I keep studying him because I’m afraid that if I stop, my heart will start beating loud and hard, a one-man band going to town in there.
I hear more mumbling, but I still can’t catch a word. Finally, Kristin’s voice chimes extra loud.
“I’m sorry, but the most famous people in Wilder are up at the college. If Milo Ritter passed through here, it was just that—passing through. Probably on his way to Savannah. You should head down there,” she says. A bit more mumbling, then the bell on the door jangles again. I start to back out of the doorway, but Milo grabs my arm, sending an electric current down to my feet that curls my toes. He holds up one finger and mouths, “One more second.” I nod, not that I’m in danger of moving at all. I’m practically rooted to the floor, the rubber in my sandals melted there by the heat of Milo Ritter’s chest. Then there’s a knock at the door.
“All clear, but I’d leave out back if I were you,” Kristin says. She hands me two Styrofoam to-go boxes with our meals in them.
“Thanks, Kris,” I say. Milo gives her a quick hug, and she pats him hard on the back.
We end up in the alley between the Diner and the hardware store. Milo glances around like a CIA operative, but there’s no one in sight. When he’s satisfied that the coast is clear, he leans back against the brick wall and sighs. Now it’s my turn to want to help him, but all I can come up with is “I guess we should probably call it a night?”
He nods. “Yeah, probably a good idea.” He looks down the alley toward where his car is, and I can tell he’s already nervous about what—or who—might be waiting for him down there.
“Hey, I don’t live that far. I can totally walk home,” I say.
He barely waits for me to finish before he’s shaking his head, but I hold up a hand to halt his argument before it begins. “Seriously, I walk here all the time. It’s not far, and to be honest, I don’t want any part of whatever that was in there.”
I can tell he doesn’t want to let me walk alone, but my argument wins out over whatever sense of chivalry he has. He nods. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and though his voice is sad, there’s a spark somewhere in my chest at the words. It’s a connection, an acknowledgment of more, and I desperately hope for it.
There’s an awkward shuffling where it seems like he might go in for a hug, but instead he raises his hand in a sort of half wave, half salute that makes me smile. I wave back, and we head off in opposite directions, out of frame of any lenses that may be watching.
The walk home takes a good twenty minutes, but I barely notice it. I’m practically floating. I think I made friends with Milo Ritter. The thought singsongs in my head the whole way.
When I get home, Rubix, our big old yellow rescue dog, is waiting for me. When we adopted him as a puppy from the shelter four years ago, they told us he was a yellow Lab. But then he grew and grew until we became convinced his dad was a Great Dane (that, or he was bitten by a radioactive spider that turned him part giant). He’s absolutely enormous and as sweet as he is large. When he spots my takeout box, his tail starts thumping loudly on the wood floor. I flip the lid and offer him a chunk of my burger, which he swallows without chewing.
“Did you even taste it?” I ask as I ruffle his ears. I drop the to-go box in the fridge, then head toward my room. Mom’s office door is shut, which means she’s either hit her stride or she’s in megaprocrastination mode and doesn’t want anyone to know it. Either way, her closed door means do not disturb. And since the sun hasn’t quite set yet, Dad is probably still out on his nightly run, which means I don’t have to worry about either of the parental units noticing my blissful attitude.
I crash onto my bed with my phone for my nightly scroll through SocialSquare and a few of my favorite news (okay, gossip) sites. But tonight I’m so tired, I feel like I won’t even make it halfway through before my eyes start to drift closed. Maybe it was the painting, or maybe the roller coaster of emotions, or maybe just the walk home. Whatever it is, I’m exhausted.
The first thing I see is a story about Moriah Mann, who’s just been dropped from her supporting role in the latest Robert Lewin movie. Which is…Holy crap. I’m reading gossip about the movie I’m working on! I think back to the blank spot next to the name Kass on the cast sheet. Was that supposed to be Moriah Mann, the indie starlet? Her long blond hair and thin frame manage to make her look both like a supermodel and your very best friend next door. Her last movie got her a Golden Globe nomination, and everyone expects her to get an Oscar pretty soon. She’s always seen skulking around New York or LA on the arm of one of many studly indie rockers with greasy hair. I read further to find she’s off to rehab, so that must be what Rob’s been freaking out about. All the stomping and yelling and hushed conversations are because she got fired, and they’re trying to replace her after we’ve already started production.
