My Unscripted Life

by Lauren Morrill

  “Look, I know this is superweird. I get it,” he says. His voice is light, like he’s trying to make a joke, but it’s falling flat. “Come on, every relationship has its ups and downs.”

  A pop of laughter bursts out of me in an explosive ha! “This is hardly a normal relationship,” I say. The words escape before I have time to run them through a filter, but as soon as they’re out I realize the truth of them.

  “What does that mean?” Milo asks.

  “None of the guys I’ve dated have ever sung at the Grammys. Or starred in a movie. Or had an ex-girlfriend who was named one of People magazine’s most beautiful humans or whatever,” I say. “So maybe this is normal for people in that situation, but it sure doesn’t feel normal to me.”

  There’s a beat of silence before he responds. “Lydia shouldn’t be a factor,” Milo says.

  “Really? Because when I heard her telling you how she still loves you and wants you back, it sort of sounded like she was a factor.”

  Milo looks like he’s been slapped. His mouth drops open like he’s going to ask me what I’m talking about, but he doesn’t even try. I can tell he’s thinking back to that moment near the attic set, the exact moment I hear in my head daily.

  “And watching you flirt with her is pretty much the worst,” I say, and it feels good to let it out. I’ve been so afraid of sounding ridiculous complaining about Lydia that I’ve been pretending it wasn’t an issue. But it was. It is.

  “When did I flirt with her?”

  “On camera,” I say, but as the words come out, they sound feeble.

  “Again, that’s my job. Not like you flirting with that bearded PA.”

  My mouth drops open, my nose wrinkling in frustration. “Benny? He’s an old friend.”

  “Yeah, looked awfully friendly to me,” Milo says.

  “You’re being ridiculous. Benny is not the issue.”

  “And what is?”

  There’s the million-dollar question. What is the issue? What’s my problem? What’s his? Why does it feel like there’s a big hurdle standing between us? I thought we were about to clear it after we kissed in the parking lot of Lowell’s, but apparently my toe caught at the last second and I face-planted.

  “I just feel like I don’t know what’s going on. I mean, you guys broke up because she cheated on you. Does that mean if she hadn’t, you’d still be together?” I ask, then go to the question I really want the answer to. “Do you still have feelings for her?”

  “I can’t believe you have to ask me that.” Milo’s lips curl, making him look sort of disgusted, but I can’t tell if it’s the prospect of having feelings for Lydia or the fact that I would suggest it.

  “I can’t believe you think I wouldn’t,” I shoot back. “There’s just so much you’re not telling me about all that.”

  “What can I tell you that can’t be dug up via Google?” Milo practically spits the words.

  “That’s crap and you know it,” I reply.

  “Excuse me?” Milo looks indignant.

  “Don’t give me the poor tortured celebrity story. It’s all crap, as evidenced by your James Bond act at the diner. Isn’t all that about keeping who you really are off the Internet?”

  He’s silent for a moment, and we both know I’m right. Sure, there’s a lot of information about him out there, but how much of it is really true? I honestly have no idea. And faced with the fact that he’s less than an open book, Milo takes a deep breath, then launches into it.

  “My album sales are flat, which is appropriate since so was my last album. I want to try something different, but the label wants more of the same old crap, because even a poorly selling Milo Ritter album still sells well. And they won’t leave me alone. I swear, I’m six steps away from rhyming ‘love’ and ‘dove’ just to get them off my back. And while we already talked about it, I think it bears repeating that my very famous ex-girlfriend very famously cheated on me with a very not-famous dude.”

  I gape at him. “Wait, is it the cheating, or the fame of the dude that bothers you?”

  “Both. Or neither. I don’t know, it’s like I didn’t know who I was without her. I’m supposed to be the guy, and then she goes off and hooks up with some rando.”

  It’s not the answer I was hoping for. What I wanted to hear was something closer to Lydia’s a she-devil and we were never meant to be together to begin with. The cheating was a blessing in disguise, and I’m happy to be rid of her forever and ever, amen. But instead, he’s telling me his biggest problem with the cheating was that it was a blow to his ego. It’s all been so thoroughly set on fire that I feel like I need to flee the scene.

