The extras who’ve already lit up stub them out and flick them into the grass.
“Excuse me, could we please try to avoid setting the one-hundred-fifty-year-old house on fire?” Carly snaps, waving a finger at them. “We have a bucket over there for your butts. Use it, or we’ll send you home.”
She turns to me and makes like she’s bashing her brains out with her clipboard. “Oy with this day already,” she mutters. She nods her head toward the tent. “Can you go in there and back Adrian up?”
If I’m going to take Carly’s advice and focus on work, then I need to stay as far away from Lydia as possible. And if there’s anywhere Lydia’s not, it’s in extras holding. I wander into the tent, which is crammed full of people and rickety plastic folding chairs. The extras are already congregating, moving the chairs around, fighting over the few power strips that have been set up so they can charge their phones. There’s a group of middle-aged extras clutching enormous travel mugs, looking like they’ve been through this more than once. In the corner is a group of girls who keep giggling nervously and touching up their lipstick, looking like they can’t wait to get in front of the camera. A few people have already parked in chairs and nodded off. There are garment bags flung over the back of nearly every chair, and several of the women are perched on the ground using the chairs as vanities while they touch up hair and makeup.
Adrian hustles through the tent flap and climbs up onto one of the chairs. Despite the heat, she’s in jeans and boots, a red bandanna tied around her neck like a bandit. Her headset pushes the spiked ends of her black pixie cut in all directions. She’s barely five feet, but she has the personality of someone twice that tall. She adjusts her headset so she can cup her hands around her mouth like a megaphone, then calls out for everyone to “shut the hell up.
“All right, guys, there’s a lot of you, so I’m going to really need you to listen when someone in a headset is talking,” she says once the crowd is quiet. “And if you can’t do that, I have no problem sending you home. Just like always, no phones on set. No pictures outside of this tent. No social media-ing about anything that happens on set, unless you want to go home and also write a very big check to Rialto Productions. If you’re going to smoke, please do it at least ten feet away from the tent, and butts go in the buckets.”
After a few more instructions about bathroom locations and not touching anything and three more reminders not to take any pictures—“I mean it,” she says with an evil eye combined with the ever-present threat of being sent home—Gloria, Eloise, and a gaggle of other wardrobe folks file into the tent and start wandering through the crowd adjusting straps and ties. A lot of double-stick tape gets applied. Gloria lasts about four and a half minutes before she huffs, waves at the wardrobe assistants, and bolts toward the house. Eloise ends up in charge in the tent.
“Excuse me, are we going to get hair and makeup?” asks a girl in a hot-pink satin-and-sequin number who looks like she’s already wearing an entire Sephora on her face. Adrian rolls her eyes in response, then turns to me.
“They seriously think that with a hundred and fifty of them, we’re going to waste time spackling them up? Fat chance. Most of them won’t even get seen.”
It turns out getting this show started “as soon as possible” means it’s two hours before we even start moving extras into the house for the first scene, which requires about a third of them to dance in the background to silent music while the cast has a quick exchange in the foreground.
Adrian is instructing the extras on how to dance and to definitely not look into the camera or at the actors when Carly brings one more group in to join them. Trevor is moving through the crowd with a roll of sticky foam strips, applying them to the bottoms of high heels to prevent the inevitable clacking during the dancing. I’ve been put on cell phone patrol, making sure no one has brought one onto set.
My own phone vibrates in my back pocket. I whip it out to see a text from Naz. I haven’t heard from her since the beach photo, which is partly my fault. Once I made the decision not to tell her about Milo, I felt guilty sending her anything else. A lie of omission feels slightly better than a slew of outright lies, which is what anything I’d send her at this point would be.
I swipe at the screen, and the message pops up.
IS THIS YOU???
Below the text is a link. Without even clicking on it, the bottom of my stomach drops out. I try to calm myself. When I finally click on the link, service is so slow it takes a moment for the page to load. And once it does, I immediately want to hop the next van back to my house, crawl under my covers, and never come out again.
