If You Were Here: A Novel

by Jen Lancaster

  I was worried that someone would get hold of my story and change it too drastically, so I wrote the screenplay myself to avoid all of that. Yet here I am in a casting session while some writer I never met gives my screenplay a “polish.” I’m told he’s going to be listed as one of the cowriters in the credits. Somehow this feels wrong.

  But in terms of wrong, nothing’s been more wrong than the parade of bimbos who have tottered through here today. Seriously, can we talk about Miriam for a second? She’s supposed to be a quiet, reserved, gentle Amish girl who inadvertently gets turned into a zombie. (Although, really, does anyone go zombie advertently?) But Miriam’s propensity for goodness is such that she keeps all her undead flesh eating to a minimum, and that’s how she earns Amos’s trust and love.

  Yes, I know her story sounds a tad Twilight-y.

  Yes, more than a little.

  I know.

  I know.

  I’ll thank you all to quit pointing it out, and did you ever consider that MAYBE I HAD THE DAMN IDEA FIRST AND THAT ASSHAT STEPHENIE—

  Ahem. Moving on.

  Anyway, when I picture my Miriam, I envision someone slight and darkly lovely, with luminous skin the color of fresh milk and enormous, soulful, haunted eyes—kind of like a young Winona Ryder before all the bat-shittery.

  Miriam might appear weak and unassuming, but she’s got a well of hidden strength. She should dwell in that netherworld somewhere between childhood and adulthood, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. I’m looking for an actress who possesses a certain innocence, someone who can portray the kind of child/woman who knows of disappointment and adult problems but hasn’t yet been jaded by the world. Every time she curls her delicate lip or raises her eyebrow, I want her to be able to telegraph the emotion she’s expressing all the way to the back row of the theater.

  When I explained this to the casting coordinator, he was all, “Oh, yeah, like Kristen Stewart?”

  NO, NOT LIKE KRISTEN STEWART.

  But I’d take K-Stew in a second over these ridiculously implanted Rock of Love girl wannabes.

  Ladies?

  For the record?

  The Amish don’t have hair extensions, and that I know for a fact.

  The woman auditioning now claims to be twenty-two, but she’s as close to twenty-two as I am. In what I imagine is her nod to the Amish, she’s plaited her blond hair (with pink highlights) into two braids and tied her completely unbuttoned shirt under where her bra would hit, were she wearing one. She’s clad in shorty-short cutoff jeans, and the charm hanging out of her belly-button piercing is a cowboy boot. If she were auditioning for the porn version of The Beverly Hillbillies, yeah, I could see her being appropriate, but otherwise? Blech.

  “That was great, Amberleigh, just great, thanks! Hope to see you back again,” says Seth. He’s running the show here and was brought in by the studio executives to head up my film. I keep trying to defer to him, because he’s the one with all the experience, but damn.

  As soon as she steps out of the room, I whip around to face him. “You were joking, right?”

  He’s the very picture of innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean she was thirty years old and probably spends her weekends in the grotto at Hef’s pool.”

  Seth seems genuinely puzzled. “You didn’t think she had a certain farm-fresh innocence about her?”

  “She’s as fresh as Bea Arthur163 and innocent as Paris Hilton.”

  “Hey, that’s an idea! We ought to talk to Paris about playing Rebecca! What a twist, huh?”

  Words escape me, so I simply shake my head in mute frustration.

  When the next actress enters, I get an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. She seems so familiar. I lean in and whisper, “Hey, what’s she been in? How do I know her?”

  “That’s America’s sweetheart.”

  “Who?”

  Seth’s whole face lights up at the mention of her name. “That’s Lolly. Everyone knows Lolly.”

  I’ve been trying to sound cheery and upbeat and not utterly and completely frustrated at everything that comes out of this man’s mouth. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was screwing this up on purpose. One of my author friends got to sit in during the casting session for her movie, and she said every actress was more perfect than the next, and all of them were better than she could have ever imagined. But here, unless I imagine Miriam as someone who’d make out with Flavor Flav in a bathtub, that’s not the case.

