Fame Adjacent

by Sarah Skilton

  “I didn’t give it much thought. I figured it was a rolling admission.”

  “It is, but the only reason they had an opening was because Carl got kicked out.”

  “Oh.” Great, I was an outsider in real life for having an addiction, and an outsider in rehab for not being addicted enough. I shook off the self-pity and focused back on Thom. “Why did Carl get kicked out?”

  Thom’s face radiated excitement. He could barely wait to tell me. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Tell me, tell me!”

  “He smuggled in a phone. Huge scandal.”

  “He smuggled—how?”

  “Uh…well…” He scratched the back of his neck, and the tips of his ears turned pink.

  Now I needed to know. “Is that why we aren’t allowed to bring in stuffed animals from the gift shop?” (Renee had purchased a SEE YOU BEAR-Y SOON bear for me as a joke, and it was promptly confiscated.) “Is it because of Carl? Did he gut one and shove the phone inside?”

  I’d seen that plot on more than one TV show, albeit to hide jewels.

  “Getting warmer…” Thom said. His discomfort should have clued me in, but in a testament to my not-quite-so-addicted addiction, I couldn’t fathom the lengths some people would go to, to keep their phones.

  “Just tell me.”

  “He, uh, used his ‘prison pocket.’”

  “Prison pocket? What’s that?” Then it hit me. “Oh my God. Ew! How does that even…ow!”

  “It’s a tough act to follow,” Thom sputtered. “You’ll never live up to that.”

  “Jesus.”

  “We should throw this out,” he said, referring to the cardboard iPhone.

  We tore it into unidentifiable pieces and scattered it like ashes into several different trash cans throughout the wing so as not to arouse suspicion. It felt like disposing of a body.

  The hospital was peaceful in the middle of the night. The only sounds were the tap of our shoes, our hushed giggling, and the droning hum of the vending machine.

  I don’t know if it was the late hour or if he felt like opening up, but once we finished our task, we kept walking through the dimly lit hallways. It was the closest we could get to an evening stroll.

  “Did you like slumber parties when you were a kid?” he asked. “Staying up late, raiding the fridge?”

  “I hated them, actually. Being trapped at someone’s house, not knowing where anything was, being forced to watch movies I didn’t like.”

  “Like what?”

  “Let’s see, when I was ten, my friends were into John Hughes movies because of their older sisters. Ferris Bueller, Sixteen Candles. I thought they were appalling. They had so many bad words.”

  “They did?”

  “Oh yeah. My tender ears.”

  “I was traumatized by the Pinhead movies,” he admitted. “Freddy and Jason, too. All that shit gave me nightmares.” He gave a courtly bow. “Pardon my language.”

  I swatted him lightly, rolling my eyes. “Do you keep in touch with any of your school friends from Ohio? I know you don’t go to reunions, but…”

  “Nah. My junior high friends were dicks. I had some decent ones in high school, but we’ve mostly drifted apart.”

  “What made them dicks?”

  “I remember one of the birthday parties at my neighbor’s house. Alex. We’d been close since kindergarten, and we both loved Calvin and Hobbes. This was ’93, ’94, when it was still syndicated. I cut out and saved every Sunday strip—so they’d be in color—all year so I could make wrapping paper out of them. I taped the strips together and if you were careful when you lifted the biggest flap on the present, you’d be able to keep them together, have a poster for your wall. Everyone put their gifts on the kitchen table when we arrived, so you didn’t know whose was whose. One of his other friends made fun of it all day, like ‘Who was too cheap to buy wrapping paper? Who used this shitty baby cartoon from a newspaper?’”

  “Fuck that kid.”

  He feigned shock. “Sixteen Candles was a bad influence.”

  “Yeah, it was all downhill from there. Did your friend come to your defense?”

  “Nah, he acted like he was just as confused as everyone else, and when it was time to open them up and see what he got, he ripped the whole thing into pieces while everyone laughed, to show how cool and above it he was.” Thom swallowed. “Last I heard, he’s been in and out of rehab for opiates. Happened to a lot of guys I used to know.”

