Finding June (10 page)

“It was actually really good,” I answered
with a smile. “I even made a few friends in the cast already. I
think I’m fitting in pretty well so far.”

“I didn’t doubt for a second that you would,”
she replied warmly. “Do they have your measurements for the costume
department?” She asked the question as though she’d just remembered
how important this detail was.

“Yeah, they do,” I reassured her. “I wonder
what kind of costume I’ll wear.”

“Probably something very pedestrian, I’d
imagine. I haven’t seen the show much, but don’t they all dress
pretty normally?”

“They do, but my first scene is as an
assistant in a vaudeville magic show,” I said with a grin,
imagining the great costumes they could put together. “So hopefully
I’ll get to wear something really different.”

I relayed the table read to Gran on the way
home, making sure I mentioned every detail so that she could
interpret every look the actors had given me and what it might
mean. After we ate dinner I retreated into my room to call Dad with
all the details of the day and to do my homework.

It was hard for me to imagine how school
would be on the set. I was the only one on the show who was young
enough to require a studio teacher, so it would pretty much be like
having my own private tutor. I guessed that they would follow the
same curriculum as my high school so that my transition from the
studio teacher and my high school teachers would be a smooth one.
It would be odd to go to school on set for a week and a half at a
time, and then going to my normal school between episode shoots. I
was going to have to make sure I really focused to keep everything
straight.

After I finished my homework at about seven
o’clock and changed into my tight black yoga pants and a fitted
emerald green T-shirt, I quickly pulled out my phone to text
Joseph.
I bought some Huckleberry, so you should come
over
.

In all honesty, I couldn’t really blame Gran
for forcing me eat super healthy at the house, since I ate ice
cream every chance I got—probably not the healthiest thing for me.
As I sat in my room painting my short nails a dark crimson that
almost looked black, a sudden thought struck me. Maybe Joseph
wouldn’t text me back. Maybe he didn’t want to come and hang out
with me after our last awkward encounter.

I put the nail polish brush back in the
bottle and turned to my phone suspiciously. I pressed the button
once to illuminate the screen and saw that I had no new messages,
which made me frown. I kept my gaze trained on the phone as my
imagination did what it did best: created worst-case scenarios.

It was possible that, because of our little
incident this morning, Joseph didn’t want to come and be alone with
me. Maybe he was scared that I’d attack him again, or maybe he was
trying to think of a nice way to let me know we shouldn’t be
friends anymore. Both of those situations would be utterly
devastating, since we’d been best friends since we were in diapers.
I tried to push these thoughts from my mind, but it was difficult
with my dark, silent phone sitting beside me.

“June, pull your hair back and meet me in the
kitchen,” Gran said, suddenly popping her head in my room to relay
her cryptic instructions. I didn’t argue or even question why in
the world I’d need to pull my hair back. Instead, I checked to make
sure my nails were dry and then arranged my hair in a high curly
bun with an elastic headband holding flyaway hairs back.

I met Gran in the kitchen, while Joseph's
silence left a nervous feeling building in my stomach. He almost
always had his phone with him—mostly to answer my texts, since no
one else really texted either of us. I placed my phone on the
counter next to a bowl full of yellow, pulpy goop. Gran pointed to
a bar stool, indicating that I should sit, although she still
failed to offer an explanation of what I was doing with this bowl
of . . . whatever it was.

“Lean your head back and close your eyes,”
she said mysteriously.

“Gran, what are we doing?” I asked, though I
did as I was told.

“I’m helping, as usual,” she replied
matter-of-factly. “Bliss, I said keep them closed,” she threw in as
an afterthought, since I kept opening one eye to glance at my
phone.

I jumped slightly as Gran plopped the yellow
mixture onto my face and couldn’t help but notice the refreshing
tingle that was spreading all over my cheeks. I sniffed a few
times, recognizing a citrus-y smell.

“Is this pineapple?” I asked, puzzled.

“It’s supposed to make your skin whiter,” she
said, a hint of skepticism in her voice. “I assumed it couldn’t
hurt, and if it works, even better.”

