Famous in Love Page 2

  My sister ignores the question and looks me up and down. “Where have you been?”

  Ever since she got pregnant, Joanna has considered herself to be totally grown up. She had this huge belly at her high school graduation, and yet she was instructing me on how to clean my room and how not to come home after curfew. As if becoming a mom made her my mom, too.

  I shrug. “Trinkets n’ Things.”

  She eyes me. “What were you doing?”

  “Selling drugs out the back door.”

  Joanna rolls her eyes and flops onto the couch. “Mom was supposed to come home an hour ago.”

  “I’m not sure what to tell you.” I rub my hand in small circles over Annabelle’s back, but she just blinks a few times and then starts crying again. Joanna picks herself up off the couch and snatches Annabelle out of my hands.

  Joanna sighs. “Look, just tell Mom I left.”

  She hooks her bag over her arm, shifts Annabelle, and heads out the door. Annabelle waves as they go, her hand like a duck beak, a tear rolling down her cheek.

  After they leave, the house is dead silent. The quiet feels strange to me. When I was growing up, our house was filled with kids, and the older I got, the more people were around. My brothers always had friends over, and by the time I got to fifth grade, Joanna was already attached to Bill.

  I hoist my bag on my shoulder and plod my way upstairs. Once I’m in my room, I take the flyer out of my pocket, smooth the edges down flat on the carpet, and look at it.

  There is a black-and-white picture of a girl on the front, but she’s in silhouette, so it’s hard to make out any details about who she is or what she looks like. Printed across the top of the page are the words OPEN CASTING CALL FOR LOCKED. They give me goose bumps. It’s the same feeling I get in an auditorium or a movie theater right when the lights go down. Like maybe that could be me up there. That someday people might know my name, even recognize me. That I wouldn’t be little Paige, the runt of the Townsen litter. I’d just be Paige Townsen: the one and only. That feeling of possibility. Of the fact that right here and right now, everything could change.

  The odds of my getting this part are practically nonexistent, I know that, but still, someone has to. Why not me?

  My cell phone lights up. It’s Cassandra. She’s talking even before I say hello.

  “… I think I fell asleep halfway through.”

  “The movie?”

  She huffs, like duh. “What are you doing tonight?”

  I fold the flyer over in my hands, embarrassed to even be holding it. What I’m doing is practicing. What I’m doing is reading that book cover to cover.

  “I’m kind of tired,” I say.

  “Laurie make you stock shelves?”

  “Yes,” I lie. The truth is I did nothing but play thumb war with myself behind the register. We had only two customers come in today, and neither one bought anything.

  “Jake is here,” Cassandra says. I hear some rustling and whispering, and then she comes back on the phone. “Maybe we’ll stop by later?”

  I picture Jake turning down the cell. He’s petrified of radiation and refuses to even carry one, which makes meeting up kind of difficult. Luckily he’s usually with one of us already.

  “Sounds good,” I say.

  Jake shouts good-bye—Cassandra must have held the phone out—and then it clicks off.

  I hear my dad’s car pull into the driveway. I don’t have to look out my window to know he’s opening the car door, walking around the back to get his briefcase, checking both car mirrors, then the tires, then clicking the lock twice, and walking in the door. He does the same routine every day and has been probably since he could drive. I imagine my dad going through the whole thing when they pulled into the hospital on the nights my siblings and I were born. Did my mom yell? In all my years of seeing my dad’s parking regimen, I’ve never once heard her try to hurry him up.

  I walk out onto the landing and see him come in. My dad wears a bow tie every day. He even has some of those tweed jackets with the elbow patches on them.

  “You look like a teacher,” I tell him.

  He looks up and smiles. “Funny you should say that. I just came from school.”

  “It’s summer vacation,” I say, making my way downstairs, “haven’t you heard?”

  “Curriculums rest for no man.”

