Unscripted Joss Byrd

by Lygia Day Penaflor

  “Nice meeting you, Joss,” Ray says.

  “You too,” I answer, even though he never actually introduced himself.

  “Can I get a picture?” he asks. Before I even answer, he holds up his phone, scooches beside me, and snaps away. I wish I’d had my makeover already. “Thanks.” He checks the picture before running off. I probably look goofy in it. He didn’t even let me see.

  Gwen looks me up and down. She’s judging me without even trying to hide it. “I’ve never heard of you.”

  “Well, I haven’t really done movies that kids watch, just dramas and stuff.”

  “Huh.” She flips her hair over her shoulder.

  * * *

  “Where’s your project?” Bella Pratt thinks she’s so great because she always brings her homework on time and always remembers which days to bring an art smock and which days to bring gym clothes. I can’t keep those days straight; I’m not around often enough to get them right.

  “I dunno.” We had a project due?

  “You didn’t make your electrical circuit?” Bella shoves her wooden board toward me, showing off cardboard buildings with lightbulbs and wires and switches: Bella Pratt’s City of Lights!

  “I missed the unit because I was on set. I had books but not bulbs and stuff.” I don’t mention that I forgot my books at the studio and production will have to mail them to me overnight. In my backpack is just lunch and my sweatshirt.

  “What do you mean, you were on set?”

  “A movie set. It’s a movie called Zany Aces. I filmed it in Los Angeles.”

  “You’re full of it,” Bella says, as if I could or would lie about being in a movie.

  “Why would I lie? You can just look it up.” If she’s so smart, she should know how to use the Internet.

  “I’ve never seen you in anything,” she says while her friends gather around with their lightbulbs on trays, in boxes, or glued to poster board. “None of us have.”

  “Just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” I say. I should steal one of her wires so that the bulbs won’t light up when she presents her project. I think I will.

  “Yeah?” Bella puffs up her chest to play tough in front of her friends. “Well, maybe if you didn’t miss so much school for nothing you wouldn’t be so stupid,” she says.

  * * *

  “Ray’s my best friend’s boyfriend, you know,” Gwen says as Ray catches up to a girl with long, dark braids and hugs her. He sinks his hands into the girl’s back pockets. Braids look so childish on me. I could never pull them off; I’d look like I’m five. But on that girl they’re stylish. The fashion channels would call her “hippie chic.” Ray and Keri remind me of stuffed monkeys Velcroed together. “They’ve been going out three months,” Gwen says. I’m impressed, I guess; three months is the whole summer, plus part of an entirely different school year. “So, what, you think that just because you’re making a movie you can come to Montauk and take over our beach and talk to our guys?”

  Me? That guy wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Joss Byrd: friend of Robert Downey, Jr.

  “What’s the matter?” Gwen leans back as if she’s making room to put up her dukes. “You don’t know what to say without a script?”

  I don’t know what to say with a script. “I’m just here for work,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “It’s … my job.”

  “It’s your job to hog our waves and to hang out on the beach with an older girl’s boyfriend?”

  “He was just asking if he could be an extra.”

  “An extra? Ha!” Gwen scratches her head and mumbles under her breath, “High School Musical.” I can see the bonfire reflecting in her eyes—two flames roaring back at me. Gwen lifts her phone, which is vibrating and lighting up in her palm. “Arianne and Chris Tate are hooking up in shed,” she reads. She taps to open the photo and scrunches her face. “Gross.” She swipes the picture away. “She didn’t waste any time. But I’m sure your friend will be very happy with her services. She is Montauk Point’s employee of the month, every month.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I mean she does a lot of jobs. You know—hand and blow?” Gwen says, motioning each job with her fist. “Arianne is foul. We’re in eighth grade. What’s she gonna do when we get to high school?”

  I can’t imagine what Chris is doing or what Arianne is doing to him in that picture. I don’t ever want to see it. I’m dying to see it.