“At least it smells good,” I said, smiling
and taking in another deep breath of the sweet, tangy fruit. A
knock at the front door caused me to jump slightly. Not being able
to see apparently made me a very paranoid person.

“Stay here and don’t open your eyes. The
vapor might sting them,” Gran instructed artfully, as if she had
been putting pineapple on people’s faces her whole life. I heard
her footsteps retreating from the room and strained to hear who was
at the door. All I could make out was a muffled voice and the sound
of two sets of footsteps coming back into the kitchen.

At that moment, I wasn’t sure where my logic
went, but my first panicked thought was, "get this stuff off of
your face—Lukas Leighton is about to walk into the room." A mild
panic began to rise within me at this far-fetched idea. I cupped my
hands and tried desperately to scrape the yellow goop from my face,
managing to spill most of it in my lap and down the front of my
shirt.

When Gran and Joseph appeared in the kitchen,
I realized how foolish my thought process had really been. Joseph
instantly burst into a fit of laughter at the sight of me.
Honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

“Did you and Annette get into a food fight?”
he finally managed to ask. It was always a little odd when I heard
people call Gran by her first name, though I used it every time I
slated for the camera and I named her as my agent.

“For your information, this will make my skin
more porcelain than Clara Bow,” I said sarcastically, standing up
and smearing a handful of pineapple pulp onto Joseph’s cheek, much
to Gran’s horror.

“Honestly, Bliss, I don’t know what to do
with you sometimes,” she said in an overly dramatic tone. “You just
make sure you clean this up,” she threatened, nodding toward the
mound of pineapple now on the wooden floor as she left, muttering
about high-maintenance actresses.

I looked back to Joseph, grinning wickedly
and relieved that he didn’t seem to harbor any animosity for my
attack on him that morning. He simply swiped a finger full of the
fruit on his face and licked it.

“Is this pineapple?” he asked surprised.

“Apparently it makes your skin whiter,” I
said knowledgably.

“So, does that mean I’m going to have one
white cheek and one normal cheek?” he asked jokingly, though I
could detect a hint of worry in his voice. I squinted my eyes at
him, leaning in closer.

“Wow, you know what? I think it’s already
working,” I said, my tone full of amazement. Joseph’s eyes grew
wide as he quickly wiped the pineapple from his face. I laughed at
his obvious distress and shook my head. “I’m joking,” I reassured
him.

“Funny, June. Very funny,” he deadpanned.
“How about you wash the produce off your face while I get the stuff
on the floor? That way we can get to our night full of eating too
much ice cream and watching
Forensic Faculty
.” I nodded my
agreement and we soon were sitting comfortably on the couch in the
living room with big bowls full of huckleberry ice cream. Joseph
tossed a few Indian pillows onto the ground, since there were
always so many on the couch that you could barely find a place to
sit.

“Do you think it’ll be different to watch the
show now that you’ve met everyone?” he asked, spooning ice cream
into his mouth and making me smile.

“I think it’ll be a little different, but it
probably won’t really be weird until I’m on the show. Then I think
it may be difficult just to watch,” I admitted.

“How was Anna Farthing? Is she really as
scary as her character on the show?” Joseph asked, suddenly very
intrigued by the fact that I could give him the inside scoop. I
wished beyond anything that I could bring him to set with me. I
knew I’d be so much more comfortable with him by my side, and he’d
love to meet everyone in the cast. But sadly, that wasn’t a
possibility, so he’d just have to settle for my stories.

“She was actually really nice! And she’s
British, which caught me off guard.”

“Wait, she’s British?” he asked, just as
shocked as I was when she had first spoken to me. I nodded with a
grin. It was kind of fun knowing all of these little facts about
the show.

“Everyone was pretty nice to me. Will Trofeos
actually winked at me while we were reading our lines,” I said,
crinkling my nose. “Is that weird?”

“A little,” Joseph answered with the same
unsure look on his face. “Was he being funny?”

“I’m not sure,” I said with a laugh. “But I’m
pretty sure I’m not his type . . . since I’m like, thirty years
younger than him.”

“Well, let’s hope not,” he said
emphatically.

