Unscripted (19 page)

“Not the point,” I snapped. “The point is I’ve been found out, which means Alex has also been found out. This blogger is a nobody, but somehow she got the scoop. Now this story will spread; it’s only a matter of time before the bloggers, the fans, the press, whoever, find out he’s here, and your campus is going to be all porcupine-y with long-range zoom lenses in the shrubbery and smuggled-in Flip cameras. The
bigger
issue,” I went on, “is who tipped off this two-bit blogger.”

Mason shrugged again. “Could be anybody.”

“No, it couldn’t. Only three people are
supposed
to know the real reason I’m here: you, me, and Jaya. Jaya was the one who sent this to me, and she’s horrified. Trust me—it wasn’t her. It certainly wasn’t me.”

“Wait—are you accusing me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then—”

“It was somebody you told.”

“I haven’t told anybody!”

“No?” I smirked. “Really? Not even your best bud?”

Mason paused, a puzzled expression on his face. “You know Steve?”

That brought me up short. “Who’s Steve?”

“Steve Blair. My best friend. Since college. We were roommates. But he lives in Montana now—”

I was so pissed off I actually growled. “I’m talking about Kaylie!”

“Wha—
Kaylie?
Why would you think that? She’s a student, not a confidante. Certainly not a—what did you call it? A ‘best bud’?”

I crossed my arms and did my best duckface. “That’s not what it looks like from where I’m standing.”

Suddenly Mason looked thunderous. “If you’re accusing me of having an inappropriate relationship with a student, Faith—”

His glare sure gave me second thoughts; it occurred to me that it would be really unwise to cross this guy. But I just couldn’t seem to shut up. I had that problem sometimes. “I’m just saying that she’s most likely the person behind this. She hates me—that’s clear—and she’s close to you—”

“She does not hate you. She is most definitely
not
close to me. And I haven’t told her—or anyone, for that matter—anything about the whole Alex situation.” He paused. “You sure have some trust issues, don’t you?”

“Don’t
you?
”

“What are you talking about?”

“Watching me like a hawk whenever I’m around Alex, to make sure I don’t push him. Don’t think I haven’t noticed, you know.” Mason looked uncomfortable, but he stayed silent. “Well, now I’m operating on borrowed time, so I’m going to have to talk frankly with Alex whether you like it or not. So thanks a bunch.”

He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Faith, I
didn’t
—”

“Maybe not intentionally. But yeah, I think you did.”

Chapter 11

I marched into Advanced Acting with renewed purpose. It was time to do what I’d come here to do, as quickly as possible, to get on top of the Internet gossip, to control the information instead of playing defense. No more pussyfooting around, no more creeping up on Alex just to keep him calm and/or happy. Or to keep Mason happy. Not that I cared whether Mason was happy or not.

But for the record, he
so
was not, right about now. Yep, that hard look I just got from him as I came down the aisle was pretty far from a warm and fuzzy welcome. Well, tough. Kaylie was my No. 1 suspect in the Alex news leak, and for good reason. If Mr. Professor Mason Mitchell was going to be willfully blind and not see the way Kaylie stuck to his soft, fuzzy stubble like the prickly half of Velcro, that wasn’t my problem. Even now, Kaylie was bending his ear about something or other, acting like his Most Favored Student . . . or more.

Then again, maybe Mason wasn’t as blind as I thought he was. Another glance at me, then at Kaylie, and he stepped away from her, dismissing her with a short remark I couldn’t hear from that far away. And another furtive look at me. Atta boy—now we were getting somewhere.

“Alex!” I called, smiling grimly and marching up to the stage. I wasn’t about to sit around and wait for an opportune moment. No more waiting. For anything.

Alex spun around and jumped down to the pit. “Faith, what the hell?” he said, his eyes flashing.

“Guess you heard, huh?”

“Kinda,” he said sarcastically. “Anthony called me at six this morning. He’s already getting phone calls from the trades, but he’s telling them you haven’t seen me and I’m touring Russia. Is it true? Are you really trying to get me back on the show?
That’s
what you’re here for?”

What the hell indeed—did he really think I was slumming, hanging out in a scriptwriting class at a community college in Moreno Valley, just for giggles? Sometimes Alex was more than a little thick. I tried to stay patient. “What
else
would I be here for, Alex?”

He paused, looked down at his feet. After a moment he muttered, “I don’t know. Something else.”

When he didn’t say anything more after that brilliantly vague statement, I jumped in with, “So let’s talk. What do you think? Get David and Sabrina together again? Everybody’d love to have you back, you know that.”

Alex stared at me, shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you, Faith?”

“Get? What’s to get?” I hated the fake enthusiasm I was spouting, but it had to be done. I punched his arm softly. “Come on, it’ll be like coming home.
Modern Women
was your life for nearly two years—don’t you miss it?”

“Faith . . .”

“I mean, sure, things weren’t exactly . . . pleasant there at the end,” I rambled, feeling my footing slipping. He didn’t look as excited about the proposition as I’d expected. But sales pitches were part of my job. I could do this. “But hey, we’re grown-ups. Lot of water under the bridge. We’re beyond all that now, aren’t we? Still friends?”

“But . . . I’m in school.”

“Well,
yeah,
but . . . so you walk. No big deal. I don’t see shackles and chains.”

“I
want
to be here.”

He couldn’t be serious. Could he?

“I like it. Being in school, learning stuff . . . learning how to act . . .”

“Alex, please, stop with the low-rent James Franco thing. You’re better than everyone else here already—you know that!” Of course, that got me a ton of nasty glares from the other students in the class, who had all been listening but pretending not to. “Well, it’s true!” I snapped at them. They turned away from me in disgust, leaving just Mason, who was close at hand on my left. Again.

