Havoc: Mayhem Series #4

by Jamie Shaw

  “We’ll make sure your brother doesn’t do something that dumb. No cheerleading captains for him.” His hand squeezes mine, and he gives me a sexy smile that charms all my blood to my cheeks. “Only pretty baton twirlers.”

  By the time Mike and I break back through the trees, the entire space looks much less like chaos and much more like business. All of the extras are lining up just inside the tree line, directed by a hive of staff workers that buzz here, there, here, there. Mike leads me away from them, through the stragglers heading toward the woods.

  “You!” a woman in cargo pants and a black thermal shouts at me when we’re halfway to the pond, and I hold tighter on to Mike’s hand, feeling like I’m breaking the rules by being with him. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  I glance over my shoulder and then back at her, unnerved by the excitement in her smile as she bursts through my personal bubble. She grins in my face, looks me up and down, and circles behind me.

  “Huh?” I manage as she completes her 360-degree inspection. That smile is even bigger when she stands in front of me again.

  “The girl in the red dress. Wow, you’re stunning. I saw you walking through here earlier and—” She finally seems to notice Mike. “Wait, you’re the drummer, right? Mike?”

  Mike and I share a confused look.

  “Oh, this is perfect,” she says with a smoker’s texture to her voice, clapping her hands together. “Are you a couple?” To Mike, she asks, “This girl is too pretty for just a fling in the woods, right?”

  “No,” I stammer, and the woman lifts a sandy-blonde eyebrow at me.

  “No to the couple or no to the fling?” She dismisses her own question with a quick shake of her head. “No, look, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. PAUL!” She shouts over her shoulder. “PAUL, I FOUND HER!”

  “I’m . . . just . . . Hailey,” I stammer, at a loss for all other words. When the woman glances back at me, her smile stretches and stretches and stretches.

  “Oh, no, sweetie. You are my girl in red.” She leans down to be eye level with me, her green eyes sparking with enthusiasm. “You are my star.”

  “Alright, listen up!” Out in the clearing, Paul, the director, holds a microphone to his mouth. His voice thunders through the speakers concealed in the trees, and Dee interrupts it in my ear.

  “I swear to God I had nothing to do with this.”

  We’re standing shoulder to shoulder just inside the tree line, along with hundreds of other people. But I know that the massive camera stationed out in the clearing is pointed at me. After all, in the words of Jillian the producer, I am the star.

  There was no convincing her that she had the wrong girl. She had her heart set on me, and when I told her I couldn’t be in her video because my psychopath cousin would hate me for it, she simply held my face in her hands and told me not to let anyone dull my shine.

  My shine? What shine?

  Still, how could I argue with that?

  Mike was the one who stepped in to assure me I didn’t have to be in the video if I didn’t want to, but everyone was looking at me, and I knew what it would mean for Dee’s career for me to show off her dress, and just . . . here I am. It’s an epically terrible idea, and here I am. The star.

  “You really didn’t put her up to it?” I accuse Dee again, even though I believe her when she insists she didn’t. My teeth are chattering, and it has nothing to do with the cold.

  “I promise.”

  “I’m going to faint,” I warn through my growing nausea. The frigid autumn air feels like thick molasses hardening in my belly.

  “You’re not going to faint.”

  “I’m going to die.”

  Unsympathetic, Dee argues, “All you have to do is walk.”

  Easier said than done when my knees are shaking more than a newborn pony’s.

  “Danica is going to kill me when she sees me in this video.”

  Dee turns to me then, her flawless face illuminated by the fifty-foot-tall crane showering its white spotlight on us. “All Danica said was that you can’t see Mike anymore, right?” I nod, and she says, “So tell her that your scenes were shot separately. You can even say I made you be in the video to show off my dress. Hopefully she’ll call me to confirm.” Her wicked grin reveals her violent intention, and a chill races up my spine.

  “She’s still going to be livid that I was in it.” I can hear her now—You took my idea, my role, my boyfriend. And the thing is, she wouldn’t exactly be wrong about any of it.

