Unscripted Joss Byrd Read online

  I lay my head on my arms and hear him separating the pages.

  “So. It looks like three pages … just you and Christopher.” Damon clears his throat.

  At least that much is true—no Rodney. Maybe it’ll be all right.

  Damon reads, emotionless. It’s like he’s reading instructions on how to assemble a toy:

  [At night. Norah runs through the path toward the beach. She is soaking wet in a T-shirt and shorts. TJ spots her as she bursts through the clearing. He chases her, calling her name. Norah reaches the sand. She collapses at the foot of the dunes, shivering, panting.]

  TJ:   Norah? God, you’re soaking. You’re shivering. What happened?

  [Norah hugs her knees, rocks back and forth.]

  Norah:   I can’t … I can’t say it.

  TJ:   It was him, wasn’t it? He did something to you?

  [He takes off his flannel shirt and wraps it around his sister.]

  Norah:   Don’t make me go back there, TJ, please. I can’t go back there.

  TJ:   We won’t. We won’t. I promise. But you have to tell me, Norah. You have to. What did he do?

  Norah:   He was in the shower, and he was yelling for me to get him a towel. He kept yelling and screaming that when I do the laundry I have to replace the goddamn towels.

  Damon’s voice starts to shake a little, giving away what we both knew from the start—it really is that bad.

  “You got it! You got it! You got it!” my mother is screeching through the house. She picks me up off the floor in front of the television and jumps up and down. I’m still holding my spoon and my cereal bowl. Milk and Froot Loops fly into the air and land all over the room as my mother swings me around.

  “You’re Tallulah Leigh! You did it! You got the part!”

  And now we’re both laughing from being hit so hard with so much luck.

  Tallulah Leigh! Tallulah Leigh! I say the name in my head to make it mine.

  “They said you have sad eyes, deep as bat caves!” my mother says happily. I don’t know why it’s good to have bat-cave eyes, but if she’s glad about them, so am I. Then, in her holey sleep clothes and with one fat roller in her bangs, she runs outside to our neighbors’ yard. “Joss is gonna be in a movie! We’re going to Hollywood!”

  Anything that can make my mother this proud of me must be a miracle. While she hugs our neighbors I twirl behind her in my nightshirt, pretending it’s a ball gown. Each time she says “Hollywood!” I picture my mother wearing big sunglasses, her hair in a scarf, and driving a convertible. Because of me she’ll get to be the glamorous lady she’s always wanted to be. Hollywood! will always be sunny. We’ll never need to put the top up!

  * * *

  “… And that’s it,” Damon says softly. “Sorry. I don’t mean that’s it, I just mean, that’s all there is.”

  I hold tears behind my eyes and stare at the Twix.

  “We’ll record it now, okay?” He reaches for my backpack.

  “No. No recording.”

  Damon touches my elbow. “It’s okay, Joss. I’ll go ahead and read both parts for this one.”

  “No, Damon. I already know it.”

  When dynamite explodes in your ear, you don’t forget it.

  “Oh, okay … well, good. Do you want to just run through it, then?”

  I shake my head. “Thank you, but can you please get Chris for me?” For some reason, saying Chris’s name pushes full, heavy tears from my eyes. “I’ll just practice it with him, okay?”

  “Yes, of course. I think that’s a really good idea.” He rips a paper towel from the roll and hands it to me. “I’ll go find him.”

  * * *

  I’m full-on crying by the time Chris comes in. He sits beside me without talking while I let out everything that I’ve been holding in.

  “Terrance has gray hair—gray. He’s an adult. He can do whatever he wants. He doesn’t have to do what other people tell him to anymore. Why would he want to remember any of this? Why doesn’t he just move on already?”

  “I don’t know … I don’t know…” is all Chris keeps saying, real quiet-like.

  I blubber into the scratchy paper towel. “Why can’t he just forget about it?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Why can’t he drop it, for Norah?” I say. “I went to see her. She isn’t mad at me. It’s Terrance. She wants to sue him. She told me herself. She doesn’t want him filming The Locals.”

  “What?” He grabs the top of his head. “Sheesh…”

  I rip another towel off the roll. “You’re supposed to move on and not look back.”