“Ms. Sinclair, I need to start class now—”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“That means Alex too.”

Bristling, I turned on him. “Alex and I are still talking.”

“But class—”

“Go and start class, Mr. Schue. We’re not done here.”

Mason’s jaw was working hard. “Then take it outside. You’re wasting my time.”

I took a breath and readjusted my bag on my shoulder. “Fine. Alex, let’s continue this in the foyer.”

He hesitated. “No . . .”

I turned to go, but that brought me up short. “Excuse me?”

“I’m staying here. I don’t want to be back on the show. It started out awesome, but then it got . . . not awesome.”

Ah, there was that erudition I was always so fond of.

“But . . .” Suddenly the small of my back was slick with flop sweat. Alex couldn’t turn me down—he just couldn’t! The plan was to get him back on the show and get myself back as exec producer. That was the plan. There was no other plan!

“I’m staying here because this is real, Faith.
Really
real.”

In spite of my promise to remain upbeat at all costs, I winced. Oh God, not the “this is real” stuff. I thought he was over that.

“
Modern Women
is real, Alex.”

“No, it’s not. Not like this. I’m sorry, Faith. I’ll see you around, okay?”

And he leaped back up onto the stage, all hard muscles and grace, leaving me alone on the floor. The students turned to Mason, who was now on the stage as well. Without another look at me, he clapped his hands as usual and said, “Okay. Let’s get started . . .”

* * *

Alex had floored me, laying down the gauntlet like that. “This is real” . . . damn, I hated that flat statement more than anything else he ever uttered. He’d talked about the “real” stuff often, when it came to his “integrity” about his acting, but casual, off the cuff, to start. Sometimes he even used it as a compliment, back when we were getting along: “Wow, Faith, this dialogue is so
real
” or the like. After that night at his apartment, though, he started using those words as a weapon. He started giving me a hard time, challenging my scripts, story lines, dialogue, direction . . . everything. He started out subtly, asking questions here and there: “Would David really do that?” or “Would he really say it
that
way?” And, ultimately, the dreaded “Faith, that doesn’t feel very
real
to me.”

At first, nobody else noticed his change in behavior, except Jaya. She threw me a “WTF?” look pretty often. I always blew her off, which made me feel bad—after all, she was my best friend, and I wanted to tell her everything, but I couldn’t. Maybe it was my pride, or maybe the whole thing made me feel like a tweener trying to figure out boys (and succeeding about as much as a tweener would, which was not at all), but I just couldn’t open up to her. Of course, that left me trapped in my own head and supremely confused.

Sometimes I even wondered if maybe Alex was right. What if my stuff
was
phony? What if I really
wasn’t
any good? Should I make it more “real,” whatever that would mean in terms of a TV dramedy? After all, I already did my best to keep
Modern Women
several levels above the sniffy classification “nighttime soap.”

Then Alex took it too far. He started talking about how much he adored the gritty Realism movement of the 1970s—something he’d just discovered and explained to everyone who would listen, as though nobody else had heard of it. I never bothered to tell him that my own mother was a key player in that movement. He wouldn’t have listened anyway.

“That was
real,
” he’d always say as he waxed rhapsodic about
Chinatown
or
Taxi Driver.
“Nicholson was
real.
De Niro was
real.
I want to make this real too.” As if I’d be able to wedge grit, guns, drugs, and blood spatters into the world I’d built around, well, modern women, as the title said. That’d work. Right.

Then one day he brought his own brand of “realism” to the show. We were shooting what was supposed to be a romantic moment between him and Sabrina: Italian restaurant, soft candlelight, beautiful clothes for him and Kimmie, sweet words. The kind of scene that made my viewers swoon and motivated their significant others to get their heads out of the Doritos feedbag and take them out on a date. Hey, I tried to provide a public service whenever I could.

Anyway, the scene was lit perfectly, I was happy with the script, the set looked great, everybody was ready to go. We started shooting, Kimmie and Alex were doing fine, and then . . . Alex started eating the food. As he talked.

I couldn’t even make out what he was saying. And even if I could, I’d have been distracted by the sauce and bits of bread spewing all over. There was David—sexy, perfect, ideal David, as embodied by sexy, er,
allegedly
perfect, ideal Alex (at least before this moment)—slurping his pasta, talking around huge mouthfuls of food, sauce flying everywhere. Never mind that the pasta was stone cold, the sauce congealed, and the bread stale and rubbery. He went at it like he’d been starved for weeks.

Wes, the sound guy, gave me a horrified look. I cut the scene. “Alex. What are you doing?”

He swallowed with difficulty. It was a mouthful that would choke a walrus, after all. “The scene.”

“Are you trying to make Wes over here vomit? Are you trying to splatter Kimmie with marinara buckshot? What’s with the eating?”

Alex looked at me like I was an idiot. “This is a restaurant, Faith. David and Sabrina should be eating, not pushing food around their plates. Eating is
real.
”

Oh Christ, the “real” thing again.

Kimmie gave me a stricken look. “Eating? Who said anything about eating? I can’t eat
carbs!
”

I suggested we all take five. Kimmie took off immediately, probably to weigh herself to see if she had accidentally inhaled some airborne calories. Alex also disappeared, but he came back a minute later and shoved his tablet under my nose.

He hit “play” and a scene from
Heartburn
started up. “There.” Nicholson and Streep were eating pizza while talking. “See? That’s
real
.”

All the chomping and slurping—I could see where Alex picked it up. On the one hand, I was impressed that he knew of the Nora Ephron-penned movie. On the other . . . well, I was just annoyed. “Oh yeah, that’s ‘real.’ So real that now the world knows Nicholson has no table manners.”