Unscripted Joss Byrd Read online

  I’m mad for real now. “I am not a little kid!” I yell. I’m not. I’m the most experienced actor here. I’m “wise beyond my years,” according to Entertainment Weekly. And if anyone’s a spoiled brat, it’s Jericho. Working, reading, making jokes—everything’s easy for him.

  “Chill!” Jericho says.

  “Hobby actor,” I whisper under my breath.

  “Kids!” Benji lunges over to us. “Shh … Come on. Terrance is right there and so is the producer and so are your parents. I know you don’t want me to call them over here.”

  “Yeah, Jericho,” I mumble.

  “Yeah, Joss Byrd,” Jericho mumbles back.

  “Stop saying my name like that!” I yell because I’d rather sound bratty than stupid.

  “Hey!” Benji holds Jericho and me by the shoulders just as Terrance sprints up the driveway.

  “What is going on?” Terrance asks, surprised. I guess the real Norah never shouted like this.

  Me and Jericho glare at each other. He squints his eyes into little slits. If I lift my elbow I could clock him in the chin.

  “I said no fooling around,” Terrance says. “We don’t have time for any of this.”

  I relax back on my heels. Benji lets me go. Then Terrance waves my mother and Jericho’s father over. As I hold my breath, I think of ten different ways my mother might go Viva on me.

  “Is something wrong?” Viva walks up with her hand over her phone. She looks from me to Terrance and back again. Her eyes widen when she notices the script in my hands—green.

  Terrance touches my mother’s arm. “Nothing’s wrong, Viva. Nothing’s wrong,” he says, covering for me. That’s the kind of brother Terrance is. “I’d just like you to take Joss to basecamp. I think I want the stunt coordinator to work some more with Rodney and Christopher.”

  I thank Terrance through mental telepathy. Thank you, Terrance. I’m sorry for ruining rehearsal. I just didn’t want to let you down, not when you picked me to be your very own sister.

  “Joss and Jericho should go to tutoring.” Terrance eyes the two of us. “Then I’m sure they’ll be ready to shoot this scene after lunch.”

  “Oh.” Viva stares at the script. She clears her throat and clamps her fingers into the back of my neck. “Yes, they definitely will,” she says, as if it’s so simple. I don’t know what I’m doing here. She should’ve been the actress.

  3

  “We’re crunched for time. So let’s see if this helps. Read these over while I make the rest.” In my schooling trailer, Viva hands me a batch of index cards with my lines written on them.

  “I don’t know.” I stare at my mother’s rushed, sloppy handwriting. “We’ve never used cards before.”

  “Well, we’re trying it now,” she says. “Get your head on straight, and let’s do this. I’ll read for TJ and Buzz and then you flip to the next card.”

  I bend the cards in my hands. “But it’s just the same lines except on smaller paper,” I argue. “What’s easier about that?”

  “It’s less stuff to look at per page!” She smacks the cards with the back of her hand.

  “But then how do I know who goes before me or who goes after me? I won’t even know who I’m supposed to look at.”

  “Jesus!” She throws her arms up. “Can’t you just work with me here and give it a try, Joss? We don’t have forever to argue about it. We’ll skip lunch if we have to.”

  “Hello? Ready for school?” Damon, my tutor, is rattling the door open.

  I’ve never been more relieved to see him. “Yes, I’m ready.” I drop the index cards on the counter.

  “Good,” he says. “I think we have a nice chunk of time to get some work done before lunch.”

  “One minute, Joss.” Viva hands me the script and a marker. “Here. Highlight the rest of your lines while I explain things to Damon.”

  I slump into my seat. Highlighting is on my list of least favorite things to do.

  “We’re having sort of a rough morning,” Viva tells Damon.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He sets his overstuffed backpack down. Its weight shakes the whole floor. Damon is always ready for action. He tries to bring different things every day, like games or books I’m supposed to like (some have covers of a boy and his dog or kids wearing overalls and playing stickball. Stickball?).

  “Anything I can help with?” he asks.

