Paparazzi

by Linda Gerber

  I peeked around her to see a marble-tiled bathroom with what looked like a Jacuzzi tub in the corner. A gold-framed mirror hung above a bowl sink that was set into a shiny black granite counter. Nice.

  “You have everything you need?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This is perfect.”

  She started to leave, but I stopped her.

  “Zoe, wait.” I didn’t really need anything, but I didn’t want her to go yet. It had been forever since I’d had another girl my age around to talk to. Well, kind of talk to. “I … um … how do you say ‘thank you’ in Greek?”

  She hesitated for a second, as if she didn’t understand what I was asking—or why. But then she smiled, and her entire face changed. If at all possible, she was even prettier than before, and she looked more like … well, like someone I would hang out with. “It is efharistoh,” she told me.

  “Efharistoh,” I repeated.

  “Yes. Very good.”

  “Efharistoh, Zoe.”

  “Parakalo,” she said. “This mean ‘you are welcome.’”

  She backed out of the room, and I let her go this time. I hoped that in the ten days we had on the yacht, we’d get beyond translating words.

  There were still forty minutes left before I was supposed to meet Logan online, so I took a quick shower and washed off the greasy, grungy feel of travel. Wrapping up in the soft, white, terry-cloth robe (with the name PANDORA embroidered on the front in gold thread) I padded out to the main room for clean clothes, towel-drying my hair on the way. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the room that I remembered—someone had unpacked my things for me.

  I rushed to the wall of built-ins and yanked open a couple of drawers. There were my clothes, folded into neat little piles. Which meant … I pulled open another drawer and wanted to die on the spot. There lay my bras. My padded, push-up, pretend-you-have-cleavage bras I bought special for the trip. Perfect. Whoever unpacked my bags—I assumed it was Zoe—knew I was a padder.

  I grabbed my clothes and plodded back into the bathroom to get dressed.

  I had just pulled on my shirt when the vibration from the engines began to hum beneath my feet. We were leaving the port. I hurried out the sliding doors to the balcony to see. Below, the blue-green water churned white, foam bubbling up beneath the hull. The pier began to slip slowly away.

  It was like magic, watching the shoreline stretch out behind us, all whitewashed walls and steep, green hillsides. I leaned on the railing and listened to the rush of the water beneath the yacht, felt the warm sea breeze blow through my hair. I couldn’t wait to start filming the special. I’d show my mom and dad. I could go on location just as well as they could. In such a beautiful setting, I thought, nothing could possibly go wrong.

  Shows what I know.

  By the time I wandered back into my cabin from the balcony, I realized I had only five minutes before it was time to chat online with Logan. I hurried into the bathroom and scrunched gel into my hair, letting it fall into natural waves like Daniel suggested.

  My phone chirped, letting me know It Was Time. I forgot about my hair and rushed to the desk to turn on my computer. When I opened the browser, though, nothing happened. My heart dropped. What if the connection wouldn’t go through? I was on a yacht, after all. What if their satellite wasn’t strong enough? What if their bandwidth was too small? What if—

  But then, all the little connectivity bars at the top corner of my computer screen lit up. I was so relieved, I felt like dancing. But I wasn’t online yet. Holding my breath, I typed in the username and password I found on the little instruction card on my desk.

  Yes! It worked. Now for the big question … would Logan be on? Anticipation built as I logged on to the chat site, but then fell when I saw that his icon was dark.

  It’s okay, I told myself. He’s in a different time zone. Maybe he counted the hours forward instead of backward for Greece. Maybe I counted wrong.

  Opening up a new tab, I checked the world time clock website to be sure I figured the difference right. I had. Back to the first tab, I checked Logan’s status again. Still dark. Disappointment opened up like a black hole right in the center of my chest, just like it did whenever I signed on and he wasn’t there. I knew he couldn’t always make it. I couldn’t always make it. But it didn’t make the letdown any easier.

  But then I noticed a message in my chat site mailbox. From Logan. I quickly clicked on it.

