The Real Real (20 page)

“Kara, when are you going to tell us what it’s like?”

Trisha pleads from under an aluminum roof of foils.

“How’d it come out? Do we look amazing? There’s going to be a party back in New York, right? ’Cause my mom knows a lot of celebrities she could get to come.”

“Owning the building they shop in is not the same as knowing them,” Nico scoffs, suddenly breaking the family reunion veneer.

“It’s better than having their asses sit in your bucket seats. Bite me.”

“Well,” Kara continues, “let’s see how this premiere goes first. And to answer your question, Trisha, I think you’ll be really pleased. It’s—”

“Glamorous?” Jase finishes with a girlish lilt, and we all groan.

“Yes, it actually is. We’ve created a really engaging, sexy show, and I think you’re all going to be thrilled with how audiences respond to it.”

“So, people are coming to an airport to watch us watch ourselves?” I ask.

“We’re giving out beer cozies.”

“Of course,” Drew says, his head emerging from the sweatshirt they’ve given him, shaking out his chestnut hair. I want to reach over and touch it.

But I wait until we’re three thousand feet up and everyone is distracting their preshow nerves with magazines and iPods. After his sixth Coke, I see Rick finally head to the bathroom, and I seize the moment to attach Mel’s terror grip to the armrest, unbuckle my seat belt, and walk nervously up the aisle to Rick’s vacant spot.

“Whoa,” Drew says as I slide in past him.

“Good. A syllable in my direction. I’ll take it.”

“I’m not
not
talking to you.” He tugs the emergency procedures brochure out of the seat pocket ahead of him and flips it open.

“Well, since Cancun you haven’t, in fact, talked to me so—”

“Look, Jess,” he lowers his voice, leaning close. “You’re doing whatever it is you’re doing with Jase.”

“It was
one
night.” I say what I want to be true, looking down at the Prickly Pear muffin in my hand that I brought to give him as a token of my contrition. “I thought you were with Nico,” I whisper. “I saw you guys at the hot tub.

I thought you were hooking up—”

“Jesse, let’s not, okay?” He cuts me off, shoving the brochure back in the pocket. “Look, the shoot’s over.

We’re weeks from graduation. So let’s not . . . complicate things.”

My stomach drops as if the plane had hit an air pocket.

I played through this strategy all night. Muffin to smiles to bathroom makeout. Not . . . “Complicate things,” I repeat while he crosses his arms and closes his eyes like he’s already moved on to better, less complicated things like napping. “Right. Sure.”

The
occupied
light goes out, and the bathroom door opens. I stand, locking eyes with Nico two rows behind, who gives me a sympathetic look. With an embarrassed smile, I squeeze past Drew’s knees.

Kara is right behind me, holding herself steady with the headrests as the plane dips forward. I’m grateful to have an excuse to close my watering eyes as she pokes each person in turn with a powder brush, talc puffing and suspending with the dust particles in the orange sunset streaming through the little windows. “Okay, my fabulous stars!” she calls out as we coast to a stop on the runway and I force myself to bring my shattered attention back.

“Hair fluffed! Sunglasses off! Sweatshirts off! Earpieces in! Don’t be nervous. Just be yourselves!” We insert the plastic buds and remove all our protective shields as Kara releases the door to a rush of hot, heavy air that fills the cabin. Hot, heavy air and screaming. Screaming?

Her kohl-rimmed eyes widening, Trisha skibbles past everyone and out onto the stairs first.

“Come on!” Kara waves at the rest of us, and we shuffle forward nervously.

I suddenly feel Nico running her fingers through one of my barrel curls. “There,” she says. “Perfect.” Smiling, she squeezes my arm. I find a smile in return. “Good luck out there.”

“You too.” I duck through the door and straighten on the top wire step. Out of practice, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the blinding brightness of the lights. I shield my view, almost stepping back into the plane when I realize there are
hundreds
of kids packing the stretch of palm-bordered lawn XTV has cordoned off. Actual living, breathing people—about to watch—whatever it is this is 206

about to be. Suddenly the reality sinks in that this hasn’t been a home movie for Zacheria’s sole benefit.

“
Hamp-ton Beach! Hamp-ton Beach!
” their chants echo off the tarmac. This is
a lot
of enthusiasm for a beer cozy.