  I’m frowning when Dee loses her devilish smile and says, “I know she has you in a tough spot, but you need to realize that a girl like Danica is always going to have something to hate you for, Hailey. She’s always going to find a reason to be mad at you. I know you think you can walk on eggshells with her until you graduate, but I love you enough to tell you that you’re wrong.”

  I want to tell Dee that she’s the one who’s wrong. I want to tell her that it’s only two years, that I can get through two years. But then the director is finishing his speech and asking if there are any questions. And since I can’t very well ask him to repeat everything he just said, I simply stand there like a deer in ten-thousand-megawatt headlights. Some staff workers get into position behind or beside cameras. A clapboard slaps shut.

  And then we’re walking.

  Step, step, step, step. I glance down at my feet, and someone shouts, “CUT!”

  “No, no, no, no, no!” Jillian complains as she marches up to me. “Who put this one here?” She shakes her head at Dee, sunglasses threatening to fly off the top of her head, and I realize she wasn’t talking to me at all. Everything about Dee’s stiff posture screams that she’s ready to go toe to toe with the producer standing in front of her, who’s preparing to get rid of her, but Jillian defuses her in an instant. “Sorry, honey, but you’re way too pretty. You’re taking attention away from Hailey. I need you somewhere else.”

  Jillian snaps her fingers, and a few staff workers rush over to show Dee where to go.

  “Are you sure you don’t want her to be the star?” I ask, looking over Dee’s shoulder at Jillian when Dee wraps me in a hug. Jillian waves dismissively at me as she walks away, and Dee whispers in my ear.

  “This is your moment, Hailey. Trust me, this is meant to be your moment. Show them what you’re made of.” She pulls away, smiles at me, and adds one more piece of super helpful advice. “Make my dress look good!”

  She leaves me. Quite happily, she lets herself be escorted away, and then I’m just standing there literally shaking in my boots.

  “Okay, everyone back in position!” Paul the director shouts, and everyone around me starts moving back into the trees. I follow their lead, shrinking under the spotlight. “Eyes toward the pond. Slow and steady. Backs straight. Aaand three, two—”

  The clapboard slaps shut, and we start walking again. We do one take, two takes, five takes, nine takes. On the tenth take, Paul starts walking up to me, and I don’t know whether to be ashamed that I let everyone down or relieved that they’ve finally realized I’m no star.

  He’s a skinny guy in skinny jeans, gray at his temples and long in his chin. “Hey, Red, listen . . . What’s your name?”

  Everyone is staring at me—the extras at my sides, the staff on the grass, the band out on the pond, Dee somewhere that is extremely not helpful to me. My voice is tiny and shy when I answer, “Hailey.”

  “Hailey,” Paul repeats softly, smiling at me. “What’s your last name, Hailey?”

  “Harper.”

  “Hailey Harper.” Still smiling, he places his hands on my shoulders. “You’re my star, Hailey Harper. Jillian was a genius casting you. We love everything about you. Your dress, your hair, your walk. You’ve got this really sweet, really sexy vibe going, and we love it . . . but we need to work on your face.”

  “My face . . .”

  “It’s gorgeous. Your big amber eyes and your long eyelashes. I love that you went with a nude shimme
r for your lips. Really, beautiful.” He squeezes my shoulder. “But Hailey, you look scared to death.”

  An embarrassed blush stains my cheeks, and I struggle to swallow.

  “Let’s talk about your motivation, okay?”

  “My motivation . . .”

  Paul smiles and nods. “Have you ever had your heart broken?”

  I think about it a moment, and then I shake my head.

  Frowning, he asks, “Really? Not even once?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, and after a moment, a light chuckle escapes him.

  “No, a pretty girl like you, I guess not. Okay, well, can you pretend? Can you think of a time you were really sad or depressed?”

  An image immediately enters my mind, but it’s not of the past—it’s of the future. I imagine a scenario I’ve imagined a thousand times: having to move back to Indiana. I picture leaving school, saying goodbye to my new friends, never seeing Mike again. That last part chokes me, and I nod my head.