Next I switch to SocialSquare and start flicking through my feed. I pause on a shot that Naz posted that looks like it’s inside the library. The tabletop in front of her is arranged with a stack of books, notebooks, and pens all in perfect right angles. The filter gives it a hazy glow, and underneath is the hashtag #myhappyplace. I feel a swelling in my chest. I miss Naz, my favorite nerd. It’s weird not having her around to talk stuff out. Texting just isn’t the same. I want to call her, until I notice the second hashtag in the caption: #donotdisturb.
Instead, I flick my finger across the screen and watch as beautifully filtered images drift by. I once tried to make my feed look that beautiful, but it was so much work to edit and export and import and filter that I gave up. Most of the time I don’t edit at all, since my feed is mostly pictures of my own artwork. I use it as sort of a mobile gallery, with silly selfies of me and Naz or me and Rubix mixed in.
My finger pauses over an image of a blond woman wearing a flower crown made of pink peonies while standing in a field somewhere. It’s Natalie Bond, who starred in a reality show about being young and fabulous in LA called The Boulevard. As I wonder who took the picture and how she came to be standing in a field wearing flowers on her head in the first place, a tiny itch of an idea starts forming in the back of my brain.
I wonder…
I click on the little magnifying glass in the corner and type his name in. It comes up immediately, and I click without thinking. His feed appears, and right at the top, the very first image, is a familiar-looking pimiento cheese sandwich. The second image is from almost three months ago, and the one after that from two months prior. He almost never posts. But there, on the tiny screen of my phone, is our dinner from earlier, taken from above. The shot is mostly his plate, but in the top left corner you can see the tips of my fingers, the teal polish chipped, with a few stray marks from the black grease pencil I’d been using at work to mark dishes for Ruth. There’s the ring that Naz got me for my birthday last year, the brass bird that looks like it’s about to take flight from my hand. I wear it almost every day.
The only caption on the image is a simple hashtag: #yum. Nothing about the movie or me, but still, it’s a record of the fact that we were together. And it makes me feel giddy and slightly jumpy, and I do a little shimmy of my shoulders to try to let some of the excitement out. Suddenly, I’m not quite so tired. I click on Milo’s avatar to load his full feed. A stream of photos appears, though he’s hardly prolific. The most recent shot prior to today was from nine weeks ago, when Milo was standing onstage taking a crowd shot of a bunch of screaming fans—mostly girls about my age and their moms. Most of the other shots were taken inside a studio, from back when he was making his newest album last year. He appears in almost none of them. And because I can’t help myself, I notice there aren’t any of Lydia either. Not even her fingertips.
I click back to the #yum photo, my stomach instinctively growling even though I’m still stuffed. My eyes roll over every pixel of the image, as if there might be a hidden message or a clue in it, but there’s nothing there. Still, I can’t stop looking.
Until my eyes roam down
past the photo to the comments below. In the five minutes I was looking at Milo’s feed, the photo has already amassed more than five hundred likes and climbing, and comments keep pinging onto the screen. Most of them have nothing to do with the actual image. About a third are in a language other than English, and several are even spam advertising fan pages and places to buy designer handbags (CHEAP! AUTHENTIC!). But just before I close the app, I notice a new comment full of exclamation points and emojis, the kind of hysterical missive that you can hardly imagine an actual person writing. But someone did. Just now.
OH MY GOD DO YOU THINK THAT’S LYDIA???? OR IS IT SOMEONE ELSE???? MILO NO NO NO DATE MEEEEE!!!!
I grimace, feeling secondhand embarrassed for JAZMEENA 29384. But then another comment pops up.
THAT’S TOTALLY NOT LYDIA. LYDIA WOULD NEVER HAVE SUCH UGLY-ASS NAILS.
