“How did you sleep?” Rainer asks me, rolling his neck out.
He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt that would look goofy on most people, totally corny on others, and maybe, at best, ironic on some, but on him it looks completely right. That’s the thing about Rainer—everything he does is totally right. He’s effortless on set. You can never see the work.
I lie, but it comes out a little sarcastic anyway. “Awesome.”
Rainer cocks his head to the side. “It’s that damn ocean, right? So noisy. I’ll get Jessica to do something about it.”
Jessica is the director’s assistant. She’s twenty-three and beautiful. The kind of girl you cross a room for just to be closer to her. Long blond hair and even longer legs. She doesn’t sweat, even in eighty-degree beach heat, or get bags under her eyes after an eight-hour night shoot. She also happens to be one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. She bought me a visor when I first got to Hawaii with the date of the shoot and Locked written on it. Stenciled in the corner was the movie logo, a cowrie shell—the necklace that August wears.
“Where is the espresso around here?” Sandy, Rainer’s manager, appears at the screen door. As usual she is impeccably dressed and, despite the breeze, not a hair on her head is out of place.
When it really comes down to it, Sandy is the one who got me the part. She convinced my mom. It wasn’t easy, but Sandy assured her she’d be around and that she’d look out for me. My mom considered coming herself, but I knew, in the end, she’d never leave her job, or Annabelle.
Sandy came with us for the first few days here and has been in L.A. since. I haven’t seen her in over two weeks. I guess Sandy has kind of been acting as my manager. Everyone in L.A. has a manager.
Wyatt, our director, is on her heels, and I instantly freeze up. I’m still in my bathrobe, and Wyatt isn’t exactly the most comfortable person to be around.
“You have to call the front desk,” Wyatt answers. “The craft service stuff is poison.” He’s got on black jeans, a black T-shirt, and sneakers—a signature ensemble that seems to say being in Hawaii is a serious inconvenience for him, not a privilege. And it’s not just his style that resists the tropics. Even his hair, a self-proclaimed Jewfro, seems to be in retaliation against warm weather.
“We’re starting at ten,” Wyatt says. “I can’t believe it takes six goddamn hours to fix the lighting in a room.”
“You want a water?” Rainer asks. He’s still his normal, relaxed self, but he stands up when Wyatt appears. He holds out a bottle.
“No,” Wyatt says. He turns to me. “Shouldn’t you be in hair and makeup?” I feel my face get hot, and my palms start sweating.
I open my mouth to answer, but Rainer jumps in. “It’s my fault. I wouldn’t let her leave.” He glances at me sideways. “But yeah, kid, go fix your face.” I get a wink.
“Thanks,” I say. It’s sarcasm, but I mean it. Another lecture from Wyatt is not what I need this morning. Although it could be worse. It could be on set, in front of everyone, the way it normally is.
Despite the fact that it’s just Rainer and me acting, there are still eight million people on the set. Editors and production assistants and line producers. Lighting guys and stunt coordinators. There are so many people I’d need ten spiral notebooks just to keep track. I’m learning, slowly. It’s a little like being tossed into college from kindergarten. Luckily I have Rainer to guide me through. The crew loves him, and he’s always pranking everyone. He’s put plastic wrap on the sound-stage toilet seats at least three times.
“C’mon, PG. I’ll walk with you,” Rainer says.
When they did the press release revealing who would be playing August, the media latched on to the fact that I was an unknown. Latched hard. They’ve been calling me PG because of my “squeaky-clean image.” I pointed out to Cassandra on the phone that I am not exactly squeaky. It’s just that I haven’t had the opportunity to get dirty yet, which sounded wrong. The point is Rainer now calls me PG, and I’d probably find it annoying if it weren’t for that right-sided dimple of his. It makes it hard to get legitimately mad.
Sandy flicks her wrist, her Rolex landing dead center. “Yeah,” she says. “Lillianna is already down there.”