  “I can’t tell if you’re not who I thought you were, or if you’re exactly who I thought you were,” I whisper. Then I turn on my heel and go.

  A door slams.

  MOM

  Dee? Is that you?

  Another door slams.

  It’s Saturday, which means no work for the weekend, and I’m glad. I don’t think I can face Milo after yesterday’s fight. Did I break up with him? Did he break up with me? I shouldn’t have bolted, but I was too afraid to see our conversation through to its end. But the joke’s on me, because now I’m left with a mountain of ambiguity and a bundle of nerves preventing me from sorting it out.

  I roll over and glance at the clock, happy to see that my week of ass-crack-of-dawn wake-ups hasn’t broken me from sleeping in. I wish I could stay asleep for the entire day, but the frantic rustling from beneath my window is keeping me from drifting off again. I swear, if Mrs. Newington’s cat has had another litter of kittens down there, I’m going to…well, have kittens as they say.

  I flop out of bed and pad across the floor. I lean into the window and look down, sighing as I lean too far and my head thunks on the glass. Thankfully, it’s not kittens down there. It’s my mother. At least, I think that’s her beneath the wide straw brim of that embarrassing hat.

  I throw on a clean tank top and switch out my boxer shorts for a pair of running shorts, an item of clothing I only own thanks to my brief relationship with Trent Schneider, captain of the cross country team. Our relationship lasted exactly four days and three miles before I realized that if it continued I’d be found in a heap on the side of the road.

  Outside I find my mother doing battle with the English ivy that’s attempting to climb the side of the house. She’s got it in her fists and is leaning back like she’s about to scale our house, but it doesn’t seem to want to let go. That’s not stopping her from yanking while grunting like a Williams sister.

  “That’s how I feel,” I say, which causes Mom to startle, let go of the ivy, and fly back onto her butt. The ivy winds up twisted around her ankle, and she kicks at it.

  “Trouble in paradise?” she asks.

  I pause. “What does that mean?”

  “I think you know,” she says. I can’t look at her, but I can practically hear her eyebrow shooting up. When I finally glance over at her, still in a tangle of ivy but staring at me, her face soft, like she wants to hug me, I know for sure.

  “How did you know?” I ask.

  “I saw the picture,” she says.

  I couldn’t be more shocked if my mother started growing ivy out of her eyeballs.

  “You saw it?” I screech, practically tipping over the porch railing with the force of my surprise.

  “I’m not clueless about the world, Deanna,” she says. “I like a little celebrity gossip with my public radio.”

  “This is so much worse than I thought,” I say. I bend over, thunking my head on the porch railing.

  Mom climbs the steps and leans back on the railing next to me. She crosses her arms and sighs.

  “I know he’s a big star, and that’s got to be really exciting,” she says. “But that can suck all the oxygen out of the room.”

  She’s describing the breathless feeling I’ve had so often when I’m with Milo. The feeling that someone is sitting on my chest. But it’s not bad, though. It’s ju
st…a lot.

  “I really like him, Mom.”

  She pulls me into a hug. “I’m glad,” she says. “But I just don’t want you to forget that you’re a big star, too.”

  I take a deep breath and let it out into her shirt, smelling the sweat and dirt that are mixed there. When I lean back, she offers me a small smile.

  “You want to help with the yard?” she asks.

  “Do I look like I want to help with the yard?”

  She laughs, then puts her arm around me as she leads me down the porch steps and into the grass. “Weeding is good for the soul, I promise,” she says.

  Well, my soul is in definite need of some TLC. The thing that was distracting me from the misery of my future was Milo, and now that’s not even working. In fact, it’s only adding to the misery. I have no art school, and possibly no boyfriend. My life rocks.

  “So how do you tell the difference between the weeds and the actual, on-purpose plants?” I ask.

  “Well, mostly it’s a gut thing,” she replies. She plops down in the garden bed closest to the porch, rocking back on her heels in the dirt. “Your eye just goes to the thing that shouldn’t be there. I’ll show you. You’ll pick it up really fast.”

  She motions for me to scoot next to her, so I drop to my knees in the soft grass and perch at the edge of the flower bed.

