The Real Real (7 page)
She grips the steering wheel with the fingerless gloves my grandmother knit for us both last Christmas.
“Yeah, yes, whatever you need.” I sit frozen beside her.
She inhales deeply, blinking up at the wilting fabric coming down around the defunct roof light.
“So how was the French test?” I try.
“Fine.” She reaches out to push on the radio and Akon fills the space between us. She twists up the volume, 62
underlining how much she doesn’t want to talk. Putting on my seat belt, I follow her lead to clear off the windshield condensation with our coat sleeves. She puts the car into drive and, sniffing back her tears, navigates us out of the lot and onto Main Street. As we slow in front of the first stoplight, I struggle with the temptation to jump out so she can roll over me with all four tires.
I grab the knob to lower the music and turn to her. “I wanna shoot myself.”
“No!” This just makes her cry harder. “Jesse, no! I’m
happy
for you! I just really wanted this.
Really
really. It seemed like the answer to everything.”
“Okay, well, I am reporting back from the front that it is, in fact, literally, a giant, sweaty pain in the ass.”
“But I wanted it! I wanted that giant, sweaty pain in my ass!” We stare at each other, her eyes wide, her words hanging between us. She can’t help but break into a grin.
We both crack up, warmth flooding my chest like someone poked a giant sewing needle through the crapbox’s roof to break the tension.
“This sucks.”
“So bad,” she sighs, leaning her head against the headrest and taking the turn off Main.
I look at her splotchy cheeks, and it is suddenly clear to me that this—this post-needle poking laugh about sweaty butts is how things need to be. The part where she’s sobbing and I feel lower than roadkill’s gotta go. “Okay, XTV
is not going to rain on our last semester.”
“Pissing. They’re pissing on it.”
“There has to be some way to get you on.”
“
I
don’t have what they want. I don’t have the long hair and legs, or the drama or whatever.”
“What they want . . . ” I twist my lips, racking my brain, as we turn onto Clover Road and I catch sight of the ludicrous Roman fountain that makes a promise the rest of Trisha’s sprawling ranch just can’t deliver. “Turn around!”
I slap the dashboard.
“What?” Caitlyn slams on the brakes.
“I’ve got the drama to get you cast. Turn around!”
“Jesse, I’ve got to get the car home so my mom can get to work.”
“I have my bike—just turn around before I lose my nerve!”
“Kara?” I call out as I step into the trailer, past the benches, past the kitchen, past the gray bulbs lining the makeup mirrors, to the door ajar at the far end. I stand for a moment between the bulging clothing racks to give myself a two-second pep talk before walking into the blue light spilling from the doorway. “Kara?”
The only illumination comes from a pyramid of television monitors stacked atop a desk, which also currently supports Kara’s earphone-covered head. I freeze, mesmerized by the images of us, of school, Drew, me. Oh my God,
me
! For a moment the cameras and mike packs are forgotten, and I feel a panic like I just found myself in a towel on YouTube. Jesse, focus!
“Um, hello?” I tentatively tap Kara’s scarf-covered shoulder and she whips up.
“Yeah?” she says loudly, quickly swiping her blouse sleeve over her red eyes before tugging off the headphones.
Has she been crying? “Yes, Jesse. What can I do for you?”
She puts her glasses back on.
“I was wondering if we could talk for a minute.”
“Sure. Can’t be any less riveting than the thirty thousand dollars of tedium we shot today.”
“Sorry?”
“What were they thinking? The Hamptons in January!
But Network wanted a midseason premiere to capitalize on the
Park Avenue Confidential
buzz, so here I am—
trying to unearth glamour beneath layers of salt-stained down and fleece. I should get one of those applications to the Prickly Peach, ’cause I seem to have bet my entire career on a bunch of adolescent nothings.”
“Pear.”
“Huh?” She blows her nose on a Kleenex that looks like it’s had a workout, and, looking around for somewhere to toss it, she ends up lifting her right hip to shove it into her cords pocket.
“Nothing. Um, I’m sure I could get you an application if you wanted. The chick who works with me is a total loser. I bet they’d be psyched to have someone with your experience—”
“Jesse.” She takes her glasses back off to rub her bloodshot eyes.
“Yeah.”
“What do you want?”
