Fame Adjacent

by Sarah Skilton

  Please. Who was I kidding.

  I knew it wouldn’t have been bad sex.

  A moment later, the lights were out and the room was dark. I lay under the sheets, listened to Thom breathe, and stared at the ceiling, unable to stop smiling.

  I think he knew it, too.

  8

  INT. LION’S DEN—DAY

  (ETHAN, J. J., DIEGO, KELLY, TARA, HOLLY)

  Ethan, wearing a bear costume (minus the head), sits at the picnic table, surrounded by party streamers, banners, balloons, etc.

  ETHAN

  Fun fact: When bears wake up from hibernation, they don’t sleep for the next three months. They haven’t eaten in forever, so they spend all day and night looking for food. It’s a nonstop party! If they live near humans, they’ll even eat garbage.

  (puts on the bear head, walks to the front door and opens it)

  Hey guys, come on in!

  Music cue: generic party music in the b.g. (no lyrics). The PARTY BEARS enter (J. J., DIEGO, KELLY, TARA), dressed up as different bears (panda, brown bear, koala bear, and black bear, respectively), wearing party hats, carrying gifts, amped up. They set their items down and begin to dance. HOLLY staggers in, dragging four garbage bags behind her.

  HOLLY

  Sorry I’m late! I brought the chow!

  She tosses full garbage bags into the room and everyone cheers. The bears dive in, ripping open the garbage and stuffing their faces.

  J. J.

  I call dibs on the banana peels!

  Audience laughter.

  * * *

  At six a.m. on the dot, Thom’s horrible alarming-alarm bleated from the floor where it was plugged in. He moaned and rolled toward it, leaning over the mattress and sliding his thumb across the screen. His gym shorts got tugged down slightly in the process and I enjoyed the view of his sharp hip bone. I remained quiet, pretending to sleep, but sneaking a few looks over to see what he would do next. Sure enough, he broke his own rule and went online, his forefinger scrolling here and there, before tossing the phone back on the carpet.

  While he used the bathroom, I sprang out of bed and dove for the phone. To his credit, he hadn’t been checking email, he’d been checking FaceTime, probably to see if he’d missed any other calls from home. I tapped settings and tried to change the auto lock to an hour instead of two minutes, but that in itself required use of the password.

  Thinking fast, I tapped the YouTube app and played the first thing that came up so as to thwart the auto lock from kicking in. I muted the video and slid the phone under the bed.

  Oh-so-nonchalantly, I joined him in the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  We stood side by side, lather-rinse-repeating, domestic and comfortable. We looked like an ad for toothpaste and suburban calm.

  “It’s still early—all right with you if I go for a swim before we head out?” Thom asked over a foamy mouthful. Our eyes met in the mirror.

  Thinking about the phone primed and ready for me under the bed, I nodded. “Sure, yes, absolutely,” I said, still brushing. It came out like this: “Sir, wes, asso-woot-lee.”

  In unison, we spat, drank water, and wiped our mouths with face towels.

  “You speak Toothbrush,” he said.

  “Certain dialects,” I replied. “Crest, Colgate. I’m hopeless at Aquafresh.”

  He laughed and the sound made my heart sing. “Why don’t you sleep in a bit more while I hit the pool?”

  “Sounds good.”

  The instant the door, closed behind him, I dropped to the floor and threw myself under the bed where his phone continued playing whatever video I’d clicked to keep his auto lock from deploying.

  When I saw what it was, I yelped, which caused me to bang my head on the under-frame of the bed.

  Thom, you dirty dog. It was a pimple popping video. He’d been watching it last night during The Jerry Levine Show. That’s why it was the first thing to come up when I opened YouTube.

  I opened a new browser and scrolled through Thom’s bookmarked sites. Was it weird I was semi-hoping for porn links? Not a lot of them—just one or two that might give me a glimpse into his turn-ons. But there was nothing like that saved. He probably deleted them before handing his phone to Lisa. At least, that’s what I would’ve done if Renee hadn’t offered to hold on to it for me.

  The only bookmarks were for job sites, résumé builders, some game apps for children, his son’s school calendar, and a TED Talk from three years ago.

  What do we have here?

  The TED Talk was Thom’s! I obviously hit play.

  Wearing a formfitting suit and old-school Vans with thick rubber soles, his dirty-blond hair gelled high and his sleeves rolled up, Thom was a skater boi who wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of Fortune magazine. He addressed a modest crowd for his speech, and expounded upon a theme from Malcolm Gladwell’s Freakonomics, which posited that when communities painted over graffiti and fixed broken windows, crime dropped in those areas. It was a psychological response—when residents and local police groups proved they cared, and that neglect and crime wouldn’t be tolerated, it changed the perception of the location for the people who lived there, and they saw its value, too. As a result, they treated it better.

  Thom’s addition to the theory was that when you built kids their own place—like a large, sound, well-lit skate park designed by someone familiar with the sport and its subculture—delinquency plummeted. “Give them a space that’s theirs,” Thom explained, “and they’ll shower it with pride. They’ll even volunteer a few hours a week to keep it in good condition.