  “Everyone except for me, Seth. I’m drawing a blank. Help me out?”

  “Mia, she’s been on the cover of every tabloid for two months.”

  “Forgive me; I haven’t really been to the grocery store for a while.”

  Or, I have been. I just haven’t had the cash to throw around on four-dollar celebrity rags.

  “Lolly was the bachelorette who got dumped at the altar! How did you miss it? She was all over the news.”

  “Whoa,” I say, a little louder than I mean to. Lolly stops and the cameraman has to tell her to keep going. “Now I remember. She was the superslutty one who had sex with all the guys on their fantasy dates.”

  “Yes, that’s her.” Seth nods enthusiastically. “We were really lucky to get her in here. She’s a hot commodity now.”

  “And . . . and you find the woman who’s famous for banging a whole bunch of unemployed dudes on national television to be the most appropriate choice to play a seventeen-year-old Amish virgin?”

  “Absolutely!”

  Oh, my God, I can’t believe this joker is in charge of this whole goddamned production; ergo, my fate.

  Think of your house, think of your house, think of your house, I mentally repeat before I say something career killing out of anger. I pose the next question as gently as I possibly can, even though it kills me to do so.

  “Um, Seth, I’m curious—have you read the script yet?”

  With complete sincerity he says to me, “No. But I plan to real soon.”

  Now, tell me that’s not a sign.

  “Ready to kill self-slash-others yet?”

  “Tracey, you have no idea.” I’m talking to Tracey on the phone from the living room of my fancy suite at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills.

  The studio’s spared no expense in making me comfortable in my home away from home. A few months ago, I’d have been in my glory in here. But now? The suite feels way too luxurious. I have two bathrooms in here! Two! For one person! There’s no possible way I could use both the massive soaking tub and the powder room shower at the same time. This room is double the size of our old place on Spring Street, and it feels more than a little excessive. If putting me up here is the reason that movie tickets cost fifteen dollars a pop, then I’m really sorry, America.

  When I step out on one of my three164 balconies, I have unencumbered views of the city and the mountains. I could have probably gotten by with one balcony—or none—considering how gorgeous the pool area is, with all the massive teak loungers and tented private cabanas.

  I have a sitting area and a dining area and a separate bedroom with a canopy bed. With solid walls and finished floors and ceilings that don’t gush carpenter ants! The studio doesn’t realize it, but they could have put me up in a motel on the off-ramp and I’d have been satisfied.165

  Yet despite my million-dollar surroundings, I’m not happy.

  I miss my stupid, chaotic, taking-baths-in-the-lake life desperately. I miss my husband. I miss my dogs. I miss my friends. I miss having nemeses who are at least forthcoming enough to try to firebomb my house or have me arrested or blackballed, rather than this passive-aggressive trying-to-ruin-my-movie shit that’s going on out here.

  I gaze out the window and I fail to be charmed by the scenery. I sip my tea and tell Tracey, “Did I mention Seth’s determined to destroy this film?”

  “You keep saying that. But if he’s in charge, why would he deliberately sabotage it?”

  “The craft table scuttlebutt is, he didn’t want t
o work on this project. I guess he got passed over for some Tom Cruise film and now he’s taking his frustration out on me.”

  Tracey’s not yet certain of what I’m convinced is fact. “Are you sure he’s not just incompetent? Hollywood’s rife with nepotism. Is it possible he’s someone’s kid or cousin?”

  I stir honey and lemon into my tea while I consider this possibility. “No one could be this incompetent. Sabotage is the only explanation for the decisions he’s made.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for one, he wants to film at the beach.”

  “Come again?”

  “The beach. He claims audiences love an ocean view. Granted, I’m not as well versed as I should be in Amish culture, but for Christ’s sake, I’m pretty sure none of them live in Malibu!”

  “It’s very difficult to maneuver a buggy through the canyons. So many sharp turns,” Tracey adds.