“Okay.” I drop into the swivel chair next to hers and tuck my hair behind my ears. I decide to give the direct route one last try. “So, I know you think you have, like, all the kids you need for your cast. It’s just . . . none of them are funny. . . . They’re cool to look at, I guess, but don’t people want to laugh? My friend Caitlyn is pretty
and
really,
really
funny—”
“Great. Great. Does she have her own plane? A parent with a Class A drug problem? A six-figure shoplifting addiction? No? Well, then, not really going to help me.
You guys just aren’t delivering.”
I take in the monitors, all of us, even Nico, sallow against our hallways’ pea-green tiles. “If you wanted the whole
Park Avenue Confidential
thing, why aren’t you filming at a private school in the city?”
“To quote Fletch, ‘
Those
parents aren’t going to bend over for a forty-thousand-dollar check from Doritos.’”
“Oh.”
“Sorry, that was rude.” She shakes her head in disbelief.
“God, I’m exhausted. Listen, I just don’t have time. I’ve got to finish a test tape to overnight to Fletch, and right now I have exactly zero minutes of airtime drama—”
“But I’ve got drama for you!” I rush, staying just a few breaths ahead of my conscience. “I can tell you about drama, but I think you also really need funny.”
She studies my face. “What drama?”
“I just . . . know something between some people in the cast I could tell you about, but only if you promise to 66
cast Caitlyn, which I swear you won’t regret because she is
totally
entertaining.”
“Okay. Jesse, I can’t
promise
to do anything. That’s Fletch’s call, and he’s at Sundance for, like, ten days, so nothing’s happening right now except my potential firing.”
She exhales a slow stream of air. “But I can promise to try.”
“Really try? Like tell-him-how-hysterically-entertaining-Caitlyn-is try?”
“Yes. Now what do you know?”
Spit back out to the corridor of darkened makeup mirrors, I fight down the yuckwave set in motion by Kara digging for her cell and yes-ing me out the door. Leaning into the Formica laminate, I try to distinguish actual words in her muffled chirp, try to hear the outcome of my maybe-nottotally-thought-through pitch, try to ignore the intrusive vision of Dad’s disappointed face if he knew what I just did.
But what did I do,
really
? What? Told about two crappy people doing crappy things to save an opposite-of-crappy person so she could do a not-crap thing? With me! And get money for college!
I avoid my reflection and turn to where the yellow parking lot light slices through the blinds onto the bulletin board of wardrobe photos of Nico and Jase and—God, why do I even care? They’re not my friends. Nico flat-out said so. And Trisha’s such a bitch, and Jase’s so . . . so—
it’s not like I told about his dad hitting him. Seriously. It’s not my fault Kara’s face lit up like I’d given her next week’s Powerball numbers.
I push myself toward the trailer door. I mean, I couldn’t even answer most of her questions. Like I would even
know
the details! Like I was in the sleeping bag with them . . .
ugh. I freeze, my hand on the handle. That’s what this feels like, like
I
cheated in that frigid half-built guesthouse.
Suddenly the door whips open, jerking me down the little steps and into the freezing cold. I trip forward, one foot over the other, narrowly missing the icy pavement before I right myself. It’s Jase—red-faced and sweat-streaked from basketball. He grips the door wide open against the side of the trailer, his rolled-up mike pack in his other hand. His blue eyes lock on to me.
“Hey!” My voice too loud in the empty lot, I feel my shoulders dart protectively to my ears. “I just forgot to drop off my mike pack, too! That’s what I’m doing here.”
His expression hard, he stares down his nose, his hand resting on the handle, his stillness implying when I move—he’ll leap.
“So . . . so, see you,” I sputter. There’s no way he could know what I just did.
His chest rises and falls in his damp T-shirt, vapor from his nostrils visible in the frigid air. I lift my foot to walk backward a few feet. He watches, silent. I turn away and, abandoning my bike, not letting myself break into a run, steady with the exception of chattering teeth, make it to the brick columns that frame the exit and then pivot onto the sidewalk home. I don’t look back once.
“
What’s there to eat in this kitchen that’s not on my person?” Caitlyn yells over the music, adjusting the Saran Wrap keeping her wild-honey-and-chamomile-tea-soaked hair from falling into her oatmeal-and-yogurt face mask.
“What’s on
my
person.” I run my finger across my jawline for some mashed banana to offer her. Declined, I lick it off and join Rihanna in the dance bridge, sock-sliding across the wood floor to check what Dad left for us in the fridge.