  “Great! Okay, so tell me about it.”

  “Uh—” I panic, unwilling to surrender my secrets. “When my puppy died,” I lie, chewing on my bottom lip.

  “Perfect!” Paul says, and I’ve never seen someone so happy to hear about the death of a puppy. “I want you to remember how you felt when your puppy died. I want you to remember feeling like you’d never recover from that loss. And then I want you to imagine that freedom from that pain is within reach. Happiness is waiting for you on that platform over there—”

  He points, and my eyes lift to see Mike standing on the platform, arms crossed over his chest, watching me. Rowan waves, and the rest of the band watch me too. But it’s Mike that I focus on when the director says, “Imagine that you’re walking toward that feeling. Maybe happiness is a color. Maybe it’s a sound. Maybe it’s your puppy. In the video, it’s going to be a song. That song is going to make you love life again, Hailey. You just have to walk through the darkness to get to it.

  “Okay?” he asks, and I pull my eyes from Mike to nod.

  One last squeeze of my shoulder, a few last words of encouragement, and then the director takes his place behind the big rolling camera again. His fingers count three, two, one.

  A clapboard slaps shut.

  My eyes lock on Mike.

  And I walk.

  Chapter 32

  It’s insane, how much filming goes into a three-minute-long music video. We cut after every shot, every angle. Paul films shots of me standing in the woods, emerging from the woods, walking toward the pond. Fifty zillion takes, from at least a gajillion different cameras. Then he gets shots of me walking through the crowd that’s rocking out around the pond. “Be a pebble through water,” he instructs me, and I try to be a freaking pebble.

  The moon gets higher and higher, and not all of the shots include me, thank God. Paul gets plenty of shots of the band playing onstage, and I enjoy just watching them as their new song pours out of the speakers hung around the clearing. Even though the prerecorded song will be in the final video, the band scraps the production team’s plan and insists on playing it live for the fans, and the fans’ enthusiasm is authentic. Hands in the air, wild excitement on their faces. Paul gets shots of them jumping up and down to the song, of the band playing it, and then we do it all over again for the drones that fly overhead.

  The final shots are of me walking onto the dock while the band is playing, and then of me walking onto the platform after everything has been cleared off of it. It’s just me walking out into the middle, and then spinning around and around with my arms spread wide and my red dress twirling out around me.

  “Let it all go,” Paul had instructed me. “You’re in school, right? Just open up as you spin, and let your homework go, let your finals go, let your student loans go . . . Anything you can think of that’s been weighing you down, just twirl around and let it all go.”

  With thousands of people watching me, I spin round and around and around on that dock, the night air kissing my skin as I lose myself in the feeling I’ve been chasing after all night. I close my eyes and turn my face to the night sky, doing as Paul directed: I let my classes go, I let my debt to my uncle go. Twirling faster, I let Danica’s crushing presence go, I let her ultimatum go, and then I let her go completely. I remember Mike telling me he loves me, and this time, Danica isn’t there. It’s just me and him, and I feel what I should have felt when I heard him say those words. I smile at the moon, and I spin, and I spin, and I spin.

  “Cut!” Paul shouts, bringing me down from starlit clouds. I slow to a stop, laughing as the world continues spinning without me. The trees blur and I struggle to find my balance, expecting Paul to bark orders for another take, but instead, he stands up from his director’s chair at the end of the dock and shouts, “We got it! That’s a wrap!”

  He gives me a thumbs-up as thousands of people burst into cheers and applause, and I plop down on the platform, lying back while I wait for my head to stop spinning. I’m smiling at the moon when Mike’s face appears in its place, and then I smile at him instead.

  “You killed it,” he praises, offering me his hand. I reach up to grasp it, but instead of letting him help me up, I surrender to impulse and tug him down beside me.

  Mike lies on his back, his shoulder pressed against mine.

  “I leave in ten hours,” he says, and I reach down and link my fingers with his. I hold on, even when I know I have to let go. He was never mine to hold on to.

