Finding June

by Shannen Crane Camp

  “All right, let’s do this,” Joseph said, rubbing his hands together as I handed him his script. We made our way into the green room behind the stage to rehearse, as per Mr. Carroll’s instructions. We only had a few days to perfect our skit, and if we wanted to win this self-proclaimed competition, we were going to have to start practicing now. Joseph kept subtly dropping hints about how I’d better not let my newfound stardom affect my commitment to winning our class competition, and I kept playfully deflecting his accusations with a coy smile and a few well-placed winks.

  “All I’m saying,” Joseph began, as we settled into the green room to practice before the bell rang for our next class, “is that I’d better not see an amazing performance on Forensic Faculty and then a crap one in class the next day.”

  I could tell he was joking, so I tried my best to annoy him. “But what I was thinking is that we could try a different approach from everyone else in the class. You know everyone is going to try to do well, right? So let’s just be awful! Then we’ll really stand out,” I said, as if he should have thought of this ages ago.

  “Very funny, June,” Joseph replied, shaking his head at my suggestion and quickly reading over the script we had been given. “Hey, I get to be funny,” he said, suddenly excited. “Well . . . for about two seconds.”

  Joseph loved funny parts. I figured it was because he’d always loved Harold Lloyd. He repeatedly insisted that Harold was one of the few people who truly sacrificed for his art (which wasn’t true at all). Of course, he didn’t sacrifice in the typical sense of the word. He was a silent film star who had a few fingers blown off during a photo shoot when the prop bomb he was holding exploded unexpectedly. Macabre story? Yes. But for some reason Joseph loved it.

  “Oh . . . ” he said out of nowhere. “Awkward.”

  “What?” I asked, skimming the script quickly to find what could possibly be labeled as "awkward." It wasn’t too hard to locate.

  “Huh,” was all I could say, once I saw the four-letter word printed on the page I held. “Kiss?” I read the word in puzzlement, as if it were foreign to me, (although the word definitely was well known, since it was the only word I’d been thinking of since I found out I’d be kissing Lukas Leighton on the show). Instead of saying, "Let’s see if Mr. Carroll will give us a different script, because this is way too weird," I simply shrugged my shoulders at Joseph, pretending it was no big deal. He seemed to take his cue from me and nodded in agreement, though his face looked like he had just been called to serve a mission in the Bermuda Triangle.

  “No big deal,” he said slowly under his breath, almost as if he were giving himself a pep talk.

  “Maybe for today we’ll just rehearse the rest of the skit. No need to practice that . . . other part . . . for a while,” I said with a sense of authority, as if I knew what I was talking about.

  “Good point,” he agreed a bit too quickly.

  The instant we began rehearsing the non-kissing part of the script, I could see why Mr. Carroll had given it to us. The scene was supposed to be acted out as a black-and-white movie. The couple, played by Joseph and me, were unorthodox bank robbers who’d narrowly escaped being caught by the police. We were supposed to be hiding out in an abandon store near the bank while the search for us continued, and while inside, we would get into an argument. Mr. Carroll’s only direction was that he wanted it to be big and a little overacted, which suited us just fine. It was always nice to be able to do something different.

  Joseph started our scene off by pacing back and forth in the green room, tripping over his shoes on one jaunt across the room and stumbling to regain his balance. I sat in a chair, my head following his movements. As he regained his balance, he rounded on me, waving his imaginary gun in my direction.

  “What could you possibly be thinking?” he spat, his hand gestures very big and dramatic. “Robbery is an art, not an excuse to throw a brick through a window!”

  I stood up indignantly, pulling my own imaginary gun out of my imaginary pocket and stepping close enough to him that my pointer finger gun barrel stuck into his chest.

  “What’s more artful than smashing a window, taking the cash, and still not getting caught?” I inquired, my eyes narrowing at him dangerously. He waited a beat before answering, letting the intensity hang in the air like a thick fog.

