Paparazzi

by Linda Gerber

  “It’sh my shtupid palate exshpander.”

  “Ah.” I’d left the thing off before—she’d been through the drama with me on more than one occasion. My mouth would be sore for a day or so before it got back to normal. “Not worth the neglect, is it?”

  “I didn’t want to wear it in front of the camerash.”

  She considered that for a moment and nodded. “Well, perhaps you can take it out for your segments, but then you should put it back in. I can remind you if you like.”

  “No, thanksh,” I said glumly.

  “Here.” She handed me a hunter-orange life vest. “We need to put these on. Mandatory.”

  I slipped it over my head and tightened the straps as Magus took his place at the front of the boat. “Everyone is ready?” he asked.

  We all gave him the thumbs-up.

  He revved the motor. “Here we go!”

  Over the whine of the engine and the rush of air in our ears, Victoria explained that Magus had to take us out far enough that we’d be well outside the ferry and shipping lanes. The water had taken on the darkest shade of blue I’d seen yet, and I realized from my water lesson with Nikos the day before that it must be deeper there.

  By the time we slowed, the yacht was just a white dot in the distance and the islands floated like little specks on the horizon. Magus steered the boat in a lazy circle until it idled still in the water. “So,” he said, facing us. “Who will go first?”

  Nikos, of course, jumped up to volunteer. He chose his board—black and silver and shaped like a stubby snowboard—and moved to the back of the boat to sit on the swim deck and strap it on. After he dropped into the water, it took him a few minutes to get situated, and then Zoe threw him the line. “Watch!” he called to Zoe and me. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Magus waited until Nikos signaled, and then started forward, slowly at first and then picking up speed. I watched nervously as the rope tow behind the boat straightened, stretched, and grew taut, pulling Nikos up out of the water. He started to stand up, but then the rope pulled him right over and he face-planted in the waves. White, foamy water spouted up and over his head as he was dragged behind the boat.

  “Let go!” Zoe yelled through cupped hands, even though he probably couldn’t have heard her through all the rushing water in his ears. She giggled and turned to me. “This is not how it is done.”

  Finally, Nikos released his grip on the rope, and Magus brought the boat around to idle beside him again.

  “You want to try again?” Magus asked.

  Nikos was too out of breath to answer, so he just raised his hand and nodded yes. Zoe pulled the rope into the boat and then threw him the handle again. He caught it and brought his board up so that the edge was sticking up out of the water.

  “Tuck in tight!” Magus yelled. “Do not fight the boat!”

  Nikos clenched his jaw and signaled that he was ready again. He did better that time, pulling up from the water cleanly, and managing to keep the board on top of the wake for a few seconds before it sliced downward and he wiped out. At least this time he remembered to let go of the rope.

  Magus chuckled as he brought the boat around again. “Again?” he called.

  Nikos nodded once more and leaned back in the water, letting the life jacket keep him afloat until the rope was thrown to him again.

  “Toes up!” Magus shouted.

  Nikos waved tiredly.

  One more time, Magus eased the boat forward. Nikos rocked back on his heels, keeping the board above the wake. He pulled up out of the water, but then rode for almost a full minute in a crouch, as if he was afraid to stand up. Once he finally pulled himself up, he had a decent run—maybe four or five minutes—before Magus turned the boat, and Nikos hit the wake wrong. He tumbled sideways with a spectacular splash.

  I thought maybe Nikos would be upset that he had fallen so many times or that he’d had so much trouble getting started, but he was laughing as he climbed into the boat.

  “Woo! That was awesome!” He shook the water from his curls. “Who’s next?”

  I sank back against the cushions. “I’ve never done it before. I think I need to watch shome more.”

  Zoe stood up. “I will go.”

  Watching Zoe wakeboard was an entirely different experience than watching poor Nikos. The first time she signaled Magus that she was ready, she really and truly was. The rope pulled tight, and she rose from the water like Aphrodite. She shifted her weight gracefully and turned so that she stood on the board, holding the rope by her front hip. She made it look easy.