  “Yeah, that part is not actually a problem, because Seth let this cowriter kid totally mangle my script. Apparently General Motors is willing to pony up big bucks for product placement, so guess what they’re driving? Think horsepower, not horses. Might I remind you this film is called Buggies Are the New Black? GM’s rep wants to set up a cross-promotional Web site—CallMeIshmaelsRide.com—and it’ll feature the cars from the movie.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I wish. I always say that the Amish bit is a device and I don’t really need it to tell the story of what it’s like to be a teenager, right? Well, Seth took that thought one step further by trying to completely eliminate all Amish parts of the movie. He wanted to make it more ‘hip and modern,’ like that 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet.”

  “No offense, Mia, but that movie version worked because Shakespeare wrote the original.”

  “None taken.” I pluck a grape from my daily fruit plate and chew it angrily. “Ooh, and guess who he tried to cast as Mose? No, wait. Don’t answer—you’ll never guess, because it’s too ridiculous. He wanted the guy from the Old Spice commercials!”

  “ ‘ I’m on a horse’?”

  “Yep. The man your man could smell like. And I love that guy and I bought Mac a bunch of Old Spice products because of him, but once we got him in to read he was all, ‘Um, you want me to play an eighteen-year-old white boy?’ He was a total class act, but it was mortifying!”

  “Mia, that really sucks. How does Mac feel about everything?”

  Oh, Mac.

  What am I going to do with him?

  He’s yet to visit, even though the studio will fly him out at their expense. He keeps making lame excuses, like about not being able to leave the dogs. I slump back into the chaise. “On the one hand, he’s been really supportive when I bitch about how things are going out here, full of advice on how to not be so passive about everything. But then when I ask him about the house, he suddenly gets distant and distracted and has to hang up. I thought it was a onetime thing, but it’s been happening each time we talk. So I don’t know what that means. I wonder if he’s even trying at this point, or if he’s just waiting for the money to roll in. I get the vibe that he doesn’t even care whether or not he’s made any progress on the house, and I find that really distressing. At the moment, I feel like I’m the only one who cares about the foundation of our house or our marriage.”

  Tracey’s as perplexed as I am. “That seems so out of character. Not his personality. He’d go down in a hail of bullets, not a blaze of apathy.”

  “Right? I can’t even fathom why he’s just given up. Maybe I was just too awful at the end, there. I did turn into a shrew.”

  “With good reason, Mia. Don’t forget I was there the day it rained toilets.”

  “I guess. If Kara would ever get back to me, I’d make her put on her advice columnist hat and tell me what to do next.”

  “Have you talked at all? I saw her once in the past six weeks, and we literally bumped into each other on Michigan Avenue. She seems happy but we didn’t get a chance to chat—she was running to a meeting. She keeps e-mailing saying we should get together, but she’s been booked all the dates I suggest.”

  “We’ve exchanged a couple of texts, but we haven’t had a conversation since I missed her outing. She’s not one to hold a grudge usually, but I must have really let her down. Seems to be a trend lately.”

  “Yes, Mia. Self-pity. That’s exactly what the doctor ordered. Much as I’d love to wallow with you, I’ve got to bolt in a few minutes. I’m meeting my new man for dinner.”

  Tracey’s been seeing this new guy for a couple of months now. She’s been particularly cagey about details and says everything will make sense once we meet him.

  “Is he coming to get you now?” I ask.“And is he driving fifteen miles an hour the whole way with his blinker on and seat belt hanging out the door?”

  “You’re going to eat those words, Mia.”

  “I look forward to it. I’ll see you . . . Shit, I don’t know when. But hopefully soon.”

  “Take care, kiddo.”

  “Bye, Trace. Big love.”

  I have some time to kill before this afternoon’s casting meeting, so I decide to check out my Facebook fan page. My tweens are completely losing their minds over the book becoming a movie. Their wall comments are full of excellent suggestions for whom they want to see on-screen. For female leads, they’re all about Miley Cyrus, Dakota Fanning, and Selena Gomez, and for the male leads, they’d like to see Zac Efron and at least one Jonas brother. They’re all dying for Justin Bieber, too, but honestly, he’s so pretty I’d lean toward slapping a wig on him and casting him as Rebecca.

