Can I See Your I. D.? (9 page)

But you tried it, and you wrote and wrote and wrote some more. For a long time, you didn't do much else, and you came up with a really good spec script for the pilot episode of a TV drama. You called it
Holliman's Way
, and it's about these three teenage sisters, and Brad sent it to this producer who really liked it and wanted to meet with you. He didn't even know how old you were supposed to be—he just liked your writing.

At this meeting, the producer didn't want to talk just about
Holliman's Way
—he wanted to talk about
you
, and your background, and how this tiny eighteen-year-old actress with no credits to her name came to be sitting in a Hollywood producer's office discussing her script. Kimberlee Kramer's story wouldn't do, of course—Riley Weston needed one of her own. So you told him you'd been homeschooled, and that your mom had brought you out here, that you'd arrived a couple of years ago, when you were sixteen.

Things started happening fast. That producer sent your script to a director, and he liked it too—he didn't know your age either—but that turned out to be a dead end. Brad kept shopping
Holliman's Way
around, though, and this huge talent agency signed you up. And this past spring, they got you a six-month, $60,000 contract as a writer for a new TV series that would debut in the fall.

Felicity
.

You were
perfect
for it—the main character is this girl Felicity who's just going off to college, so having an eighteen-year-old writer on the staff made total sense. The other writers were all older than that. Even the star was already in her twenties. The two guys who created the show were about the same age as you—the same age you
really
are. Everybody working on the scripts had a lot more writing experience than you, but while sometimes you felt like you were just along for the ride, they turned to you for help in getting the characters' late-adolescent voices right.

You had to keep in mind that as far as they knew, you actually
were
an eighteen-year-old—and a fairly naive one at that. You needed to act the part—bringing in stuffed animals for your office, hanging up a
Titanic
poster, talking about boys. Everyone on the show threw a big party for you right there on the set for your nineteenth birthday.

Playing that role all day long month after month was exhausting. They all knew that what you most wanted to do was act, but they had no idea how much acting you were already doing.

The show was really coming together, though, and this past summer, before the first episode even aired,
Felicity
was getting a lot of buzz. Part of that was because the network figured that having an actual teenager on the writing staff of a show about teenagers would make a good story, and they pitched it to the media. But what
Entertainment Weekly
did was a little surprising.

The magazine has this feature they do each June called “The It List,” which is a rundown of the hottest, most creative actors and writers and singers in the business. And out of everyone involved in
Felicity
, it was
you
they wrote about. They singled you out. When they interviewed you, you told them, “In many ways, I am Felicity,” though you never said exactly what those ways were—or weren't.

A
lot
of people read
Entertainment Weekly
—people outside Hollywood, in airports and supermarkets and doctors' offices, everywhere. Riley Weston suddenly became a lot better known than Kimberlee Kramer ever was, and no one besides insiders had even actually seen
Felicity
yet. By the time the show did go on the air at the end of last month, something even bigger had come your way: a $300,000 deal to create shows about teenagers for Disney/Touchstone.
Holliman's Way
might actually happen after all.

Meanwhile, your big break as an actress came along. An episode of
Felicity
you helped write has this character—a visiting high school junior named Story Zimmer who's totally single-minded about getting what she wants, which in her case is to go clubbing—and she's you, really. She's you. It's a subplot, but she's got four big scenes, and they're all comic relief breaking up this really heavy storyline about date rape, and people always remember the funny parts. You auditioned for the role, and you
nailed
it.

So, things are going great, right?
Entertainment Weekly.
Touchstone.
The Wall Street Journal
is interviewing you, and
Entertainment Tonight
is following you around the set. You've got a big role—you shot the first half of the Story episode just yesterday.

And then . . .

And then . . .

And then somebody turns on you. Somebody turns you in. Someone starts calling the show's producers and your talent agency and reporters and everyone and telling who you really are, how old you really are, how long you've been around. They even have your Social Security number, and they've been giving that out so that reporters can see the proof down at the courthouse where you changed your name.

You don't know who is making those calls. Or why.

Why would they
do
that?

You're here in your dressing room on the set of
Felicity
, on what ought to be the greatest day of your whole life. You've worked for thirteen, fourteen years to have scenes like these to shoot—scenes that you're at the center of, scenes where millions of people are going to pay attention to you. You ought to be getting ready for the shoot.

But instead, you've got this message from a reporter. She's the one who wrote the “Touchstone TV inks teen scribe” article last week, but today she seems so hostile. You know that the producers know—you knew before you even showed up today that you were going to have to face them.

But you can't deal with that right now. You just can't worry about it. You're a professional actor, and you've got to keep it together at least long enough to complete your scenes. And then—well, who knows what then?

You know, though—this whole thing would really make an excellent TV movie. If only they would let you play yourself.

Boy,
that
was easy.

You're no master con artist. You're no master anything, actually. You're just a sixteen-year-old runaway with a lot of gall. But it looks like that just might be enough to get by on.