  “If you don’t point that thing somewhere else, I’ll have to reconsider my idea of working as a team,” he whispered darkly, his face forming an expression I’d never seen my sweet Joseph wear. It was actually a bit terrifying and it caught me off guard for a moment. I had to collect myself before going on.

  I dropped my hand from his chest and turned as if I were about to walk away from him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

  “To find a new partner,” I shot back at him, putting as much ice into my voice as I could.

  “Perfect. How about while you do that, I’ll stay here and count all that money you just made me,” he said condescendingly, causing me to stop in my tracks and turn slowly toward him again. He kicked his backpack on the ground, indicating that it would act as our bag of money for this rehearsal. I tried to make it look as if I were thinking hard about a way to turn this situation in my favor and had suddenly discovered the perfect ploy. I walked over to him slowly, looking up at him from under my eyelashes, my lips turned up into a half smile.

  “I see your point,” I said finally, sounding as if I had just realized how foolish I was being. I injected as much sweetness into my tone as I could muster while trying to look seductive. “Really there’s no reason to fight, right?” I asked as I finally closed the distance between us. I rested my arm on his shoulder and let my fingers play with the back of his hair. “We’re on the same team aren’t we?” I said sweetly, moving my face close enough to him that I could feel his shallow breathing on my cheek. While doing this, I moved the "bag of money" behind me with my foot, trying to be graceful as I did so—which proved to be difficult, since he had so many books in his backpack.

  Joseph’s face was bright red and he looked a bit like a deer in the headlights, but he still managed to say his line, however broken it sounded. “Um . . . yes . . . Yes, we are on the same team,” he said shakily, sliding his hand around to the small of my back while using his foot to slide the "bag of money" back behind him again. I could feel his hand shaking on my back, but I tried to ignore it. I assumed he was probably just nervous about performing this very intimate scene in front of our class. No one in the class ever let you live down a kissing scene.

  He was looking at me intently now, his brow furrowed slightly and a look in his eye that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He pulled me closer to him, causing my heart to race for some reason and making the blood rush up to my cheeks. I swallowed loudly, almost comically, as I tried to keep my focus on the scene. Joseph and I had been in dozens of plays together, but we’d never had a scene like this. I had always wondered what it would be like to have to act something like this out, but now that it was here, I was actually in a state of mild panic.

  By this point, Joseph's eyes were closed and his hand had tightened its grip on my back. As his lips were only inches from mine, our noses touching lightly, I pulled back abruptly, startling him. Apparently he had gotten a bit lost in the scene as well. I cleared my throat in an attempt to gain my composure and get my cheeks to stop flushing.

  “All right, and so this is where we would kiss and both reach for the bag at the same time, catching each other in the act, right?” I asked, looking down at the floor rather than at Joseph. I wasn’t sure why I wouldn’t look at him. Maybe I was worried about what I might see in his face, or maybe I was a little worried about what I might feel if I looked at him. Joseph and I did not see each other in a romantic way—at all. It was probably just my constant fantasizing over Lukas that had gotten me so off balance. I was confusing my feelings; confusing who I was having the feelings about.

  Joseph cleared his throat as well, ap
parently trying to pull himself back to reality. His cheeks were still red and he was still breathing hard, though I pretended not to notice. “Yeah,” he said finally, sounding distant. “Yeah, we’ll need to make sure when we both reach for the bag we . . . um . . . we really play up the look we give each other in the end… that’s where the comedy will be, if we can do it right."

  “Perfect,” I said, trying to sound bright and cheerful, though my words just sounded odd, like yelling in an insulated room with no echo. Finally, I looked up at Joseph and was startled to see him staring at me intently with a confused look in his eyes. We didn’t say anything for a moment, and the silence in the room was deafening. Joseph eventually opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by Xani bursting into the room. Her unexpected entrance caused us both to jump in alarm, as if we’d been caught doing something wrong.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys!” she exclaimed in her southern accent. “The bell’s just about to ring and—,” she let her words trail off, looking from me, to Joseph, and back again. “You guys just have a séance or something?” she asked with a small laugh. “Looks like ya’ll have seen a ghost.”

