Our laughter filled the room as I carefully moved the costume to a garment cart.
“That thing makes me look huge, by the way.” Kim curled her lip at the costume. “I’d hang around and rib Randy about it, but Stewart came by again. He had some new materials, and he really wanted you to see them today. I told him you had to work late, so you couldn’t go to the library. He was pretty disappointed, so I thought I’d just go pick the stuff up and bring it home. By the way, you’re a pooh for keeping secrets all this time. He told me you two figured out weeks ago that I was right about Wildwood.”
“Kim, don’t ask him to smuggle stuff out again. Last time, you made him a nervous wreck. And I didn’t tell you about Wildwood because I knew this was exactly what you’d do—get all obsessive about it. When you board the bus to head for the set with the rest of us, they’ll give you your character journal and the whole mystery will be solved, anyway. Why not just wait? Think of it like a . . . a Christmas present.”
“I peek at Christmas presents, thank you. Doesn’t everybody? And Stewart is enjoying himself. All this research is the biggest thing to hit his life in forever—look how into it he is.” Kim finished dressing, and we left the room.
“He’s too into it,” I told her as we walked down the basement hall together. “I’ve told him, like, three times that I’m done with the costume diaries, and I really don’t need any more research material. With work and finishing classes for the semester, I don’t have time to read anything extra.”
“I would’ve read it.” A plaintive frown came my way as we stopped outside the costuming room to deposit the garment cart. “If you weren’t such a pooh-head secret keeper.”
“Yeah, whatever. More like keeping you out of trouble. I do not want to end up in the woods alone this summer.”
Kim put on a happy face as she poked her head in Randy’s door. “You’re gonna put super-stretchy spandex in my costume, right, Randy? Like built-in Spanx, okay?”
A few gray hairs escaped Randy’s ponytail and fell down his thin cheeks, surrounding a smirk. “You’re about a hundred and forty years too early for spandex, sweetheart, but I do have a period-appropriate alternative for you.”
I snort-chuckled, knowing what he had in mind as he crossed the room. I was already laughing by the time he presented her with a corset. “The nineteenth-century alternative to spandex. Wear it with pride.”
Brows knitted with concern, Kim investigated the hooks in front. “Well now, this’ll be like putting ten pounds of taters in a five-pound sack. Do you have a bigger size?”
Randy turned the thing around, showing her the laces in back. “It comes with a dual-expansion slot. But don’t worry, Kim, you’re smaller than you think. And once you get this thing on, you’ll look like Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. Or Melanie Wilkes. Wasn’t Melanie a blonde?”
Kim gave Randy an adoring look. “I love you. That’s the best thing a man has said to me in forever. If you weren’t already married, I’d be after you like a hen on a grasshopper.”
Randy chuckled. “Well, now, there’s an attractive picture. I’ll let Miranda know that she has competition for my affections.” Randy had a wife on the West Coast somewhere, but like many couples in the industry, they didn’t end up working in the same city very often.
I felt a little sorry for him. After growing up in a household where my mother and stepfather ate in different rooms, watched TV in different rooms, and most often slept in different rooms, I’d made up my mind that if I ever did find somebody, I wanted the kind of marriage where we actually did things together in the course of a day. Normal things, like coffee in the morning, a surprise sack lunch in the middle of the day, a trip to the park just because the weather was nice, evening talks beneath the moonlight. . . .
It was all just a dream, a fantasy, but it was a nice fantasy. I couldn’t help clinging to it, no matter how impractical it was for a girl like me. Given my lack of luck in the dating world, it didn’t seem super plausible, but it was good to believe that someday it would just . . . magically . . . happen.
I turned to walk Kim out, and all of a sudden, there was Tova, standing behind her in the hallway looking morose, as usual. My stomach dropped, bounced off the soles of my shoes, rebounded somewhere into my chest, and then sank into place again, which was my usual reaction to Tova.
Her icy, narrow eyes slanted back and forth between Kim and me. “And pray tell, what are you two doing loitering around here together?”