That money in your hand couldn't have been easier to come by—you wrote a check out to “CASH,” the teller handed over the bills, and the bank is just microscopically worse off than it would have been if you'd never walked in the door. So what if, technically, there's not actually any money left in the account behind that check? And so what if, truth be told, you're not really the twenty-six-year-old the teller thought you were?

You needed something the bank had, the bank needed it less than you did, and nobody got hurt. Easy.

Easy, that is, once you overlook the hard situation that got you where you are in the first place. No, not just hard—devastating. Your parents had separated for a while, and then one day, without warning, they called you out of school and down to family court. Before you'd fully grasped what was going on—and without so much as looking at you—the judge asked you which parent you wanted to live with after the divorce.

What kind of question is that? Well, in your case, it's the kind of question that you answered by running away, leaving Westchester County that very day and heading twenty-five miles south to Manhattan. You didn't take much with you, but you did bring the essentials:

Your driver's license.

A book of personalized checks for that $200 bank account your dad opened for you a while back.

Your own six-foot-tall, prematurely gray-haired self.

That's right—gray-haired already, just like your dad. It started when you were fifteen, and it's the number one reason folks always think you're older than you really are. Not having any acne helps too.

Anyway, you knew midtown Manhattan well from making deliveries for your dad's stationery store at Fortieth and Madison. And when you got to midtown, all you wanted was to get by. You were even prepared to do it honestly, though that scam you pulled back home with your dad's Mobil gas card—charging set after set of tires, then selling them back to the dealers for 2,500 bucks in cash—showed a certain flair for other approaches.

You rented a boarding room by the day and started looking for a job. But what you found was a fairly limited set of career opportunities for a sixteen-year-old dropout—imagine that. So the obvious solution was to not be a sixteen-year-old dropout. Maybe you could have forged a high school diploma and passed yourself off as a precocious adolescent with a go-get-'em attitude. But you chose a simpler route. Why fake a whole document when you can fudge just one teensy little number?

Without much effort, and definitely without anything resembling a
plan
, you turned back the clock on your date of birth: On your pictureless driver's license, you changed the 1948 to 1938. Now you were twenty-six-year-old Frank W. Abagnale Jr. Trouble is, the twenty-six-year-old version of Frank Abagnale was just as much of a high school dropout as the sixteen-year-old version. More employable, perhaps, but as you soon found out, getting employed and getting decent pay are two very different things. Your income wasn't nearly enough to keep you afloat in Manhattan.

All along, of course, you were tapping into that $200 account. A $15 check cashed here, a $25 check cashed there—you kept them as small as you could, but those numbers added up. Within a week or two of your arrival in the city, your account has been drawn down to nothing.

Which is where you are today—or rather, where you
were
until just now, as you casually make for the bank exit.

Who would have thought that you could just write a check no matter how little money—if any—was behind it? If this giant bank doesn't want to be taken advantage of, it shouldn't make it so easy.

All you had to do was ad-lib a story for the teller, something along the lines of how you lost your bag containing your wallet but luckily had your checkbook in your back pocket: “I don't have an account here, and I need to get home on the train. I don't have any money. Could somebody cash a check for me?”

“No sir, I can't do that,” she replied, “but if you go over to see that man behind the desk, he may cash it for you.”

The man behind the desk took pity on you. He put his initials on the check and said, “Give this back to the teller and she'll cash it for you.”

Piece of cake. You didn't even have to show a photo I.D., for crying out loud—Frank W. Abagnale Jr. (even the sixteen-year-old version) could look like anyone, and nobody would be the wiser.

 

In the days since, you've repeated that con again and again. And as you emerge from a bank with that ill-gotten cash in your pocket, you know that not everyone can do what you do. Yes, at night you cry yourself to sleep—you were big enough to leave home, but you hadn't been too big to have your dad kiss you good night right up until the end. In the daylight, though, you've got confidence that most people just don't.

Something about you makes those bank tellers take your checks more seriously than they do the average Joe's—makes them take your checks, period. You've always been at ease around grown-ups. In fact, you've preferred their company to that of kids your age, and your comfort with adults must show. They don't even look at your checks, really—they look at you, your height, your hair, and give you exactly what you want.

Are you reckless? Sure. After all, those checks have your real name and hometown address. You don't even question the wisdom of sticking around midtown, where you might be seen by one of the customers you used to make deliveries to for your dad—or even get seen by your dad himself. It's the part of Manhattan you're most familiar with, so at least for now, that's where you stay.

Common sense says that even in a town as big as New York, you're going to run out of places to bounce your rubber checks sooner or later. But the thing is, you're still just sixteen. Not actually old enough to vote or join the army—or to drink, even if you wanted to—you aren't entirely sure you're ready to head out to another city. And even if you are up to it, you aren't eager to find yourself in a town where bank tellers aren't as friendly to a New York State driver's license.