738 Days: A Novel (21 page)

“If people are going to judge us by our pasts,” I say to Chase, “then I’m at least going to control how it happens and make it work for us. We are not our mistakes, our tragedies. We’re more than that. And
he
”—I wave a hand toward where Max stood—“should know that.”

Plus, this way, Max might think twice before taking out my presence on Chase. I’m a potential asset now instead of a liability.

I expect Chase to argue further, but instead he’s looking at me oddly, his head tipped to the side.

“Amanda,” he says hesitantly. “Whatever Karen told you—”

I stiffen. “It’s fine. It doesn’t—”

“—I’m sure it’s true,” he finishes as if I hadn’t spoken. “You don’t have to come to my rescue. I deserve what I’m getting. And I’m willing to take whatever Max hands out to get a second chance. I
need
this chance,” he says, his eyes boring into mine, pleading with me to understand.

Tears blur my vision. He really believes what he just told me. He’ll let them say anything, do anything to him as long as he gets his “chance.”

I blink them back and step closer to him. “The whole point of a second chance is that no one ever deserves it.”

He rocks back like one of my punches from last night connected.

“Everyone messes up, Chase; the degree just varies,” I say with a weariness that feels bone deep. “And the perspective.”

No one thinks I made a mistake in the course of events that happened to me, but I did. Of course I did. I trusted someone I shouldn’t have, wasn’t as smart as I should have been, maybe didn’t fight as hard as I could have in the moment because I didn’t believe the world was that messed up. That doesn’t mean it was my fault, but I have to live with all of those things, the choices I didn’t make and the ones I did.

Chase opens his mouth and closes it without saying anything, emotion writ large on his face: regret, shame, despair, and determination. And I’m familiar with every damn one of them.

“I have to believe that we’re all on our second or third or fourteenth chance, one way or another,” I say. “And anybody who says otherwise and tries to make us feel bad about it”—I jerk my chin in the direction Max took—“is fucking lying to himself and everybody else.”

Chase laughs, but it’s a choked sound. “Thanks.” He lifts his arm and, after making certain I see the gesture coming, wraps it around my shoulders, pulling me close. “Thank you for that.”

My cheek rests against his chest lightly. His arm is warm and comforting across the back of my neck, and his fingers on the cap of my shoulder seep heat through my shirts. Beneath the faint scent of sulfur, like old eggs, that clings to his hoodie, I smell him, the shampoo and soap from the hotel … and his skin.

My heart is thumping in my chest like a rabbit on crack, but it’s not fear I’m feeling. I want to curl closer to him, press full-on against him, and possibly stretch up to press my mouth against the side of his throat.

I can actually feel my toes tensing, as if they’re preparing to lift me up for that last item, with or without my consent.

“Sure,” I mumble and pull away.

He lets me go immediately. I rub my arms up and down, trying simultaneously to retain his warmth and also banish the goose bumps.

The shivers aren’t unpleasant except in their newness and what I know they mean. Want. Lust. Everything I can’t have right now.

Chase frowns and opens his mouth to say something.

But I beat him to it. “We should go, right?” I ask brightly.

Involuntarily, his head swivels in the direction of the cameras, the lights, and the activity. “Yeah.”

“Good. Because you smell kind of horrible,” I tease. It’s an exaggeration but an effective change of topic. I wrinkle my nose. “Does this fight you’re in take place in a pile of garbage?”

He raises his eyebrows and lifts a sleeve to sniff at it. He grimaces but tries to hide it. Then he grins at me. “We are committed to authenticity here,” he says in mock solemnity.

“Awesome. Could you maybe be authentic more downwind of me?” I ask.

He laughs and stretches his arm toward me, looping it loosely around my neck as we start to walk. “You just don’t understand dedication to the craft.”

I make a face. “I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”

“I don’t know—maybe you just need another whiff,” he says in pretend thoughtfulness.

Another hug? Another ten seconds of closeness with him?
Yes.
I’m already turning toward his chest.

But then, with a teasing grin, he raises his other arm as if he’s going to hold it in front of my nose, and disappointment flashes through me before I can clamp down on it.