  “As a matter of fact … yes.” She glances at me. “You see, Joss and I are in a bit of a bind. But I think that with your help we can get through it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, Joss was hired to do a movie, and that’s the reason we’re all here, isn’t it?” she asks, without pausing for his answer. “Good. You’ve seen her films, right?” When Viva wants to impress someone she calls them films. When she wants to pretend it’s no big deal, she calls them movies. “Then you know she can act. But you also know how much she struggles.” She glances at me disappointedly. If I had a dollar for every time she looked at me that way I wouldn’t have to do this movie in the first place. “Obviously, she’s not a reader.”

  I can sense Damon looking at me while I hide behind my script. He probably agrees that I’m dumb because I can also sense that he’s giving me a sad face. I can read people even when I can’t see them. I could tell my mother’s mood by the back of her head ever since I can remember.

  “You mentioned yourself that her schoolwork is already a challenge, and it’s only the start of the year,” Viva adds.

  “She can do it, though,” Damon says. “When she’s calm and takes her time, she can.”

  I don’t know if Damon means it or if he’s just being nice, but it doesn’t matter. How can I be calm and take my time on set when all Terrance expects is action?

  “Time is exactly the issue,” Viva says. “So far we’ve been able to manage her scenes by running lines every night, but there’s a revision.”

  My mother shows Damon my green script and points out scene 15, but I’m distracted by something going on outside my trailer. Through the window I can see a crowd of noisy kids a couple of years older than me gathering around. A surfer girl, probably an eighth grader, in a striped bikini top and faded cutoff shorts, is balancing an orange surfboard twice her size on her head. “You’ve been here all week,” she says. “How much longer do you expect us to put up with this? This sucks! You can’t claim the ocean. You can’t claim nature.” Her tan and her hair that matches wet sand make her look like she was born in the ocean, was raised in it, and is now queen of it.

  I’ll get to surf for our last scene of The Locals. I’ve never surfed before. I hope I can look half as cool as this girl. I also hope I can stay as flat as she is when I’m her age. Her chest is as flat as her board.

  The surfer girl’s scabby, blond-streaked friends start pounding their boards on the ground. They’re gonna start either a song or a war.

  “Yeah! This is a public beach!”

  “This is bootleg!”

  “The ocean is our temple, man!”

  They must be the locals—the real locals.

  There are postings along the beach that say something like, Due to film production on these dates, there will be no surfing between the orange signs. Like a pop-up city, our production has taken over the entire beach parking lot and turned it into our production basecamp. At basecamp we have our dressing trailers back-to-back; we can hear each other’s TVs and toilets. One time I heard Chris sing “Happy Birthday” to his mother on the phone, which made me want to hug him through the wall. I also heard Rodney hacking up a loogie and spitting it into the sink, which made me want to barf. Wardrobe and the hair and makeup trucks are parked in an L-shape. This way, we can walk quickly from one to the next. The production offices are in trailers, too, including Terrance’s office and Peter Bustamante’s. Their doors say Director and Executive Producer. There’s trucks for the cameras and others for lighting and all our gear. (I don’t know what all the rolls of glow tape and switchboards an
d steel poles are for, but trust me: in the end they make a movie.) By the surfer kids’ faces, it’s obvious that us taking over their beach at the end of September isn’t making us very popular in town.

  “Here’s how this is going to happen,” my mother says. “I know you have to report her schoolwork to her teachers. But what I’ll do is, I’m just gonna sign off on all of her assignments.” She pretends to sign her name in the air. “That way you don’t have to worry about your paperwork. And on your end, you’re gonna help Joss learn her lines.”

  The last time I was in school my class was working on persuasive arguments. One of the strategies is that you’re supposed to point out the advantages for the other person even when you’re looking to get something for yourself. My mother would’ve gotten an A.

  “I trust you’ll keep this to yourself, for life or longer.” She lowers her voice, for nobody’s sake.

  Me and my mother are pros at keeping my school problems to ourselves. Doris doesn’t even know. We want to stay at the very top of her client list. The last thing we need is for her to peg me as some sort of problem.