The picture is small and grainy, and looking again, I have to blink a few times. It’s like one of those magic eye puzzles where you have to relax your eyes to get the image, but once you do, it won’t go away. The parking lot. The big black truck. Me on my tiptoes, my hand against Milo’s chest, while he stoops, his lips pressed to mine.
“Holy shit, is that you?” Carly is by my side, peering over my shoulder.
My silence is answer enough, apparently. Because the grainy cell phone photo is most definitely me. Not that it looks like me at all. I can’t believe Carly was even able to come to that conclusion. I can only tell it’s me because, well, I was there. And though the memory of the kiss gives me the usual sizzle, it quickly fizzles as the reality of my situation sinks in.
Apparently one of those old-timers at Lowell’s knew exactly who Milo was.
I scan the page, my finger flicking up and down on the screen, but I’m not identified by name. Thank God.
“They don’t know it’s me,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
Another text from Naz pings onto the screen.
Normally I’d tell you not to, because it’s the #1 rule of the Internet, but read the comments…
I navigate back and take a deep breath, then click on a hot-pink link below the picture that reads “Comments.” I gulp. Dear God.
Four hundred and ninety-three bits of text appear. I don’t even have to read them to tell that they’re full of snark. Between the questionable capitalizations, the strings of emoticons, and oceans of exclamation points, it’s sort of hard to miss. Some aimed at Milo, some aimed at Lydia, and quite a bit aimed at me. But that’s not what I really focus on. Nope, I can’t care about the words “slut,” “skank,” “rebound,” or “nobody,” because the “Top Comment,” noted with a yellow star and about sixty bajillion likes, simply reads DEANNA WILKIE. Below that is a link to my SocialSquare page (which, thank God, is still private), as well as an article about a community art show I did sophomore year (that’s accompanied by a really unflattering photo of me holding a blue ribbon…let’s just say face-framing layers are not my best look).
“Look, I know you’re having, like, a massive existential breakdown right now, but if you don’t put that phone away Rob is going to fully lose his shit,” Carly says, glancing around to see if Rob is about to leap out from behind one of the many potted ferns that props has brought in to add some more color and texture to the space. “But we are so going to talk about this later.”
Oh, we are so not.
“Okay, go for rehearsal!” Rob calls. Music kicks on through the speakers placed behind the ferns, and the extras begin dancing. Then, just as abruptly as it began, the music cuts out. But the extras continue as if it were still playing. Lydia enters in a blood-red, gravity-defying strapless dress, a giant white magnolia behind her ear holding back a cascade of cinnamon-colored waves, but she doesn’t get a line out before Rob calls cut. “Hey, uh, PA girl? You’re in the shot.”
I feel the sting of a minimum of fifty pairs of eyes on me. My cheeks burn with the heat of the embarrassment I feel when I realize that yes, I’m standing right in front of the camera while all around me, people in formal wear are fake-dancing to silent music. I glance up to see Lydia shoot me a withering look before turning on one of her impossibly high heels and stomping back to her starting mark at the top of th
e stairs. And as my eye follows her, Milo appears from around a corner wearing an immaculately tailored black tuxedo. He doesn’t notice me standing below in a sea of extras, but I see him. I see him looking devastatingly handsome, and I see him reach over and grab Lydia’s hand. He laughs, and then she laughs, and I swear there are literal bolts of electricity zapping back and forth between them.
I bolt from the parlor muttering apologies to anyone who catches my eye. Having visited the Charlesmark House so many times, I know that if I make my way through the atrium and into the kitchen, I’ll find a small wooden door painted bright red that will lead me down a flight of stairs into the servants’ quarters, which is what Southerners call the slaves quarters so they don’t have to think about slavery. I doubt they’ve got anything set up down there for filming, and sure enough, when I arrive, I find it blissfully empty. Which means I can park myself on the stone floor of the basement, pull out my phone, and further twist the knife by scrolling through the comments.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing and sobbing emojis from girls who were hoping Milo would stay with Lydia, or better yet, date them. One girl refers to me as a skunk, but I assume she was going for “skank.” I keep telling myself I should stop, but just like picking a scab, I can’t quit until I’m bleeding. I keep scrolling, keep reading, and with each comment on my hair or my outfit or my face, the pit in my stomach grows.