It’s followed by several comments speculating as to my identity, none of them kind.
And just like that, my stomach drops. My cheeks feel hot, and I find myself shifting uncomfortably in bed. There’s a creepy-crawly sensation running up my arms and across the back of my neck, and before I can think anything of it, I’m climbing out of bed and pulling my shades shut, making sure they overlap so there’s no space for anyone to look in. Then I double-check my own SocialSquare page to make sure it’s still private. There’s no way any of those crazies could find me. It was just my fingernails. Not even all of them. I’m still anonymous. Right?
I know I should brush it off. I should close the app and go back to my own corner of the Internet. I should do anything other than sit here staring at this photo. But even though everything in my head and the sick feeling in my stomach is telling me to put down my phone, I refresh the feed. The photo now has thousands of likes, and the comment thread is getting longer. Most of them are still of the fawning-fan variety, but there’s also a growing conversation of sorts happening between a few people on the thread. They’re trying to figure out who that manicure belongs to, and they’re not very happy about the prospect of its being someone other than Lydia.
DEE
Mom, do you have any nail-polish remover?
MOM
No, but I can pick some up if you want.
DEE
Please.
The set is a totally different world when I arrive on Tuesday. Today is scheduled to be the first day of filming, and everyone is walking around like they’re at the starting line of a marathon. The atmosphere is crackling with energy, just waiting to hear Rob call out, “Rolling!”
I check in with Ruth, who tells me I’ll be spending the day shadowing her. I follow her into the warehouse to the attic set, where we’ll be filming the first shot of the day. It’s Milo’s character’s tiny studio apartment. It’s a scene without any dialogue, just the camera capturing Milo puttering around the set. Ruth points to spot near a rolling cart filled with props for the room and tells me to stand there.
All around me, crew members are working busily like bees in a hive. Lights rise up on metal poles, fat electrical cords are hauled around, cameras are mounted on shoulders and dollies while one sits on a cart that rests on a little silver track. I spot Milo in a tall director’s chair. He’s got the day’s sides in his lap, and is going over the scene while a man adjusts his hair with a pick and two makeup women dab at his face. Behind him, a short woman is on her tiptoes adjusting the collar of his vintage button-down so it’s sticking up slightly, as if it happened by accident and not very particular design.
“Okay, people, here we go!” Rob calls. He pulls on a pair of headphones that will allow him to hear what the boom mike is picking up, then positions himself behind a set of three monitors to watch what the cameras see. Immediately, the set clears as everyone takes up residence out of view of the three cameras. Milo steps onto the set and takes his place on top of a tiny X of gaffer’s tape. He bobs up and down on the balls of his feet a few times, then rolls out his neck like he’s preparing for a prize fight.
“Rolling!” Rob yells.
“Rolling rolling,” the cameramen reply.
“Sound speed,” he says.
“Speeding,” the young guy hoisting the long boom mike replies.
“Action.”
The set is quiet except for the sound of Milo’s footsteps as he moves through the cramped attic set, and even those are dulled thanks to the layer of foam the sound guy stuck to his heels. Milo picks up a blank canvas that’s on the floor and places it on an easel—my easel, from the prop room—then picks up a pencil and sweeps it across the white space. I glance at the monitors in front of Rob, and suddenly the Milo in front of me becomes Jonas. The lights and the wires and the tape marks on the floor are all gone, and it looks like an artist in his crappy studio apartment. You can’t tell that the light streaming in through the windows is coming from an enormous lighting rig full of bulbs. You can’t tell that there are approximately thirty people in the room. You can’t tell that the apartment is missing its fourth wall, open for only those of us on the other side of the camera to see.
Now I know why they call it movie magic.
When Rob calls cut, the set springs to life again. Cameras move, lights are adjusted, and the hair-and-makeup team climb over cords and weave around cameras to meet Milo at his mark, fluffing his hair and dabbing his forehead. And it’s now, while surrounded by a small army, that he spots me, still rooted to the floor by the props cart where Ruth left me. He lifts his chin and smiles as much as the makeup assistant will allow while she’s working on him, but it’s enough. I feel a warmth in my cheeks that has nothing to do with the hot lights all around. That’s real the Milo looking at me, even as he’s surrounded by people and dressed up as someone else.
