Fame Adjacent

by Sarah Skilton

  Fowl Play had screwed me over, but not as badly as it appeared; the pay-or-play contract my agent had negotiated meant the network had to pay me for the episodes I would have done (all nine, the length of the original buyout) had they not replaced me the day before the series started shooting. (I still get tiny residuals each time an episode from those first nine airs. At this point it’s not worth the paper cuts I get opening the envelope, but for a while it was my sole income.) The fact that it became a hit later didn’t help me, but the original six figures stretched far and wide when I was eighteen to twenty-four.

  By 2001, when I was twenty, OffBeat had managed to escape the clutches of their first, deranged manager and Bubblegum, their first album post-liberation, had first-day sales of a million units. Though the title was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, and music scholars eviscerated the lyrics “You’re stuck on me, I’m stuck on you” (“Like something stuck to the bottom of my shoe,” read Pitchfork’s angry headline), there was no denying that bubblegum pop was back for good, and OffBeat was its poster child. The world’s obsession with the group hit a fever pitch when Mel and Brody got together as a publicity stunt. Not even “viewers like you” were immune; PBS threw together a compilation DVD of Diego skits and songs called The Best of J. J., Melody, and Brody as a new-subscriber perk.

  The so-called Diego Darlings, with their status as the show’s most famous alumni, captured the hearts and allowance money of teens and tweens by the truckload.

  Since I appeared in one of the sketches, I received a small cut of the DVD profits. Everyone else donated their portion back to PBS. I took the money and ran.

  Lesson Three: Dignity is overrated.

  For a while I shared a studio apartment with a girl who did closed captioning for daytime TV shows. She worked and slept on the couch, headphones on, special caption keyboard at the ready. At night I had to climb over her sleeping form on the couch to get to the bed, which was mashed up against the wall behind it. I stepped on her face once when she reversed her positioning without telling me.

  I spent most days nursing a bottomless cup of coffee at Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard, going over lines and counting the days until J. J. would swing through town again on tour. We broke up and got back together more times than I could count, and the only person I could talk to about it was Tara.

  Brody and Melody’s fauxmance dominated the tabloids, and it was surreal for me to witness. He and Tara had been best friends during Diego, and she’d been his first choice for fake girlfriend, but she’d turned him down, refusing to tie her career and prospects to his dating life. She wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, as well as an artist of color, which was challenging enough after the debacle that was Manchot. No way would she be a beard for a white pop star, regardless of their friendship. Melody’s rise was stratospheric after that; she launched a solo career and Tara could only watch as opportunity after opportunity went to high-profile, blond, and perky Melody instead of her. Leaving her to wonder whether her integrity or her skin tone was the cause.

  I had failed as an actor, but at least I didn’t have to watch J. J. slobbering over someone else for the cameras, and reaping all the benefits. OffBeat’s PR machine pretended J. J. was single so fans could imagine themselves in the girlfriend role; with Brody so publicly “taken,” they needed to present J. J. as an alternative. Ironically, this led to rumors that J. J. was “the gay one.”

  I wish I’d said, Goodbye forever, Hollywood! Have fun shattering people! Instead, I continued chasing fame until I had almost no money left, and only then did I apply to college.

  (TL;DR: I spent five years on a TV show, and seven years trying to get it back.)

  At twenty-five, I was the oldest freshman in my dorm. I purchased wine coolers for the kids on the floor and studied psychology and musical theater. I nabbed the role of Little Red Riding Hood in the campus production of Into the Woods, but the weekend of dress rehearsals, I got an emergency call from my parents that my sister had survived a perilous labor but didn’t believe the baby belonged to her. She told the doctors who examined her that she was waiting for the baby’s real mother to show up.

  2

  Having left Woodbury, Minnesota, we took I-90 east going sixty-five miles an hour, not a mile more, not a mile less. Have I mentioned the speed limit was seventy?

  “Is this how we’re doing this?” I asked. “Slow and steady wins the race?”

  “I don’t want to get pulled over. And when it’s your turn to drive, you’ll do the same,” he replied gruffly.