  “This,” she says as she runs her hands over the leaves of a big green bush covered in hot-pink blossoms, “is an azalea. Everything popping up beneath it that isn’t an azalea needs to go.” She points to a patch of clover-looking greenery near the edge of the plant. I reach over, grab the leaves in my fist, and yank. They snap off, and I come away with a fistful of crumpled leaves.

  My mom shakes her head. “You want to pull the whole thing out, root and all, otherwise it’ll be back lickety-split.” She takes her thumb and forefinger and sinks them down into the soft brown dirt right at the base of the now-decapitated clovers. She pinches and pulls, and after a second up comes a bright red root system that looks like a jumble of nerves wrapped around a tiny clump of dirt in her hand. She gives the thing a shake, dirt raining back into the small hole where the clovers once were, then tosses the weed, root and all, into a small pile in the grass behind her.

  She nods as if to say Now you, and so I do. I scan the dirt and spot another patch of clovers. Instead of reaching for the leafy green top, this time I push my fingers down into the soil right at the base of the stem. I can feel the cool, damp dirt bury itself into the half-moons of my fingernails, but I ignore it and pull. I’m surprised by the resistance such a scrappy little plant can give, but after putting a bit of muscle into it, the roots let go and out it comes.

  I pull all the clovers I can find, and then I start in on the other stuff. Random green fuzzy things and little yellow flowers that Mom says will choke anything else we plant. It feels good, yanking out all the bad stuff. Despite the sweat rolling into my eyes and the Jurassic bugs flying around my head, I find myself grunting and sighing and nearly cheering with each weed I eradicate. I let myself imagine that some of the weeds are Lydia, while others are the hot-pink screen names calling me a skank and a slut and all manner of other ugly words. I close my eyes, visualize, and yank, as if I can rid my life of them as I rid the garden of the weeds.

  I work for a while, long enough that I completely lose track of time. I only stop when my pile is overflowing with evil, fuzzy greenery and my knees are whining, telling me they’re done being perched upon, even on the soft grass. I yank one final root, a tough one that doesn’t want to let go. I actually have to plant both feet firmly on the ground and put my back into it, and when the weed finally gives, I topple over onto my butt. I can feel the last remaining moisture in the grass that hasn’t been sucked out by the hot early-morning sun soaking into my shorts. But still, I hold the weed in front of my face and give it a shake.

  “Take that,” I say, tossing it in with the rest.

  “When you’re done taunting them, take them over to that yard-waste bag.” Mom points toward the largest paper lunch bag I’ve ever seen. I glance down at my hands, which are caked with dirt, my nails now topped with little black crescents instead of the usual white.

  “I was thinking of leaving them here as a warning to the others.” I gesture to the next garden bed, the one we haven’t started in on yet, where I swear I spot a stray dandelion cowering in fear.

  “I don’t think so,” she says. She points at the bag again, but she’s got that smile she gets when she finds me amusing, one she tries to suppress to keep me from becoming insufferable. I start gathering the weeds in my hands. I hold them away so the soil won’t streak my shirt, but this just causes me to drop half of them back onto the grass. I give up and gather the whole pile in my arms and hug it to my chest. What do I care, anyway? It’s not like my next stop is dinner or dancing.

  Standing, I realize that my knees are none too happy about me sitting on them for the last half hour. I can practically hear them creak as I take a few tentative steps. I stop to flex a few times, feeling like the Tin Man and wishing for my own can of oil.

  “Therapeutic, huh?”

  “Yeah, not bad,” I say. “What are you needing therapy for?”

  Mom hops up from the grass and takes off her gardening gloves, dusting them off on the leg of her shorts before stuffing them into her back pocket. She takes off her hat and swipes at the sweat over her brow. “Oh, the usual,” she says. “Prerelease jitters. Fear of terrible reviews. Worry that I may never write another book ever again.”

  I gape at her. “Holy crap, seriously?”

  “Well, yeah. What did you think?”

  “Uh, that by the time you’re on book seventeen you’re feeling pretty confident in your awesomeness?”

  Mom bursts out laughing. “Some days I feel pretty awesome, sure, but others I’m a mess. And it’s not like it’s been a path of rose petals for all seventeen. You remember my fireman series?”