  “Oh man. I’m sorry.”

  He explained that the neighborhood where he grew up in Ohio was considered one of the first pill mills. When he was a sophomore, a cabal of greasy-haired, red-eyed doctors with expired licenses and marks on their records slithered in from other states to set up shop. They handed out Oxycontin prescriptions like taffy, the slow-release ones that kept patients either perpetually stoned or perpetually vomiting from withdrawals, and when the crackdown on scrips came, people turned to black tar heroin, which was actually cheaper to buy. Thom’s parents still lived there but he rarely visited them; instead, he flew them out to New York every Christmas and Fourth of July.

  I still didn’t know what his addiction was.

  13

  Reddit/AMA

  [WickedBlintz]: I’d like to address the most troubling aspects of the show. Why was Brody Rutherford cast in the role of DIEGO? I know it was the ’90s, but how was that okay?? He was vaguely ethnic, in a Freddie Prinze Jr. kind of way, but obviously coded white, and obviously not Latino, which is problematic on so many levels, especially when San Diego is, like, one mile from the Mexican border and the Studdards could have easily found someone who more accurately represented what the name Diego implies!! Secondly, the “token black girl” was BRITISH. Why couldn’t she be an AMERICAN black girl? Was that somehow too threatening? Too controversial? And from a logical standpoint, WTF? We are talking about runaways who lived at the zoo—why and how did a girl from England get to California on her own??

  [HollyD]: I hear you! I’ll do my best to answer, but keep in mind I was in middle school at the time and didn’t have a clue how offensive some of the choices were; also, there really is no good answer to your questions. I’m glad you brought up the Studdards (the show’s producers/financiers) because everything stems from them. The first thing you have to understand is that they had more money than sense and had never worked in entertainment before. Mrs. Studdard, a grain-processing heiress and philanthropist from Point Loma, happened to be at the San Diego Zoo with her bird-watching group when the idea for a kids’ show came to her. She and her husband funded the program primarily as a tax shelter and relied obsessively on focus groups of children to supply the show’s content. If you visited the San Diego Zoo in the summer of 1989, and you were 5 to 9 years old, you were handed a piece of paper upon admittance that asked what you’d like to see in an animal-themed upcoming PBS show. The problem was, from what I can tell, they used every concept they received. Nothing was too ambitious or bizarre. What if the kids adopted a different zoo animal each week and took care of it, learning all the details of its life, habitat, and eating habits? What if there were different themes each day to determine which animal got the spotlight? What if the kids spun a wheel like on Wheel of Fortune and it landed on different categories like Leapin’ Lizards, ’Mazing Monkeys, and Rockin’ Rhinos? What if our characters were orphans who lived and worked at the zoo? What if we hid in the bathroom stalls at night and survived off coins thrown in the fountain? (That part was flat-out stolen from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; luckily it never made it to air, and our “dorm/house” became the titular lion’s den instead.) And then the biggest, splashiest suggestion: What if we weren’t just orphans, we were orphans who’d formed a band and were looking for our big break? As for the deeply flawed casting decisions, they were based on the Studdards’ premade travel plans; they held open calls wherever they happened to be on vacation. Tara was discovered in London, and they didn’t bother to gi
ve her (or any of the other kids, to be fair) any sort of backstory. We emerged whole cloth in the lion’s den, without parental supervision until midway through season 2 when the roles of zookeepers Ed and Martha were added. If the Studdards had visited Mexico instead of Texas that fall, perhaps we’d have found a Diego who better fit the name. The only reason they even called him that was so we could refer to the location of the zoo. The Studdards’ cluelessness doesn’t excuse the issues, but it all starts there.

  Essentially, if you pull any thread—plot, characters, casting, setting—the whole thing falls apart.

  [AngBee]: First impressions of the *original* cast, please. (Only Brody, Tara, Kelly, and J. J., please. Don’t care about Melody or Ethan.)