  My dad is the only member of my family who gets me. He’s also the quietest person I know. I never realized he was a morning person until I joined the swim team sophomore year and had to wake up early for practice. I came downstairs one morning at five AM to find him sipping from a coffee cup. He was so still the air around him could have been water and he wouldn’t even have made a ripple.

  He smiles at me when I reach the last step. “Where’s your sister?”

  I try to remember where she said she was going. I shrug and follow him into the kitchen. “Dunno.”

  Unlike the rest of my family, my dad doesn’t discourage my acting ambitions. My sister thinks I’m too self-involved; my brothers don’t understand it because it’s not a team sport. My mom thinks acting is best reserved for daydreams and the occasional community production, not for “real life.”

  My dad, though. My dad has never told me outright what he thinks, but I feel his support. I’ve often heard him say that parenting is like a building. One person has to be the height; the other, the foundation. My dad isn’t a tall man, but he’s a solid one. With four children, if you’re the base, you’re pretty well cemented in there.

  He gives me a little nod and heads into his bedroom. He’ll spend the afternoon fixing whatever is broken around the house. He does all the upkeep himself, always has.

  I crane my neck to make sure my sister isn’t pulling into the driveway, and then go to her bookshelf and run my hand across the spines until I find her copy of Locked. I don’t know why I’m being so sneaky about it. It’s not like she wouldn’t let me borrow it or anything. It’s just that I feel like if she saw me she’d somehow know. She’d put it together and then when I didn’t get the part it would be further confirmation that my dreams are stupid and shallow and totally unrealistic. I don’t really need any more of that in our house. And yet—

  What would you sacrifice for love?

  The one line, printed across the top of the back cover, makes my heart speed up to a sprint. I take it to my room and close the door. I pull the flyer out from underneath my bed and hold them both in my hands. The girl on the book cover has her back turned, but unlike on the flyer, you can tell her hair is red. It tumbles down her back and looks like it runs right into the waves of the ocean. They surround her, about to swallow her whole.

  I open to the first page, and then I start to read.

  CHAPTER 3

  Saturday goes by absurdly slowly. There are even fewer people in Trinkets n’ Things than there were during the week, and Laurie has decided to take the day to lead an aromatherapy workshop in the back room. I wonder if anyone has ever died from a sandalwood overdose.

  I finished the first book yesterday morning—read it straight through in one sitting. And the truth is I get why Cassandra hasn’t been able to stop talking about the romance, and why it seems the entire world hasn’t put the books down. They’re phenomenal. And the love story is just so, so good. It’s the ultimate fantasy. August and Noah, her longtime crush and boyfriend’s best friend, are the only surviving members of a plane crash that had her boyfriend and younger sister on board. They learn Noah is a descendant of the island and its people—a position that comes with power. The power to heal August after she’s almost killed by the crash and—I won’t ruin it for you. Let’s just say love isn’t easy, even when you’re the sole survivors of a plane crash and you have the hots for each other.

  I jump back in and make it halfway through the second book before asking Laurie if I can head out a little early. She says yes, of course. Actually what she says is, “It’s Saturday. No one comes in on Saturday.”

 
I close the door to the back room behind me and loop the keys around the hook by the tarot card shelf. I grab my bag from behind the counter, and as I’m leaning down I catch a reflection of myself in the mirror—my hair whipped around my face, my cheeks flushed and red. For just a moment, I don’t recognize myself. I could be anyone. Even August.

  Droves of girls are wandering around when I get there. It’s not surprising, but the sight is pretty spectacular. There must be a thousand people outside the Aladdin. The last time I saw this many people in one place was when my brother took me to a Muse concert freshman year. We don’t really spend a lot of time together. My brothers and I, I mean. There was a period when my sister was kind of close with them, but I think by the time I came around the novelty of having a sister had long worn off. I remember being really surprised Jeff would want me to go. It turned out, once we got there, that he just wanted me to watch the car, because free parking was really hard to come by. “You can sit here and listen to the music,” he said. I didn’t even say anything, totally afraid I’d burst right into tears, and afterward, when he dropped me off at home and my mom asked me how it was, I lied and said great. Telling her the truth somehow seemed too humiliating.