  “Uh, Mrs. Byrd…”

  “Ms. And please, call me Viva, already.”

  “Viva, I appreciate the challenge you’re up against here. It must be an enormous pressure to make a movie. I’m sure. But I’m an educator. And I’m required to cover three hours of academics a day.” He pats the textbooks on the table. “Anyway, I’m not an acting coach. I don’t know anything about movies. I just graduated from college. I took this job to teach actual subjects. Sixth grade is a lot more demanding than fifth. Joss has a unit on geometry, and she has the Egyptians to study, and homework for English—”

  “A Terrance James Rivenbach autobiographical screenplay is English. Joss needs this more than she needs Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

  Teachers are always busting my butt to read that. They think if any book will get me reading, that might be the one. Good thing I never spent the effort since Viva doesn’t even think it’s worth it.

  My mother doesn’t want to fire Damon. She likes him and so do I. I liked my tutor from my last job, too. She used to boil down my chapters to the bare bones and only make me answer the important questions. I requested her again, but she works on a TV series now, so I didn’t know who was going to walk through the door this time. I was worried I might get someone real strict. But me and Damon get along. He’s young, his hair is spiky, plus, he’s Asian. I know that doesn’t automatically make a person smart and hardworking, but for him it’s true.

  “I’m sure there’s still room for schoolwork,” Damon says.

  “No. No.” Viva shakes her head, getting down to business. No more Ms. Nice Girl. “Look, you’re a crew member here. This is how it works on set. You’re part of production. That means we all share the same goal, which is to make this movie.” Another strategy of persuasive arguments is to present the facts.

  Damon inspects the script and flips the pages. “I’m really happy to be part of the crew, Ms. Byrd, uh, Viva. But I’m a teacher. I don’t think the movie should be my goal.”

  Outside, the surfer girl is raising her voice at our crew about her rights as a “resident of Montauk and a citizen of the U.S.A.” I like all her bracelets. Maybe I can get some just like them as soon as we wrap; they’re rubber or rope or twisted strands of colored cloth. She’s lifting one foot now to scratch her heel with her big toe. Her bony hips jut out above her shorts. I wonder how the waves don’t snap her in half.

  “Kids go to school to figure out what they’re going to be, right?” This is the clincher. Viva is getting to her most logical point.

  “Well, that’s part of it—”

  “Let’s face it. Joss isn’t gonna be a lawyer or an accountant or a doctor or anything. Luckily, she’s already doing what she’s gonna be. So let’s get on board here.” She waves her arm to welcome Damon aboard.

  I might be behind in school, but I’m ahead in life. That’s what my mother always tells me. But it doesn’t feel that way when she lists everything I’m not going to be. Hiding behind my script, I scan for Norah on page 68. One of my parts is, like, ten sentences long.

  “Her school in Tyrone…” Viva sighs. “All they want to do is test her some more so that they can slap an official label on her. But Joss doesn’t need a label, Damon. She needs a career. Joss is an actress, not a dyslexic.”

  “Your movie sucks balls!” the surfer girl yells. Then she turns with her board on her head and screams, “Hairy balls!” She walks ahead of the group by a good five steps, with the leash from her surfboard dragging along the ground. Now that girl is ahead in life.

  Damon shakes his head. “But a label could help. Maybe Joss would get the support she needs.”

  “Or it could give people a reason not to cast her,” Viva says. “We’re not taking that chance. We just have to work harder than everyone else. You’re not afraid to work hard, are you?”

  “Of course not, Viva,” Damon says. “But I’m not sure if this is the—”

  “Damon, Joss will do whatever it takes. But she just needs you to get her through it. Show him, Joss.”

  They both stare at me like I’m a monkey in a lab.

  I turn my head from the window. “Huh?” I didn’t expect this part of the persuasive argument: the demonstration.

  “Read a little for him,” Viva says. I hate her for putting me on the spot. But this is the deal I made. I promised she wouldn’t have to force me to do the work again.

  “That’s not necessary, Viva,” Damon says kindly. “She reads for me every day. Don’t you, Joss?”

