Here he goes with the pathetic apology again, you think to yourself. Still, you can picture the table read, and you do wish you were there reading your own lines and fleshing out your character. You’d be wrapped in the Caribbean warmth, sipping a coffee, smiling as you picture the finished film. Then you think about the end of the day, returning to your trailer and knowing Jackson is prowling about somewhere on the set.... But still, you’ll have Buffy there to run interference if there’s a problem. There will be plenty of people around, and once the shoot wraps you’ll never have to deal with Jackson again. You plan to stipulate a few conditions when you do talk with Jeffries, one being that your post-shoot press junkets will be solo.
“Jackson, I appreciate you trying, but I do have some issues I’m going to need to resolve. Those are between Jeff and my manager.” You don’t want to give him the satisfaction of imagining he has gotten even a millimeter under your skin. “It really has nothing to do with you.”
“Alrighty then,” replies Jackson. “Don’t say I didn’t try.”
He’s quiet and for a moment you think the conversation is over, on your terms at last, but it’s not to be.
“Oh, and Anna,” he tells you, “I should probably tell you, as a friend, that Jeffries talked with your manager right before you called. I happened to overhear most of the conversation, I think. Jeffries is well aware of your dissatisfaction with—the circumstances.”
“And?” you ask him.
“And, the conversation was pretty brief. It sounded like your manager had a lot to say, but it was kind of funny. Jeffries didn’t say much.”
You’re getting more and more uneasy and incredibly irritated as Jackson strings you along. Finally you take the bait. “So, what did he say, Jackson?”
“She’s under contract.” Then he hangs up.
You close your eyes, breathe, open them, and decisively hit the end button on your phone, then shut it down completely. You look up at the hovering flight attendant who is obviously pretending not to eavesdrop. “Alright,” you tell him, “let’s go.”
He turns as if to move toward the cockpit but stops himself and arches one droll eyebrow. “You are quite certain this time?”
You don’t bother to answer as you insert your headphones and lean back into the seat, hoping you’ll at least be able to sleep.
Turn to page 72.
From page 90 . . .
The thought of betraying your best friend is too much to bear. You fight every urge in your body and pull forcibly away from Jackson. With your back to him, you begin to make your way to shore.
“Hey, just a minute,” Jackson shouts. “Where are you going?”
You turn to look him in the eye, “Jackson, you know we can’t do this.”
“Can’t what, cupcake? Nothing’s happening here.”
Suddenly he is at your side, and his hand is back on your arm, his face close to yours. You try to pull away, but his grip is firm. “Jackson, just stop.”
“Well, darlin’, I don’t see how that’s fair. You got me all worked up here. I told you I’m not one to give up so easy.”
You feel a rising panic as Jackson pulls you back out into the water and you realize you have no control over what is going to happen next.
He turns you roughly and twists your arm behind your back, just hard enough to be uncomfortable. You resist the urge to cry out, calculating your next move. He presses himself against you from behind, and you feel his urgency beneath the slick skin of his wet swim trunks.
He’s talking into your ear, his voice taking on an unmistakable gruffness. “This doesn’t have to be a fight, Anna. This was going to happen one way or the other all along. I know you can feel it too. No reason to deny it. All fighting’s gonna get us is tired.”
His free arm has moved up to your bikini top and he’s gripping your breast, hard. Again you resist the urge to make a sound. Something in you knows it would only make things worse. You stand perfectly still as Jackson works with his hand, still twisting your other arm. Your feet are free, though, and you try the only thing you can think of, bringing your right foot up to connect with his groin. He somehow anticipates your action and brings his knee up protectively, blocking your blow.
“Well, you little spitfire,” he drawls into your neck, “if you like it rough, that’s okay by me.”
He wraps his leg around yours and now you are completely pinned in the water up to your neck. Sheer panic begins to rise as you realize you have no way of escape, and if things go really wrong there’s only the water to catch you.
