The Real Real (6 page)

We picked you guys because each one of you has something special, something captivating.” Nico leans forward in her seat, entranced. “I know your forms aren’t all in yet, but, looking out, I see a hot cast, and I hope you’ll all come on board. Okay, enough gabbing! Go be awesome!”

He gives a wave and hops back out of the trailer before I can say a word.

“Guys, I think that’s it. Oh, wait, Drew, can I swap your shirt?” Kara looks between him and Jase. “You’re both in brown.”

“Sure.” Drew shrugs, pulling off his coat and T-shirt as he follows Kara to the back of the RV.
Oh, you are so beautiful,
I sing in my head as his rippling everything retreats.

He comes out, rippling frontward this time, as he pulls a navy polo shirt over his head.

“And keep the penguin visible—they’re a sponsor.

Okay, have a great day!”

Nico, Jase, Rick, and Melanie race for the door, ready to start their first recorded day. I hang back uncertainly, following Drew, who zips his sweatshirt closed over the shirt as soon as Kara’s out the door.

“Your parents signed the form yet?” he asks.

“I think my mom’s too busy getting the check framed.”

“Yeah,” he says, wriggling a little in his new shirt as he descends the first step.

“You okay?” I ask, because I’m not.

He pauses, looking back over his shoulder. “I don’t 52

usually wear anything this tight—or expensive. It’s weird.

This whole thing is weird.” I nod. “But you’re here, right?”

His face brightens. “We’re in this together?” he asks. I smile back, despite the pain in my chest, because this is not the together it was supposed to be. “It’s no big deal,” he continues. “I bet it’ll be like nothing is even happening.”

He pushes open the swinging door, and we both freeze under the stares of the entire student body. They stand on tiptoes, craning to see two people who were, mere minutes ago, unremarkable.

REEL 4

“
Just thread it under your shirt,” Ben gruffly instructs through his smoker’s cough, handing me the jelly bean–

sized microphone in the trailer the next morning. I do as told, feeling the icy metal clip pass against my stomach as I weave the wire back out the neck of my sweater. Well, not
my
sweater. My sweater was from Old Navy and—

“It looks like it’s from Old Navy,” Kara said as she gestured for me to raise my arms over my head.

“Because it is.”

“That’s better,” Kara says now, sipping from her morning coffee and appraising my new Alice + Olivia boatneck, as Ben tries to affix a cold black box, about the size of an individual cereal pack, to the back of my jeans. “You look really good in red, Jesse. Diane?”

The wardrobe mistress sticks her head out from the back of the trailer, a line of pins pressed between her lips.

“Make a note to get more red for Jesse.” Diane nods as Drew emerges, shaking out the legs of brand-new Rock & Republic jeans, identical to Fletch’s.

“I stapled ’em,” Diane mumbles. “But I pinned five more pairs for him, and I’ll have them hemmed by tomorrow.”

“Your pants weren’t XTV-worthy?” I ask as he rips open a Pop-Tart.

We look down at his discarded Levi’s sitting in a heap on the floor.

“My pants might make someone, and I quote,” he says, smiling in Kara’s direction, “change the channel.”

Kara sticks her cup in the microwave and hits power.

“No one wants to tune in to see their own pants. They want to see the fantasy of their pants.”

“Aw, you’re wearing fantasy pants,” I say, patting his shoulder.

“Ay!” he shouts as Ben affixes the cold black box on the inside of his waistband. The new jeans immediately droop below his boxers from the weight.

Kara looks over, lips pursed. “Tape him.”

Ben nods, tearing off a thick strip of metallic gaffer’s tape and slapping it to Drew’s lower back, affixing the pack before he can protest. Drew’s eyes bulge as he tilts his head, looking to me for acknowledgment that he is eight hours away from a world of pain.

Just then the door to the trailer opens with a cold draft, 55

and Melanie hops up the stairs, her hair expertly barrel-curled, her face pristinely made up.

“There’s my girl!” Kara shouts at her arrival, popping open the microwave. “Matte where she should be matte, glossed where she should be glossed. Get miked and you’re good to go.”

Melanie blushes beneath her freckles as Ben hands off her own cold jelly bean and motions for her to thread it under her chiffon blouse. Which, unlike Drew’s pants or my sweater, is probably at a sufficient price point to qualify as a fantasy garment. I have a feeling daily check-ins with Diane might only be on the docket for the two of us.