“The only person who wasn’t all that nice to
me was Joann Hoozer,” I confessed, remembering the icy looks and
indifferent stares she had given me throughout the table read.

“I can see that,” Joseph said with a nod of
his head. “She seems like a bit of a diva.”

I thought about his statement for a moment,
realizing how little I knew of the people we had watched every week
for years. “I guess I never really thought about it,” I said with a
shrug. “I always assumed they were all like their characters . . .
although Benjamin and Ryan are exact replicas of their characters.”
Rich and John were Joseph’s favorite characters on the show, so I
knew he’d be excited to hear that they weren’t huge jerks in real
life.

“I want to meet them,” he whined, giving me a
pouty look.

“Who knows, maybe we’ll become great friends
and they’ll hang out with us so you can meet them too,” I said
enticingly. Joseph laughed, giving me a nudge with his shoulder and
then not moving back to his side of the couch after. We stayed
shoulder-to-shoulder while we watched the show, and I couldn’t help
but notice how much I liked how comfortable we were around each
other. After a day of tension and nerves, it was nice to just sit
with Joseph and forget about all of the scary things coming up.

CHAPTER 9

Just as she did every morning, Edith Piaf
interrupted my blissful dreams with her low, resonating voice. I
rolled over, my eyes still closed, and hit the snooze button. I was
always pretty good about getting up in the morning, but that didn’t
mean I had to enjoy it. I rubbed my eyes wearily and wondered how
my bed managed to become so warm and inviting the second I had to
leave it. I pulled my fluffy comforter up around my face and tried
to hold on to the last fleeting memories of my dream.

Five minutes later, I was staring blearily
into the mirror in my bathroom, trying to tame my wild mass of
curls. I had fallen asleep on Joseph’s shoulder the night before.
When he finally left, I was too tired to shower, and now my mane of
hair was very vocally lodging a complaint, with ringlets sticking
up in all directions. Most of the time my hair had a medium wave
that curled naturally. Today, however, the lack of washing had
turned it into a giant mass of curling chaos.

I gathered my dark hair up at the back of my
head and began randomly shoving bobby pins into it, hoping that it
would form some semblance of a proper hairdo. In the end it
actually looked quite nice, although some of the ringlets were
escaping wildly around my face. I did my makeup light today,
sticking with a peaches-and-cream color pallet.

As I re-entered my room to get dressed, I
heard Joseph pull up outside. I looked around in confusion,
wondering why he was so early, only to find that I was actually the
one falling behind on our normal schedule.

“Shoot,” I muttered under my breath, tripping
over my backpack in my attempt to hastily get dressed. My phone
buzzed by my bed as I threw on a pastel pink tunic top and some
faded gray skinny jeans.

Running late are we?
my phone read,
much to my annoyance. Joseph knew that if my bedroom light was
still on when he pulled up, we were in trouble.

Two seconds
, I texted back, realizing
that if I had not texted him, I might already be out the door. I
quickly put on some cream-colored peep-toe heels, grabbed my
backpack, and ran out the front door, sticking light pink feather
earrings through my ears as I rushed down the driveway. I could see
Joseph smirking from the driver seat of his Beetle.

“I have no idea how that happened,” I said,
referring to my late arrival.

“Maybe we’ll skip the hot chocolate for
today?” he asked, with a questioning glance in my direction.

"Well, it is Friday, so someone’s going to
bring food to seminary, right?” I asked. Fridays were the best. It
was almost the weekend, everything went by faster, and someone was
assigned to bring treats to seminary for everyone.

“I think Grace is bringing them,” Joseph said
as he pulled away from my house.

“Oh, do you think she’ll bring that fruit
Danish thing? It’s amazing,” I said closing my eyes at the mere
memory of the delicious dessert.

“We can only hope,” Joseph answered with a
laugh. “You know, I think this show is already starting to wear you
out,” he said, suddenly changing the subject. “The second they
revealed who the killer was last night, you were out like a
light.”

I blushed slightly at the memory, knowing I
had fallen asleep on his shoulder. I couldn’t help it that his
shoulder was right there next to me, just begging to be slept
on.