  I nod, picturing the covers of the books in the trilogy, each with a glistening, shirtless fireman clutching a woman in a slinky silk dress while flames lapped around them. Definitely among the more embarrassing of her covers.

  “Those were pretty well ignored, when I wasn’t getting panned by reviewers. That was supposed to be a whole series, not just a trilogy, but my publisher canceled the rest.”

  “I had no idea,” I say. Suddenly my Governor’s School rejection isn’t feeling like such a big deal.

  Mom cocks her head at me. “Dee, are you okay?”

  “It’s been a rough couple of days,” I tell her, glad to unburden myself, even just a little bit. “But this helped.”

  “Well, good,” she says. “And hey, if you’re going to do this again, I can pick up another garden pad for you,” she calls as I make my way over to the yard-waste bag. I’m about to make a crack like the ones I usually make when chores are suggested to me, but at the last second I swallow it. Something about my mother’s dedication to the erratic plant life she calls a garden lights a spark of pride. After pulling weeds for an afternoon, I think I might get it. Despite the heat and the bugs, there’s something about the pulling and the yanking, seeing the progress and the dirt on your shirt. It’s somehow both energizing and relaxing, and while I used to have no problem finding that through art, lately I’ve been in desperate need of that kind of outlet.

  “That would be great, Mom,” I say, and stuff the weeds and dirt down into the bag. I don’t even have to turn around to know which smile she has now. I’m sure it’s the big, bold, because-I’m-your-mom smile, which makes me smile the big, cheesy, yeah-I’m-your-daughter smile in return.

  ANGLE ON a phone. On the screen, a photo of DEE and BENNY, smiling as Benny gives Dee bunny ears.

  DEE

  Was I right? AP Hotness score of 4?

  NAZ

  Meh, maybe a 3. What’s with the outfit?

  DEE

  Color war

  NAZ

  Typical Benny insanity


  “Are you actually going to eat that salad, or are you just art-directing it?” Carly asks as I shovel lettuce around the plate with my fork, intermittently stabbing at chicken and croutons. She reaches over and plucks one of the large parmesan shavings from my plate and pops it into her mouth.

  I push the plate toward her. “It’s yours if you want it,” I say, and she dives into my croutons, leaving the lettuce abandoned.

  My weeding-induced relaxation was short lived. By the time I returned to set on Monday, I felt as if my body’s been electrified. Every time I heard footsteps or caught a glimpse of a human in my periphery, I’d jump, wondering if it was going to be Milo. But he wasn’t on set at all on Monday, or Tuesday. They’ve been shooting only with Gillian and Paul, who have their own romantic backstory as Kass’s mom and Jonas’s teacher and mentor. I have no idea where Milo’s been, other than not on set. I don’t even know if he’s still in the state, and I’m ashamed to say that I resorted to Google more than once to see if I could get any information on him. But if Milo was merely hiding from the press before the picture of us hit the Internet, now he’s gone completely incognito. I’d call him, but he never gave me his number. And it’s not like I have anywhere I can find it.

  By Wednesday, I’m pretty sure that whatever I had with him is over.

  At lunch I’m sitting with Carly, Benny, and the rest of the PAs, laughing along with their jokes, though I’m barely listening.

  “So, what are you up to next?” Carly asks me.

  I shrug. “Um, I don’t know, Ruth’s probably got something for me,” I reply. I pick at the yeast roll still sitting on my napkin, but I leave the pieces on the table.

  “No, I mean your next job. We’ve only got a few more days left.”

  I cock my head at her, like I don’t understand. But as soon as she says it, I know it’s true. Life on set is a weird vortex of an alternate reality, like being in a casino. There’re no windows or clocks, and everyone is running around frantic at all hours of the day and night. When you’re on set, you’re in it, and it’s hard to pay attention to much else. Maybe that’s why it’s been so easy for me to forget about art and Governor’s School, or even my mom’s proposed road trip to visit colleges. Okay, maybe that’s a little to do with Milo, too, but they go together, don’t they? So the realization that I’m about to be spit out of the vortex feels wrong, like an eviction.