  “He should.” Chris nods. “He really should.”

  “I don’t want to do it, Chris. I don’t want to say those things.” I cover my face.

  “Everyone’s gonna know it really happened to Norah. And she has a baby; when she gets older, she’s gonna know, too.”

  “That’s not your fault. That’s Terrance’s fault,” he says. “Hey, it’s hard for me to play TJ, too. Like, every time he tells me how sad, how pissed, how hurt my character is, it’s weird because I know he’s talking about himself.”

  “But he wants everyone to know about his childhood. Norah doesn’t. And getting hit is different than getting … getting…” I can’t even say the word here in my trailer. How can I act on camera like I’ve been molested? “And everyone’s gonna … remember me … like that … for the rest of my life.” I hiccup between sobs.

  “You’re right. They will,” Chris says. It’s surprising how plain and simple the truth sounds. Because of Camp Magaskawee, no matter what other roles Chris plays, people still remember him having diarrhea against a tree. And Doris says I’ll always be known for the parts I’m doing now. It was the same for Tatum O’Neal and Paper Moon. But I don’t want to be remembered as a poor, abused girl. I want to be happy and light and beautiful.

  “There’s always crap parts of a movie. For me, literally, there were crap parts,” Chris says. “But you know what else I got on that movie? I got a motorized car that I rode around the lot all month, and when we wrapped I asked to take it home, and they shipped it to my house the next day.”

  I bet he ripped that big box open right on his doorstep.

  “So this scene is the crap part of The Locals. But after tomorrow, it’s all cake, right? We get surf lessons!” He shakes my arm. “Surf lessons! We get to shoot our last scene in the ocean while every other kid on Earth is sitting in a classroom. How sweet is that?”

  “Pretty sweet.” I try hard to see past tomorrow. I try to imagine the first seconds of diving into the cool ocean.

  “Tomorrow we’ll be TJ and Norah for Terrance and Peter and our families, but then we can celebrate because everything left is all for us. Who knows? Maybe we’ll nail this in one take and that’ll be that.”

  “Right.” That would be impossible.

  “How ’bout this?” Chris’s voice lightens. “I buy a surfboard for you and you buy one for me.”

  I wipe my nose. In the surf shop there’s a blue board with yellow flowers on it, a Hawaiian pattern. I’ve had my eye on it since we got here.

  “We’ll give ’em to each other at the wrap party.”

  I’d like that. I imagine tiki torches at the party. For some reason, I’ve always wanted to be at a party where there’s tiki torches. If only Terrance didn’t have to be there. Or my mother. Or Rodney.

  “I told off Rodney,” I say.

  Chris looks at me like I’m nuts. “You did?”

  “I know I shouldn’t have. He’s a grown-up, our costar. He’ll be even angrier at me now.” I exhale into my hands. “Oh, I don’t know…” I wish I knew once and for all if Rodney is bad or good so that I can be sorry or not. “Plus, everyone heard. They probably all think I’m a diva. I was just so mad.”

  Chris holds his hands up. “Hey, you don’t have to explain it to me.”

  “Viva’s freaking.”

  “She’s always freakin
g. So’s Rodney. That’s their problem.”

  “Hey, Chris?” I ask, remembering something I’ve been wondering all day. “What’s a Bessie? I heard Terrance and Benji call me one.”

  “What is wrong with people? Doesn’t anyone keep anything to themselves anymore?” Chris pauses with his eyes down before blurting, “It’s a prized calf. A cash cow.”

  “I’m … a cow?” In my mind I see Terrance selling me for magic beans.

  “A Bessie is someone who makes her owners lots of money.”

  Terrance plants his seeds. Then they grow into a giant beanstalk. He climbs it up through the clouds to his castle in the sky.

  “Hey, hey. This is what you do, okay?” Chris touches my arm. “If you’re the Bessie, then be the Bessie.”

  “Huh?”

  “Kick ass on camera. The better you are, the bigger Bessie you can be. That means the more demands you can make. Production will have to give you anything you want.”

