Starlet's Web (The Starlet Series, #1)

by Carla Hanna

  I interrupted, “I don’t have to tell anyone? They won’t be mad that I didn’t tell them in person? Everyone is going to think I’m mental when they learn I rejected a $60 million contract. I do have to work with these people for a few more years.”

  “Does it matter, Lia? Remember, your decision to bail on the contract you have with the studio affects the projects you do for the studio. It affects your agent. It affects your publicist and the spaces she gets your brand into. It doesn’t affect the Muse projects anyway since they were run through your mom’s production studio.”

  He paused. I listened in silence while he found the words he wanted to express. “I’m proud of you, my filly. I don’t think I could have walked away from that kind of money at your age. Now go have fun. Eat a dessert. You deserve it, Lia. I love you.”

  “Thanks, Dad. Love you, too.” I pressed end and held the phone in my hand as I continued to hug myself… soothe myself. I had been alone so often in the last four years that I found that just hugging myself was surprisingly comforting and made me stronger.

  It sounded simple enough. And he was right. I could do what was right for me.

  I would be eighteen in a month. I was stressed from finishing up Constantine’s Muse and stressed from the pile of contracts waiting for me to sign at home. I was tempted to take that money for another five years of hell. But I was in love and done with the isolation and confusion from being a product. I would leave tonight to get some sleep before my senior prom the next night.

  I wanted to live a more simple life.

  ~ WRAP PARTY ~

  I heard a knock on the door to my trailer while I was in the shower but ignored it. I could hear everything outside of the trailer so I knew people could hear every noise inside the trailer, too. The joke on set was that Byron’s trailer was very noisy.

  I turned off the water and heard the knock on the door again.

  “Marie? I heard the water stop. Marie, I need to talk to you.”

  I knew the voice. It was Byron. I put on my robe and towel dried my hair. I was in no hurry to get the door.

  “Marie!” Byron persisted. “Please let me talk to you. This is our last night here, and I have to talk to you.”

  I didn’t even raise my voice. “Byron, I have nothing to say. Go away.”

  He begged. “Please, Marie.”

  I opened the door, not caring that I was in my bathrobe. Everyone could hear him pleading outside. They would make much more of this than there was. I gestured to him to come inside. He came in and hugged me.

  “Get off me,” I reacted.

  He backed off from me immediately, frustrated and confused. “Marie, I’m so sorry about being an ass. We need to be friends. What the hell is going on?”

  I admitted, “Working with you is frustrating. You forget your lines. You mouth the words to my lines. You don’t focus. You’re late for work. We have to do so many takes. You drink and smoke too much. You sleep with everyone. You move too fast. I just can’t deal with it.”

  My words flung out faster than I could self-edit. The words stung. I scrunched up my face. I continued, “I don’t want to have a relationship with my co-star. I want it to be professional.”

  “Well I didn’t ask for any of this life and can’t handle it. I need your help. You ground me, Marie. You get me, right?”

  “I don’t know. When I’m around you I forget that you’re a playboy.”

  “But that’s not who I really am. It’s just this place. I’m talented as a singer but I suck as an actor. I was so happy when I won the show for my songs. I did an album that’s now selling well back home, but I’m in this contract that ships me off here to be some loser pop star dancer/vocalist. Then I sign something to be an actor. I don’t have any idea about what I’m supposed to do. I got this part after auditioning for a few months during the time that they’re working me non-stop. I haven’t really slept for about a year—when the craziness started. I can memorize a song, sing anything, but I can’t do scripts. I get so flustered. It’s unnatural, fake! Honestly, I wish I never tried out for that damn show. I don’t think I’m set up for this business but I’ve got these contracts so I might as well live it up, right?”

  I decided to explain myself to him. “Byron, I’m sorry I’ve confused you and you had to be part of this nasty industry without knowing what you were getting into. You’re gorgeous. You should know that you don’t suck as an actor. You’re remarkable at getting into your character. But you need to stay in character and learn those lines. Remember our night. You learned them great. And about our night, I appreciate that you stopped right away, but I don’t like that you pressured me so much. I botched how I handled everything with you and am embarrassed, and sorry.”