  “Let me give you an example. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. In the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands, huge swaths of Ohio got swept up in the opioid crisis, including my hometown. I watched kids I grew up with—pretty much everyone I knew—have it affect them in some way. I got my high from skateboarding. The kid I hung out with the most, though, broke his elbow—separated the tendon from the bone—and that was pretty much it for him. He was prescribed Oxycontin, with no intention of misusing it, but the withdrawals were brutal, and…” He trailed off. “I was always interested in what could have been done differently there. What would it have taken? A community center, a functioning city council, a place to go? A skateboard park with better safety measures in place?

  “There’s a sense of adventure when kids seek out their own place; it comes from the thrill that you might get caught. Critics might say the skate parks take that element away, in a sense, but they also provide something better: a sense of community. I like to think they do, anyway, and the evidence backs it up.”

  Thom’s expertise shone through as he unveiled charts depicting the success he’d had all over the eastern seaboard (“I always took Sammy with me, or I made sure I got back before bedtime so I could read him a story”). He and his company had transformed neighborhoods and earned the respect of local businesses and families. He also wrote out specific steps community leaders could take to enhance opportunities for underserved youth by speaking to their passions in a manner that was neither condescending nor restrictive.

  His speech was so compelling, I was ready to hire him to build a skate park in Balboa Park in San Diego.

  He was a seasoned pro.

  Fiercely intelligent.

  Changing people’s lives.

  Making a difference.

  I shut off his phone and lay on the carpeted floor in the darkened room, stunned, not moving.

  I believed him, now; he’d told me the truth.

  He hadn’t been flirting with me.

  Why would he have?

  He was way, way out of my league.

  His phone rang, the bright rectangle of light cutting into the darkness, the ring of FaceTime filling the quiet room. Using the bare minimum of movement, I rolled my body over to see who it was.

  Sammy.

  I leapt into action. I couldn’t let my private pity party ruin Thom’s chance to see his little boy. If it were Lainey calling, I
’d have wanted him to do the same for me.

  I accepted the call and waved into the camera. Onscreen, a rectangle of my face popped up. “Hi, you’ve reached Thom’s phone,” I said, as cheerfully as I could muster.

  A confused pause. “Where’s my dad?” Sammy tilted his head as though trying to look behind me.

  “I’m going to find him for you.”

  Sam looked a little different from his photo—he’d recently had a haircut, and there was a bit of food on his face—strawberry jam?—but his messy hair and lanky frame were pure, miniature Thom, a fact I found incredibly bittersweet right now.

  I searched for my room key, unbolted the door and stepped into the hallway in my pajamas and socks, still chatting to him.

  “I might lose you in the elevator, but don’t hang up. I know he wants to talk to you. He’s at the swimming pool. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Sammy said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Holly. We both needed to get to New York, so we’re carpooling.”

  As predicted, we couldn’t hear each other in the elevator, and his image froze on a serious expression, but once I made it to the first floor, he sprang back to life.

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re in Elyria, about five hundred miles outside New York. So he’ll be home late tonight, I should think.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s your favorite TV show?” I asked, darting down the hall toward what I believed was the pool.

  “Um, I like MythBusters. It’s kind of cool.”

  “‘Kind of cool,’ huh? But what’s your favorite? What do you watch when you’re home sick and you get to watch whatever you want all day?” The way he smiled, a bit shyly, like he had a secret, made me think I was onto something, and my heart clenched.

  “PJ Masks. I know it’s, like, for little kids, but I still like it,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I love PJ Masks! Who’s your favorite bad guy? Mine’s Luna Girl.”

  “I like Night Ninja and the Ninjalinos.”

  I pushed the doors open for the pool, inhaled the chlorine smell and damp air, and scanned the room. No Thom. Maybe he was underwater holding his breath? For, like, a long time? I walked closer and peered into the depths of the water. No Thom. Crap crap crap. Was he in the bathroom? Locker room? He’d be crushed if he missed the call…

  Sam’s grandmother—Thom’s mother—entered the frame, all bobbed gray hair, bifocals, and curious eyes. She leaned in close to the camera and I could see up her nostrils for a moment. “Who are you talking to, Sam-Sam?”

  “This woman who picked up Dad’s phone.”

  Sammy turned his back to me so he could talk to her. Through his T-shirt, his shoulder blades were so sharp, it made my breath hitch in my throat. Lainey was the same way at that age, even up until two or three years ago, the blades like the nubs of angel wings trying to grow. That’s what I’d always thought, anyway.

  I waved. “Hi. Hello. Thom’s here somewhere, I’m trying to find him, I’m going to circle back up to the room.”

  “How do you know Thom?” his mother asked. “He didn’t mention he’d be traveling with anyone.” She was probably wondering if she’d caught her son with a hitchhiker, a hooker, or both. At least I wore a respectable ensemble. My pink-and-gray polka-dot flannel outfit covered me from head to toe.

  “I’m a friend from…” I had no idea if they’d used euphemisms for Prevail! or been up front with Sam. “The health…provider…location. He’s kindly giving me a lift. We’re not staying in the same room.” It was one of the dumbest lies I’d ever told. Obviously we were staying in the same room if I’d picked up his phone.