Jackson’s hand moves quickly down, skimming your hipbone and then in one swift move unties the strings on your bikini bottom. He has the piece off in two seconds and is grinding hungrily against you. You feel him reach down again and realize he’s pulled his swimsuit out of the way. You can feel him stiff against your bare backside. He twists your face roughly to his, bending your neck at an excruciating angle, and kisses you hard and long, plunging his tongue into your mouth. You know you can’t fight, there’s no way you’ll be able to overpower him, and you’re vaguely aware that your mind is going where your body cannot in an effort to protect your sanity. Funny, you’ve read about this kind of thing happening, you just never thought it would happen to you.
You feel like you’re viewing the scene from afar, almost like watching a movie, when you notice a shape moving toward you from the shore. Buffy wades into the water, moving slowly but surely toward Jackson. She approaches like a dangerous animal, calculating every step.
At the same moment, Jackson notices her too. He eases his grip on your arm but keeps his leg wrapped around yours under the water and too deep for Buffy to see. He actually manages to smile at Buffy, a look of sheer hunger in his eyes.
“Come to join in?” He asks through gritted teeth. “Three’s more fun.”
Then everything seems to happen at once. Jackson lunges for Buffy, you fall from his grip, and Buffy leaps toward Jackson, a gleaming object hanging from her hand. It collides with Jackson’s skull with an audible thump as Buffy swings her arm down in a powerful arc. The gold liquid slides down Jackson’s face and into the water followed seconds later by a deep red liquid. For a moment, time stands still. Jackson is stunned, unmoving, watching the growing ring of crimson in the setting sun. His eyes clear for a second and he looks almost as if he’s going to cry. “Buffy, I didn’t . . .” he manages before falling headfirst into the blood-tinged water.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” you can hear yourself repeating over and over again. Buffy, on the other hand, is silent, her eyes cast down at the huge, broken bottle dangling limply from her hand.
“Buffy!” you cry. “Help me!” as you tug desperately at Jackson’s shoulder, trying to turn him over in the water. You manage to maneuver him face up and almost wish you hadn’t. His eyes stare unseeing at the sky and you think you glimpse bone through the deep, bloody gash on Jackson’s forehead. Bile rises to your throat but you fight it back. You don’t know whether he is dead or alive, but you know you need to get him back to shore. Looping your arms under his, you begin a long, backwards slog toward the sand, pulling what feels like dead weight.
Buffy stands still, watching, zombie-like. The heavy glass bottle hangs from her hand, reflecting the sunset above and the bloodied water below.
By the time you manage to drag Jackson to shore, you are huffing and puffing like you’ve just run five miles. You fall to your knees in the grainy sand beside his lifeless form and begin to administer the rudimentary CPR you learned on a movie set. You breathe and compress, breathe and compress, concentrating on nothing but trying to bring him back. You know the chances are slim, but you keep trying, hoping against hope that Jackson will suddenly sputter back to life.
After what seems like an eternity, you feel the light touch of a hand on your shoulder, and look up to see Buffy standing beside you. Her voice is flat and toneless. “It’s over,” she says.
She pulls you from Jackson’s side and straddles
him, staring down into his dilated, unseeing eyes. Without warning, she bends in one motion and slaps him hard across his slack face. Then she begins to cry, huge, heaving sobs wracking her body as she grabs Jackson by his ankles and pulls him back into the water. You watch wordlessly as her tiny frame, all sodden hair and bedraggled clothing, hauls the large figure farther out to sea.
You know you can’t let this go on any further. You wade into the sea beside her and place your hand gently on her forearm. She looks at you with tear-filled eyes and all she says is “Please?”
To insist that you and Buffy bring Jackson’s body back with you, turn to page 167.
To grant Buffy her wish, keep reading.