  “Shit, Marie. I’m sorry, too. I just want you so much, need you to keep me sane. I would have done so much more for you if you had let me.”

  “Byron, it bugs me every moment I see you that I didn’t speak up. I know that I could have. When you said you loved me, I believed you for a half-second and felt I should go for it when you got naked. But I just froze. I didn’t want to be a tease. Then I had to see you every day. These last weeks have been really awkward, painful.”

  “I didn’t lie to get you to sleep with me. You’re amazing.” Byron peered at me soulfully. “Marie, I need to know something. Please tell me the truth. I promise I won’t tell. Were you raped?”

  I learned that I could not tell anyone who promised not to tell my secrets because they always told. He studied my expressions carefully. “Byron, my sexual past has not been great. I wasn’t raped but could have been. But I don’t want to talk about that. You ignored the twenty times I asked you to back off. You annoyed me when we had to do so many takes. I was annoyed with myself that I kept kissing you. That was the tension I felt.”

  My words were clearly a blow to his ego. But they were true. That was how I felt.

  “Where does that leave us for the events, the premiere? You know we’ll have to kiss and hug for the cameras. It will hurt me if that is all acting, knowing that you hate me the whole time.”

  I sat down on the couch next to him. “I don’t hate you. I like you. I just don’t want to have a relationship with you. I also mix up the emotions from on screen and off. It’s hard for me to keep it straight in my head. I’m sorry I acted so mental.”

  Byron put his arm around me again. I let him. “Please tell me what you feel right away when we work together, do the events. There’s something about you. I don’t know: your soft skin, the way you move, your child-like sexy face, your unbelievable lips and eyes. You turn me on like no other girl.” He shook the thoughts away. “You’re the most amazing actress I have met and the best person I’ve met in Hollywood. I want you to be in my life. We’ll work through this weirdness together. Friends? Please?”

  “Yes, friends.” I was uncomfortable with how he described me. I did not see myself that way. I looked like a kid, not some sexy woman.

  We both got up from the couch. I walked to the door but stopped when he didn’t follow. My body shivered when I saw his smiling eyes. In an instant, Byron walked to me and pulled at my robe. I wobbled as he slowly hugged me and then kissed my lips. I put my arms around him under his shirt and returned the kiss. He put his hands under my robe, stopped the kiss, smiled at me, and covered my body. I huffed, bewildered. He kissed my forehead as he re-tied my robe.

  “See, we’re just friends. I have self-control. Please call me when you change your mind about your boyfriend.” He winked as he left my trailer.

  Shocked that I kissed him and sure I would have done much more, I finished getting dressed. I’m a whore, I thought as I did my makeup and hair. Shame and disbelief gutted me.

  I filled my Marcia Sherrill backpack with the pictures of Manuel from my nightstand, running clothes and shoes, my wallet, iPhone and keys. Before I stepped out, I perused my trailer one last time. Goodbye home, I thought. See you in a few months on some other location for Muse III. I hoped I
would be stronger then.

  ~ HOME ~

  I was home. I made myself a smoothie after I returned from my training session that morning with Elise and was outside ever since. We did the Santa Monica stairs down to the canyon and back up ten times with intervals, planks, sit-ups and push-ups in between. Those stairs required complete concentration because they were steep and insanely crowded.

  I soaked up the sun while I ate lunch outside, breathed in the ocean breeze, and absorbed the colors from the trees and flowers. When I worked on a project, I avoided the sun at all cost so I didn’t redden or darken my pigment. Franz used a yellow shellac under the foundation to hide my natural redness as it was. More redness would mean more shellac and many more unnerving itchy feelings that I’d have to control. Today I was free to be out in the sun. I watched a flock of bright green wild parrots fly from tree to tree below my terrace and a group of black crows relentlessly chase a hawk.