  I imagined the sound of the clunk Nikos’s jaw made as it hit the floor. He was staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. Bingo.

  Zoe rode for a while—I lost track of how long—zigzagging over the wake, even turning backward a couple of times. She didn’t fall to finish her run. Oh, no. She simply signaled Magus, let go of the rope, and sank slowly into the water.

  When she climbed back onto the boat, Nikos couldn’t get to her quick enough. “Where did you learn how to do that? Show me how you did that turn.”

  She tucked her chin shyly, but smiled and answered all his questions in her soft, direct way. She demonstrated how he could move his weight on the board for better control, and he imitated her moves as much as he could.

  “How long have you been doing this?” Nikos wanted to know.

  Zoe shrugged slightly. “Since I have been little,” she said. “We would come out on this boat very often, before …” She ran her hand over the railing like she was stroking a kitten. Lovingly, almost longingly.

  Nikos slid a quick look toward Victoria and me. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Uh … can you show me how you spin like that? I always bite it the moment I let go of the rope with one hand.”

  She demonstrated again, and he followed her lead, watching intently as she explained the release.

  I was glad to see that Nikos wasn’t one of those guys who got put off because a girl was better at something than he was. I once read in one of those “how to get a guy” magazine articles that guys have very fragile egos, and they don’t like girls who can outplay them. I always thought that was stupid. Who wanted to be with someone who always had to be better than you were in order to be happy?

  Nikos may have acted like he had a king-size ego, but in those moments on the boat I could see he was more interested in what Zoe could do than he was in what he could do, and that made me like him for Zoe even more.

  Before you wonder about it too much, yes, I tried to wakeboard, too. I managed to stand up twice, but I didn’t stay up for very long. Still, like all good things, it was fun while it lasted.

  Happiness depends on ourselves.

  —Aristotle

  Our shoot that evening was on the island of Santorini. After the afternoon on the boat, my arms and legs felt like deflated balloons filled with wet sand. I pretty much had to drag myself to the makeup chair and wanted to fall asleep sitting there.

  “What have you done to your face?” Jacqueline demanded when she started in to work on me. “How to you expect me to achieve the same skin tone you had this morning if you insist on cooking yourself like meat under the sun?”

  “I wore sunscreen,” I protested.

  “You should have worn a hat! Just look at this mess!” She turned my head from side to side and tsked. “I’ll have to use a green underbase. Do not do this again.”

  I promised her I wouldn’t and she set about dabbing and rubbing and powdering my face until she was satisfied it wouldn’t ruin the continuity of the filming.

  Since we would be docking in Oia, she didn’t need to put my hair in the annoying rollers, but part of our segment was going to be filmed on the yacht and she was afraid of a breeze messing up my hair, so she had me wear a headband to keep it under control.

  Five minutes before we were supposed to show up for the sound check, Nikos dropped into the chair next to mine. “Why didn’t you tell me about Zoe before?” he asked.<
br />
  “What did you want me to tell?”

  “She’s so … and when she got up on that board … and those eyes!” He sighed and fell against the back of the chair. “Did you know she can almost beat me at arm wrestling?”

  I gave him a sideways glance. “Almost?”

  “All right, she pinned me. But she was holding my hand!”

  “So you like her.”

  Suddenly, his face turned serious. “You can’t tell anyone.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “Quiet. You two are giving me a headache.” Jacqueline had finished with me and moved over to Nikos’s chair. She grabbed his jaw and turned his head so that his face was to the sun. “Close your eyes,” she ordered.

  When he had been properly powdered and his curls tamed with a dime-sized dollop of gel, she released him.

  “Who don’t you want me to tell?” I asked him again.

  “We better hurry,” he said. “The sun is dipping low already and they haven’t even wired us yet.”

  And then he ran off, evading my question.

  You’ve probably seen pictures of

  Oia on postcards or travel posters. It’s one of the towns on Santorini built right along the top edge of a cliff. All the buildings, the walls, the stairs—everything in the town is painted white. No, I take that back. Not everything. The doors and shutters and handrails are all painted in bright, cheerful colors. And the domes of the churches are blue like the Aegean Sea.