  “‘Check out how hot I am! I messed around with an actor in the shed next to a bucket of live worms.’ I’ll have to listen to that romantic tale for the rest of my life, now.” Gwen rolls her eyes and sends a text back. “See? This is exactly what I mean…” She glares at me again, fires raging, as if this is my fault, as if I wanted this to happen.

  The phone lights up again in her hand. Every flash makes me imagine something worse—Chris kissing Arianne, her shirt up, her hand down his shorts—I can’t stop picturing stuff. This isn’t the Golden Age of Hollywood. It’s modern times. I know that clothing is optional and the action doesn’t fade after kissing.

  “It’s always the same. You movie people take our bonfire and our waves and turn our town into Whoretauk Point.” Gwen stuffs her phone into her back pocket as she walks away. “Some very good work you’re doing,” she grumbles. “Keep it up, everyone!” she calls to the crew with her thumbs up.

  For no reason, I walk over to the food and fill a plate. I don’t want anything. I lost my appetite one whoretauk ago. My stomach hurts just looking at the barbecue chicken. The glaze is too orange, and I’m not sure it’s cooked all the way through; it’s too dark out to tell. But there’s nothing else to do but eat while I’m waiting for Chris to finish his not-so-secret rendezvous, so I take my barbecue chicken to a quiet spot and make the best of things.

  I thought that my stomach couldn’t get queasier, but I was wrong because Rodney is heading in my direction with a plate and a drink. Why’s he coming over here? There are plenty of other people he can talk to—people who aren’t twelve-year-old girls.

  Don’t look at him. That way he won’t feel invited. Can’t sit here! I pick up a reed and play with it, as if it’s the most fascinating reed that’s ever sprouted. I should’ve stayed with the crowd. How many times have I heard about safety in numbers? That’s another one of my problems. I don’t think of important things until it’s too late.

  Finally, Chris is on his way back. This isn’t the time for me to dwell on Arianne when Rodney’s on the prowl. Hurry, Chris, hurry! Chris has his hands in his pockets; he’s just strolling along, as if my safety isn’t at stake over here. The closer he gets, the clearer I see his guilty, doofy expression.

  Jericho runs at him, and then he laughs and jumps on Chris and rubs his head. All that’s missing is a cooler of Gatorade.

  Rodney has stopped to watch, too, as Slim rushes over to meet the boys.

  “Really? Yeah? Yeah?” Slim yells. He slaps Chris on the back and shakes his hand. Chris lowers his bright red face.

  When Rodney sees Chris walking my way, he turns toward the trail back to the Beachcomber. That was close. I must’ve been tensed up this whole time because now all my muscles are relaxing. I could roll over and fall asleep here and now.

  “Hey,” Chris says.

  Why am I embarrassed? I haven’t done anything, but I feel embarrassed anyway. I don’t look up, can barely look at him. But really, all I want to do is look—at his face, his hands, his body. Did he get a job? Or something more?

  “What’s up?” he asks, all innocently. He really is a talented actor.

  “Nothin’.”

  Chris takes a seat beside me on a hollow log.

  Maybe he’s messed around with a lot of girls, and this is just a day in the life of Christopher Tate. If that’s the case, why would he care about what I have to say about Rodney or Norah or anything else? I trace circles in the sand with the reed until it breaks. Then I throw the pieces into the dunes.

&n
bsp; “Why are you being weird?” Chris asks.

  Because it is weird. Because you just did stuff with a whoretauk, stuff I can’t even talk about, and right now I need you to be my movie brother. “I’m not being weird.”

  He laughs as he watches Jericho gabbing away with the crew. “Jericho’s nuts. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about half the time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think he’ll keep acting after this?”

  “Probably.” Nobody ever leaves unless they’re forced to leave—puberty or rehab.

  “Don’t tell him I told you this, okay?” Chris says.

  “What?” I look up at him without blinking. Maybe he didn’t do anything with Arianne after all. Maybe she wasn’t his type or maybe she said something idiotic or had bad breath.

