Famous in Love (4 page)

“Just a friend?”

I shrug. “There’s this guy. We kissed. But we’ve known each other forever. It’s not like that.”

I have no idea why I’ve told her this. Stupid. I can never keep quiet. It’s not like Lillianna is going to run to
Star
magazine, but I shouldn’t be talking to anyone about anything. Sandy has been really specific about that part.

Lillianna eyes me. “How come you’re never talking to him?”

“He’s not that into phones,” I say.

Lillianna crouches down in front of me so our eyes are level. “I never heard of a man who didn’t want to speak to his sweetheart if he could. Sounds like he’s not worth your time.” She stands back up, puts her hands on her hips, and surveys me, then nods in approval. “All right, hon, we’re all done here.”

A familiar feeling of dread lands in my abdomen like a bird on the water. Every day on set feels like a giant audition, even though I already got the part. I know I need to relax—Rainer is right—but I have no idea how.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome. You ever need someone to knock some sense into that boy, you let me know. I could get anyone on the phone.” She raises her eyebrows at me. I kind of believe her.

The sun is blazing when I get outside. I walk down to set repeating the same words I chant every day in my head.
They chose you. You can do this. You belong here.

When I get down
to the beach, Wyatt is squinting into the sun, talking to Camden, our cinematographer, about camera angles. Filming at the beach sounds sexy and sun-kissed and windblown but in reality is really just technical and itchy. It’s a constant battle to get the right angle, to have the right amount of sand and dirt, to hit your mark without a gust of wind blowing or a wave coming in.

Rainer is a pro at it. I swear the elements sort of fold at his whim. I’ve seen it turn from pouring rain to blasting sun in a matter of seconds when he walks out onto the beach. Noah has powers in
Locked
. The weather does funny stuff when he’s around. Rainer and his character have a lot in common.

Today we are filming what Wyatt has dubbed the “washed up” scene. It’s the one where August and Noah land on the island and he heals her. I’m covered in fake blood and dirt, and I have on what can only be described as rags, not clothes.

This scene is pretty early on in the book, but we’re not going in chronological order. Wyatt says he likes to try to do that, for the emotional arc to feel as authentic as it can, but shooting schedules are complicated. We do what we need to.

Rainer is chatting with a production assistant who is building a mountain out of sand. He keeps trying to help her, and she keeps telling him to stop. I see her blushing, the corners of her eyes crinkling into a smile. He’s not flirting, exactly. It’s more like he’s aware of the effect he’s having on her.

“Come on, guys. Let’s get this before sunset.” Wyatt doesn’t look at me but motions for us to come over, and Rainer flicks some sand at the PA. She shakes out her hair and laughs. Something flares up in my chest, but I shake it down with my nerves. We get miked, which always involves one of our sound guys getting a little too personal with my cleavage (or lack thereof). And then we head down to the water’s edge.

I take a deep breath and focus on the ocean. It’s this
spectacular turquoise color. Cassandra would probably call it something ridiculous, like tortoiseshell green. From a distance the water is beautiful and bright, but when you get into it, right up close, it’s perfectly clear. You can stare right down into the sand at your feet.

It’s the same thing with acting: It looks a lot different up close. When you watch a movie, it’s seamless. The story moves from one scene to another with effortless grace. But day to day, scene by scene, it’s all broken up and choppy. Put your hand here, lift your chin right, square your shoulders center. Hit the mark on a certain word.

The real problem, though, is that I’m too in my head about it. Wyatt tells me this all the time. He screams it.
“Stop thinking!”
But I can’t. I’m worried about getting August wrong and disappointing tens of millions of people.

I’ve played a hundred different characters before, characters of Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams and even one really chatty girl written by Steve Gleck, the eighth grader who won the one-act competition at my school a few years back. But this is different. August is a character beloved by the world, and it’s my job to bring her to life. She’ll have my face and voice and hair. She’ll be
me.
And what if I’m wrong?

It seems so easy for Rainer. He doesn’t even try. He jostles onto the set, makes some jokes, and as soon as
Wyatt calls action, he becomes Noah. It’s like an on-off switch.

Which is crazy because Noah is nothing like Rainer. Rainer is friendly and outgoing, and Noah is reserved and mysterious. They both have blond hair and tragically gorgeous blue eyes, though. And his abs. They’re just… beautiful. There isn’t really any other way to put it.

“We need to be better today!” Wyatt is yelling. I know he means me.
I
need to be better today. And I will. I have never been one to shrink from a challenge. Now hardly seems like the time to start.

