Really Something

by Shirley Jump

  “I think a lot of us…” Allie shook her head. “I mean, a lot of people do. Want to leave small towns like this one.”

  Katie gave her a curious glance, then went back to fiddling with the leash. Ranger, finally sure he wasn’t needed, let out a doggie sigh and settled his head on his paws. “I was going to leave this place, go to California, maybe get into acting or something like that, didn’t matter as long as it was far from Tempest and someplace warm. Carlene and I had plans to leave town as soon as we graduated.”

  “Carlene?” The word was a squeak. And then, Allie remembered, the social life of her sister’s that she’d been so envious of, so she’d tried not to pay attention to it, tried to ignore it. The names that had flitted in and out of those conversations—Darla, Cassidy, Mia….

  Katie.

  Carlene had been good friends with Duncan’s sister?

  “Yeah, Carlene.” This time, Katie’s gaze met Allie’s, direct, clear. Knowing. “Carlene Gray. Do you know her by any chance?”

  “Uh, the director needs me on set. Busy day, the first day of shooting and all.”

  “You know, you kind of look like Carlene. Or at least, how she looked back in high school. She was all skinny and blond, a dark blond, but still…You have similar face shapes, too. There’s just something about you…” Katie rolled her chair a little closer.

  Allie let out a laugh that sounded high-pitched and nervous. She took a step back, hopefully out of Katie’s too inquisitive gaze. “Well, there are plenty of blondes in the world.”

  Undaunted, Katie rolled closer again, straining her head upward, staring at Allie. “Are those colored contacts? I meant to ask you before, because your eyes are such a vibrant color of green and I saw a commercial for a pair like that once.”

  Oh shit. That was way too close. Katie was fitting pieces together faster than the world jigsaw-puzzle champ. “You sure you don’t want to see how a movie comes together?” Allie said, the words a rush, wanting to do anything to distract her from the subject of Carlene. And Allie’s true identity. “Especially since you used to be interested in acting?”

  “No. I can’t go over there. It’s not about people staring or what they might say. It’s because…” Her voice trailed off, then she raised a finger and pointed at the tree. “That’s where it happened.”

  Allie’s gaze followed to the huge oak tree at the driveway’s entrance, its side scarred, the bark missing in a gnawed-off chunk. The grass and weeds had grown up around it, as if trying to mask the damage to the wood.

  Here. It had happened here.

  Oh, no.

  Allie took in the farm again, seeing it with new eyes, guilt filling her chest. How could she have allowed Jerry and his crew to come out, stomp all over, and make a mockery of the place where something so tragic had happened? She looked at them now, Jerry with his careless disregard, not seeing this place as anything other than a commodity. A means to make his movie.

  What a mistake. She should have found another location. It was too late now, too late to undo it.

  “That’s where the accident was, wasn’t it?” Allie asked, her voice soft, tender.

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Katie said, then turned away. She pushed off with her chair, the dog jumped to his feet.

  “Wait, Katie, what do you mean, not an accident?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head, then recovered her smile, albeit a mellower version. “I should be getting home. Bye, Allie. See you at dinner.” The conversation was clearly over.

  Katie wheeled her way toward a van that Allie now saw had been waiting a few yards down the road. The new private duty nurse was behind the wheel and came around the vehicle as Katie approached. With quick, efficient movements, she pulled Katie’s wheelchair onto the ramp, locked it into place, then raised the platform. It made a sluggish, jerky journey up, the motor whining and groaning before Katie disappeared behind the doors.

  People turned and watched the van leave, their gossiping whispers carrying like leaves on the wind. Around here, Katie’s first public appearance was bigger news than Neil Armstrong’s hop-skip across the surface of the moon.

  “Hell of a kid, isn’t she?” Vanessa said, coming up to Allie. She’d arrived on the set earlier today, providing much needed support for Allie, especially in between Jerry’s tantrums. And, since her husband owned the local delivery business, no one thought much of Allie and Vanessa’s frequent conversations, especially since she helped ferry Jerry’s overnight packages back and forth. It was the perfect cover for Allie to connect with her friend.