“Fitting.” I pointed to Kim, so as to make it clear that this was a legitimate visit, and I was in no way breaking the rules, nor would I ever dream of it.
Tova studied each of us head to toe, taking in everything from the frosted tips of Kim’s hair, which would have to be dyed back to the natural color before we moved to the set in less than a week and a half, to the measuring tape strung around my neck and Phyllis’s favorite fabric scissors protruding from my pocket. I’d picked them up in the fitting room to return them to their normal place. One of the Costume Department’s requests was that I quell the daily tide of clutter and misplaced materials, so things could keep running in maximum overdrive.
Tova turned her attention to Randy. “Wren Godley will be here at 3:45 for her final fitting. Apparently the child was sick this morning or some such. I do not know why her mother has my number rather than yours, but now you have been told. Please make sure to give her your card so she will have the correct contact when next they have an issue with keeping their appointments.”
“Will do,” Randy answered, then flipped through his schedule to see who could handle the fitting. “We’ll work her in somehow. I’ll call upstairs and tell the guard to let her come down when she gets here.”
Tova’s cell phone rang, and she left without another word.
“Well, I’m gone.” Kim gingerly set the corset inside the door as Randy slid into his office chair and rolled toward the phone. “I’ve got a couple errands to run yet this afternoon, and also a guy called about the ad I put on Craigslist for my truck. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll buy it, and I won’t have to pay the insurance and the payment over the summer.” Kim had devised a clever plan to sell her current vehicle, since she wouldn’t need it for the next few months. In the fall, she planned to use the savings, plus her earnings from the docudrama, to buy a new set of wheels.
“See you at home later—but if you’re meeting the guy about your car, make sure you do it in a public place, okay? Maybe you can get someone to go with you. Creepy people troll those online lists.”
“Yes, mother.” She finger waved over her shoulder on her way down the hall. “Don’t work too late. Maybe we can go out and celebrate the sale of my truck tonight.”
“Sounds good,” I said, but I should have known better. As always, the afternoon became a blur of phone calls, meetings, and general panic. In the end I had to cover the Wren Godley fitting, of all things.
Randy literally shoved her costumes into my hands and said, “Here, deal with this. She’s been fitted. Her wardrobe shouldn’t need anything but fine adjustments. Just pin the hems.”
Wren, I quickly discovered, did not fit her gentle-sounding name. At. All. She was a tiny redheaded, blue-eyed terror. The sort that gives redheads a bad name and makes it tough on the rest of us.
Checking her wardrobe took twice as long as it should have. While I worked, Wren wiggled, whined, complained, and blackmailed me for cookies and sodas from the break room. Her mother was constantly in my way, commenting, advising, and insisting that Wren’s costume should be designed so as to best accentuate her features. Having previously had small parts in several Austin-based plays, little Wren was a star in the making—at least according to her mother. I finally determined that Mom was more than a little over the top and possibly on a high dose of medication, and she had some sort of personal connection with someone on the production who had pull.
By the time she walked her soda-bloated eleven-year-old down the hall and out the doo
r, I was convinced that parenthood would never be for me.
When I finally left the Berman, it seemed like days had passed since I’d been home. Trudging up the stairs to our apartment, all I wanted to do was climb into the shower, wash off the grime from crawling around on the floor, and sink into bed. Unfortunately, I had finals to study for this week.
A dark form suddenly appeared above me at the top of the stairs, and I gasped and staggered back a step before realizing it was only Stewart.
“You scared me.” I exhaled loudly and started up the stairs again.
Adjusting his backpack, Stewart plodded past without glancing my way. “You shouldn’t leave pizza boxes outside your door, Allie. It attracts vermin.”
“Sorry. That must’ve been Kim. I’ll get her to clean it up.” At this point, I couldn’t count how many times Stewart had flagged us for stairwell offenses.
“I took them to the trash for you. So you wouldn’t be in violation . . . if they spot-check the stairwell areas.”