  When I was reading my lines for the Santorini segment, I learned that the island Oia is on is actually the rim of a caldera that was formed thousands of years ago. In case you’re wondering what a caldera is, it’s a big, basin-shaped hole in the ground that’s usually made when land collapses around a volcano after it erupts. The islands of Santorini are on the rim of the caldera, with thousand-foot cliffs that look over the sunken center.

  As we sailed toward Santorini, the white towns built on the edges of those cliffs made the rim look like it was topped with snow. I stood at the railing on the yacht and watched the cities appear as we got closer. The sound guy came to finish connecting my mic, but I didn’t move. All I could do was stare at Oia, the closest city. This was the view I always imagined when I thought of Greece. Actually seeing it in front of me was like a dream.

  “Okay, listen up.” CJ said. “The sun is setting so we only have time to run through this once.”

  My dream bubble disappeared in a “poof!” and I turned to listen to her directions.

  “When We’re through with your lines on the Pandora, we’ll head into town for the Atlantis segment. Ready? Let’s go!”

  Nikos looked into the camera as if he knew each viewer on the other side of the lens personally. “At one time in its history, Santorini was a single island.”

  “Over the space of thousands of years,” I continued, “a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused the center of the island to sink, leaving behind a group of smaller islands. This is why scholars guess Santorini could actually be the home of the lost city of Atlantis.”

  “Cut!” yelled CJ. “Cassidy, the line is, ‘some scholars guess.’ Not all. Some. Do you think you can get that right?”

  The tone in her voice made my chest cave in. I wasn’t used to being yelled at. I knew a professional would suck it up and try again, but it stung. “Sorry,” I said in a small voice.

  CJ didn’t answer, but turned to the crew and yelled, “Let’s go again!”

  Nikos found my hand and squeezed it before starting his line again.

  I squeezed his hand back. As far as I was concerned, Nikos had just scored major points. I hoped Zoe had seen how sweet he could be. I smiled into the camera as I corrected my flub. “This is why some scholars guess Santorini could be the home of the lost city of Atlantis.”

  “Nobody knows about that for sure,” Nikos said, “but what they can tell you is that Santorini is home to some of the most beautiful sights in the world.”

  “I’m Cassidy.”

  “And I’m Nikos.”

  “Welcome to Santorini!” we said together, sweeping our arms out toward Oia.

  “And … cut!” CJ said. “Okay, that was good. Now let’s get just a few frames of you two standing with the sun setting behind you. Gabe, are you getting this? Good. Now turn so that we’ve got the city in the background. Smile, smile. And that’s good.”

  She turned to the rest of the crew. “Okay, everyone, pack it up. We’ll reconvene in the city in thirty minutes. Chop-chop!”

  Victoria brought each of us a bottled water. “Just two takes,” she said. “Not bad.”

  Yeah, tell CJ that. I was still stinging from the way she yelled at me.

  Nikos unscrewed the lid to his water. “Where’s Zoe?” he asked. “Is she coming into town with us?”

  “I think she’s going in with her mum,” Victoria said.

  He deflated. “Oh.”

  I shouldn’t have been so happy to see his disappointment, but I was proud of myself. Just two days ago, Nikos didn’t even look at Zoe. Now he didn’t want to let her out of his sight. I had mad matchmaking skills.

  There’s a small road that winds up to Oia from the Ammoudi port, but Mr. Kouropolous suggested that we walk. It wasn’t far, he said, and he thought we would enjoy it. CJ and the crew took a van. The rest of us started with the steps. Two hundred and fourteen steps. I know because I counted. It was a hike, but the view of the sea and the cliffs on the way up was amazing. Now that the sun had set, lights from the boats and yachts below reflected like watery fairy lanterns in the harbor. Above us, the white city was lit so that it practically glowed.