  I was the first one to stop acting like a complete idiot. “The auditorium is supposed to be haunted,” I said cheerfully, figuring I should do some actual acting today.

  “Wait, you didn’t really, did you?” she asked, a little slow about catching on to my joke. “Never mind. Not important. What is important is that you tell me absolutely everything about Lukas Leighton right now!”

  Xani pulled me violently by the arm, barely giving me the chance to grab my backpack off the floor before she’d forcibly led me out of the green room. Joseph seemed to finally regain his composure and hurriedly picked up his backpack to run after us.

  “So, what did he smell like?” Xani asked seriously.

  “Heaven,” I replied, finding that this conversation was clearing my mind of its recently confused contents. “I don’t even really know how to describe it.” Xani just beamed at me as if this were the best news she’d ever heard.

  “Was he nice? I’d hate to think he was one of those celebrities who’re big jerks to everyone who isn’t famous,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “He was so nice! Well . . . I mean, I didn’t get to talk to him much out of character,” I admitted. “We only said a few words to each other before rehearsing the scene . . . but he seemed really nice for those few sentences,” I said, trying to sound as reassuring as I could. Joseph was walking a few steps behind us, muttering something under his breath. I ignored him.

  “But didn’t y’all have a chance to talk after the audition?” Xani asked, sounding a bit disappointed that I didn’t have more to tell her.

  “Well, he had to leave right after we finished our scene. I’m sure he’s really busy.”

  Xani nodded slowly at this revelation. “Makes sense,” she agreed as the bell rang.

  After Xani left us, I turned to Joseph, determined not to let things be weird at all. “Well, I’m off to learn about all sorts of interesting, non-math related subjects,” I teased.

  He just rolled his eyes and adjusted the way his backpack sat on his shoulders. “Yeah, thanks June,” he deadpanned, before winking at me and making his way to his next class.

  Maybe things wouldn’t get weird after all.

  CHAPTER 6

  The rest of the school day was uneventful. Joseph and I went to Spanish and Art History together, and then said our goodbyes after he dropped me off at home, never once mentioning the weirdness of that morning. Gran was already waiting for me in the kitchen with some new, bizarre concoction that would make me a better actress somehow. She wore a deep emerald tracksuit that made her flaming red hair stand out from miles away. I took this apparel to indicate that today was going to be a workday. I sighed deeply, but wasn’t let off the hook. Surrendering, I changed into my black yoga pants and oversized purple v-neck T-shirt to prepare for what would undoubtedly be a grueling workout. I pulled my curly hair back into a high bun and secured an elastic headband in place to hold any stray hairs back.

  “What have you got for me this time?” I asked Gran when I returned to the kitchen. I rubbed my hands together, ready to take on any weird tasks she would throw at me. After all, I was now on a hit TV show. I could handle anything, right? Gran didn’t say a word, but pushed over a glass of blue-ish, purple-ish sludge. At least this time it wasn’t green.

  “Drink,” she said with a knowledgeable smile, as she always did when making me try some strange new concoction. I raised an eyebrow at her skeptically. “Oh relax, Bliss, it’s just a berry smoothie.” That put me at ease exponentially and I happily accepted the drink.

  “No green goop today?” I asked.

  “Not today. Besides, berries have antioxidants, which are good for your skin. We don’t want you to show up to your first table read looking like your skin is made of rice paper, now do we?” she asked. I instantly brought my hand up to my cheek in horror and she realized her mistake. “You don’t have rice paper skin Bliss. I’m just making sure it stays that way,” she clarified.

  “Thanks Gran,” I said with a grin. “Bottom’s up!”