For this shot I’m lying in the sand, in Noah’s arms. I’m dying—there are shards of plane stuck in every which way in my body. Luckily they CGI most of that in later. We take our places in the sand. I lie down and then Rainer is there, right next to me. When his hands find my shoulders, I involuntarily suck in my breath. This is the most intimate scene we’ve done yet, by far.

“You’re dying!” Wyatt is screaming. “This is fucking
painful
! Could we fucking
feel
that?”

“You got this,” Rainer whispers to me.

Wyatt calls action, and I start choking. Noah is bending over me, frantic. I feel his fingertips glide up my sides. They search my rib cage. I focus on the feeling. Pain. Death. Darkness.

“Cut!” Wyatt yells.

I breathe out. Rainer sits back.

“I’m not buying it,” Wyatt says.

Rainer squints up at him. “We could hit it a little faster,” he says.

Wyatt shakes his head. “I want to
feel
it,” he says. “I want to feel like you are losing her and you”—he points down at me; it makes my blood run cold—“you are barely conscious.” He crouches down. “It needs to come from here,” he says, and drops a hand roughly to my stomach. “Core.”

He stalks off. I hear him mutter something, but I’m not sure what it is.

Rainer touches my shoulder. “Don’t listen to him,” he says softly. “You’re doing great.”

But I know he’s wrong. I’m not. I want to be, but I’m not.

It’s getting hot now, the sun climbing higher and higher. Jake knows how to tell time by the sun. He once tried to teach me, but I didn’t quite get how you were supposed to go about it, since you’re not supposed to look directly at the sun at all.

By the time we finish for the day, it’s dark and I am exhausted. We must have done about a hundred takes of that healing scene. And then another hundred involving
the crash. We were in and out of the water, and even though it was hot, my teeth have been chattering since the afternoon. Rainer kept putting his arms around me to warm me up between takes, and whispering encouraging things. He’s been pretty protective since we got here, and I’m grateful for that. If he weren’t on my side, I don’t know what I would do.

We have to end at eight, and this makes Wyatt crazy. Usually our shoots get later and later throughout the week. Technically we can’t shoot for more than twelve hours without a seven-hour break in between, and my hours are even stricter. Since Rainer isn’t a minor, he can film late into the night and stay on set as long as he needs to. I, on the other hand, have all these stipulations and requirements—I can film for only five and a half hours and need to spend three hours a day in school. Sometimes, at the end of a shoot, I’ll have twenty minutes of school left and I’ll have to go up to the conference room in the hotel lobby with my tutor, Rubina. Wyatt will film my reaction shots, or dialogue, and then I leave and my double comes in to film the rest. It’s weird to think that for a lot of the movie, I’m not even there.

Even so, once you factor in hair and makeup (which can take close to three hours), sleep is hard to come by.

I hop into a waiting van.

I turn to see if Rainer is coming, but I see he’s cornered Wyatt, and the last thing I want is to interrupt that. We leave, and then I trudge back up to the hotel, discouraged. I had thought that getting the role was the hard part. That I’d proven myself and that was why they’d hired me. What I didn’t realize was that getting hired was only the beginning.

I’m heading into my room when I hear footsteps behind me.

“Hey, PG, wait up.” Rainer jogs to my door. He wiped his makeup off in the van and now has on a gray T-shirt and jeans.

“So,” he says, “today was a little tough.” He cocks his head to the side, like he’s trying to get a read on me.

“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s fine. It was my fault.”

Rainer gives me a small smile. “Want to talk it out?” he asks. He moves around me to take the keys out of my hand and unlock my condo door. He’s so confident, so comfortable. I know he’s older, but it’s something else, too—experience.

I shrug, caught off guard by our contact. “There isn’t really much to talk about. I just sort of suck.” I slip past him, and Rainer follows me inside.

“That’s absurd.”

“Oh really? Tell it to my core.” I tap my abdomen twice like Wyatt did.

Rainer shakes his head. “He’s being an asshole. I just told him—”

“Please,” I say, cutting him off. “Please tell me you did not just tell him to go easy on me.”

Rainer sighs. “You shouldn’t have to be screamed at every day.”

I drop my bag on the floor and slump against the counter. My condo has two bedrooms and a full kitchen. It’s almost as big as my house back in Portland, and at one time six people lived in that thing. “I really wish you hadn’t done that,” I say.

“C’mon,” Rainer says. “I got your back. We’re in this together, kid.”

I look at him as he leans casually against the cool marble, his arms crossed. He looks sophisticated, handsome, and self-assured. Like the world’s never really given him a reason to not assume he could win.

“Thanks,” I say. “But don’t big-brother me to Wyatt.”

“Big brother?” Rainer smirks at me, and I feel myself blush. “Hey, you want to grab dinner?” he asks, switching gears.