Shrugging on his coat, Drew turns to Kara. “Anything else you want to stick to me, or can I go to French now?”

Kara bites the edge of her black scarf as she takes him in from head to stapled toe. Suddenly her exhausted face breaks into a smile as her gaze drops. “You are scrumptious,” she says into her coffee. “Just solid-gold scrumptious. They’re gonna eat you with a spoon.”

Although I couldn’t agree with her more, Drew nods, the way we do to our deluded parents when they make some grandiose prediction through DNA-colored glasses, and heads to the stairs, to his real life, where no one is currently eating him with anything. At least I hope not.

“So Benjy is hanging on the golf course fence and starts to get agitated. Why?
What
is Faulkner implying?” Mr. Baxter asks. A few arms go up. I turn toward the lofted hands.

Not that I actually care who might know the answer; I 56

just want to pivot my face away from the camera hovering inches from my head for a few seconds. “Jesse?”

“Uh . . . ” I scramble, so keenly aware of the glaring klieg light practically brushing my left cheek.

“What is Benjy hearing?” he asks with exasperation.

I picture myself last summer on the edge of the Maidstone Golf Club, waiting for Caitlyn to finish with the lunch service so we could hit the public beach. Oh, right.

“Caddie?” I pull out of my butt.

“Yes,” he says in a pinched voice that indicates accuracy was not his hoped-for outcome. He turns back to the board, leaving me to contemplate what I must look like from two inches away. Are my pores gaping craters? Is sweat from the hot light gushing down my temple like the Rio Grande? This is unbearable. This is worse than the two weeks we had a working camcorder and Dad forgot all the other seedpods blooming into flowers on the ballet studio floor and wandered right into the middle to get a close-up of me. I went from white lily to red carnation in two seconds flat. Yes, despite having a mother who occasionally sings in a Bangles tribute band, I have not been this self-conscious since nursery school.

The bell rings, and I whip my binder into my bag and book it for the door, letting the back of my head be the show for a moment while I pat down my temples with my borrowed red cashmere sleeve. I wonder if Nico is also sweating under the lights. I wonder if Nico sweats. I spot Caitlyn, who I
still
haven’t talked to, entering the stairwell, head tucked.

“Hey!” I jog to catch up. She doesn’t slow. “Caitlyn, hey,”

I repeat. She stops on the third step down and turns, her face impassive as people jostle around us to get downstairs.

“What’s up?” I ask just as the camera catches up to me, bouncing light off the stairwell tiles. “You would not believe how ridiculous this all is. My head is like manicotti under a heat lamp.”

She squints up at me as a trio of freshmen jockey to get into the shot. “I’m late, Jess.” She turns and keeps walking.

I scramble down to her, grabbing her sleeve. “Wait.

Why haven’t you returned my calls or emails? You could have at least texted. Are you totally pissed?”

She stops and just looks at me for a moment, inscrutable. “I had that makeup test for English, remember?”

she finally says. “I was busy.”

“So we’re okay?” I ask, wanting to be relieved.

“Of course,” she says, her eyes on the Amnesty International bake sale flier taped above my shoulder.

“Really?” I ask, waiting for a smile.

“Sure. Why? Is this the big
why didn’t you return my
calls
scene?” Then she smiles. But it is a smile worse than the not-smiling. She pivots and returns to the downstream flow. I make my way back up to the second-floor landing, feeling punched.

At lunch Kara is standing outside the entrance to the cafeteria, hunched over her habitual Prickly Pear cup. She has a walkie-talkie tucked into the back waistband of her black cords, exposing pink cotton briefs. Wouldn’t all our lives be 58

easier if the networks got together and made chic pants with an equipment pouch in them? “Ben,” she says, addressing my shadow, “Sam’s in there, so you can take lunch.” He trudges off, lighter in hand, camera dangling at his side.

“Okay, Jess, you’re sitting with Nico and Mel.”

“Do
they
know that?”

Kara nods.

“Look, can we do whatever it is you’re envisioning here tomorrow? I really need to talk to Caitlyn.”

“After. They’re already on line, so scoot. Doritos!” she trills, which I guess will be her new shorthand for, “
We
own you
.”