“And we’re walking!” Kara’s voice reaches me through the din, and I return my focus to putting one heel in front of the other as I shakily descend the little steps and follow the red carpet.

“Here they are!”
a disembodied game-show voice reverberates from the ten-foot-high speakers on the stage.

“The brand-new stars of
The Real Hampton Beach
!”

Keeping my eyes trained on the back of Drew’s head, I follow our line to the edge of the stage, up the three steps, and take my seat on the last folding chair on the side, where we can see the audience and the screen at the same time.
“And now,
live
, the world premiere of
The Real

Hampton Beach
!”

I pivot to the screen, keeping my spray-tanned knees carefully together. The spotlights on us are bright, fading the images. That and I’m sitting way too close. And off to the side. But I get the gist.

As Wilco plays, I see the sun rise on the surf.

I see our school.

I see Jase shooting hoops.

I see the store banners on Main Street—Gucci and Tiffany and Tory Burch.

I see Nico leaving her McMansion, getting into her Maserati.

And I see me stepping out of the Richardsons’ red-lacquer front door. Like I own it. Like I’m richer than Nico.

“
Smile
,” Kara’s voice pleads in my ear.

I see us shopping, getting pedicures, eating sashimi.

Then it’s Nico and Jase over and over; the happy, sexy, gorgeous couple, looking like a Valtrex ad, lit to perfection by Zacheria and loving life.

Then Trisha standing in snow-patched sand looking forlorn.

I see Jase running with springer spaniels in the distance. Springer spaniels?!
Whose?
What day was that?

Then the moon cross-fades into a red stoplight cross-fades into a cherry on Nico’s tart.

I see Jase and Nico not talking over the tart at Cooper’s.

I see Jase standing in snow-patched sand looking forlorn.

Then footage—darkly grainy, like it was shot on a surveillance camera—of Jase and Trisha at the guesthouse where I saw them back in January, before any of this. The snow is gone, though, the house has siding, she has boobs, and there they are, walking in together, hands on each other’s asses.

Then me, climbing down from the lifeguard station ladder in those ridiculous boots, stating to him that I won’t tell Nico about Trisha—but we weren’t miked! How did they—and there I am hanging out with Nico, saying 208

nothing while she goes on and on about Jase.

And then Jessica Simpson talking about her acne. It takes a second to realize she’s not one of us. A commercial.

“
Smile. Smile
,” Kara says sternly into my ear. “Everyone is watching you. Turn to each other and talk like you
love
it.” I look out at the crowds, who are indeed rapt.

Smiling so hard her lips can’t move, Nico beams straight ahead. We all do. And then she minutely tilts her face to me. “Well,” she purrs, waving at the crowd, “guess somebody just came into some money.”

“I
never
implied I live there,” I rush. “Or that I was—”

“My friend?” Nico laughs. “You’re not, that’s pretty clear.”

“And it’s
not
real,” Jase adds, a Hail Mary pass for himself.

Melanie gives him a sidelong glance. “No shit, dog lover.”

“
And we’re back in three, two, one . . .
”

REAL REEL 3

“
JESSE!”

Rubber-banded stack of mail in hand, I pivot on the porch to the source of the screaming—a Honda slowing to a crawl as it passes our front lawn.

“YOUR OTHER HOUSE IN THE SHOP?!” some

guy screams from the driver’s window.

“HOW’S DREW?!” a girl screams from the back.

“BLOW HIM RECENTLY?” The car screeches away in a cloud of obnoxious laughter and exhaust fumes.

Must
stop looking every time someone calls my name.

I see Mrs. Kropel across the street staring out her front door, curlers so tight in her gray hair I can see patches of her pink scalp. I wave my handful of mail.

“Hey, Mrs. Kropel! How are you?”

She scurries back inside.

“And I am now scaring old ladies,” I mutter as I twist my key in the lock and push into the quiet front hall. I drop my straining bag to the floor with a thud. Eight more days until the first AP. I wish I could just take it in my bedroom. Wish I could do everything in my bedroom.

Kicking off my sneakers, I watch one sail satisfyingly through the living room and corner off the La-Z-Boy to land dejectedly on the carpet. I fight the temptation to flop there myself and instead head into the kitchen. I grab the cookie jar as I pass and, lifting off the suction top, am greeted by the comforting vanilla scent.