  Cass—out of apt tonight sign in latr 10 ur time

  Logan

  Ten at night or ten in the morning? I hoped he meant night, because at ten in the morning, I’d be off filming on Delos, and I wouldn’t get to talk to him. On the other hand, ten at night would make it six in the morning for Logan, and he wasn’t much of a morning person. …

  I figured I’d find out when I signed in that night and saw if he was there or not. I grabbed my phone and reset the alarm to our new (I hoped) chat time.

  Meanwhile, I still had almost an hour before lunch so I decided to upload the pictures of the limo and the yacht to my blog. At least it would give me something to do that didn’t involve wondering when I would get to talk to Logan.

  The blog is something I started when my grampa got sick a couple of years ago. Since he had gotten too weak to go anywhere outside the farm, I wanted to share my travels with him. After he died, I couldn’t bring myself to stop posting. What had started as a way to keep me with him turned out to be a way to keep him with me. As long as I kept talking to my grampa, he wasn’t really gone. At least that’s what I told myself.

  To the network, my blog was something else completely. They noticed how many people were starting to read the things I posted, and they decided it could be useful to my mom and dad’s show. They gave me a dedicated spot on the When in Rome website and started keeping stats and charting demographics and all sorts of other stuff I didn’t understand. I didn’t like how commercial they were making it, but I couldn’t really complain too much. If they didn’t care about my blog, I wouldn’t be on a yacht in the Aegean Sea, starring in a television special, and working my way back to When in Rome.

  In fact, one of the many conditions for me coming to do the special was that I blog about it every day—giving a “behind the scenes” look at the show that the network could use for advance promotion.

  I uploaded the photos and lost myself cropping and adjusting them so that they’d look good online. By the time I had them ready to post, it was already 2:45. Almost lunchtime. And I wasn’t ready.

  If CJ and crew filmed Victoria and me walking onto the yacht, they’d for sure have the cameras rolling for lunch. I wanted to look decent for at least one of the candids.

  Back in the bathroom, I checked my makeup and shook my hair and tried to think of every camera angle imaginable and how each one would look on-screen. I seriously wasn’t trying to be vain, but when the papers call you la chica moda, you’d be amazed at how many people search for any little flaw to prove you’re not.

  With that in mind, I had chosen to go simple for the lunch, in a powder-blue top and a pair of jeans. Not too dressy, but with a pair of beaded sandals and the sparkle of my charm necklace, not too casual, either.

  I practiced my TV-star smile in the mirror. My mouth gleamed. Or, rather, the wire of my palate expander gleamed. My smile faded as I remembered Daniel warning me about how it could catch the light on camera. I quickly spit out my appliance and rinsed it off. I had just snapped it into its storage case when I heard a timid knock on my cabin door.

  “Coming!” I called.

  Quickly checking myself over once more, I turned toward the door. Paused. Automatically reached up to run my fingers over the good-luck charm necklace my grampa had given me years ago. Here we go. I told myself. It’s showtime.

  Zoe was waiting in the hallway with Victoria. She bobbed her head as I joined them. “You are hungry?” she asked.

  I actually was. I’d been too excited and nervous to eat that morning. “Yes,” I said. “W
hat are we having?”

  “My mother, she makes the food,” Zoe said. “You will like it.”

  Ah. So Zoe’s mom worked on the yacht, too. Maybe that was how Zoe got her job.

  She led us to the opposite end of the hallway from where we had come down earlier that afternoon. Instead of a stairwell, she paused at a set of small, ornate doors and pressed a button on the wall.

  “No way,” I said. “This place has an elevator!”

  “What did you think of your room?” Victoria asked. “Is this place swanky or what?”

  “What’s ‘swanky’?”

  “Posh,” Victoria said. “Richly furnished. Opulent.”

  “Are those vocabulary words?” I asked. “Do I have to know them?”

  She made a big show of rolling her eyes. “No, Cassidy. You do not have to know the words, though it wouldn’t hurt you to expand your vocabulary.”

  I was about to say something about giving me a break from lessons when the elevator chimed softly and the doors glided open. Zoe stood back and ushered us inside, then she followed us in and pressed the number Four button. The doors slid shut again.