  [HollyD]: Sure. Brody and Tara were always paired together for duets, partly because they could be counted on to hit the high notes, and partly because Brody tried much harder when Tara was around because he wanted to impress her. She was the only one of us with bona fide musical theater chops, having appeared in a West End production of The Wiz as one of Glinda’s court girls prior to being cast. Both of Tara’s parents flew to San Diego to help her settle in, but only her mother stayed for the long haul. Her dad traveled back and forth to Merry Old on business. If Tara was homesick for Britain, she never let on, though she did receive regular shipments of Fry’s Turkish Delight bars that she hid from everyone except Brody.

  They were always huddled together laughing and practicing, although they were given much less dialogue than the rest of us, because their speaking voices were…concerning. Tara’s British accent was difficult for her to shed, but because she kept trying, she sounded like someone from a fake country, like Balki from Perfect Strangers. Brody couldn’t memorize a single line of text, let alone any Spanish words. Also, he laughed through every sketch. I’m not saying that to be mean. He laughed through every sketch.

  Kelly Hale was a Botticelli painting come to life. She was also four years older than the rest of us and we all wanted to be her, because (a) she could drive, and (b) she made it cool to be nice, and that set the tone for the set and everyone who worked on the show. The first time we met she told me I looked like Cindy Crawford. Probably because of my bushy eyebrows. She drew a mole on my face with eyeliner once, and she told me that toothpaste, dotted on problem areas, would nuke zits. She was our hero.

  As for J. J., he was skinny, with curly brown hair and large glasses. The Carolina Panthers football jersey he wore swallowed him whole; a stiff wind from the Pacific would’ve sent him into orbit, with the enormous jersey serving as a parachute. If the kids at my school had heard him speak (“Ah’m hankerin’ for a Coke. Y’all got any?”), they would’ve eaten him alive. His birdie wrists were smaller than mine. His Reebok high-tops were unlaced, a pratfall waiting to happen. He was eleven, like me, but he looked about nine. His speaking voice was piping high, but when he opened his mouth to sing, a gorgeous baritone came out, shocking us all. He was small, vulnerable, open. His parents wanted nothing to do with Hollywood and tried to yank him off the show after the first week.

  14

  Friday evening I planned a wild night of reading an Elle magazine from 2009 when a knock sounded on my door.

  “Holly?” called a bright voice.

  “Be right there.”

  The only pajamas I had brought to Prevail! were a thick gray flannel with pink polka dots on them. I finished buttoning up the top and opened the door.

  Lisa’s assistant stood in the hall looking young, adorable, and helpful.

  “Sorry to bother you, Miss Danner, but you have a phone call.”

  “It’s no bother.”

  Only one person had my number here. After thanking Lisa’s assistant, I practically skipped to the private phone room when a chilling thought hit me: Why were they calling from Belgium? Wasn’t it three a.m. there? Was something wrong?

  Renee traveled there every other year with Mom and Dad for research—her Belgian bistro, Gaufre It, specialized in gaufre (waffles) and pommes frites (fries). This was the first time Lainey had gone on the trip. She would be celebrating her eleventh birthday there.

  “Hey, you guys okay?” I asked breathlessly. My concerns poured out nonsensically. “What’s going on? When did you get in? Did you find the children’s melatonin? Did you have her drink a glass of water for each hour of the flight?”

  Turning off the part of my brain that worried about Lainey was easier said than done. I craved information. No one answered my greeting. Had we lost the connection? When Lainey was younger our phone calls had abrupt endings—when she learned to talk on the phone, instead of saying goodbye before hanging up, she’d say, “The end!”—but this was different.

  “It’s me.”

  Oh.

  Shit.

  No.

  My heart beat so rapidly it seemed to make my entire body shake. My hands tingled and I thought I might throw up. It was about a thousand times worse than the feeling I’d had in Lisa’s office when I realized my iPhone was so far away.

  It took me a moment to recover my voice. “How did you find me?”

  I sounded quiet, and timid, and I hated him for it.

  “I saw Renee at church and she gave me the number.”

  “Oh. You’re in San Diego right now?”

  “Has it really been five years? What have you been up to?”