“I’m ready,” Rainer says. He stands behind my chair, ready to pull it out for me.
I set my coffee cup down and wipe the back of my hand across my lips. I glance at Wyatt, but he’s not paying attention to us. He’s leaning over the railing, looking up at the clouds and down at the beach. Trying to get a read on the weather today. I know he’s only in here because of Sandy, anyway.
She turns us both around by the shoulders and marches us through the suite, out the hallway, into the elevator, and down the two flights to hair and makeup.
“Sit, hon,” Lillianna instructs. Rainer and I take our seats, and Sandy turns to leave.
“I’ll see you guys on set,” she calls over her shoulder.
“What if we need you?” Rainer teases. “Where will you be?”
Sandy stops, hands on her hips. “Give me a break.”
“Where will you be?”
“You know where I’ll be,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Just tell me,” he says. He winks at me.
“Starbucks,” she says through gritted teeth.
Rainer pumps his fist. “Every time. Why don’t you just tell someone you hate the coffee here?”
Sandy glances at Lillianna, and then back at Rainer. “Just do your job, and I’ll do mine.”
She leaves, a whirlwind of cream-colored silk, and I sink down into my chair. It’s only eight AM.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us today, love,” Lillianna says, surveying my bed head.
Lillianna isn’t just the hair-and-makeup woman; she’s also our resident gossip. She’s from Hawaii, born and raised, and she’s been working on movies that film here since she was a teenager, almost fifty years ago. My first day she told me about the time she took a moonlit walk on the beach with Cary Grant. “I was a kid,” she said. “I didn’t even realize he probably wanted to kiss me.” I didn’t mention that almost everyone thinks he was actually gay.
She’s pulling and attacking my hair, but the sound of her smooth voice and the comfort of the seat begin to lull me to sleep. I’m not getting much rest lately and sometimes, as embarrassing as it is to admit, the makeup session doubles as a nap.
What feels like a moment later, I’m nodding awake, wiping some obvious drool off the corner of my mouth. Rainer is gone, but Jessica is standing over me. She’s fresh and bright in a light-pink tank top and denim shorts. “How’s it going?” she asks. I can tell what she means is why aren’t you finished yet?
“If your cute behind would stop interrupting, we’d be on schedule,” Lillianna says.
Jessica blushes, and I bite my lip at her as if to say sorry.
“Got it,” she says. She leaves the way she came, mumbling something into her headset.
I turn around to look at Lillianna. She’s armed with a can of hair spray and a tub of makeup mud. She smiles and extends her supplies-laden arms. “Ready to get dirty, hon?”
I nod.
You know how at the dentist’s office, the hygienist always waits until she has your mouth open, tubes sticking in and out and a metal pick hassling your gums, before she starts asking you how school is? Lillianna is kind of the same way.
“Tell me about the boys.”
“What boys?” I mumble, my mouth half open as she paints my cheeks.
“The ones at home, the ones here.” She clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth a few times and moves her ample hips.
“There is only one here,” I point out.
“Oh hon, but he’s a good one.”
I laugh. Lillianna is more boy crazy at seventy than most of my friends at seventeen. Well, besides maybe Cassandra. All Lillianna does is talk about how if she were fifty years younger, she’d never let Rainer out of her chair.
“I’m sure he has a
girlfriend,” I say. “You’ve seen him, right?”
Rainer acts single. I think. It’s hard to tell. I wouldn’t call him flirtatious, he’s just being friendly, but he’s never brought up his romantic status with me.
Lillianna waves me off. “That one, Britney? She’s got nothin’ on you.”
“Who’s Britney?”
Lillianna steps back and places a hand on her hip. “You ever pick up a proper magazine?”
“Not really.”
“Britney Drake. Pop star, that’s what they call her. Chin up.”
I pop my head back into place. “Britney, huh?” I’ve heard of her. I want to say she was a Disney kid, but I’m not sure.