  “This yacht has four levels!” I whispered to Victoria.

  “Five,” Zoe said proudly.

  I’d never been on a yacht that big before. In fact, the only time I could remember being on any yacht was when I was nine, and that one had only a single deck.

  The elevator chimed once more, and the doors slid back to show a shaded deck featuring a round, white-draped dining table and a killer view. Beyond the railings, deep blue stretched out all around us, dotted by rocky islands in the distance. I could barely breathe as I stepped off the elevator. It was like I was walking into a dream.

  Zoe watched me the way my gramma does when she gives me a present and she can’t wait to see how much I like it.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I breathed.

  “This place is my favorite.” She spread her arms wide and turned in a circle. “The most high deck on the Pandora.”

  “You know the yacht well,” I said.

  A cloud of something I didn’t understand crossed her face. “Yes,” she said simply. “I do.”

  There was a touch of pride in her statement, but something else, too. It felt like sadness. But why? I would like to have talked to her more to find out, but just then Mr. Kouropoulos made his grand entrance, all smiles and charm.

  “Ah, there you are!” He brushed right past Zoe, making a big fuss over Victoria and me. Not so charming. Then he kissed each of us on the cheeks as if he hadn’t seen us just a couple of hours before. “You look lovely, both of you.”

  The overenthusiastic greeting shocked me so much I started to pull back … until I realized the cameras must already be rolling. I’d half noticed CJ and her crew when we first stepped out onto the deck, but I’d been so distracted by the view that I hadn’t given them much thought. Now I took a quick look around (careful not to let my eyes rest directly on CJ so I wouldn’t get yelled at again) to see what else I had missed.

  I was pleasantly surprised to find Magus standing in the corner, feet shoulder-width apart, huge hands clasped in front, dark glasses hiding his eyes. He looked very bodyguard-ish. Ha. I was right.

  Nikos was sitting on one of the lounge chairs nearby, bent over a cell phone. Texting, I guessed, the way his thumbs raced across the phone’s keypad. He looked cute, in a Mediterranean/preppy sort of way. He had also changed during the break and now wore a crisp, white shirt and khaki trousers. He’d also stuck a pair of D&G sunglasses on top of his head and had even popped his collar. I did have to admit that the white looked good on him, with his olive skin and dark hair.

  He must have sensed I was watching him because he glanced up and caught me looking. Instead of saying hello or waving or something civilized like that, he jerked his chin at me … just like Logan always did. It made my stomach tumble just a bit.

  “And you, Cassidy?” Mr. Kouropoulos said.

  Victoria nudged me and I jumped. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “I trust you found your accommodations to be satisfactory?”

  “Oh. Yes, thank you,” I said quickly. “My room is really nice.”

  He nodded, smiling—obviously pleased with himself.

  By then, Nikos had sauntered over to where we stood. He’d put on his Dolces, even though we were well under the shade of the awning, and jerked his chin at me again when I looked at him. Give me a break.

  “Hi, Nikos,” I said.

  “Kalispera,” he said. “That means ‘good afternoon.’”

  “Kalispera,” I repeated.

  “Kalispera,” Zoe said softly beside me.

  He didn’t answer her, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he was being rude or because he hadn’t heard her. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses so I didn’t know if he was even looking at her. I waited for a few really uncomfortable seconds until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “So, Zoe was just telling me this is her favorite spot on the yacht. What about you? Where—”

  Zoe made a scared little squeaking sound and scurried away from us.

  I watched her disappear into a hallway behind the elevator shaft. “What happened?” I asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

  Nikos shook his head. “She doesn’t talk much.”

  “She was talking just fine to me.”

  He shrugged.

  “Shall we?” Mr. Kouropoulos said, bowing toward the table.

  Four place settings. I looked to the crew, to Magus, to Victoria and Nikos and his dad, and then back to the table. So I was right about filming at lunch. Great. Even worse, the four of us would be eating in front of everyone else. My mom and dad were filmed during meals all the time, but with their show, I usually hung out with the crew so it wasn’t often I had to try to eat gracefully with a camera in my face. But if they could do it, so could I.