  This drink pleasantly surprised me. Even though Gran had called it a berry smoothie, I still expected it to have some hidden green or brown thing in it. However, it was actually pretty good, which made the drinking process much easier than it had been with the green goop. I polished the drink off with gusto and jumped out of my seat to show I was ready for the day. It was hard to tell where my newfound energy had come from, but the fact that I had a table read with Lukas Leighton in only two short days may have had something to do with it.

  Gran seemed ecstatic about my enthusiasm and beckoned me into the living room, where she had lined the floor with the silk Indian pillows that seemed to be coming out of every corner of the house. “I thought we’d start off our workout today with a little yoga,” she said, as she lit some incense in a stone holder.

  I feel that before I go on, I should point out that my grandma is a bit of a hippie. She's completely dedicated to the art of acting, of course, but her methods are a bit . . . well . . . hippie-ish. Dad always called her a high-tech hippie because she was all earthy and organic, but couldn’t go anywhere without her smart phone. So, as I prepared myself for a round of yoga that I was sure would kick my butt, I tried to ignore the heavy perfume coming from the incense holder.

  After a few minutes of "clearing my mind," (or at least clearing it of everything except a certain someone I would be seeing again on Thursday) I arranged myself into my least favorite pose: Garudasana, or the “Eagle Pose.” It wasn’t that this pose was terribly difficult—for most people. Unfortunately, I lacked a basic sense of balance, so to stand on one leg with my other foot tucked behind my knee and my arms twisted like a pretzel with no chance of catching myself if I fell . . . well, needless to say, it was a pretty deadly combination. I stared intently at a spot on the floor, trying to maintain my balance and actually managing to clear my head—until Gran spoke.

  “Now, June, I want to talk to you about your shining new opportunity on Forensic Faculty,” she began, instantly making me wary. “You’re going to be on set a lot—more than a month, if you only do four episodes. You’ll have a studio teacher on set for those days you’re filming for eight hours. But just because you aren’t technically in school doesn’t mean you can slack on your school work,” she said with a note of finality.

  I tried to respond and reassure her, but even thinking about speaking made me wobble in my current yoga stance. Instead, I settled for a reassuring (though pained) smile in her direction while I tried to ignore the bead of sweat running down the side of my face. She took it as her cue to keep talking.

  “I know I’ve never put much stock in school . . . or at least I’ve never told you how important it is. I just want to make sure you haven’t gotten the idea that I think school isn’t important, Bliss,” she said from her p
osition next to me. Gran was simply amazing. She was obviously much older than me, (she was my grandmother, after all) but she could hold a yoga pose better than me. Probably better than anyone, really.

  I finally managed to speak, feeling that this one-sided conversation wasn’t going to reassure her. “Gran, I promise I’m still going to get good grades. I’m not going to get into BYU by batting my eyelashes at the admissions office,” I said, causing me to lose my balance and fall into a heap on the floor. Now I could see why the pillows were scattered everywhere. Gran had taken precautions against my notorious clumsiness.

  “Well, good. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page . . . And on that note, I wanted to mention something else,” she started, though she quickly interrupted herself by saying, “Natarajasana, Bliss,” indicating that I should get into the "Lord of the Dance" pose. I did as I was told, bringing my leg up behind my back and reaching back over my shoulder to grab my foot. Needless to say, it was painful and very unstable.

  “I know you know this, but when you’re actually in the thick of things it becomes easy to forget . . . well . . . to forget what’s important,” she said seriously, easily holding a "Tree Pose" as she spoke. “Just remember that being around the same people in such a unique situation every day can skew reality a bit. You grow close to people faster than you normally would, and sometimes you think you have feelings that aren’t really there.”

  I dropped the foot I was holding behind my head to turn to her. “Are you talking about Lukas Leighton?” I asked, coming off a bit more defensively than I meant to.

  “I know you’ve only met him once, but I can see those stars in your eyes, Bliss. I just want you to be careful and keep your real friends close,” she said, bring her hands up in surrender, preventing any fight that could have started. “Whenever you need a break from the limelight or a reality check, you should give Joseph a call. He’s a very grounded young man.”