“If he knew what was good for him, he’d run in the other direction. Word is she’s two-timing him with Jordan Wilder,” Lillianna says. She holds an eyebrow pencil over me. “Any boys at home?”
I think about Jake briefly. “No. Just friends.”
“Just a friend?”
I shrug. “There’s this guy. We kissed. But we’ve known each other forever. It’s not like that.”
I have no idea why I’ve told her this. Stupid. I can never keep quiet. It’s not like Lillianna is going to run to Star magazine, but I shouldn’t be talking to anyone about anything. Sandy has been really specific about that part.
Lillianna eyes me. “How come you’re never talking to him?”
“He’s not that into phones,” I say.
Lillianna crouches down in front of me so our eyes are level. “I never heard of a man who didn’t want to speak to his sweetheart if he could. Sounds like he’s not worth your time.” She stands back up, puts her hands on her hips, and surveys me, then nods in approval. “All right, hon, we’re all done here.”
A familiar feeling of dread lands in my abdomen like a bird on the water. Every day on set feels like a giant audition, even though I already got the part. I know I need to relax—Rainer is right—but I have no idea how.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome. You ever need someone to knock some sense into that boy, you let me know. I could get anyone on the phone.” She raises her eyebrows at me. I kind of believe her.
The sun is blazing when I get outside. I walk down to set repeating the same words I chant every day in my head. They chose you. You can do this. You belong here.
CHAPTER 5
When I get down to the beach, Wyatt is squinting into the sun, talking to Camden, our cinematographer, about camera angles. Filming at the beach sounds sexy and sun-kissed and windblown but in reality is really just technical and itchy. It’s a constant battle to get the right angle, to have the right amount of sand and dirt, to hit your mark without a gust of wind blowing or a wave coming in.
Rainer is a pro at it. I swear the elements sort of fold at his whim. I’ve seen it turn from pouring rain to blasting sun in a matter of seconds when he walks out onto the beach. Noah has powers in Locked. The weather does funny stuff when he’s around. Rainer and his character have a lot in common.
Today we are filming what Wyatt has dubbed the “washed up” scene. It’s the one where August and Noah land on the island and he heals her. I’m covered in fake blood and dirt, and I have on what can only be described as rags, not clothes.
This scene is pretty early on in the book, but we’re not going in chronological order. Wyatt says he likes to try to do that, for the emotional arc to feel as authentic as it can, but shooting schedules are complicated. We do what we need to.
Rainer is chatting with a production assistant who is building a mountain out of sand. He keeps trying to help her, and she keeps telling him to stop. I see her blushing, the corners of her eyes crinkling into a smile. He’s not flirting, exactly. It’s more like he’s aware of the effect he’s having on her.
“Come on, guys. Let’s get this before sunset.” Wyatt doesn’t look at me but motions for us to come over, and Rainer flicks some sand at the PA. She shakes out her hair and laughs. Something flares up in my chest, but I shake it down with my nerves. We get miked, which always involves one of our sound guys getting a little too personal with my cleavage (or lack thereof). And then we head down to the water’s edge.
I take a deep breath and focus on the ocean. It’s this spectacular turquoise color. Cassandra would probably call it something ridiculous, like tortoiseshell green. From a distance the water is beautiful and bright, but when you get into it, right up close, it’s perfectly clear. You can stare right down into the sand at your feet.
It’s the same thing with acting: It looks a lot different up close. When you watch a movie, it’s seamless. The story moves from one scene to another with effortless grace. But day to day, scene by scene, it’s all broken up and choppy. Put your hand here, lift your chin right, square your shoulders center. Hit the mark on a certain word.
The real problem, though, is that I’m too in my head about it. Wyatt tells me this all the time. He screams it. “Stop thinking!” But I can’t. I’m worried about getting August wrong and disappointing tens of millions of people.
I’ve played a hundred different characters before, characters of Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams and even one really chatty girl written by Steve Gleck, the eighth grader who won the one-act competition at my school a few years back. But this is different. August is a character beloved by the world, and it’s my job to bring her to life. She’ll have my face and voice and hair. She’ll be me. And what if I’m wrong?