  He leans his shoulder softly against mine. “I used the drops.”

  “You did?” I stare, surprised that he used them and even more surprised that he’s telling me.

  “I tried not to, but I couldn’t make it happen.” He shakes his head.

  “Wow,” I say. “It was the best scene so far, though. I think Terrance wanted to cry. I know I almost did.” The drops don’t change a thing, if you ask me. Tears you can fake, but you can’t fake pain.

  “Long day.” Chris sighs. “Anyway, I’m glad it’s over.”

  He doesn’t even know about Norah or Rodney. “Same here.”

  “Hey, I found you something.” Chris digs into his pocket and hands me a piece of purple sea glass, an almost-perfect triangle that fits right between my thumb and pointer finger. It’s warm from his body heat. “Thought you’d like it.”

  I hold it up to my eye; it glows against the fire. “I do.” How long does it take for all the sharp edges to wear down until it’s this smooth? Months? Years? “It’s like a guitar pick,” I say. Sometimes I hear Chris strumming a guitar in his trailer. I wish I could play. Brian, my Pops, wanted to teach me during Hit the Road, but we never had time. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Right along the grass there.” He points to the spot where I watched him disappear.

  “Just now?” I can’t help but ask. I don’t want the sea glass to be tainted by Arianne. It’d be gross if it was in Chris’s pocket when he fooled around with her.

  “Uh, just … before.”

  “Oh.” Heat rushes to my cheeks as I try not to imagine him and her doing who-knows-what.

  I rub the sea glass into my palm till it feels like it’s about to melt into my skin. I guess it shouldn’t matter when he found it. The point is, he cares about me. I found you something … I found you something … And he could’ve given the sea glass to Arianne, but he didn’t. He gave it to me, his movie sister.

  “Hey, Chris?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t tell Jericho, okay?”

  He scrunches his eyebrows. “What?”

  “I met the real Norah, and she hates me.” I frown. “She thinks I’m the worst actress ever.”

  Chris sucks in his breath.

  “And … there’s something else. It’s bad.”

  Doris would say it’s unpleasing to talk about a costar. But the way Chris is looking at me makes me sort of proud to have something major to tell him. “It’s about Rodney. He might be a perv for real.”

  “What? Why?” He looks at me with wild eyes. “What’d he do?”

  “He came into my schoolroom and skeeved me out. He went like this.” I grab my shoulders and cringe. “I wasn’t sure it was anything. But just now he was trying to come over here, except you came.”

  Chris’s mouth drops open. “Oh, shit.”

  Telling Chris makes Rodney more real. But I’m not afraid. I’m relieved. Across the beach everyone else is still eating and drinking and talking nonsense, which is so strange when we’ve got serious stuff going on here. There’s even a song playing, “Lifting me up, baby, higher and higher…” I’m glad there’s music, though. This way no one can hear us.

  “And Chris?” If I confess one last thing, maybe I’ll feel relieved about it, too. “Remember that day when I kicked you guys out of my schoolroom?”

  “Yeah,” he says. The bonfire is blazing in his eyes.

  Viva would say it’s a mistake to tell him. It’s too big a risk. But I lean closer now because it’s also too big a secret to hide any longer. “Well, the truth is…” I rub my thumb against my sea glass for a moment. “I’m not a ‘big deal,’” I whisper. “I’m not Joss Byrd. I’m an unofficial dyslexic.”

  8

  So what if I’m not the only girl who shared tonight with Christopher Tate? I might not be hot stuff like Arianne. But for now, I’m deciding that it’s more special to swap secrets than to swap spit. I didn’t even feel so left out when he went off to eat corn on the cob with Jericho. They can have their boy-talk because my time with Chris can be measured better by bonding than by minutes.

  Chris said there’s different types of intelligences, like logical intelligence and visual intelligence. He saw a video about it in school. He explained that since I’m a natural actress, I’ve got extra interpersonal intelligence. If we added up my total smartness, I might possibly be more intelligent than most people.