  Funny, not one of them envisions a thirtysomething ex–porn actress for any of these roles. Except for Nick, of course. He’s hoping we’ll consider Traci Lords.

  I tab over to read my Facebook messages and I run across a couple of familiar names in the in-box. Looks like I’ve gotten notes from both Amberleigh and Lolly. Of course, they’re both dead wrong for the parts, but I do appreciate anyone who sends a thank-you note. Manners still count, you know?

  I open Amberleigh’s first.

  Hiya Miya,

  Small pet peeve here, if I may? My name is three letters and I get a wee bit stabby when people spell it wrong.

  I dunno if you rememumber me but I tried out for Marion.

  Oh, honey, I won’t forget you or your jeans shorts.

  You should cast me becuz I LOVE your books!

  Plus ten points for the bimbo.

  Vampries turn me on and I would totally have a three-way with Edward and Jacob.

  And ... thanks for coming out. Delete.

  Then I begin to read Lolly’s letter.

  Mia,

  Thank you for the opportunity to audition. I’m currently awaiting a callback.

  What’s the expression I’m looking for?

  Ah, yes, over my dead body.

  Your books are superfun and I know I’d be a great Mary Ann.

  Unfortunately we’re not casting any Mary Anns.

  If you cast me in your movie, I am willing to do the following to you:

  I scan the list and . . .Yikes. She really wants this part.

  A lot.

  I’m not sure number sixteen is even legal.

  I feel dirty even knowing some of this stuff exists.

  Um, wow.

  I always heard rumors that the casting couch existed. Guess I never realized one day I might be running the couch.

  I think that’s enough fan mail for the day.

  I’m going to get ready for this afternoon’s casting session now. By taking a Silkwood shower.

  I’m almost late for the meeting because I couldn’t stop scrubbing. Most of the team is assembled and we’re here to discuss final callbacks for principal roles. I pretty much hate everyone Seth likes, and what sucks is that I don’t have right of first refusal. Per my contract, I’m allowed input on the decisions, but I don’t get final say. As EP, Seth is the one with all the power. I guess the trade-off is that I get
a really big check.

  I settle into my seat at the conference table and grab a bottle of Fiji water. I’m probably not even going to drink it; I just like to take them, since they’re free. I’ve got quite the collection of them back in my hotel room just in case the Four Seasons runs out of water and I need to wash my hair or something.166

  Seth opens the meeting with a bombshell. “Good news, everyone! We’ve found our Marion!”

  “Miriam,” I correct in a tone that I mean to sound firm but instead comes across as passive-aggressive. There’s a low rumble of whispered conversations and collective surprise at the table. Sounds like none of us were part of this decision.

  “Right, right! Miriam, I meant to say.” He flashes me a shiny white, fully veneered, completely insincere smile. “We needed someone new and fresh, but she had to be the kind of person who would get audiences talking—I mean, really talking! So I figured, why not go for broke? Why not reach for the stars? Why not bring on the biggest It Girl out there?”

  The room instantly begins to buzz. Who is it? Who’d he get? Who possesses such star power that he didn’t even have her read for us? Big, huge names are bandied about the room as Seth goes to retrieve our Miriam.

  My mind races with possibilities—is it Taylor Swift? She could be amazing in the role. My tweens would love her, and adults would appreciate her charm and authenticity. What about Amanda Seyfried? She’s a triple threat, and her eyes are so expressive. She’s not what I envisioned as Miriam’s physical type, but the truth is, she’d be perfect with all her blue-eyed innocence. Blake Lively would bring grace and a timeless elegance to the role, and Emma Stone could be great in that she’d bring such comedic timing. Ooh, what about Carey Mulligan? How spectacular would it be to have an Oscar nominee speaking my words on the big screen?