  Most children of celebrities went to private schools but there were several of us that either went to the public Roosevelt or Franklin Elementary since both schools were fed by the homes north of Montana Avenue as well as those south of Montana, the socio-economic divide between the rich and well-off in Santa Monica. I lived in the posh part of Santa Monica, north of Montana Avenue, where people lived in detached single family homes with front and back yards. Only a few homes like mine, located north of Montana Avenue and north of San Vicente Boulevard had the luxury of a canyon view and ocean view. The area south of Montana Avenue was packed with retail spaces that lined each street and apartments or condos for twenty some blocks by fifteen blocks. It was very congested.

  Parking was difficult south of Montana Avenue. All parking was permit parking, metered parking, or valet. Parking was free at the grocery and drug stores with most lots monitored by attendants. Validation was required at the monitored lots. On days Dad didn’t bike with me to school and back, he often found parking tickets on his windshield if he parked on Montana Avenue. He used to get unglued when he was a few minutes over the meter time limit when he picked me up from school. He liked asking the teachers about my day and letting me play with friends in the playground after school. He thought it was healthy. He’d think he was getting back to the car in time. But then there’d be a parking ticket on his car and he’d cuss all the way home, saying that it was completely unacceptable that there was not enough free parking to allow a parent to get out of his car to meet his child at the end of her school day.

  Dad wanted to raise me in Montana, but settled with the hand he had been dealt. Although it would have been socially easier for me to go to a private school, he was adamant that I go to public school. If he couldn’t drive me or pick me up, he hired a driver. I was not allowed to walk or ride my bike to school alone. I went on to one of the public middle schools in Santa Monica, too. By then, my driver, Sashi, always took me and picked me up. I drove my junior year.

  I actually have a “General Equivalency Diploma” from the state of California so that I could work longer hours on the set. Getting a GED was the way around the Child Labor Laws so I didn’t have to go to school and was not limited to working a maximum eight hours on the set. During the filming of Constantine’s Muse this past fall and spring, we found that it worked out great because we often had to go over-time with Byron’s sloppy work.

  Even with the GED, Dad begged the school to let me finish my senior year: go to class when I was in town, do the work, and take the tests for the classes. He insisted that it would help me feel normal and actually learn something. I liked school, having friends, and seeing Manuel so alright, whatever.

  “Hey, Attila. Thanks for lunch.” I smiled coming in from the back patio. I got a glass of water and took my refill of Excedrin. I took two extra-strength pills when I woke up in the morning, two at lunch and two before bed to manage my joint and head pain. I had endured bad migraines for at least a year, maybe longer. My doctor gave me a bottle of Vicoden that I could take if they became unbearable, but I had only taken one pill since January—that time the headache was so bad that I couldn’t see and couldn’t think. Otherwise, I hadn’t found them to be unbearable. Given my crazy schedule, eating too little and exercising too much, I figured headaches were inevitable.

  Attila smiled back at me and continued working. The kitchen was clean. He was almost done preparing my food for the week.

  Attila was Hungarian living with a Japanese-American second wife and two children from his African-American ex-wife. He was tall and muscular, and always wore a black cotton tee with camouflaged fatigue pants. He loved his kids and wife. I loved his go-with-the-flow, non-judgmental, treasure-each-day perspective on life. He was totally cool.

  Attila was there all morning cooking my meals for the week, as he did every Saturday that I was in town. He cooked them and then stored them in the freezer and fridge with instructions on the containers for reheating and the type of meal and day I should eat it. It made life really easy to not have to think about my diet, nutritional requirements, or portion size. The prepared meals and the exercise kept me appropriately fit and too thin—the perfect size for Hollywood.

  “This week I have to make some more ‘raw’ meals for you. Elise said you should ease up on the cardio—you guys are strength training instead, I guess. If you hate the meals I’ll change things next Saturday?” Attila almost asked apologetically when he told me. He knew I got so bored with salads and the “raw” food extreme that Elise was crazy about. The way he did “raw” was pretty clever but I could only handle it in small doses. I liked my meats and fish. His salmon with fennel in a butter cream sauce was my favorite dish. I wondered which day this week I would get to eat it.