  “Yeah.” Allie turned to face Vanessa. “Did you know her?”

  “Not well, but my little sister did. They were on the cheerleading squad together. She was full of piss and vinegar, my mother used to say.”

  Allie laughed. “Still is.”

  Vanessa’s face softened. “Good. Glad to see some things don’t change.”

  Jerry’s sharp voice barked over the walkie-talkie in her hands. “Brock’s threatening to quit. Says this project isn’t aligned with his star sign or some such shit. Break time’s over, Sugar-pie. I need your ass back here.”

  Allie rolled her eyes. “I gotta go. His Majesty is calling.”

  “If it’s okay, I’ll walk with you and hang out for a little while longer. I have an hour of freedom left until the kids get out of school and I have to go back to mommy prison.”

  She and Vanessa fell into stride together, covering the grassy field that led to the farmhouse at an easy pace. Across the way, Allie could see a cowering Leath, looking red-faced and petulant as Jerry laid him out for some new infraction. “Poor Leath. He’s still trying to find a coffee shop that can make Jerry a latte.”

  “In Tempest?” Vanessa arched a brow. “Good luck with that.”

  “Jerry will live. I’ll be back at my old job soon enough. And then Scotty go can back to working on his bachelor’s degree in sucking up.”

  Static crackled on the walkie-talkie, then Jerry’s voice again. “Hurry your ass up, and get this offense to humanity away from me before I have to fire him myself.”

  Allie increased her pace, then slowed. “What am I doing?” She turned to Vanessa. “Why should I go back to work for that jerk?”

  “Because it’s your job?”

  “Exactly,” Allie said. “It was my job, but never my dream. Working for Jerry was only a way toward my dream. This whole thing with the movie, with finding the location was one step closer to proving to Jerry that I can handle a project of this scope. And you know what? I can handle it. I did handle it.”

  “So when you get back to L.A.,” Vanessa said, “ask for a promotion. After that, you can work your way up—”

  “Work my way up? Why? Because slow and steady has done such a good job of getting me there in the last five years?” Allie shook her head. She toed at the soft fertile earth, the decision firming in her mind. “No. I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to make my own movies. Now.”

  “How are you going to do that? You have to find financing and, I don’t know, a million other things that go into movie-making.” Vanessa touched Allie’s arm, her gaze earnest, filled with concern. “I don’t want to be a wet blanket on your idea fire, Al, but I also want to see you pay your rent, too.”

  “I don’t care about the rent and all those details.” As the words left Allie, a lightness filled her chest. Another kind of freedom, a different one from the freedom she’d felt after she’d finally found her true self, invaded her spirit. “I’ll find a way to make it work.”

  “You’re not scared at all?”

  Allie laughed. “Sure I am. I’m terrified. I have a thousand what-ifs running through my mind. But I’ve spent years imagining my name rolling across a film screen, years with scripts sitting in a drawer that I’ve been too afraid to send out, and I’m not going to live that way anymore.”

  Hadn’t this week—and Katie’s example of overcoming her own personal obstacles—taught her how foolish it was to le
t fear hold her back? Heck, she’d overcome her fears in all the other areas of her life. She’d lost the weight, come back to Tempest, conquered her personal demons…

  Surely she could conquer the ones with her career just as easily.

  “I’ve always been afraid to take the leap,” Allie continued, “because it was easier to stay with the nightmare I knew.” She glanced over at Jerry again, a walking, talking version of his own movies. “Literally.”

  “What were you so afraid of?”

  Allie turned to Vanessa, her vision blurred by the cloud of tears that suddenly washed over her eyes, and saw more than just the last few years of her career in the word that slipped past her lips. She saw the truth that had defined her life, from high school until now. Allie Dean may have come a long way in so many areas, but there were still a few that she had yet to conquer. “Rejection.”

  “And that’s why you haven’t told Duncan Henry that you’re in love with him, huh?”

  “I’m not in love with Duncan.”

  Vanessa reached out and put a soft hand on Allie’s arm. “Hon, you really suck at lying.”