“I’m not all that hungry.”

“Come on, you need to eat. What have you had today?” He uncrosses his arms, and some of his blond hair swings down onto his forehead. It’s familiar, which is strange, until I remember it’s the exact same pose he’s
striking in a poster Cassandra has on the back of her bedroom door.

My life is so weird.

“Okay, let me go change.”

I hear him whistling in the next room, the tune of something I recognize but can’t remember the name of. I think it’s a Britney song. The one about summer love that played on repeat from April until August last year. Even I knew every word by heart. Maybe they are dating.

I yank open the dresser, and the photo sitting on top of it falls. It’s a picture Jake gave me before I left—of him, Cassandra, and me from last summer. We’re standing in front of Delmano’s ice cream shop, chocolate and silly grins on our faces. I pick up the photo and place it in the drawer. I feel a sweeping sensation of guilt—for not calling more, for leaving. I think about the two of them in class, trolling around downtown on the weekends. All without me.

I choose a white tank top and a floral-print skirt I’ve had since sixth grade. I never wear it but figured it might be good for Hawaii.

I got my signing check last month, and it took me until last week to deposit it. I was scared, to be honest. The reality of those numbers is bigger than just money. It means something I don’t totally understand yet. It’s more money than anyone in my family has ever made before, combined
and multiplied by ten. It makes me feel powerful, but not in a good way, necessarily. Kind of like Godzilla, who outgrew his family. Like I won’t fit in my own house anymore.

Before I left I offered the money to my parents, but they refused. My dad actually left the room after I told them. My mother told me never to bring it up again, that I’m earning it and it’s mine to keep.

But what do I do with it?

So far I’ve paid some lawyers and things like that. I gave my mom a check for the women’s shelter she volunteers at. That she took. But I haven’t gone shopping. I haven’t bought myself a bag. Or shoes. Or a car. Maui doesn’t have very many shopping destinations, besides this little center behind our condo, and even if it did I’d probably like the same things I’ve always liked—jeans and tank tops.

Maybe I’ll fly Jake and Cassandra to set. She’d like that, I think.

“You look great,” Rainer says when I reappear. He flashes me a smile.

I snort because despite the winning combination of my kiddie skirt and sand-infused hair, I’m pretty sure he’s joking.

“Where should we go?” he says.

“Longhi’s?”

The bottom level of the shopping center nearby has
this Italian restaurant. We order from there just about every day for lunch, but their pasta is good, and the restaurant is open-air, so you can hear the ocean. Not that you can’t hear the ocean from, you know, my living room, but it’s still nice.

“Sounds good,” Rainer says.

When we get to Longhi’s, Rainer flashes his signature golden smile at the hostess, and she shows us to a table right at the edge of the restaurant, hidden discreetly behind a palm tree. She’s the kind of girl you see in all those Roxy ads. Tan, tall, slim, and blond. I’m sure she surfs in the mornings, models during the day, and works here at night. If the acting thing fails, this sounds like a pretty good life. Minus the modeling.

“So I’m thinking of staying put this weekend.” Rainer reclines in his chair and slips his arm casually over the back of mine. We’re sitting corner to corner at a four-top, but Rainer has sat so close to me we’re practically side by side. Next to us, two girls out with their parents audibly swoon.

It’s never easy to forget he’s famous.

“Yeah?” I say, pulling apart a roll.

Rainer has been jetting back and forth to L.A. pretty much every weekend. Now I think it’s probably to see Britney, but I haven’t asked.

He takes a sip of water, keeping his eyes down. “Yeah.
I just figure I haven’t really even been here. What am I running off for?”

“Britney?” I offer, and immediately regret saying it out loud.

Rainer frowns. “What do you mean?”

I imagine responding, “You want to make sure that your girlfriend isn’t hooking up with Hollywood bad boy Jordan Wilder, right?”

Then I say, “Tabloids,” when what I really mean is “Lillianna.” I’ve heard about Jordan Wilder from Cassandra before, too. Bad news.

Rainer looks amused. “You read those?”

“Er, no, not exactly.” I can feel my face start to get hot.

“It’s okay.” Rainer puts his hand on my bare shoulder. It feels soft and warm.

“I don’t read tabloids.” I exhale. “I probably should, because maybe then I’d know who people are, but I don’t. My best friend used to fill me in.” Normally I would have brought up Lillianna’s comment with Cassandra, but I haven’t had time. “Lillianna mentioned someone named Britney. It’s not important.…” I’m rambling, I can tell, but it’s hard to stop. The way he’s looking at me—a combination of interest and confusion—is making me nervous.