow myself to be subsumed in the camaraderie.
“I’m going to miss this,” I say wryly to Melanie.
“What?” she asks through taut lips as her liner is applied.
“Smelling like I bathed in Aussie Sprunch. The unexpected woohoo of excitement when the cold metal mike 202
pack brushes my lumbar spine. Getting up at four. Getting to bed at four. Good times.”
“I’m going to be sad when my eyelashes grow back,”
I hear Nico chime in from the leather bench where she’s contentedly snuggled at Jase’s side. “I’ve gotten used to the nightly depilation when I pull off the false ones.”
“I’m going to miss wearing borrowed clothes that smell vaguely of other people and whatever stressful situation they wore them in,” Drew pipes in from where Diane staples the hem of his last pair of fantasy pants.
Rick turns from the kitchenette, downing a handful of Doritos. “I’m going to miss Zacheria. His little fingers.
His little toes.”
Smiling, Kara pulls her coffee from the microwave.
“Okay, enough reminiscing. Here’s the rundown.” Everyone leans out to get our last set of instructions, seven styled heads aligning. Kara puts her mug on the counter to read to us from her binder, her freshly manicured nails fanning on the underside. “In a few hours, once everyone is camera-ready, we’ll be boarding the jet to South Beach, where we’ve set up a second XTV beach house location adjacent to the private airport. You will disembark
on camera
and take your seats on the stage to watch the premiere
live
with America. We’ll be split-screening the show and your reaction shots. How real is
that
?” She weaves a hand through her blown-out hair.