  “No, no,” my mother insists. “You should see what a colossal embarrassment this shoot is going to be if you don’t help us. Joss, go ahead.” It’s like she’s asking the monkey to point from ball to block to banana.

  I clear my throat to read because I was the one who made Viva turn the truck around. And as embarrassing as it is, I also know that this will get Damon to help me because as soon as I look at the page, the letters will start to float and the words will mash one on top of the other.

  But before I start, I look out the window again. The surfer girl, who’s leading her pack out of the parking lot, does two things at once that I can only dream of doing: she balances her board on her head with one hand, and with her other hand, she flips our movie crew the finger.

  * * *

  “I’m never going to learn the new lines by lunchtime. I’ll look like an idiot.” I sulk over the back of my chair and watch Damon as he reads through the new pages. “My mother’s gonna kill me,” I say, even though I’m afraid of so much more, like the whole world finding out that I’m a phony.

  “Hang on, now. Nobody’s killing anybody,” Damon says. “Where’s the old script—the yellow?”

  “Why?”

  “I just want to check something.”

  I pull the yellow script from my backpack.

  Damon opens both versions in front of him on the sofa. “I knew it!” He brings me both copies and sets them on the table. “The dialogue is the same. It’s just switched around.”

  “So?”

  “So, that means you already know the words. All you have to do is learn them in a different order,” he says, as if it’s easy. “For example, Chris used to have the first line. But now Jericho does. Then it’s Chris and then Jericho again. You just have to respond to Jericho instead.”

  “Whaaat?” I ask. How can I learn the actual lines when I can’t even understand this much?

  “Don’t get frustrated. We haven’t even read it through yet.”

  “But this scene is supposed to be snappy. The boys talk so fast, and I’m used to the old version.” I hold my head. I can practically hear Jericho mocking me again: Joss Byrd.

  “Okay, take a breather.” Damon sits quietly and lets me mope. After a few minutes, he opens his laptop and taps the keys. “Maybe we should take a step back and explore our options, okay?”

  “Yes, please,�
� I beg.

  When I look outside, I see that the surfer kids have gone, but there’s a woman in a baseball cap and surf shorts pacing and talking on her phone. Something about her square face and her tight lips looks familiar. Maybe she just reminds me of someone on TV. She must be stressed. I can tell by the way she’s holding her neck and trying to get the kinks out. She’s probably a surfer. We probably ruined her day off. Whatever her problem is, she should get over it because I bet I’m having a worse day than she is.

  “Acting class … acting class…” Damon types the search words and then scans through the videos. “Donna Joy Carena’s School of Acting … Acting Class for Beginners … Acting Class Fails…”

  “Donna Joy Carena, let’s see what you’ve got.” Damon hits play.

  Donna Joy has dandelions in her hair and bare feet. Her face is eighty but her frilly dress is for someone who’s eight. “Imagine becoming your favorite flower. You’re stretching, you’re opening and opening and opening up toward the sun…” Donna Joy Carena stretches both arms toward the sky.

  “No way,” I say. “I’m not being my favorite flower.”

  “Agreed.” Damon scrolls down the choices. He clicks on one video of a girl standing on a chair holding a script. The girl delivers one line and loses her balance. The chair tips, she falls onto the stage then slides into the orchestra pit. Damon laughs. “Sorry. Not what we’re looking for … pretty funny, though.”

  This is a slippery slope. Me and Viva can watch videos of fat cats in sinks or tours of celebrity dream closets for hours and hours. We’ll start after lunch on a Sunday afternoon and the next thing we know it’s dark and time for dinner.

  Damon clicks the arrow to the next page. “Yale Drama School?”

  Yale sounds hard. “Nah.”

  “Meryl Streep went there.”

  I can’t remember who that is.

  “No. You’re right. Too snooty. I went to Fordham. Much more down-to-earth.”

  Fordham sounds hard, too. I knew Damon was smart.

  “You should’ve taught regular school,” I say. He would’ve been happier teaching all those subjects to smart kids.