  I work my way inside the audition space. There seem to be two lines. One for people who have registered and one for people who haven’t. The nonregistered line is way, way shorter. The majority of people, unlike myself, have prepared for this. Everyone else already has their forms, and they are filling them out on clipboards. They’re sitting in chairs, lining the floor, leaning against the walls.

  Most of the girls are with their mothers, and for a slight second I feel a wave of familiar sadness. My mom and I have gone to exactly two auditions together. The first was for a cereal commercial when I was seven. I remember I saw the flyer in the grocery store and begged her to take me. She didn’t want to, but eventually my father convinced her it wasn’t a terrible idea, and maybe I’d make a little money in the process. I got all dressed up in my best dress and the shoes my mom had bought me for Christmas that year, and we went, hand in hand.

  We didn’t even make it into the audition, though. My mom took one look at the other girls and decided we weren’t going to “play,” as she put it. “It’s a beauty pageant,” she’d said. “There is absolutely no way we’re participating.”

  I’ve always gone to auditions alone, and in secret. She supports school- and theater-related projects, mostly because she thinks they are somehow “academic,” but anything with film she’s been against pretty much from the beginning.

  I make my way to the reception desk, where a woman with a smile like a line hands me a sheet of paper. I take the form and fill it out on the edge of the table, careful to hand it back to her with a smile. She gives me a number in return and waves me off. There are no seats available, so I lean on the wall and put in my headphones.

  For my birthday this spring, Jake made me audio recordings of all my favorite films. He even put them on my iPod. I can listen to Empire Records while I’m biking home from school or walking to work.

  Today I choose a recording of Singin’ in the Rain. It’s corny, but I’ve always loved classic movies. There is something about seeing the screen without a ton of CGI or animation that just feels so cinematic. Important. Like the work those actors were doing meant something.

  The sound of Gene Kelly’s voice sweeps over me, and I sit back against the wall, knees tucked up to my chest. I let myself think about what it would be like to get this part. To be in a real film. To prove to my family that this is more than an adolescent fantasy.

  I let myself think about what it would be like to actually live my dream.

  And just like that, I’m Debbie Reynolds. My eyes slip closed, and when she speaks, it’s me. On the stage. In the spotlight. So much so that when they call my name and I hand over my number, hours later, I’m still singing my heart out. And when I read the lines, it’s like I’m Debbie Reynolds reading the lines. And when they call this man in, this beautiful, tall, blond guy to read with me, it’s like he really is Gene Kelly. And when they ask us to do the scene together, it’s like we’re in the film and it’s raining all around us. A soft, steady pitter-patter.

  “I’m Rainer.” He holds out his hand to me, and I take it. He pulls me toward him, and before I’ve had time to even say my name, we’ve begun. We’re August and Noah. And it feels right. No, it feels better than right. It feels perfect. It feels like every moment of my life has been leading to this one.

  It’s not until the audition finishes, what feels like days later, and I go outside that I realize it’s actually raining. And the funny thing is I’ve lived in Portland my entire life and this is the first time I can remember ever forgetting an umbrella.

  Three months later, we’re on the set.

  CHAPTER 4

  “August and Noah are already household names, and soon Paige Townsen will be, too. The bestselling book series Locked is coming to life on the big screen, and we have the first pictures from set, where filming is already underway. Townsen will play August, the mortal girl caught between her human boyfriend, Ed, and supernatural crush, Noah. Rainer Devon, best known for his work in Over You, will play Noah. The role of Ed hasn’t been cast yet.

  David and Mark Hess penned the script, with Wyatt Lippman directing.”

  Rainer reads from the trades, and I crane over him to try to reach for it. “Watch yourself, PG,” he says, and I snatch it out of his hands.

  “Please,” I say. “Can’t we have five minutes in the morning without this stuff?”