Playing my part, I lift my hands quickly to cover my nose. “No, thank you!”

“Oh, well, your loss,” he says with a shrug, releasing my shoulders and dropping his arms to his sides to stuff his hands in his pockets.

Yes—yes, it is.
A surge of wistfulness overwhelms me momentarily, and I catch my breath.

A fearful impulse tells me to push the emotion away, box it up for safety and send it to the farthest reaches of my mind. At the same time, some part of me wants to hold it up to the light and examine it, to feel the wonder of
wanting
again.

I don’t have much time to consider either option, though. Because once we’re on the set, I learn a couple things very quickly.

The first is that, despite my initial worries, after a few curious glances, absolutely no one seems to care about my presence. They’re too busy, all of them moving in a hundred different directions at once. The set is an anthill that’s been stomped on and then lit on fire for good measure. Which is a relief because if I can’t hide from so many strangers, being invisible to them is the next best thing.

Chase settles me in the chair with his name on it and heads to the relatively calm epicenter, an open space where a battered car, a cooler full of ice and beer, two ragged lawn chairs, and the other two actors are waiting beneath the lights and the watchful eyes of the cameras.

I watch as Chase and the others run through the scene, under Max’s direction, trying different approaches with the same words. It’s fascinating to see the shades of character emerge without knowing anything about the overall story. There’s the push-pull of old friendship and envy between Chase and the other guy, and simmering resentment and bitterness between Chase and the girl.

But that’s when I learn the second thing: Karen was right to warn me. Chase is extremely talented. So much so that he disappears into Smitty in front of my eyes. The Chase I knew, or thought I knew, is gone and in his place is a temperamental addict with shaking hands and a short temper. Even his gestures, the way he moves his body, are different. It’s like watching a stranger with Chase’s face.

It wedges a tiny crack in the little bit of confidence I’ve regained, letting in a chill. Because, in spite of my fierce defense of Chase only a short while ago, I have no choice but to recognize that someone this good at pretending to be another person might be impossible to ever really know. Or trust.

14

Chase

I forgot what it was like, having someone on your side.

I don’t like how Amanda did it, sacrificing herself on the altar of more unwanted media attention, but that she was willing to means a lot. The warmth of that belief, deserved or not, stays with me, and I catch myself staring at her off and on while we rehearse.

She’s taking in the sights around her, the hive of activity, the strange and new in what is so familiar to me. Her hair looks redder in the sunlight, and the pink shirt she hates, the one she wears under mine, adds color to her pale skin.

When I check on her, she asks questions—quietly at first, worried about making too much noise in case the cameras are already rolling—wanting to know the purpose of that piece of equipment that looks more like it belongs on a construction site or what that person with a harness does.

She’s observant, smart, wry … and beautiful.

The moony tenor of my thoughts sets off an internal alarm. I know, better than others, the dangers of falling for your own fiction, believing the lies you had a hand in making.

I try to keep an eye on her, but once we’re rolling, I lose myself in being Smitty. I forgot what that was like, too, how good it feels to be someone else.

Smitty is an unapologetic mess, and it’s a relief to be an unflinching disaster of a human being. Because, as horrible as it sounds, it’s exhausting trying to be a better version of myself. As Smitty, the bar is much, much lower. I can be a dick sometimes, but Smitty, as written by Max, has turned it into an art form.

When I remember to look up during a break, someone has given Amanda a script, and she’s absorbed in reading.

Then, when I glance over later, the AD has pulled her over by one of the playback screens. Amanda’s watching us, watching me, with an intent expression, her forehead creased with concentration.

She’s interested in the story and in what we’re doing. Other girls I dated, they only cared about the results—the cameras, the magazine spreads, the party invitations—not the work.

Not that I’m thinking about Amanda that way. The dating way. Being attracted to her is one thing, an uncontrollable, biological or chemical thing, but acting on it would be just like pressing the button to blow up my life.

I’ve done dumb things, but I’m smarter than that. And she deserves better.