The line between right and wrong seems suddenly blurred. You could return with Jackson’s body, but you have no idea how the justice system works on this tiny island. You need to protect Buffy, to be there for her at last. It doesn’t escape you that you may avoid a scandal yourself, too. Is it right that Buffy’s life—and yours—should be ruined by a single action committed in a moment of self-defense? Is it wrong to protect your friend? What’s done cannot be undone, one way or the other.
You step back onto the beach and gaze out into the fading hues of the sunset as you watch your friend, your confidant, your sister, carry Jackson’s body into the water. It’s as though you’ve left reality. Maybe, you think, you are in a dream. Maybe you’ll wake up sunburned and relieved, and all of this will seem silly and far away. Maybe you won’t remember this at all.
These thoughts float through your mind as you watch Buffy bend down to place a single kiss in the middle of Jackson’s cheek. Then, she pushes his floating body, suspended in the salty sea, ever so slightly. He floats out slowly until the dark and the water swallow him up and he is no more.
Buffy makes it almost to shore but then falls to the ground a few steps short of the beach, splashing into the salty foam. You go to her and the two of you sit at the shoreline, holding each other and sobbing as darkness falls. You know you will never reveal what happened here, and that you and Buffy will be bound by this vow of silence for the rest of your lives.
It’s funny how through time and repetition, a lie can become the truth in the mind of the teller. After a few months you believe it yourself when you tell the story of watching Jackson disappear into the deep water with his snorkeling gear. How after a few minutes you realized he hadn’t surfaced, and how you and Buffy spent hours in the little runabout searching in widening rings until it became too dark to continue. How you returned to the main island begging for help. How nothing was ever found.
The mystery surrounding Jackson Michaels’s disappearance only amps up your star power, and your name and photo become inexorably intertwined with the retelling of his story. The tabloids cast you as Jackson’s grieving love interest. Michaels becomes a Hollywood legend in the ilk of the ill-fated, up-and-coming movie star. His family sells the rights to his tale, which becomes an hour-long WE True Hollywood Special.
The years pass and you find yourself on many other movie sets, and in many exotic locations with Buffy by your side. Your refusal to take any project set on a Caribbean island is understandable.
The trauma of that fateful day proves too much for Buffy. Her bleeding begins shortly after Jackson’s death. She convinces herself that perhaps there never was a baby, after all. In any case, that glimmer of life was not to be.
You realize as time goes by you’ve made a solid trade: Buffy’s freedom for your own. You date casually from time to time and become fondly known as Hollywood’s eternal bachelorette, famous for flings with your costars and infamous for your unceremonious breakups as soon as the shoot wraps. You visit plenty of “new Hollywood” bungalows but you are always in control and never bring a man into your domain. You are painfully aware you’ll never be able to really let anyone know you completely. There will only ever be one person who knows all of your secrets.
Eventually, Buffy moves into your beachfront home and silly rumors circulate. None of it hurts your PR, though, and you really don’t care what people think. As long as you are working, you are happy, and so far the work is steady and consistent. One day the offers may begin to dwindle, but you don’t think about that or anything else too deeply. For now, you’ve found an acceptable life.
In all your years together, you and Buffy never so much as refer to that day on the island. Sometimes you think perhaps she’s blocked it from her conscious memory. But other times you catch her sitting out on the balcony at sunset, sipping a glass of wine and staring out into the sea, perhaps wondering what other secrets the vast ocean holds, and dreaming about what might have been.
THE END
To take Anna on a new Bedventure, go back and choose a new path.
From page 165 . . .
It takes every ounce of courage for you to make the decision that you do, but you know you have to do the right thing, for you and for Buffy.
“Buffy,” you say, “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Buffy drops the big bottle of Jim Beam into the water and watches as it slowly drifts off into the distance. Wordlessly, she pulls the little boat so that it floats by Jackson’s feet and together you haul his lifeless form into the bottom of the boat then wrench the anchor from the sand.
Buffy never meets your gaze as you gather up your things from the beach and toss them onto the runabout’s wooden seat. She gives the motor’s cord a hard, determined pull and the engine roars to life. Slowly, in the darkness, she guides you back to a course you would never have predicted your life would take.