Knowing there is no “after,” that Caitlyn and I don’t cross paths again following lunch on Thursdays, I shuffle into the bustling cafeteria with twisted lips. I take my place at the end of the hot dog line and stare at the twelve rows of full tables that run from Loser Town by the beverage dispensers to Hipville at the windows. I have always sat comfortably in the middle, surrounded by other reasonably attractive people, like Rob DeNunzio, Emily Franken, Jennifer Lanford, people who have unembarrassing clothes, decent social skills, and solid senses of humor, but who lack things like sports cars and nose jobs and Elsa Peretti silver. I inch toward my tepid lunch meat and wonder if my ass hitting the orange Formica bench of Nico’s table will trigger the beginning of some Indiana Jones–

style action sequence. Sand will pour out of the wall, and the whole table will gradually submerge, letting Nico and me into an alternative culture of friendship just waiting to 59

be exposed all these years.

Or she’ll finally tell me she hates my haircut.

As the camera sharks over to Nico, I follow, now wondering if this has all been the most elaborate
Punk’d
ever.

But across from Melanie and Nico is an empty spot.

“Hey, is this Trisha’s?” I ask, pointing to the tray-sized space.

Nico pauses the overstuffed bun to her mouth, already flecked with sauerkraut. “Trisha’s MIA, babe. C’mon down.” She exposes her palm in invitation.

I rest my tray down, listening for sand. “What do you mean, MIA? I thought she was still recovering from her . . . accident.”

Melanie looks up from where she’s carefully slicing fruit into her yogurt. “She hasn’t returned our calls.”

“And her batshit insane mother will only say that she

‘needed a break’ and has gone to her aunt’s in West Palm.”

Nico pauses to swallow. “What, like, she’s Britney and has to hide out and recoup?” She looks to Melanie. “She’s our best friend. I mean, I get you’re pissed but at least answer your phone. What if I needed her?” I lean forward to commiserate about Caitlyn, but Nico plows on. “She didn’t make the show. Get over it.” The edge to her voice in contrast to the dulcet maternal cooings in the bathroom suddenly makes me question if she knows about Trisha and Jase after all. She holds up her condiment-smeared hands, and Melanie reaches into her bag and passes her a Wet One. Nico blows her a kiss in gratitude.

“So . . . ” I start, knowing I should be bringing something to the table conversation-wise, but the nerves and camera stymie me.

“Wait, is that
Drew
sitting with
Jase
?” Nico asks in disbelief, swiveling her long torso on the bench.

“Yes, XTV has sponsored Adopt-a-Dork Day,” I say on our collective behalf.

“I didn’t mean it that way.” She reaches across and squeezes my forearm with her freshly cleaned palm. “It’s, just, what will they have to say to each other?”

“Sex and sports.” I shrug.

“Does Drew do either?” she asks, still swiveling and swanning to get a better look. “He doesn’t have a MySpace page, a Facebook page—he doesn’t Twitter.”

“He runs cross-country. And I’m sure Jen broke him in,” Melanie quips.

Nico snorts with laughter. Full-on snorts. Someday I would love to be able to be tall enough and blond enough that I could snort and still look cool.

At the end of the day, with my camera-fueled adrenaline flatlining, I push out the front door into the biting air and watch as the yellow buses slowly snake out of the gates. I spot the Camry parked at the periphery of the emptying lot and, ignoring my bike, run over, my bag hitting against my hip. Leaning down on the passenger side, I see Caitlyn staring out the window, the tip of her thumbnail between her front teeth. “You okay?”

She nods but won’t look at me. I open the door and slide in. “Cay?” I start to lean forward, but she puts her other hand up in my face. “Caitlyn.”

She shrugs, staring out the windshield, her eyes watering as she shakes her head back and forth. “Oh my God,”

I murmur. “I’m so sorry.”

“But I’m . . . really happy . . . for you,” she manages as the tears roll down her cheeks, seeping into her white down coat in dark wet spots. “I just . . . want you to know.”

“Cay, I know, but—”

“No. Just—I’m happy for you, and I don’t think I can really talk about this right now or with you or . . . maybe at all.”

She rakes her sleeve across her face, and I feel a cold seep up my chest.

“You
know
I didn’t expect this—I’m the last person who would expect this! If it wasn’t for the scholarship—”

“I know. I know that. But I can’t . . . I’ve been holding it together for the past two days. I just—need to go home, okay? I’ll drop you. But can we just not talk about this?”