  It wasn’t until we were about halfway up the stairs that I realized there might be another reason why he suggested we walk. A group of photographers crowded down the steps toward us. “Over here!” “Just one smile!” “This way!”

  Magus immediately moved Nikos and me behind him as we continued up the stairs and Victoria positioned herself right next to me, but Mr. Kouropolous seemed to forget we were even there. He played to the paparazzi the rest of the way up until CJ met us at the top of the stairs and shooed the photographers away.

  Once they were gone, Mr. Kouropolous lost interest in staying with the group and wandered off. I’m not even exactly sure when he left. All I know is at the beginning he was with us, but about midway through he was gone. One of the crew members told us he said he’d meet us back at port.

  If it bothered Nikos that his dad had ditched us again, he didn’t say anything. Out loud anyway. But I caught the way his jaw tightened when he scanned the streets around us, and the tiniest tug of a frown when he saw for himself his dad was gone. Still, he was able to smile and turn on the charm for the camera so that you’d never know anything was wrong. I admired his professionalism. And yet I wondered how much it covered what Nikos felt inside.

  We worked straight through dinnertime. I’m pretty sure somewhere in that agreement we signed, there was something about the child talent being fed. But CJ kept reminding us that we had only one night in Santorini, so if we didn’t get the shots they needed, they were going to have to throw the entire segment out.

  “I’d offer to go grab something,” Victoria told me, “but I’m not allowed to leave you during filming. As soon as you finish up, we’ll eat, I promise.”

  “One more time, from the top!” CJ cried.

  With the promise of food waiting for us, Nikos and I plowed through the segment. What we were basically doing was debating the possibility that the legend of the lost city of Atlantis was referring to the eruptions on the island of Santorini. The lost city, some people believed, was actually the sunken center of the caldera. Our lines were long and wordy, and it was kind of hard to keep the fake perkiness in our voices after about the tenth take, but finally, we did it to CJ’s strict standard, and we were released. Only not in time to stop for something to eat before we had to go back to the Pandora.

  “I’ll have a talk with the network,” V
ictoria vowed. “This is simply unacceptable.”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “I bet we can find something in the kitchen when we get back.”

  That wasn’t really the point, and I knew it, but I also knew my mom and dad would freak if the network told them the production company wasn’t living up to their part of the agreement. I didn’t want Victoria to make that phone call.

  The moment we got back onto the yacht Nikos, Victoria, and I made a beeline for the galley.

  “There’s probably leftovers from lunch,” I said hopefully.

  “I’d settle for bread and cheese,” Nikos said.

  Victoria stopped. “Do you smell that?”

  Theia Alexa had beaten us to the galley. She looked startled when the three of us came walking into her space.

  Behind her mom, Zoe glanced up from where she was dicing onions. I couldn’t help but notice the way she and Nikos looked at each other. Sparks were flying all the way across the room.

  “We’re sorry to intrude,” Victoria said, “but the kids never got a chance to eat while we were in town. I was hoping we could scrounge something up in here.”

  “Of course!” Theia Alexa said. “And you are right on time. Tonight I try to prepare tomato keftedes like the ones we taste in town. Santorini is known for their tomato keftedes, and I want to discover the recipe before I lose the flavor up here.” She tapped her head with the handle of her spoon.

  “I volunteer to be a taste tester,” Nikos said.

  I nudged him. “You would.”

  Zoe hid a smile and brought her cutting board over to where her mother was mixing a bowl full of red goop. (Hey—that’s what it looked like. But it smelled good.) As she stirred in the onions Zoe had chopped, I tried to see if I could identify the smell of the other spices the way Nikos had with the moussaka. Nope. Except maybe for mint. But whatever else was in there made my mouth water.

  Theia Alexa dipped the tip of her pinkie finger into the mixture and tasted the result. “Hmmm … Zoe?”

  Zoe daintily dipped in her finger and tasted the batter. “More salt, I think.”

  Nikos leaned forward, but Theia Alexa pulled the bowl closer to her. “You will wait until they are done.”