  Still prickly I forced myself on the road trip, then.

  The Volkswagen’s air conditioner seemed to be in a death spiral. It rattled and hissed, and one of its vents appeared to be melted shut from some long-ago heat wave. Very long ago. The radio was broken, by which I mean it wasn’t there. A tangle of loose wires spilled out from the space it used to occupy. I assumed it had been stolen.

  “Had this car awhile, have you? Since high school, maybe?” I had no idea why I kept poking the bear. But arguing was better than silence for two thousand miles.

  “It’s new,” Thom answered vaguely.

  I coughed uncontrollably.

  “New to me,” he clarified. “I think it’s a ’94.”

  I wiped my eyes. “Right.”

  “It should take us twenty-five hours to get to Manhattan,” he continued. “Though I didn’t plan on a passenger and her girl bladder making us stop every fifty miles.”

  “My girl bladder is top-notch, I’ll have you know.”

  “I’m not—all I’m saying is you can’t exactly pee into a bottle. It’s not your fault.” He dragged heavy fingers through his dirty-blond hair, ruining the side part from that morning. “We can alternate shifts of seven hours each per day, and spend one night in a hotel. I haven’t budgeted for meals now that we have to double up, though.”

  “I’ll pay for everything,” I assured him, ticking off the list on my fingers. “Gas, food, hotel, Red Bulls. Go nuts.”

  “I’ll cover the gas since I’m driving this way anyway, but if you want to handle the rest that’d be great. Thanks.”

  First thing we needed was a different car, I thought. Perhaps one that was new to the world.

  I kept my misgivings to myself. We were still within twenty minutes of Prevail! and who’s to say he wouldn’t dump me on the side of the road if I annoyed him too much?

  “I have one rule,” he said.

  “Anything.” (Don’t spill soda on the car, as it might detract from the stains already there?)

  “Since you didn’t finish the program, you have to follow the guidelines at Prevail! I’m not hauling your ass halfway across the country while you stare at a screen the whole time. Once a day, for fifteen minutes, you can use my phone to go online. I’ll be your sober companion, so to speak.”

  I didn’t love the plan, but I was in no position to argue. Tomorrow would’ve been my first chance to go online if I’d stayed, so why not? This way, I was getting my treat a day early.

  “Done,” I agreed.

  “I’ll get you to New York, but what you do after that is up to you. I’m not going to be part of your little scheme.”

  “I’m aware of your feelings on the subject. But remember we’re on the clock.” My eyes strayed to his mileage indicator and its unwavering adherence to sixty-five mph.

  “Trust me, I want to get to New York even more than you do.”

  My tone softened. “Of course you do; you miss your son. Sammy, right?”

  “Sammy Bear,” he said quietly.

  “How old is he?”

  “Eight.”

  I waited for more, but he wasn’t forthcoming. When the topic was my dysfunction (or InstaMom’s, or anyone else’s), he was a regular Chatty Cathy, offering opinions left and right. When it was his turn to reveal a weakness of any sort, he clammed up.

  Not to mention the verbal gymnastics he’d used to avoid mentioning his progeny the past three weeks.

&nbs
p; “Were you able to talk to him on the phone at all?” I asked.

  “A couple of times. With school, and the time difference, and his weekend activities, it was sort of tricky to set up. And my parents didn’t want us to talk too often because they thought it would disrupt his day, make things harder on him. He tends to…fixate on things.” Thom pointedly kept his eyes on the road while he spoke.

  We rode in silence. The Volkswagen did not. A mysterious rattle shook the cup holder, even though it was empty, and the car bounced and swayed at random, as if we were flying over dangerous terrain instead of traveling below the speed limit on a smooth expanse of highway.

  Before my excruciating seduction attempt, I’d have said a road trip with Thom would be a piece of cake, filled with conversation and laughter. Now I found myself staring out the window at passing billboards, most of which were in favor of colonoscopies, Wisconsin Dells, and the Unborn. The past few days without Thom had been isolating and lonely. Now that we had all this time alone together, it was a shame we couldn’t return to our old banter.