“Thank you, Stewart. Sorry about the pizza boxes.” But he’d already headed for the parking lot.
When I opened the apartment door, Kim was sitting on the sofa with a stack of cash beside her and her laptop balanced on her knees.
“What’s all this?” I asked, though I was afraid to know.
“I screwed up.” She didn’t bother to look at me but remained bent over the laptop screen, wildly scrolling. “There’s food in the kitchen. Oh man, I screwed up so bad. Stewart’s going to kill me.”
“If you mean the pizza boxes, I saw Stewart on the stairs. He actually carried them down to the trash in case there was a spot check.”
“Don’t mention Stewart. If he finds out . . . oh man.” She slapped a palm to her forehead, pulling upward until she had the bug-eyed look of a Pekingese dog with its topknot rubber-banded too tight. “It was just a CD pack of audio recordings that were made back in the thirties and forties—interviews with people who’d lived through the Civil War period, I think. I remember putting them in my truck, and I thought I brought them back into the apartment before I met the guy who answered the Craigslist ad. I know I did, but they’re not here. Stewart just came by to ask if I’d given them to you, and I lied and said you were listening to them.”
She cast a miserable, guilt-ridden look my way. “I didn’t mean to. I just panicked. You know how seriously Stewart takes things. I must’ve accidentally thrown the CDs away when I cleaned all the junk out of my truck at the car wash. And I even called down there, and they’d already had their trash hauled away. So now I’m trying to figure out if there’s anywhere I can buy copies.”
I walked to the table, set my stuff down, and rested my head against the divider wall. “Kim, you lost some of the things you convinced Stewart to smuggle from the library? Please say no.”
“I’ve got it under control.” She huddled closer to the computer. “I remember the name—American Voices. University of Nebraska. I’ll replace them, and nobody will ever know the difference. Don’t worry, okay? Heat up some of the leftover pizza and come sit down. I’ve gotta tell you about the guy who bought my car. We sat out in the parking lot talking for three hours, and then we ordered pizza and talked some more. I think I’m in love.”
Chapter 11
ALLIE KIRKLAND
MAY, PRESENT DAY
I can’t believe it!” Kim moaned as we finished breakfast. “I finally meet a guy I really like . . . a guy who might be the one, and now I’m headed into a communications blackout in the middle of nowhere for months. It’s just not fair.”
Three days before the cast was to report for transportation to the set, Kim’s relationship drama and the stress at work were driving me to the brink of insanity. “Yes, but look on the bright side. You found a good home for your truck, you met a nice guy you can get back in touch with in the fall, we’re off on an adventure for the summer, and we have almost no living expenses for three whole months.”
What we had here was a case of serious role reversal. I was actually looking forward to moving to location, while Kim suddenly seemed to be dreading it. She’d been with the truck guy every night since the Craigslist deal. I had yet to even meet him. “Kim, if it’s really meant to be, then it’ll last through a few months apart.”
She hadn’t mentioned the docudrama or cowboys in days. I had a sickening feeling she was thinking of backing out. “After all, he’s known all along that you would be gone for the summer, right?”
“Well, of course. I told him when I was selling the truck.” Pausing, she sniffed a vase of red roses that had arrived over the weekend. She had the moony look of a girl in love.
“And he decided to like you anyway, right? So, when do I get to meet this guy? You know, I haven’t even given my approval yet.”
She rinsed a dishcloth and then started wiping the counter, her lips straightening into a somber line. “I don’t want you to yet. I’m scared he’ll . . . meet you and decide he likes you better. I need time to cement things, but the problem is, I don’t have time. I’m not going to be here.” She lifted her hands, slinging a fine spray of water across the kitchen.
“No, seriously . . . why are you really not letting me meet him?” With Kim being so secretive, I wondered if something weird was going on—like this guy, Jake, was twenty years older than her and she didn’t want me to know it, or he was one of her professors or something.