If they know who I am, it’s only a matter of time before there are more photos, these taken with sharper lenses wielded by professional hands. I’ll end up on more websites, and maybe even in magazines. I could end up on freaking TV.
I think back to Lydia’s words the other day, about how I’d get tired of all this. About how I wouldn’t last. And I’m starting to understand how she could be right. This sucks. It sucks bad.
I can’t watch Milo and Lydia filming today. I can’t watch them have their meet-cute or whatever and start falling in love on-screen, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to separate that from real life. Or if it even is separate from real life. So I tell Adrian that I’d be happy to man the extras tent for her. She looks at me like I’ve just offered her a kidney, and then actually hugs me. She sends me over to get a walkie-talkie and headset and tells me she’ll call for me on channel two when she needs me to send extras to set.
“Just keep them quiet and contained, okay?”
It sounded like an easy-enough assignment, maybe even my easiest since I started work on the film. But it turns out that keeping extras contained is like herding kindergartners who are hopped up on Pixy Stix and Mountain Dew. They keep wandering out of the tent to smoke or sneak onto set to get in more shots. While they have their own craft services table in the tent (okay, so it’s only a giant tray of Chex Mix and a big orange jug of water), several of them try to sneak out to the back of the property to hit up the crew table. I don’t blame them. Today is burrito day, and the smell of cilantro and marinated chicken is enough to make your mouth water, but I quickly learn that nothing sends a crew member over the edge faster than having to stand in line behind an extra to get a bite, especially when they have only a precious few minutes between shots.
Inside the tent is no better. I keep getting approached by extras, all asking in new and different and not-so-subtle ways if they can go to set soon. Several of them try to pump me for contacts, not knowing that I’m an intern with none to speak of. I can’t help any of them get famous, which seems to be why most of them are here.
Ultimately I grab one of the folding chairs and take up post outside the tent so I can watch the comings and goings, and hopefully catch them before they make their way to the burrito bar. The rest of the time I spend alternately staring at my rapidly growing in-box and shoving my phone into my pocket, telling myself to stop—no, really this time, stop!—obsessing over the photo.
Production has set up sawhorses around the perimeter of the property, which seemed weird to me until, over the course of the day, people began showing up on the sidewalk. Some just peer around, hoping for a sighting of a celebrity; others have phones and cameras and are busy snapping photos. It’s not a big deal—there’s really nothing to see outside save for the stacks of equipment the lighting crew are storing on the front lawn. Someone may have gotten a truly impressive shot of Steve’s butt crack as he hauled a giant stand up the front steps. But otherwise, not much going on.
But there’s a flash of something jewel-toned and satiny over by the crowd that catches my attention. I stand up and shield my eyes from the beating sun to try to get a better view. Has someone from the cast gone down to sign autographs? Oh, that’s really nice.
Only I don’t recognize the brunette who’s down there, pen in hand, posing for pictures. She’s not in the cast, at least not that I know of.
“Who the hell is that?” Benny asks, appearing at my side.
“I don’t know,” I reply. And then I get a flash of recognition. I saw her getting off the school bus this morning. She’s the girl who asked if the extras would be getting hair and makeup, and I’m pretty sure she’s asked me to get on set six or seven times. “Holy crap, she’s an extra.”
Benny laughs. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says. “Adrian is going to flip her shit when she sees that.”
I’m not normally a very confrontational person, and a few hours ago I probably would have jumped at the chance to let Adrian be the bad guy. I might have even enjoyed watching the show. But right now? When I’m taking virtual hits from every Milo Ritter fan in the Western Hemisphere while Lydia Kane’s warning haunts my brain? Yeah, I’ll take this one.