  Even though this is only our third week on set—and we’ll be here for a few months—it seems like we’ve clocked close to a thousand hours together. I pull my robe tighter around me and sip the coffee that has just been set down. There is a nice, cool breeze, and if you sit outside, like we are on the balcony of Rainer’s condo, you can see all the way down to the ocean.

  We’re in Hawaii, by the way.

  There were two more rounds of auditions in Portland, and then a trip to L.A. to meet and audition for the studio and about one hundred producers. There was the hiring of an agent and a lawyer and rounds and rounds of negotiations and more documents with my name on them than could fill a library. But I got the part. And the beautiful guy, Mr. Gene Kelly, and I landed in Maui to start filming Locked. The love story that has taken the world by storm. And I’m playing the lead. It still doesn’t feel real, despite the evidence all around me.

  The book is set on an island in the Pacific Northwest, but Hawaii was offering tax breaks that would allow us to start shooting almost immediately, so here we are. Beaches, palm trees. We’ve even turned an old plantation house into a soundstage and built the one set we have, the little hut Noah and August share on the island. They’ve rented nearly an entire hotel of condos for the cast and crew. It’s where we’re all staying and where a lot of the various offices and departments are—editorial, hair and makeup, props.…

  Rainer clucks his tongue. “Should we move our tabloid time to lunch, then?” He looks at me, an eyebrow raised.

  “Funny,” I say.

  “Charming,” he says, shrugging. “But close.”

  Rainer and I are lovers. No, actually: Noah and August are lovers. Not us. We’re just friends. He was the first one cast and the guy I read with in Portland. He’s the producer’s son and has been acting his entire life. Not theater, like me, but real movies. Television and film. The big stuff. He was in a movie last year with that actress Taylor, where they played neighbors whose parents get killed in a car crash, but it turns out to not be an accident. I’m not ruining this because I think every person on the planet saw it twice, but the big twist was that Taylor’s character’s parents actually killed Rainer’s. They still ended up together, though. He saved her from her parents and then whisked her off to Europe with the inheritance his parents had left him. They changed their names and bought a villa.

  The producers keep telling us to be prepared, that these rol
es are going to change our lives, but I’m not sure how his could get any bigger. He’s already known as Hollywood’s golden guy, and I’ve made a promise to Cassandra that if he’s single, I will fly her out here to be his girlfriend. I don’t think he is, though. How could he be? He’s famous and gorgeous and has the cutest dimple on the right side of his face. He’s got shaggy blond locks and beautiful blue eyes, and his body looks like a superhero’s. Guys like that are never single. It’s, like, a fact of life. Or, you know, science.

  There’s also the slight issue that he’s older. Twenty-two to Cassandra’s (and my) seventeen. Even though he’s playing a teenager, I hardly think he’d fall for one.

  I look away from him. We’ve become good friends, it’s true, but I don’t share his nonchalance on set. I feel out of my element here, and not just because I’ve never done a movie before. This thing is on another level. The pressure to make August real, to make her loved, is something that stays with me from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep. Rainer keeps telling me to relax, but I think that’s easy for him to say. He’s used to this.

  Seriously, if you Google him, there are sixty-one million results, and that’s not even counting news, blogs, or image searches. Up until a month ago if you Googled me all you saw was one track race I qualified for, and the news clipping for the production of The Sound of Music I was in. If you clicked on the link, though, the page had expired.

  Locked—the first book, anyway—is mostly August and Noah on the island alone together. As they figure out why they’re there, and how to survive, they begin to fall in love. There are a few smaller roles that they’ve cast, and we’ll film those scenes near the end of shooting. They’re still looking to cast someone to play Ed, August’s boyfriend, who she thinks died in the plane crash. We won’t meet him for a few weeks, at the earliest. For now it’s just me and Rainer, alone in Hawaii. Well, us and the entire movie crew—which occasionally includes the author, Parker Witter. I’ve seen her around a bit, but from what I’ve heard, she’s a recluse. She hasn’t so much as spoken to us once since we’ve been here.