  I retraced my steps, grateful for frozen screen images when I entered the elevator again. Any follow-up questions they had about my existence would have to wait.

  I entered the hallway to our room again, praying he was behind the door, but when I used my keycard and called out to him, there was no reply. There was, however, the sound of the shower running.

  Shit.

  “He’s not there,” Sammy told his grandma. His voice was one part resigned, one part jaded. As though he’d predicted this very thing, and had been vindicated.

  “We’ll try him again tonight,” she replied smoothly.

  “No, wait!” I knocked loudly on the bathroom door. No response. I jiggled the knob. Locked. I knocked louder. I would not be the reason he missed his son today. I would not be the reason for Sam’s disappointment.

  “Yeah?” came a muffled voice. “Kinda busy here.”

  “It’s Sam. For you.”

  The door opened a crack and a dripping wet arm reached for the phone.

  “Sorry,” I told the arm, “I was trying to track you down, but…” I turned to the phone again. “Bye, nice to meet you.”

  “Bye. Nice to meet you, too,” Sam parroted, waving.

  “Hey, Sammy Bear,” Thom said enthusiastically. He sounded like a morning show host, caffeinated and strained, like a switch had been flipped, or his battery had been replaced.

  Sam’s demeanor instantly changed. He stared back, eyes infuriated. “Not Sammy anymore. Just Sam. I told you that.”

  I placed the phone in Thom’s hand and scurried away to give them privacy.

  “Yeah, okay, I’m going to…” Thom swallowed and closed the door.

  I rapidly dressed and packed my bag. Five minutes later, Thom exited the bathroom, fully dressed as well. His face looked ashen, rather than pink from the steam of the shower.

  “Everything okay?” I asked carefully.

  He slumped onto his bed. “‘Just Sam’ wasn’t feeling the conversation.”

  “For what it’s worth he was very polite when I talked with him.”

  “That’s how I tried to raise him.”

  “From what I saw you’ve done a great job.”

  “You should’ve seen us six weeks ago. He couldn’t get enough of me. Now everything I do annoys him. He’s eight, it’s not like he’s a teenager, and I don’t know how to fix it. If it can be fixed. I don’t think he trusts me anymore. And I don’t even blame him.”

  I sat beside Thom on the edge of the mattress. His skin radiated warmth, and his hair remained damp from the shower.

  “I’ve never introduced him to a girl before,” he said. “I always date on the down low. Not that I date much.”

  The women of upstate New York clearly didn’t know a good thing when they saw it.

  “Well, I introduced myself, so that doesn’t count, and I definitely wouldn’t have if I’d—”

  “He liked you. Said you ‘seemed cool.’”

  “I can think of no higher praise. But don’t sell yourself short. I watched your TED Talk. It was really, really good.”

  “Yeah?” He looked shyly pleased. It perfectly mirrored his son’s expression when he’d talked about PJ Masks.

  His relaxed expression tightened. “Wait, when did you see my TED Talk?”

  “Um…”

  It occurred to him I must’ve broken the internet rule and his eyes widened. “You sneaky little…You’ve been bad.”

  His voice pricked my nerves in a way that could only be described as anticipatory. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “You get no screentime today.”

  His command did things to my insides, but my irritation overrode it. “You’re treating me like a child. I did not agree to that. Besides, I didn’t go to my usual site. I cross-pollinated. I had a chance to check Reddit and the Daily Denizen, but I didn’t. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Do you even know what cross-pollination is?” He folded his arms and waited for me to tighten my own noose.

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you. That’s for graduates of Prevail! only.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I don’t know if you’re ready for it.”

  “Thom!”

  “If you take a tour of someone else’s obsession, it will seem silly, th
us puncturing the importance of our own obsessions when we imagine them viewed through others’ eyes. It’s a way of inserting objectivity and distance into our behavior.”

  “Did Lisa say all that?”

  “It’s my interpretation.”

  Damn, he was good. He could sell milk to a cow.

  “If we’re going to be all judgmental,” I groused, “how do you explain this?”

  I dramatically raised his phone and opened it to the YouTube video of pimple popping.

  The only indication I’d surprised him was that one of his eyebrows lifted. I wondered if Sammy could do that move. It had taken Lainey half her life to learn how to wink.

  “She said it was relaxing, so I thought I’d try it out,” he answered matter-of-factly.

  “She said it was relaxing until she became addicted.”

  He shrugged. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

  “And was it? Relaxing?”

  “No, it was fucking gross. The production values were terrible.”

  I snorted. “Shocker.”

  “The camera kept zooming in and out of focus, and there was always one zit over to the side that was ripe for popping that the doctor—or whoever, I got the feeling most of them aren’t doctors—ignored, or didn’t see. So the whole video becomes about hoping they’ll get the one I had my eye on, and when they don’t…Opposite of relaxing.”

  “Thanks for those visuals. I’m so hungry for breakfast now.”

  He stood, slid his phone in his back pocket. (Lucky phone, I thought idly.) “No time to eat.”

  We conducted a quick room check and picked up our bags. “I should at least raid the continental breakfast,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll go check us out.”

  9

  In what would turn out to be a mistake, I insisted on driving the first shift.