  What would I do with a motorized car? “But I don’t want anything.” Except not to do scene 20 to begin with.

  “You will. Trust me,” he says, confidently. “Eventually, everybody wants something.”

  “I guess.” I pick the script up. We might as well get this over with.

  “No. Let’s not practice it today.” He takes the rolled-up pages and sets them on the seat beside him. “We’ll rehearse tomorrow after the deli scene. That way we’ll only have one bad night.”

  That sounds all right to me.

  “You guys have Jenga?” he asks, eyeing the game in the corner.

  “Damon brought it. He thought we’d have tons of free time.”

  “Do you have anything else today besides school?” Chris has a glimmer in his eyes.

  “Just a bathing suit fitting after lunch.”

  “Good.” He gets up to open the trailer door. “Excuse me, Damon? We’re gonna need at least an hour,” he says. Then he turns back inside and points to the floor. “Well, go on. Set it up!”

  So I pour the game pieces. We crisscross and stack the smooth wooden blocks higher and higher into a perfect column, and then steady as we can, we pull blocks out one by one and replace them carefully on the top. I want to get into the game; it’d be fun on a regular day. But now it’s just another thing I can’t stop from crashing down.

  14

  “We can climb through the drive-thru window!” Chris says, running full-speed around the Milk-n-Stuff deli.

  Me and Jericho are on his tail, kicking up dust as we go like in a cartoon. Out of the corner of my eye I see my mother (what nerve!), standing close to Terrance (on the job!) behind the camera.

  Terrance has been directing this morning as if nothing’s changed between us. He isn’t sorry at all about the talk we had yesterday, which is even worse than going back on a promise. He also isn’t the least bit embarrassed by Viva. He’s whispering in her ear with his hand on her back when he should be backing away and pointing her toward the monitors where the parents are supposed to be.

  Jericho grabs the windowsill. “Lift me through! I’m goin’ in!” he yells. “Toss me over!”

  “No. I don’t trust you in there.” Chris pulls me in front of him. I nearly stumble over my own feet. “We’re sending Norah in.”

  “Yes! Yes!” I jump up and down. “I can do it! Let me!” I’m saying the words but am too distracted to feel them because my mother and Terrance are out in the open daylight, looking very cozy, as if they’re a couple. A couple of backstabbers is what they are.

  “What do you guys want? Cookies? Apple caramels?” I look from Chris to Jericho.

  “Cut!” Terrance yells. “Joss, you said apple caramels instead of caramel apples.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I say. At least, I’m pretty sure I didn’t.

  “No worries.” Terrance lifts his hand. “Just watch your lines. It has to be exactly right.”

  “I know the lines. I know every single one.” What a laugh this is: after recording the dialogue on my phone and memorizing it the way me and Damon planned, I finally do know all the words, but now I can’t concentrate.

  “Don’t talk back, Joss.” Viva steps forward in her platform sandals. “He didn’t say you didn’t know them. He said watch them.”

  She should be minding her own business. It’s bad enough they’ve teamed up against me. Do they have to do it in front of everybody?

  “We’ll go again, okay?” Terrance says. “From Joss’s ‘Yes, yes.’”

  While Jericho peers through the drive-thru window, I mumble under my breath to Chris. “I can’t take them anymore, I mean it. If my mother pokes her nose in scene twenty tonight, I’ll never be able to do it.”

  “Don’t think about tonight,” Chris whispers. “This is all we’re doing right now, so keep your head in it, okay?”

  “Hey! There are Mallomars in there! I haven’t had those since, like, second grade!” Jericho says.

  The Milk-n-Stuff is like a junk-food pit stop on the way to heaven. It would normally be my new favorite place. But today, before the worse scene ever, this set is just sweet and fake, like everything else on The Locals.

  “Grab me a box of those when you get in there, will you, Joss?” Jericho asks. “I love it when we get to eat the props.”

  Is that the only thing missing in Jericho’s charmed life? Mallomars?

  “Get ’em yourself,” I grumble.

  “Roll sound! Rolling!” Terrance calls, with his hands resting on top of his head. “And … action!”