  “Two things, Sugar-pie.” Jerry’s voice erupted from the walkie-talkie. “A latte, stat. And a Luger. So I can blow Leath’s whiny, stupid head off, have it stuffed, and mount it in my office.”

  Allie picked up the walkie-talkie and depressed the talk button, all the years of Sugar-pies and latte orders suddenly boiling to the surface in one enormous burst of anger. “Jerry, shut up and quit calling me Sugar-pie. My name is Allie. A-L-L-I-E. Now keep your big boy pants on and wait because I’m busy. I will be there when I am good and ready. And I’m not bringing you a latte. I’m the location scout, not the coffee girl. So drink some goddamned Maxwell House.”

  She clicked the button off and waited for the berating that was sure to come.

  Nothing.

  “Is he screaming?” Allie asked, afraid to look.

  “I think he’s in shock,” Vanessa said. “He’s not even moving. He might be dead.”

  “Good. Maybe he’ll be quiet for a while. A man like that needs to come with hearing protection.”

  Vanessa laughed, then drew Allie into a hug. “You are one kick-butt woman, Allie.”

  “Thanks. I’m probably also now a fired kick-butt woman, but still, it feels good.”

  “Good enough that you can quit playing it safe with your heart and tell Duncan how you feel?” Vanessa arched a brow.

  “No way. Because doing that means telling him who I really am.”

  Vanessa stepped back, surprised. “He hasn’t guessed?”

  “If you were a guy, would you see past all this and guess I used to be Allison Gray?” Allie swept a hand over her hourglass figure.

  “I get your point, but still. I thought Duncan went a little deeper than that.”

  “Oh, he does,” Allie replied, thinking of the conversations they’d had over the past week, the layers Duncan had revealed. How close she’d come to believing that was the real man.

  Vanessa smiled. “Oh, you have it bad, girlfriend. Really bad.”

  Allie turned and started walking toward the set again, but at a slower pace—her own pace this time. “That’s the problem. If I tell Duncan who I really am, then I’ll have to admit I’ve been lying to him and that’ll go over about as well as a clown at a funeral.”

  Vanessa laughed. “You don’t think Duncan is above all that?”

  “Come on, Vanessa, do you really think so? What do they say about history? That it always repeats itself? I’m trying to learn from the mistakes of the past.” She drew in a breath. “That’s why I’m sticking to the plan. Love him, leave him, and go back to L.A.”

  Before he could reject her. Like he had before.

  Thinking anything else was just plain crazy. Soon as she got back to L.A., she’d put Tempest and Duncan Henry far behind her.

  But the thought didn’t fill her with the cheer she’d expected. Instead, disappointment weighed heavily in her gut. Crazy. She didn’t want to stay here any more than a carpenter wanted to cut off his right arm.

  Vanessa sighed. “Oh, Allie, I wish you’d—”

  “Uh…Allie?” Jerry’s voice, interrupting again, but this time sounding almost…contrite. “Could you, ah, please bring me a latte or a coffee? Just this one more time, please? I have a headache and I think Leath just ran away from home.”

  Allie and Vanessa exchanged a glance, then both broke into a fit of giggles. Vanessa laid a hand on Allie’s. “If you can change the great Jerry Wiggs, maybe miracles really can happen. Don’t give up on Duncan yet.”

  Chapter 20

  That afternoon, Duncan took great satisfaction in putting Jerry Wiggs in his place. As soon as they got on the set and the cameras started rolling, it took about five seconds to get the pompous director to stop inflating his own ego and instead get to the point.

  “In Indiana, Mr. Wiggs,” Duncan said, “we’re more about substance than flash. So why don’t you give us a little meat to go with that frosting you’re trying to sell?”

  Jerry opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. He turned to Allie, who thus far had sat on her side of the set, quiet as a church mouse, letting Jerry do all the talking during the interview. She’d given her boss a smile, and nothing more.

  Silence, Duncan had learned, was the best way to let a subject either dig his own grave or tunnel his way out. It had worked with that NBC reporter and his father—causing John Henry to lose his cool, an event flashed on national television as well as local Tempest TV, undoing years of a carefully orchestrated façade.