  “Honestly, I think you’re too thin and don’t agree with you eating ‘raw’ so I threw in a salmon meal or two to look forward to, but don’t tell Elise. I need this job.”

  “Thank you for sneaking food for me. I felt like I was starving on the set. I hate eating ‘raw’ food!” I smiled and laughed. “Attila, you’re an amazing cook, and I’m always grateful for your hard work. Thanks for the warning. ‘Raw’ it is.”

  “Have a great time at prom,” he said. “Be sure to order a decadent dessert after dinner.”

  “Thanks.” I said and then glanced at the clock. I was confused—time flew by fast. I needed to shower right away. I didn’t hire anyone to do my hair or makeup. I wanted to do it myself. It was prom, not a big production. I was not on display.

  ~ THE DRESS ~

  Before I did my hair, I checked out my prom dress.

  Sage left a note on the outside of the garment bag, “Darling, you will look stunning as you always do. I thought this would be the most prom-like of your dresses and had it altered so you can laugh and dance and move freely. You shouldn’t need to be taped and should be able to just slip it on easily! Enjoy your night! Love you!”

  I laughed. Event dresses were impossible to get into and difficult to move in. It was a painful few hours. Sitting in the limo prior to the red carpet was pure torture. Walking gracefully in heels was nerve racking and required my complete focus. Posing for the cameras was embarrassing, and my mind was always on guard to make sure I didn’t show any pain or nerves. I even tried to blink quickly so some weirdo picture didn’t get published with my eyes closed and mouth frowning from the pain of not being able to breathe.

  I opened the garment bag, and my heart sank. I became acutely aware of my headache. I hated the dress. It couldn’t be my prom dress. I was sure I included it in the list to be donated to the tsunami relief auction. To me, it symbolized the destruction of my family and the consequential isolation I felt since my parents divorced.

  It was the dress I wore to my first Academy Awards when I was fourteen. I was nominated, but didn’t win, for my performance in my first film, Left to Die. It was the project over which Dad divorced Mom. It was the film for which Mom won Best Actress and reinvigorated her A-list career. It was the launch of my career. It was the first time I got drunk at an
industry event. It was my first kiss.

  No. I would not wear the dress. I pushed it back inside the garment bag and carried it into the garage. I threw it in the back of my Prius. I’d get rid of it later. I stopped in the kitchen and took two more Excedrins with water and ate an apple. I washed my hands and then tried to rub out the back of my neck. It throbbed and my vision blurred. I tried to relax and sat in the chair at the kitchen counter for I don’t know how long with my eyes closed until I felt the pain subside. I headed back to my room when my vision cleared.

  I found a comfortable dark purple jersey cocktail dress in my closet. It was no prom dress but I’d look great with some simple Spanx under it, and I could move freely. I decided to wear my hair up.

  We were going to prom with Alan and his date who was thankfully not Sherry, Mitch and Beth, and a group of dateless friends of ours that hung out with us at school.

  Mitch had an intensity and maturity that I had only seen in a few people. He had a great, supportive family, too. His parents were high school sweethearts that were still married—an anomaly in Santa Monica. His sister was also the valedictorian of her graduating high school class and attended Georgetown University. She was one of those everything girls: a gorgeous blond with an attractive body, performed on the dance group during half-time, was social and kind, had good friends, and managed to get perfect grades in honors and AP classes. She was thriving at Georgetown, too.

  Mitch and I dated twice and had a wonderful time. We were going to go to the junior prom together in April last year, the Saturday after my seventeenth birthday, but I canceled because Manuel complicated things. The three guys had agreed to triple date, just like they did this year. Alan invited some girl who ended up being a bitch, of course. Manuel was going with Kate. Mitch hadn’t asked anyone yet. I was incredibly busy that spring filming Jefferson’s Muse, but we were in L.A. on set in front of the green screen. I commuted from my house to the set. I was not going to school and was doing my work through the studio teacher and independent study, but I saw my friends on the weekends. On a day in March when I didn’t have to go to work, I sat with Mitch as I studied in the high school library. We were at the same table, but were not chatting. He slipped me a note, asking me to prom. Delighted, I accepted.