  “Yes! Yes!” I clap and hop on the balls of my feet. “I can do it! Let me! What do you guys want? Cookies? Caramel apples? I’ll even get you those gross jerky things!”

  Did I say it right?

  “Why her?” Jericho asks. Suddenly I can’t remember what he’s talking about, and I have to tell myself to listen, feel, react.

  “Because she’ll stay out of the cash register and the dirty magazines,” Chris says, reminding me where we are.

  Jericho groans. “Okay.” He sticks his finger in my face while I try to figure out how to react. “But you’d better get me some hot dogs or I’m going in after you.”

  Now my mother is holding her phone up to the monitor, probably to show me later how bad I was. Taking video during shooting probably isn’t allowed. There’s got to be a rule somewhere. But who’s gonna say no to Viva when she’s partners in crime with Terrance?

  “I will. Now, boost me!” I face the drive-thru and grip the ledge. I’m glad to turn my back on Terrance and my mother.

  When Chris links his fingers together to make a step, I put my foot in and push myself up by balancing on Jericho’s shoulder.

  “Be careful on the other side,” Chris says.

  “I got it, I got it. Hold your horses.”

  The ledge has been padded so that I won’t skin myself as I wriggle my belly over it. I spot a thick gymnastics mat on the deli floor, swing my left leg up, and climb over.

  “Cut!” Terrance laughs.

  I land softly on the mat and bounce.

  “Good, kids. Really good.”

  Compliments from Terrance irritate me now because: 1) the scene wasn’t any good at all, so he must be blind; 2) I don’t want to impress him anymore; 3) LIAR!!!

  “Let’s get a few more,” I hear Terrance say as I walk through the store. I spot the Mallomars on the shelf and leave them there. “More energy for the next one, all right? Remember you’re supposed to be hungry, and this is a store full of goodies! Let’s reset.”

  As soon as I step out of the door, Viva bursts out laughing as if she was holding it in the whole scene. “Do you think you can do that just a little bit more gracefully, Joss?” She holds her phone up to show me. “You have to see this video. It’s hilarious—your butt hanging over the edge in those shorts!”

  What’s there to laugh at? Eating too much and growing too tall and zits and training bras and my butt aren’t things to joke about. Definitely not in front of my cast and my crew. I’m so mad I
can understand how Oscar Coombs could smash a camera.

  Chris shakes his head and mouths at me to stay focused.

  I shuffle the gravel on my way toward Damon. “Did you hear her?” I ask him.

  “I heard it,” Damon says. “I saw the whole thing.”

  “I need some air,” I say, which might sound stupid because we’re already outside, but it’s true. “I have to take a walk or something. They’re resetting the camera.”

  “Sure. Let’s power walk, burn off some steam. That’ll be good.” He motions to Benji where we’re going.

  We take a wide lap around the deli. It’s more peaceful on the woodsy side where there isn’t any crew, but our porta potty smack-dab between the trees ruins the view.

  I pump my arms faster when we turn the corner and my mother is back in sight. “I hate her, Damon.”

  “Don’t say that. She’s still your mom,” he says, lifting imaginary dumbbells.

  Copying him, I pretend to lift dumbbells, too. We should count this as PE for school. “No. I do. I really do hate her.”

  “Stop. You don’t mean that. Plus, your mic might still be on,” he reminds me.

  I touch the mic pack that’s clipped inside the back of my shorts. If Viva heard me, then so what? If she wants me to love her she should be more lovable. And if the crew heard me, and they’re surprised to learn that America’s sweetheart hates her mother, they’ll get over it. Believe me: images get shattered every day.

  Damon checks over his shoulder. “Let’s keep walking until they call you back. Break a sweat. It’s healthy for you. And do yourself a favor. Try to think about something positive for a few minutes.”

  * * *

  “Is this real marble?” I ask, sitting on the cool bathroom counter.

  “I think so.” Viva dusts over my eyelids with a tiny makeup brush. “But if it isn’t, we could demand that the manager bring us some more chocolate-covered strawberries.”

  “It’s so clean.” I slide my palms across the sparkly white surface. “How do they chip marble into sculptures with nothing but a screwdriver thingy and that little hammer?”