  I couldn’t possibly dignify that with a response. What was I supposed to say? While you traveled the world in a private jet, I staged a coup at the local bookstore and took over the Saturday Storytime so my niece wouldn’t have to listen to mumblers who couldn’t enunciate or emote? And it was an honest-to-God highlight?

  He sighed at my lack of response. It did not move me.

  “I thought it was just me you weren’t talking to, but Tara and Kelly said they haven’t heard from you, either. And I saw Ethan and Melody at the—” (He was about to say something impossibly obnoxious, like the Golden Globes, or the McGregor fight in Vegas, but cut himself off.) “Anyway, even Brody was like, ‘Where’s Hol-Hol at? It’s been a minute, yo.’”

  His version of Brody used to crack me up.

  “I didn’t realize you weren’t talking to anyone,” he added quietly.

  “What do you want?” My voice quivered, which only made me feel more helpless and angry. I’d had no time to prepare for the possibility of him contacting me.

  “I’m sorry you’re not doing well. I kept expecting to hear that you sold a novel or something, I look for it whenever I’m in a bookstore, and—”

  “Nope.”

  “Can I…Will you let me pay for your rehab?”

  “What? No. Why?”

  “Whatever it costs, I’ll wire it to your bank—”

  “I don’t want your money,” I said.

  (No way in hell was I telling him the program was free.)

  “It’s nothing, let me do this for you.”

  “I would never accept it from you.” My words came out in a rush. They felt harsh in my throat, like they’d been painstakingly scraped from it.

  The shock of hearing his voice after so long made it hard to breathe. I had to remind myself to do it; my brain was no longer capable of performing automatically.

  “Come on, Holly. Don’t be this way. I’m trying to reach out.”

  “And now you have, so…” The end!

  “Wait, there’s something else I—”

  I hung up before I lost the strength to do so.

  The entire conversation was forty seconds, max, but I felt as though I’d landed after an eighteen-hour flight. I would’ve loved that to be true. I would’ve loved to be in Belgium right then. Unreachable.

  I stood there in a daze, light-headed and dry-throated.

  Eventually I staggered back to my room, hugging the walls and keeping my head down. My hairline and underarms were slick with sweat, and my heart blasted so hard in my chest it turned my pulse into a bass drum. I’d been ready for bed before I spoke to him, but now it seemed unlikely
I’d ever get to sleep. Frustrated adrenaline would keep me up for hours while I parsed his words and my dumbfounded responses for meaning.

  Why the fuck had Renee given him my number?

  The humiliation hit me like a wave. I didn’t want anyone to know I was here, but especially not them. Not him. The whole point of showing up at the anniversary was to surprise them. I hadn’t wanted to be in their thoughts prior to that.

  On the plus side, Prevail! was a vague term, creamy with hope; it could mean anything.

  If they found out I needed to be separated from society for Googling the shit out of them, stalking their social media accounts 24/7, and writing essays on Reddit about the old days, I would crumble into dust and blow away.

  Maybe I should do that anyway. Maybe it would be a goddamn relief to disappear.

  Why, oh why couldn’t they be the ones to disappear, for once?

  I was awash in memories, pain, and regret when another knock interrupted my racing thoughts.

  “Who is it?” I warbled through tears.

  “Thom. Can we talk for a sec?” he asked. I didn’t remember his voice being that low. It was oddly soothing.

  I cracked the door open. “You can come in, but I don’t feel like talking.”

  He hesitated in the doorway, eyeing my full-body flannel pajamas. “Expecting some gale-force winds tonight?”

  “What’s up?” I muttered.

  He ran a hand through his messy hair. “I, uh, I was just…”

  I was intrigued. In the two weeks I’d known him, he’d never tripped over his words. I wasn’t in the mood to make things easy, though. I stared back, blank-faced and expectant.

  “Yeah, so there’s a field trip, for lack of a better word, at the Mall of America tomorrow. I wasn’t sure if you heard about it.”

  I didn’t give an inch. “Uh-huh.”

  He slipped his thumb into his empty belt loop (no belts allowed) and returned to his usual cocky self. “And I was thinking: you, me, a slice of pizza at Sbarro…”