  I raised my chin and threw back my shoulders and said in my most genuine voice, “Yes, thank you. Everything looks great.”

  Nikos pulled out my chair for me while Mr. Kouropoulos did the same for Victoria. So genteel. I was actually proud of myself for being able to smile and ignore the cameras and settle into my chair somewhat gracefully. Mr. Kouropoulos started gushing about what a pleasure it was to have us on his yacht, and I thought I did a reasonable job of acting like I was interested, even though I was pretty sure he was about as sincere in what he was saying as I was listening to it.

  In the background, I couldn’t help but notice Zoe watching him, shaking her head just the slightest bit, a frown etching deeper and deeper on her face until it looked like she couldn’t take it anymore, and she backed away. By then, she was standing directly behind where CJ stood with her clipboard, next to the cameras. I tried to catch Zoe’s eye, but I caught CJ’s instead.

  Too late, I remembered I wasn’t supposed to look at CJ when we were being “candid.”

  “Cut!” she yelled.

  I don’t know what the Greek word

  for smorgasbord is, but that’s what Zoe’s mom had prepared for us. Nikos said the lunch was made up of mezedes, which he eloquently explained was “a bunch of hot and cold dishes.”

  To me, it looked like a lot of appetizers. I mean a lot of appetizers. They reminded me of the tapas you can get in Spain. I hoped that the rest of the crew would be eating, too, because there was way too much food for just the four of us.

  Some of it I recognized, like olives, meatballs, octopus, and squid, but a lot more, Nikos had to explain to me. There were kolokithea keftedes (fried zucchini balls), gavros marinatos (marinated anchovies), lakerda (tuna in olive oil), tzatziki (a yogurt cucumber dip), some giant beans that I never did get the name of, and a whole lot more that I didn’t get the chance to ask about.

  While we were eating, we were supposed to be acting like we were having a stimulating conversation. But since I didn’t know either Mr. Kouropoulos or his son, it was kind of hard once we moved past food and were supposed t
o find something else to talk about. And I was supposed to show enthusiasm! Be peppy! Smile! Laugh! (According to CJ.)

  By the time the meal was over, I was totally drained, but I kept the smile going as long as the cameras were still rolling. And I wasn’t the only one—as soon as CJ yelled cut for the final time, Mr. Kouropoulos pushed away from the table, and Nikos pulled out his cell phone to resume his texting. I sat there awkwardly wondering what I was supposed to do. Excuse myself from the table? (Whose permission was I supposed to get?) Stay put? Clear the dishes?

  “Did you like it?” Nikos asked.

  “What?”

  He tucked his phone back into his pocket. “The food. Theia Alexa chose the menu especially for the television show. Your mom does the food on your show, right? What did you think?”

  “It was good. Well, most of it,” I admitted. I wasn’t a big fan of squid. “Who’s Theia Alexa?”

  “She’s the chef. She’s not really anyone’s aunt; she just likes us all to call her theia.” Nikos pushed back in his chair and started to get up. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll introduce—”

  “Sit.” CJ was standing behind Nikos and clamped a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back into his seat. “I need a couple of shots with just the two of you.” She turned to Victoria. “Would you mind?”

  “Not at all,” Victoria said, and left the table. I wondered if CJ was going to film without sound, because Mr. Kouropoulos, was now pacing back and forth by the railing, practically yelling into his phone and waving his free hand around like he was trying to swat a bee or something.

  Nikos, I noticed, was watching his dad, too. Sadly, I thought, but his dark eyes held something else. Anger, maybe.

  Until CJ yelled to start. Then his face transformed. Suddenly, he was laughing, flirting, acting more like the guy who pulled me over to wave at the paparazzi. I tried to match his enthusiasm, and pretty soon I forgot I ever thought anything was wrong.

  When they were finally done filming, and the crew started packing up, Nikos asked me if I wanted to go swimming. “There’s a pool on the main deck,” he said.

  I was about to tell him I’d love to join him when Victoria shook her head. “Lessons first.”