“I am serious.” She went back to work, scrubbing at a stain that had been on the counter since the day we moved in. “You’re just so . . . skinny and tall and pretty, Allie. Everywhere we go, guys look right past me to ogle you. And you don’t even care, which makes me want to choke you sometimes, even though you’re my best friend and I love you. Jake is . . . perfect. He’s a decent guy, he comes from a little town like I do, his daddy is a deacon in the Baptist church, and he is . . . okay, I’ll admit it . . . so good-looking. I just want to keep him to myself for a while, okay?”
Sometimes Kim’s way of thinking amazed me. “Okay. But you’re wrong about the other thing. You’re the one with all the trophies and tiaras. While you were winning all that stuff, I was walking down the hall with bad hair, braces, and my mouth practically wired shut while the mean girls pointed and made fun of my lack of fashion sense.”
A sardonic snort answered. “You need to take a good, hard look in the mirror, Allie. I think that’s why Tova gives you so much trouble. She feels threatened. You’re younger, and you don’t even try to be pretty. You just are.”
I went back to my breakfast. Sometimes I wished I could see in myself the things Kim saw. Life would be a whole lot easier if I could shuck off that girl in the braces and the headgear, the one who disappointed all the family expectations.
“What I really wish is that I could be here for the summer.” Kim dumped imaginary crumbs into the trash can.
My stomach and my heart collided with a painful, queasy thud. “Kim, you signed a contract.”
“I know . . .” Dropping the dishcloth in the sink, she started toward her bedroom. “I’m excited about the pioneer life thing. I am. When I went in for my final paperwork yesterday, I just came right out and asked the guy if our town was Wildwood, and he just smiled and said, ‘You didn’t hear it from me, though.’ The more I read about the real town, the more fascinated I am by it. When I bought those CDs online, I also picked up a DVD about mysteries of the Civil War. Jake and I just watched it last night. Wildwood was, like, legendary. Nobody really knows anymore what’s myth and what’s fact, but in the summer of 1861, people from the town just started randomly disappearing—like into thin air.
“After a while, there was some kind of mass hysteria. Families were running off in the night, hiding in caves in the woods and things like that. Some people apparently just jumped off the cliffs into the river and drowned themselves. Then there was a giant storm. Whenever outsiders came to the place again, all the people were gone. Not one single soul left in town—just empty buildings. Now, that’s a histo
ry mystery, and it makes me even more convinced that the big, secret executive producer of this thing is Rav Singh, by the way. This totally sounds like one of his horror flicks. And it’s fascinating to think about—how could a whole town of people disappear? I just wish I could be in two places at once, that’s all. I can’t stand the idea of being away from Jake. Especially when we’re so . . . new. All I want to do is be with him. He’s the first thing I think about every morning.”
“Well, I can’t tell you how to be in two places at once. If I were smart enough to figure that out, I could be home to take the twins to their gymnastics camp next week, and my mother wouldn’t be pretending I don’t exist right now.” I instantly wished I hadn’t brought it up. I wanted to put the family issues out of my mind, but I couldn’t.
Kim sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I understand that people have real problems. I do. You just need to ignore your mom and her emotional blackmail, Allie. This summer is your big chance, and the people who care about you should want it for you.”
Kim wandered off to her bedroom, and I finished breakfast, then got ready for work. There was a full day ahead at the Berman now that the school semester was over. The good thing was that I was gaining so much experience this summer, and in so many different areas, that I really did believe Kim was right. This summer was not only an opportunity to scratch together enough money to float another semester of school; it was my chance to make the connections I needed.
Kim caught me in the stairwell as I was headed out. She was wild-eyed and excited, still in her pajama pants and socks. “Oh my gosh I’ve got it!” The sentence came in one big rush of words. “I figured it out. My iPhone. My iPhone!”
“Shhhh!” There were three other apartments on the quad with ours, and it wasn’t yet seven in the morning. If we woke Stewart, he’d be calling the management. “I have to head for work, okay? I’ll talk to you tonight.”
Wildwood Creek Page 10