Reminding myself of that whenever my gaze strays toward Amanda, I concentrate instead on doing the best work I can.

In the scene we’re working on today, Smitty and Keller, best friends since kindergarten, are forced to realize that their shared future, long planned and loosely envisioned as owners of the Blue Palace Bar with a little dealing on the side for Smitty, is just a childish fantasy. Keller has an opportunity to get out of Westville, to go to school and become the writer he’s always dreamed of being.

But Smitty can’t handle it. He doesn’t have the opportunities that Keller does, and the Blue Palace was his bright future with his best friend. In one horrible moment, he’s losing both.

The day passes in a long, strenuous blur with a tense director and a cast and crew new to working together.

So it’s not until we break for dinner, when I’m settling on to a piece of curb next to Amanda with my paper plate in hand, that I realize she hasn’t said much lately.

Actually—I frown, thinking about it—she hasn’t said much since this morning, other than perfunctory answers to direct questions.

Momentary panic grips me.

“Is everything all right?” I ask, wondering if I’ve missed something. She was tense when she confronted Max, but after that, she seemed all right, or so I thought. But I was more than a little distracted.

“It’s fine,” she says, but she doesn’t look up from where she’s putting a layer of potato chips under the bread of her turkey sandwich.

“Are the blueberries going in, too?” I tease, tipping my head toward the only other food on her plate. “I just want to be prepared.”

“No,” she says with a distant, polite smile, like I’m a stranger approaching her at an airport. Nothing like this morning.

“Amanda, what’s wrong?” I ask. Then a belated thought occurs. “Is this about Adam?” I glare in his direction, where he and the other cast and crew have gathered to eat, twenty or thirty feet away from us.

Adam DiLaurentis, the guy who’s playing Keller, approached her this afternoon, blowing right past me to say awkward things like, “It’s so great to see you up and around.” Like she was stuck at home with a broken leg for a few years. And then he pressed her on eating dinner with him, away from me, so they “could get to know each other because you seem awesome.”

She was staring him down into awkward silence by the time I intervened.

At the memory, my hands clench, bending my plastic fork until I make myself relax.

“No, no,” Amanda says quickly. She pauses. “You know that was more about you than it was about me, right?”

I pause in the middle of stabbing a forkful of salad. “No.”

She shrugs. “Adam is Keller. Even when he’s not being Keller, you know what I mean?”

Sort of, yeah. Adam doesn’t have the chops. That’s what my acting coach would have said. Adam will always play this type of character. Friendly, guy-next-door, nothing that’s too much of a stretch from who he is in reality. There are a lot of actors like that.

I’m not sure what that has to do with me, though.

But Amanda is done talking, picking up her turkey–potato chip sandwich to eat around the edges.

A secondary and self-centered fear kicks in on me.

She read the script, watched part of it play out today. Granted, it wasn’t the finished version, but there should have been more than enough for her to form an opinion about the story. About Smitty. About me.

Oh, Jesus.

Have you ever watched someone do something they claim to be good at but they’re so clearly not, you can barely stand to be near them? I’ve been in auditions like that, where I’m fighting the urge to cringe on someone else’s behalf. And then there’s that weird fear their incompetence and overconfidence are contagious, ready to leap through the air and land on you like germs blasted out into the room by a sneeze.

Don’t be stupid. Amanda’s not like that.

But now that the idea has taken root in my head, I can’t get rid of it. “Did you enjoy what you saw today?” I ask.

She puts her sandwich down and pulls out the napkin tucked beneath her plate to wipe her mouth before answering. “It was great,” she says, with a bland smile.

My heart plummets to my feet.

I drop my fork on my plate, appetite gone. “Shit, Amanda, if it’s not … if I’m not…” I shake my head, trying to find the words. Acting is the only thing I’ve been good at. I thought I was locked in on Smitty, but it’s hard to judge your own performance. Max hasn’t been effusive with praise, but he never is.

Amanda looks up at me, alarmed. “No, Chase.” She reaches a hand toward me in a placating gesture, but stops well before making contact. “No, that’s not it.”