It seems so easy for Rainer. He doesn’t even try. He jostles onto the set, makes some jokes, and as soon as Wyatt calls action, he becomes Noah. It’s like an on-off switch.
Which is crazy because Noah is nothing like Rainer. Rainer is friendly and outgoing, and Noah is reserved and mysterious. They both have blond hair and tragically gorgeous blue eyes, though. And his abs. They’re just… beautiful. There isn’t really any other way to put it.
“We need to be better today!” Wyatt is yelling. I know he means me. I need to be better today. And I will. I have never been one to shrink from a challenge. Now hardly seems like the time to start.
For this shot I’m lying in the sand, in Noah’s arms. I’m dying—there are shards of plane stuck in every which way in my body. Luckily they CGI most of that in later. We take our places in the sand. I lie down and then Rainer is there, right next to me. When his hands find my shoulders, I involuntarily suck in my breath. This is the most intimate scene we’ve done yet, by far.
“You’re dying!” Wyatt is screaming. “This is fucking painful! Could we fucking feel that?”
“You got this,” Rainer whispers to me.
Wyatt calls action, and I start choking. Noah is bending over me, frantic. I feel his fingertips glide up my sides. They search my rib cage. I focus on the feeling. Pain. Death. Darkness.
“Cut!” Wyatt yells.
I breathe out. Rainer sits back.
“I’m not buying it,” Wyatt says.
Rainer squints up at him. “We could hit it a little faster,” he says.
Wyatt shakes his head. “I want to feel it,” he says. “I want to feel like you are losing her and you”—he points down at me; it makes my blood run cold—“you are barely conscious.” He crouches down. “It needs to come from here,” he says, and drops a hand roughly to my stomach. “Core.”
He stalks off. I hear him mutter something, but I’m not sure what it is.
Rainer touches my shoulder. “Don’t listen to him,” he says softly. “You’re doing great.”
But I know he’s wrong. I’m not. I want to be, but I’m not.
It’s getting hot now, the sun climbing higher and higher. Jake knows how to tell time by the sun. He once tried to teach me, but I didn’t quite get how you were supposed to go about it, since you’re not supposed to look directly at the sun at all.
By the time we finish for the day, it’s dark and I am exhausted. We must have done about a hundred takes of that healing scene. And then another hundred involving the crash. We were in an
d out of the water, and even though it was hot, my teeth have been chattering since the afternoon. Rainer kept putting his arms around me to warm me up between takes, and whispering encouraging things. He’s been pretty protective since we got here, and I’m grateful for that. If he weren’t on my side, I don’t know what I would do.
We have to end at eight, and this makes Wyatt crazy. Usually our shoots get later and later throughout the week. Technically we can’t shoot for more than twelve hours without a seven-hour break in between, and my hours are even stricter. Since Rainer isn’t a minor, he can film late into the night and stay on set as long as he needs to. I, on the other hand, have all these stipulations and requirements—I can film for only five and a half hours and need to spend three hours a day in school. Sometimes, at the end of a shoot, I’ll have twenty minutes of school left and I’ll have to go up to the conference room in the hotel lobby with my tutor, Rubina. Wyatt will film my reaction shots, or dialogue, and then I leave and my double comes in to film the rest. It’s weird to think that for a lot of the movie, I’m not even there.
Even so, once you factor in hair and makeup (which can take close to three hours), sleep is hard to come by.
I hop into a waiting van.
I turn to see if Rainer is coming, but I see he’s cornered Wyatt, and the last thing I want is to interrupt that. We leave, and then I trudge back up to the hotel, discouraged. I had thought that getting the role was the hard part. That I’d proven myself and that was why they’d hired me. What I didn’t realize was that getting hired was only the beginning.
I’m heading into my room when I hear footsteps behind me.
Famous in Love Page 3