* * *
The next few months seem interminable. Through endless, exhausting hours of interrogation, you tell your stories truthfully. You cannot understand why it’s not a clear-cut case of self-defense. The prosecution wants a murder charge and now Jackson’s family is making noises about a civil suit. Every morning you wake up to the fresh nightmare of this awful saga. You can’t escape the scandal of it. Every tabloid magazine runs a similar headline: JACKSON MICHAELS MURDERED ON TANGO SHOOT. WAS ANNA INVOLVED? INSIDE THE COURTROOM!
Thanks to the efforts of celebrity attorney Rich Glockman, you and Buffy remain on house arrest. Your trial date looms in the distance and Buffy’s belly swells with each passing day.
The trial takes less than two weeks. It’s televised on Justice TV and you watch the grueling recaps every night, glued to the television like an ordinary civilian, desperate to read between the lines of the commentator’s summaries. During the long days in court, you furtively glance at the jury to try to figure out what they are thinking, but their expressions are uniformly emotionless and bored, their faces unreadable.
It’s finally your turn to take the stand. The prosecution’s questions are startlingly simple and swift. You feel both relieved and slightly disappointed that you aren’t given a chance to tell your side of the story. Then you realize the strategy must be to isolate Buffy, to rob her of any sense that you assist or support her. If she acted alone, her punishment will be much more severe.
Buffy’s testimony is heart wrenching. The attorney for the prosecution, a balding man who stands less than five-foot-five, peppers poor Buffy with a relentless line of rapid-fire questions delivered in a smarmy, nasal voice. Buffy speaks in a quiet monotone, answering as succinctly as possible, as you’re sure Rich has advised her to do.
“Ms. Templeton, what was your relationship with the deceased?”
“We were seeing each other.”
“How did you meet?”
Buffy clears her throat and answers, “We met while I was at work.”
For a brief moment, Buffy’s eyes flicker to meet yours, instantly bringing you back to that moment in the makeup room, a moment that now seems like eons ago. Why didn’t you try harder to talk her out of dating Jackson? Your gut told you all you needed to know about him. You have tremendous guilt coupled with fear for your friend. Oddly, you feel no sense of trepidation for your own well-being.
The hours of questioning
progress along the same path with tedious repetition. The same questions are often posed in multiple ways. Only once does Buffy show any emotion, in response to the attorney’s most personal question. “Ms. Templeton, please characterize your relationship with the deceased. Clearly it was intimate.” He gestures toward her burgeoning belly. “How often did you and Mr. Michaels engage in activities of a sexual nature?”
“That is none of your business!” she spits through clenched teeth. Rich stands at the same moment to object. Before the judge can make a decision about whether to let the line of questioning continue, the prosecution surprisingly withdraws the question and announces it will rest. You breathe a sigh of relief, but realize it’s the defense’s turn to question Buffy, who has now clearly been pushed too far.
Rich allows Buffy to sit silently for a moment. She stares at her hands, which rest gently on her belly, and only looks up when he asks, “Buffy, can you tells us exactly what happened the day of Mr. Michaels’s death?”
Buffy locks eyes with her attorney, looks straight at the jury, lets out a long breath and begins to tell the story. “We all decided to go for a boat ride . . .”
She speaks stoically at first, her words calm and evenly paced, but as she continues, you can see her begin to break. Her enormous eyes first grow glassy then fill with tears and spill over. You cry silently with her, and as she speaks you dab your eyes with your well-worn tissue.
Buffy ends her testimony, telling the jury how heartbroken she is that her unborn baby will never get to know her real father. For the first time the jury shows some emotion; some are sniffling, some swiping at their eyes. You can’t help but wonder whether their tears are the result of sympathy for Buffy, now left alone, for the fatherless child, or for the man who will never get to know his baby. You alone know that Buffy’s tears are completely genuine.
Star Struck Page 21