  Eventually, Thom cleared his throat.

  I sat up straighter but remained silent. I didn’t want to scare him off by appearing too eager.

  “When I left New York, it was the first time Sammy and I had been apart since he was three,” he said quietly.

  “Wait. You didn’t have a single night away from him in five years? No overnight trips, no vacations, nothing?”

  “He suffers from night terrors. He hasn’t had a full night of sleep since he was a baby.”

  Which meant neither had Thom. “I’m sorry. That sounds tough.”

  “If I have to travel for work, I take him with me, and if I go out of town during the day I make sure to get back before bedtime. He misses a lot of school that way, but it’s easier than trying to find someone who can handle him.”

  “I bet he loves being with Grandma and Grandpa, though.”

  He wouldn’t give an inch. He was determined to tear himself down. “He needs to stick to a routine as much as possible. We were making progress—at least I thought we were—and I shot it to hell by coming here.”

  “Hey, you don’t know that. Maybe it was good, to get a break from each other. Or if not good, at least necessary. For both of you.”

  He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened. “Not for forty-five days.”

  “The important thing is you faced your problem and got help,” I pointed out, insipidly, aware of how cliché I sounded, “and, and—”

  He shook his head, unconvinced. “You don’t get it.”

  “I do, I really do—”

  “I know you helped out with your niece, but it’s not the same.”

  “I didn’t ‘help out.’ I was her primary caretaker.”

  The skepticism in his voice remained. “For what, a year or two?”

  “Until two months ago. She’s ten.”

  He looked stunned. “I didn’t know.”

  “At least I mentioned her. You didn’t tell me anything about Sammy.”

  He swallowed. “It upset me too much. Being with you—I mean, talking with you,” he quickly corrected, “it was a break from all that.”

  “Guess we both kept things from each other,” I admitted.

  “What’d you say earlier? ‘You have baggage and I have baggage, but together we’re a…’”

  “I didn’t say it,” I protested. “I used it as an example of something I would never say.”

  “The fact that you even came up with it…”

  “As an example of a ridiculous line.”

  “That you nevertheless felt the need to—”

  I threw up my hands. “Moving on.”

  He laughed. It felt good to hear that sound again. “Okay, ‘Lisa,’” he teased me.

  “She hated you.”

  “She couldn’t find her own ass with both hands.”

  “Come on, she wasn’t that bad.” I felt a pang of guilt. I’d been unfair to her, ditching the program, but what choice did I have?

  “Anyway, you said the show was all you have, but it sounds like for ten years you had a hell of a gig watching your niece. What made you decide to leave? I’m not blaming you, just curious.”

  I chewed on my thumbnail before answering. “I don’t know. It was just time.”

  “Was it a tough conversation to have with your sister, or did she understand? And what was your plan after quitting? You must have had something else lined up?”

  “It wasn’t exactly formal,” I said uncomfortably. “I asked her to meet me in the kitchen for a talk, and I laid it out as gently as I could, that it was time for me to move out because I wanted to do my own thing now.”

  I didn’t look at him when I said it. The words came out in a precise, self-conscious order but my gaze remained out the window, looking into the windows of other cars. Other lives.

  I should’ve known by then he wouldn’t drop it that easily.

  “You lived with them?”

  “Well, I had my own cottage out back. Kitchen, living room, bedroom. I was close by, but not right on top of them. And you didn’t have anyone helping with Sammy? No regular sitter, no day care?” I didn’t ask about Sammy’s mom because I figured he would bring her up if he wanted to. I wasn’t about to dig it out of him.

  “He got suspended from three day cares before I realized I needed to make a big change in my life. So I set up a home office and worked from home.”

  “And you haven’t spent a night without him ever since?”

  “It sounds good when you put it that way, but it’s only a technicality.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was home with him all the time, but I wasn’t really there. You know? When he was asleep, I’d be on the computer, and when he was awake, the only thing I could think about was How many more hours until I get to go on the computer? I missed out on so many things, things that were happening right in front of me.”