“There’s a box on the work table filled with books,” Ruth says, and I have to break eye contact with Milo to turn to her. It’s harder than I want it to be. “Grab it and bring it here.”
And that’s how I spend the rest of the day, running between props and set, often waiting outside the studio door until I hear Rob call cut, so I can enter without disturbing filming. I quickly learn to live in mortal fear of making any noise while the camera is rolling. I bring books, dishes, and boxes of knickknacks, so Ruth can adjust things in the shot as Rob requests them. We replace one of the posters hanging on the wall of the attic, a vintage circus shot, because it’s pulling too much focus. This is our chance to get the attic set right, since this is the first time shooting in it. From here on out, everything that comes in, goes out, or gets moved around will need to get documented with a tiny point-and-shoot camera that lives in Ruth’s pocket, because everything needs to be in the right spot for every shot that comes after. Otherwise we’ll start piling up continuity errors that will take the audience out of the story or wind up in snarky comments on message boards. It’s our job to avoid that.
By the end of the day, I’m exhausted. My arms ache from carrying boxes, my feet ache from running and standing, and my ears are ringing a little from the cavernous silence of the set during filming. I can think of nothing but my bed, and possibly curling up with Rubix at my feet. And the rest of the week is the same. I learn to wear my most comfortable sneakers every day, partly for comfort and partly because they don’t make any noise when I move across the concrete floor of the warehouse. I learn to leave my phone off and in my purse so I don’t have to worry about remembering to silence it on set (this lesson came after a makeup assistant got a thorough reaming-out from Rob when her phone started quacking during a scene). Eventually, Ruth hands over the camera and puts me in charge of taking continuity photos. And by the end of every day, all I want is to fall asleep until I can wake up and do it all over again.
I don’t see much of Milo throughout the week. During lunch, he’s either in his trailer, rehearsing with Paul and Gillian, or going over the script with Rob to prepare for upcoming scenes. I see him plenty on set, but he’s always surrounded by a fleet of people attending to him. The only time he’s not surrounded is when the cam
era is rolling, when he’s Jonas, and then I definitely can’t talk to him.
By the time Friday rolls around, I feel like we’ve been filming for a month, not barely a week. Life on set feels like an alternate reality where time simultaneously flies and grinds to a halt. Maybe it’s because we spend so much time recreating tiny moments from different angles and with slightly different inflections. Hours can pass, but on camera it’s only been a few minutes.
Rob has just called a wrap on the day, and I’m piling items back onto Ruth’s cart to return them to the prop room when Milo appears. The skin on his arms is red and scrubbed tattoo-free, and he’s out of his punky Jonas wardrobe and back into his standard relaxed jeans and V-neck T-shirt. I haven’t seen him out of wardrobe in days. It’s amazing what clothes can do. He’s him again, the version I want to see.
“Hey,” he says.
“Oh, hi.” I realize that I’m trying to sound casual to hide the fact that I’m staring at how good he looks in that dark-green shirt. But I’m failing. Miserably.
“I never did get a chance to say thanks. For having dinner with me last week.”
“I think I should be thanking you,” I reply. I can’t believe it’s been a week since the Diner, and that I haven’t talked to him since then. It feels like a lifetime ago that I was crying over the paintings in the prop room. “You were the one who was pulling me out of my funk.”
“Well, I just wanted to tell you that I had a good time. It was nice to get out. I’ve basically spent all my time either here or in my hotel room watching basic cable. I’m pretty worn out on reality TV and home improvement shows at this point.”
“You should get out. See the sights,” I say. Across the studio, Ruth gives me a look, and I know I need to get the cart back. I may be leaving for the day, but she’ll still be here for a few hours packing boxes and getting ready for next week, when we’ll be on location. I start pushing it toward the exit, and to my surprise Milo falls in step with me.
My Unscripted Life Page 8