The Post-it on the counter reads,
Jess, chicken out of
freezer to defrost. Home by 8, Mom
.

Stuffing a generic sandwich cookie into my mouth, I pull out the tinfoil-covered mound and set it on a plate by the stove. I hear another car slow as it passes our house. So it might be time to acknowledge my if-I-don’t-watch-theshow-it-doesn’t-exist plan has a huge-ass flaw—everyone is more up-to-date on my life than I am. I flip on the little TV that sits on the counter as Jessica Simpson joins me in the kitchen to share her undying gratitude to Proactiv.

I pull open the fridge and take out the milk carton. As I reach for a glass from the cabinet, I hear Drew’s voice asking me for hot chocolate. Cold clammy washes over me as I stand with one hand on the glass, the cabinet door blocking my view of the third episode. They must 211

be running it constantly since its original airing last night.

Which I managed to keep from turning on by bargaining with myself in five-minute intervals.

I hear the sound of my laughter coming from the TV

as Drew cracks a joke. He really is funny.

Resigned, I close the cabinet door and turn to face my XTV self, who, for the next eighteen minutes, will have the carefully edited, flirtatiously promising start of a relationship that’s too complicated for real life.

REAL REEL 4

I’m an hour into the AP when I, and everyone else, become aware of knocking on the window. Mrs. Cutler rushes from her desk to yank up the blinds, revealing Kara standing in the spring grass with a giddy expression and a piece of paper pressed to the glass. Which, unless it tells me the speed of this bullet leaving this gun at a thirty-eight-degree vector, I DON’T CARE. I look down and try to pretend I have no idea who that crazy lady is. Even though everyone knows I know. Just like they “know” I love chinchilla slippers. And they “know” I prefer Dom Pérignon.
With Doritos!

“Jesse!” Kara mouths, pointing at the paper. Mrs. Cutler raps on the glass in Kara’s undeterred face and drops 213

the blinds. With the whole room pivoted to me and Mrs.

Cutler distracted, Bobby Latman wags his tongue between his V-ed fingers. I quickly flip him off before she turns around. If this keeps up until graduation, I’m going to start walking around with my middle finger permanently erect.

Two miserable hours later, I emerge, twirling my wrists, my neck, and everything else that’s cramped. BlackBerry in hand, Kara jumps up from the row of lockers where she’s apparently been levitating over the floor this whole time.

“Oh my God,
what
?” I cry, releasing four hours and thirteen years of academic frustration. The test room empties behind me, and for once people are too drained to care about me and the XTV producer.

Oblivious to my ire, Kara thrusts the paper in my face.

I squint down at it, trying to see through the little circled letters still swimming in my vision. It’s a web page printout. With pictures of me that aren’t really pictures—more like freeze-frames—from the show.

“It’s your own fan site!” She jumps up and down in little hops.

“My own what?”

“And we didn’t do it. It’s completely fan-generated.

It’s getting HUGE traffic. Jesse, I’m so psyched for you!

We’re totally tracking it to shape the remaining episodes.

They like a more accessible, slightly less aspirational you.”

“More accessible than what? The Nico droid you edited me to look like?”

“Yeah, she’s actually not getting the response I thought.

People find her kind of cold. Anyway, they loved your chemistry with Drew!”

Ouch.

“I wanted you to know right away. We’ve only aired four episodes, and it’s slaying the time slot. Slaying!

It!
And . . .
” She pauses for dramatic effect. “
Good
Morning America
called! They want you guys Thursday morning!”

My eyeballs leave their sockets. “For
what
?”

“To talk about being
real
American teenagers. How great is that?!” She claps her hands together, her silver rings clinking. “You’re going to be the face of the pressures and hopes and dreams of America’s youth.”

It’s chaos in the ABC green room. Seated on the hard couch out of the path of human traffic, I just watch the building anxiety and try to breathe.

“Melanie, where’s the curling iron?” Mrs. Dubviek is digging in her big python bag, enthralled in her self-assigned task of fluffing everyone’s hair. Upon arrival we learned that union rules prohibit non-contracted hair and makeup people from being on the premises. So we’ve all been ABC-ed, and Mrs. Dubviek is underwhelmed. She returns to tugging at my bangs, practically falling into the laps of my uncomfortable parents, who bookend me on 215