  “It’s impossible to be fully engaged every second of the day. Everyone’s mind wanders. And sometimes kids are…” I lowered my voice as though the words were blasphemous. “…kind of boring.”

  “I should’ve done better. I want to.”

  We drove in silence for an hour, until our first pit stop: a gas station next to a Cracker Barrel in Kenosha, Wisconsin, right near the Illinois border. After Thom flew through a series of complicated maneuvers with the gearshift, the Volkswagen shuddered to a halt.

  “Credit card?” He held out his hand and looked at me expectantly.

  “Oh. Um, I don’t actually…have my credit cards on me.”

  “There’s probably an ATM inside. Should we grab food first, and then fill up?”

  I scratched my forehead absentmindedly, trying to stall. “Yeah, about that. I don’t have my ATM card, either.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “You told me you would pay for everything.”

  “Pay you back. And I will. My sister has my cards but she’s in Belgium with the rest of my family.”

  “No, you said you’d pay for everything, which I took to mean ‘while it’s occurring.’”

  He exited the car and shut the driver’s-side door. It didn’t close all the way. He opened it again and slammed it this time. I didn’t know if I should follow him or give him space. My stomach rumbled and I thought back, mournfully, to the fiesta eggs I could have eaten at breakfast.

  I instinctually reached in my pockets, not for my iPhone this time but for money, in case there was a rumpled bill somewhere. They were empty except for a quarter, which reminded me of the Ziploc bag in my backpack. It was embarrassing as hell—as though Renee had dropped me off at summer camp instead of rehab—but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  I stepped out of the car and jangled the bag of coins to get Thom’s attention. “Truce?”

  3

  Ariel’s Blogspot

  May 2010—Not That Into Her

  With Brody and Melody
’s nasty split (anyone else have Mel’s “Low Down, Dirty (Cheat)” playing on repeat?!) I thought it was the perfect time to talk about the hee-larious Diego and the Lion’s Den taping I went to when I was 9. I was OBSESSED with that show. OB-SESSED. When my parents took me and my older brother on a spring break trip to San Diego, the only thing I cared about was getting tickets.

  Stuff I remember:

  1. The hype guy for the audience threw so much candy at us that they could’ve sat onstage reading the Yellow Pages (remember those) (lol I’m old!) and we would’ve screamed our sugared heads off.

  2. Kelly had a person following her around at all times who was JUST in charge of her hair.

  3. J. J. led a prayer off to the side before the cameras started rolling.

  4. Tara and Brody were constantly hugging and whispering together. I NEVER saw him smile or interact with Melody. (Anyone else think “LDD(C)” might be about TARA? Like Brody is working his way through the Manchots?) In every interview they would say they were childhood sweethearts, but my scoop is, he was NOT THAT INTO HER back then!

  5. Ethan Mallard was ADORABLE with his braces.

  6. The taping took FOREVER. I’m talking two hours for a ten-minute skit. Before we could leave—I swear, they TRAPPED us there—we had to fill out a survey about whether we would watch a spin-off of the show, and if so, with which characters. The choices were: Tara as a princess (we were soooo confused by this? but in the episodes that hadn’t aired yet, her character was revealed to be a secret princess who had swapped places with her identical cousin so she could “live a normal life”); Ethan as the new junior zookeeper (YES PLEASE haha); or Brody/Diego as a lion tamer for the circus. I don’t think any of these spin-offs came to fruition, but if anyone remembers anything about them, sound off in the comments.

  7. The next night, my brother and I saw the actors at a café downtown, all hanging out. We went over for autographs and photos. Everyone was game except one person—the girl who always did the silliest stuff on the show. Tilly? Lily? She is NOT funny in real life. She was like, “Sorry but this is our last night together and we want to finish talking but can we meet you in front of the restaurant in a few minutes” blah blah. The others were happy to sign napkins and take pics right away except for that one girl, who, not kidding, never went on to do anything else. Just goes to show you why: what a bad attitude! If you’re not even going to give back to the fans you don’t have the right to be on TV.