“I feel like a mozzarella stick.” Caitlyn peers in over my shoulder.
“Well, you smell like a cereal bar.” I pull open the freezer door and halfheartedly poke through the tinfoil69
wrapped restaurant leftovers. “Let’s order pizza.”
“Brilliant. How much guilt money did your folks leave?”
“Are you kidding? I’m the one who didn’t go to Grandma’s ’cause I have to work Sunday. I practically had to pay them. I have, like, fifteen bucks.”
“But it’s so worth it to spend the night
avec moi
.” Caitlyn bats her eyelashes, flaking oatmeal onto the countertop while I grab the phone. “Let’s watch the scary one first and then the funny one to calm ourselves down,” she mouths over the Blockbuster cases while I rest my elbows on the counter to place the order, careful not to get the phone sticky with banana or the avocado mask in my hair.
“All Johnny Depp, all the time,” I say after hanging up.
“Jack the Ripper or Peter Pan, it’s all good.” The timer on the ancient wall stove buzzes.
“You’re done!” Caitlyn switches it off and leans over my iPod station to pick our next number. “Go rinse, then step aside, ’cause I’ve got”—she glances up at the glowing numbers ticking down on the microwave—“sixteen minutes to go until gorgeous.”
I give her a thumbs-up before jogging through the living room and up the stairs, pumping my fists in time to the opening bars of Spoon’s “Way We Get By,” before I realize I’m leaving a trail of conditioning avocado blobs behind. Placing my hands under my neck like a tray, I book it to the bathroom and carefully strip down to rinse off the contents of our Friday Night Spa Date. I’m smashing 70
guacamole chunks into the drain with my toes and debating whether we should actually bake the frozen cookie dough like grown-ups when the shower curtain rips open to reveal a bug-eyed Caitlyn.
“What the hell?!” I scream, wrapping the other side of the curtain around myself.
“XTV,” she whispers, her face white at the edge of her congealed mask.
“Huh?” I wipe the water out of my eyes with my free hand. But she’s already in motion, kicking off her socks while tugging at the Saran Wrap. Giving up, she jumps into the bathtub behind me, the spray soaking her clothes.
“XTV is in your
living room
,” she whispers frantically as I whip a towel off the wall rack and exchange it for the curtain before the whole bathroom gets soaked.
“On a Friday night?” I ask as she moves me aside to frantically shampoo her sticky hair, the bottle flying out of her hands and ricocheting off the tile before I can catch it. “But I thought they want to film us together. We’re not together on the weekends. For all I know, Nico locks herself in a cryogenic chamber from Friday to Monday. Cay, just stop for one second and tell me what’s going on.”
“I was lip-synching. Using the glass patio doors like a mirror and . . . and I guess I couldn’t hear the front doorbell over the music. They must’ve come around to the backyard—the next thing I know I’m not seeing me in the reflection, I’m seeing that woman from the show with her hand raised to knock, just looking in at me like . . . like I’m 71
a
freak
.” Her hands pause above either side of her sudsy head, her eyes flitting as she relives the horror. I share her cringe, flashing to what they must’ve seen with the lights ablaze—Caitlyn’s
American Idol
broadcast in high def to Mom’s Hummel figurines.
“Okay.” I step out of the tub and pull the curtain closed. “Were the cameras on? Was the little flashing light green or red?”
“No cameras.” A ball of sticky Saran Wrap lobs over the bar, and I catch it to drop in the wicker waste bin. “It was just that woman—the short, dark-haired one with the glasses.”
“Kara?” I jerk my jeans up over my damp legs. “In my living room?”
Caitlyn turns off the water with a squeak and darts her arm out to feel for a towel. “You have to lend me jeans.
And earrings.” She climbs past me, already reaching for the hair dryer. “Plug in the curling iron.” Her voice cracks as she catches her scrubbed raw appearance in the fogging mirror.
“Wait, Cay, this is good!” I grab her wet shoulders. “Fletch must be back! She must be here to tell us you’re in!”
“Before my Floor Show of Crazy changed her mind.”
She tugs open my drawer and grabs a round brush.
“Did she say that?” I whip on my henley. “Did she say she changed her mind?”
“She didn’t tell me anything. She just said she needs to talk to you.”