  “I don’t want to go,” he confesses, and I finally look over at him. He should be happy—his band just finished shooting an epic music video, a massive party is about to start, he’s going on an international tour tomorrow . . . but I find none of that in his eyes as he stares somberly over at me.

  “Why?” I ask, and he holds my hand tighter.

  “I haven’t even gotten to take you out yet,” he says, and my heart doesn’t know if it wants to cartwheel or simply curl up in a ball and cry.

  “Fancy restaurants are overrated.”

  At my failed words of comfort, the corner of Mike’s mouth kicks up. “I wasn’t going to take you to a fancy restaurant.”

  “Where were you going to take me?”

  “Ice cream,” he says, and at the expression on my face, his laugh lines appear.

  “In October?” I ask, and when he nods, I realize I’m smiling. I can see us—side by side on a little bench outside the parlor, teeth chattering from the ice cream, Mike’s arm wrapped around me to keep me warm, me laughing because of how perfect it all is.

  My heart starts to ache, and Mike and I both lift our chins when footsteps begin to clatter against the steel grating.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Shawn says with sincere apology in his voice. He scratches his fingers uncomfortably through his hair. “But it’s time to set the equipment back up.”

  Back on dry land, after being showered with hugs and kind words from Jillian, Paul, and the rest of the staff, I head for the long row of Porta-Pottys back up the access road. Dee, Rowan, and even Kit offered to go with me, but honestly, after being literally surrounded by people for the past five hours, I need some alone time.

  I regret my decision almost as soon as I step back out of the Porta-Potty. The after party is in full swing—judging by the music I hear blasting back in the clearing—and waves upon waves of people are heading in that direction. I overheard Adam saying earlier that a lot more people were going to come afterward, since the band couldn’t accommodate everyone who wanted to be in the music video, but I never anticipated this many people.

  I get swallowed in the current as I make my way back toward the pond, and once I get to the clearing, I realize I have no idea where anyone is. I know the band must be performing out on the water, but the space around the pond is absolutely swarmed with people, and there’s no way my five-foot self is going anywhere near it, not after my experience with armpit guy at the band’s concert a few weeks ago. I fish my phone out of my jacket and consider calling Rowan or Dee t
o find out where they are, but I pocket it when I realize they’re never going to hear their ringers over the blaring music consuming this entire forest.

  Instead, I walk. In my red dress and my black boots, I walk through the grass and pretend I know where I’m going, which is no easy task considering that the entire space has been transformed. Fog machines that were used earlier to make the woods look eerie have been turned up to full blast, and all throughout the clearing, blue strobe lights and lasers cut through the haze. A firework explodes in the sky, and I look up to see a waterfall of white sparks fall from the moon. Cheers erupt all around me while I just stand there with my eyes pointed at the sky, mouth parted in awe.

  A shiver sends goose bumps up my arms, and I lower my eyes just as a woman handing out glow necklaces passes me. The night lights up with glow sticks and glow necklaces and glow bracelets, and then the Solo cups start multiplying, and I realize I’m nearing the kegs. And beside the kegs, food trucks advertising free pizza, free pretzels, free funnel cake. Someone carrying cotton candy walks past me, and I realize I am so, so, so incredibly lost.

  I keep walking, and my eyes start playing tricks on me. I think I see Kit in the crowd, but it ends up not even being a girl—just a guy with the same incredibly smooth black hair and the same fair skin tone. And beside him, another guy with a buzzed head who also looks strikingly like Kit. And a few feet away, flirting with a group of girls: yet another ridiculously tall guy who looks just like Kit.

  I’m walking away from the food area, rubbing my eyes and trying to convince myself I’m not losing my mind, when I hear an unfamiliar voice call my name.

  “Hailey Harper,” the guy repeats as he walks toward me, a warm smile on his face, “are you lost?”

  He stops just in front of me, a tall twenty-something with honey-shaded eyes and dyed ombre hair—the base, the same striking cerulean color as the highlights in Kit’s hair tonight.