I snatch the clipboard out of Benny’s hand, because I figure I need something to lend me an air of authority, and then march across the lawn. “Hey, you!” I shout. The extra whips around, and her photo-ready smile vanishes. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“I, uh, I w-was just—” she stammers.
“Get the hell back to the extras tent before I send you home,” I snap, gesturing toward her path. “Extras do not leave the tent. Can you not follow even the simplest of instructions?”
“You mean you’re not an actress?” a middle-aged woman in an electric-blue visor drawls as she drops her camera back into her fanny pack.
“I am an actress,” the girl replies, “just not—”
“Go!” I cut her off, and then, like my mom used to do when I was little, I start counting. I have no idea how high I’m willing to go, or what the consequences will be when I get there, but it doesn’t matter because she scurries back up the path toward the tent before I hit three.
I let out a huffy breath and tuck the clipboard under my arm before stomping up behind her. When I get back, Benny is giving me a slow clap while a smile spreads across his face. “Nice one,” he says. “Color me impressed.”
“Yeah, I had a little frustration to get out,” I reply.
“Well, I’d better get back. I’m on camera patrol,” he says, rolling his neck and bouncing on his heels a bit. While I’ve had my chair out here, Benny’s been on his feet in the house all day. He’s got to be feeling it.
“Camera patrol?” I ask.
“Making sure none of the extras are staring at the camera,” he says. “By the way, tomorrow is red. Don’t let me down, Wilkie.”
I give him a two-fingered salute, then watch as he bounds off toward the house.
I spend the rest of the day on my perch outside the tent. My job is 90 percent pointing out where the bathrooms are, but each time they set up for a new shot inside the mansion, I get to pull a selection of extras to send up to set. I actually find myself having fun pulling out a good mix of people and complementary dress colors from the group, trying to imagine what the camera will see when it pans over the crowd. Adrian even comes down to tell me that Rob is really happy with the way the scene is looking today. “It’s crazy unusual for the director to compliment the background,” she says, and gives me a good hard slap on the back that nearly knocks the wind out of me.
; Soon the sun is starting to set, and on the radio I hear that there’s only one more shot before we wrap for the day. Adrian takes up a post at a table inside the tent to start wrapping the extras, meaning signing their pay vouchers and sending them home. We need to retain only a small group to finish up inside, so I stand at the entrance to the tent and make sure everyone’s voucher is signed before they leave.
“Voucher?” I ask as they file by, barely registering their faces. They nod or wave their signed slips, but most ignore me. I don’t care. Between the early wake-up, hanging around in the sun all day, and fretting about the photo, I’m exhausted. “Voucher? Voucher?”
“Yeah, where do I get that signed again?”
“Ugh, at the table in the tent,” I groan, and notice how much I sound like Carly. When I glance up, Milo is standing in front of me in his tuxedo, looking just as sexy as I imagined he would. “Oh, hey,” I say, trying to sound cool and breezy and relaxed. Unfortunately, I think I come off sounding strangled.
Milo clears his throat and adopts some sort of weird, professional tone of voice. “Uh, can I talk to you? About tomorrow’s scene?” He nods toward the back of the property, away from the prying eyes and iPhones of the tentful of extras.
“Yeah, of course,” I reply, trying to match his all-business tone. I follow him across the lawn and around the side of the house, where we’re alone and out of sight.
“How’s it going?” he asks, but there’s a hesitancy in his eyes that tells me he probably already knows.
I take a breath to ensure I won’t burst out into sobs. “Well, I’m wrangling a hundred and fifty extras who all think their Oscar-winning close-up is coming any second, I have a blister on my left pinkie toe, and oh, what was that? Yeah, strangers are discussing my love life on the Internet.”
He grimaces like he’s just witnessed a horrific car crash. And I feel like I’ve just been through one. “So you saw it, huh?”
My Unscripted Life Page 14