  He also told me I couldn’t argue about it because it’s not based on his opinion. It’s science. So I have to believe him.

  After all that today has thrown my way, I’m going to sleep like a rock; it’s felt like ten days in one. At least I have thoughts of Chris to think about now—that beats falling asleep to thoughts of Norah or Rodney. Sliding my key card in the door is nearly as good as laying my head on my pillow.

  But something’s different about our room.

  The sliding door is wide open.

  The TV is blaring.

  I recheck the room number.

  204.

  The sheets are moving.

  My mother is giggling.

  There’s a man’s voice.

  And then his arm.

  And shoulder.

  He’s moving on top of her, moaning my mother’s name.

  Her leg is hooked over his body.

  He lifts his chest.

  And his head.

  It’s not just any man.

  It’s Terrance.

  I’m hyperventilating again. My room card slips from my fingers right before I step back outside. As soon as the door clicks, I turn and punch the wooden railing. Then I press my forehead against it.

  How could she do this?

  He’s my director!

  We’re supposed to listen to him about when to scream and when to be still. We’re supposed to start when he says action and stop when he says cut. And that’s it.

  Nobody—especially not my mother—is supposed to bring him to their hotel room to do it with him while the rest of the town is eating chicken!

  And everybody who’s ever seen a People magazine knows that he’s married!

  There are so many rules that I have to follow: get to set on time, hang my wardrobe at the end of the night, know all the crew members’ names, say please and thank you, keep my trailer clean, don’t talk bad about other actors, hand out wrap-gifts to the cast and crew, don’t let anyone find out that I’m stupid, don’t complain, don’t complain, don’t complain …

  What are the rules for my mother?

  * * *

  “It’s the director!” Viva loud-whispers with one hand over the phone. On her laptop are dozens of pictures of Terrance Rivenbach—him in a baseball cap, him in a tuxedo, him standing on a cliff, him playing basketball with the president (of the country!) … “Well, if you say so. I mean, if you truly think my daughter is right for the part … Right … I can understand that … You did?… Yes, we have worked with them before … Of course…” I recognize something in Viva’s voice. They’re “clicking,” as she likes to put it. With some people she just “clicks,” and there you go.

  “But still. I’d hate to fly her across the country if she isn’t exactly right,” Viva says, even though sh
e would never turn down a paid trip to LA for any reason whatsoever. “I don’t like pulling her out of school.”

  I’m laughing to myself, already planning to charge my laptop before the flight so it’ll last through a couple movies.

  “Well, if you really think so…” Viva scrolls through the pictures on the screen and clicks on one of the director with his pretty young wife and their very blond twin boys. “I very much look forward to meeting you, too.”

  * * *

  I should’ve known this would happen. She’s going to ruin everything the way she always does. Any minute now she’ll piss Terrance off; he’ll hate her, and then he’ll hate me, too.

  I wonder if Peter Bustamante knows. Is this the image she wants to give to the executive producer? And if Doris finds out she’ll be furious. How does my mother expect us to look professional when she’s pulling stuff like this? People will think we’re a joke.

  I plop down against the door and breathe into my knees—deep breath in, deep breath out. All I can think about is one of my triggers: we lost the house we loved in Maryland because Viva wanted to follow her beefed-up boyfriend to Tyrone, Pennsylvania.

  “It’s gonna be so great!” she said. “Brendan and I are partnering with his friends and opening up a chain of upscale hair salons. There aren’t any classy places yet. The whole town is hungry for something high-end. We’ll buy the land and his friends will build. We’ll grow our money back faster than we can count it.”

  But Tyrone wasn’t great. It was a broken-down apartment with stained carpets and jittery lightbulbs and other people’s scum between the tiles. Viva was only right about one thing—there isn’t anything classy in the entire town. Tyrone is a place to leave, not to go. The town’s hungry, all right. There’s not even a Panera Bread. Sophisticated salons didn’t make sense from day one. Why would people who wear pajama pants to Walmart pay sixty dollars for a haircut?