  “Well, ah, this movie delves into the…” Jerry fidgeted in his seat, looked to Allie again, his eyes wide with “help-me” written all over his face. “Allie?”

  She paused, then finally took pity on the guy. “Sorority Slumber Party Slaughter may look and sound like your standard teenage horror fare,” Allie said, “but underneath it all is a message.”

  “Really?” Duncan said.

  “Really?” Jerry said, definitely the more surprised of the two.

  “Yes. The main character, Wanda Wolfie, turns into a werewolf and exacts revenge because she is tired of being the outsider in her sorority. Because she is going to beauty school in addition to attending college, she doesn’t fit in, and every attempt she makes at being a part of the group is rebuffed. Even her professor, played by our star, Brock Dudley, tunes her out. But when she’s a werewolf, she finds power and she’s heard at last.” Allie let out a little laugh. “Granted, her means of handling her anger isn’t the best, which is why Wanda dies at the end. It’s your classic good versus evil plot. But it does have a message about exclusion and how that hurt can build up in someone and cause them to do things they might not otherwise be driven to do.”

  Duncan leaned back in his chair, impressed with Allie’s analysis of what he’d thought wasn’t much more than one more trashy movie with an NC-17 rating. But Allie, as she had done at a hundred different turns since he had met her, had surprised him yet again. He tried not to let his growing feelings for her show on his face, but they sure as heck beat in his heart. When this was over, he intended to show her.

  More than once.

  And in his pocket waited a surprise for Allie—something Duncan had picked up an hour ago, a spontaneous decision, but one he couldn’t have felt more right about if he’d tried. He shot her a quick smile, then brought his attention back to the interview.

  Jerry was staring at Allie, openmouthed and shocked by her analysis of his film. “Wow, Allie. You really wrapped that up with a hel—” Jerry caught himself before he swore. “Er, a really nice bow.”

  “I thank you for this interview, Miss Dean and Mr. Wiggs, and I think we’ll all be interested to see how this little taste of Hollywood transforms our town.” Duncan turned and faced the camera. “So keep an eye out for the werewolves, Tempest. You never know what might be lurking around the corner.”

  A moment later, Jim signaled that they
were done. The bright production lights above them went out, one by one, and then the cameras were shut down, the studio lights brought up. “Thanks,” Duncan said as the three of them left the stage and headed back to the control room. “That’ll make a great piece. I’ll edit and get it on the air tonight. I’ll make it my lead piece.”

  “And get a jump on the city stations,” Allie said.

  “Exactly. Makes my boss happy, makes your boss happy—” He indicated Jerry, who was already on his cell phone and halfway out the door, waving a good-bye with his free hand. “Everyone wins.”

  “Yeah.” Allie drew in a breath and knew she should break it off with Duncan now. Tell him she was through with him. She had his signature on the rental agreement. Had the interview in the can. All her ducks were in a row.

  The time had come to start taking out the enemy. The problem?

  Duncan had stopped being the enemy somewhere between the kiss in the garden and the sheets at the Ramada. And she’d lost sight of the goal a long time ago.

  One of the production people popped his head into the studio. “Dunk, you’ve got a call on line one.”

  “Excuse me.” Duncan crossed the room to pick up the phone. He sat on the edge of a long table, the pose so like the one he’d taken a hundred times in those early morning tutoring sessions at Tempest High, that it sent Allie’s mind rocketing back—

  To the day he’d asked her to the prom.

  “Hey, Grace,” he’d said, giving her that grin as he’d come into their math classroom, a half hour before the school day started. The room had been deserted, she and he meeting for what had become their usual study time. She was helping him pass the one class that was; holding him back from staying on the football team, he was making her days at Tempest High bearable.

  Something to look forward to.

  That day, of all days, he’d remembered something she’d said, one of those silly offhand remarks. “A present,” he said, dropping a package on her desk, then sitting back on Mr. Benoit’s desk, waiting for her to open it.

  She’d unwrapped the slim box—badly wrapped with Scotch tape and leftover Christmas wrap even though it was early May—and remembered laughing as she did. Laughing wasn’t something Allison Gray did often in high school.