Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance (17 page)

Jo looks at me and all pretense of a smile drops from her face. “What,” she asks as she pulls her laptop from her bag and plugs the cell phone modem into the side of it. “Did. You. Do?”

Time passes as the page loads, and I really hope everything comes out okay.

“Oh, God, no,” Jo says, staring slack-jawed at the laptop.

And there’s the young Hollywood gossip site, featuring the photo of me, shirtless, with two other shirtless young men, heavy lidded, smiling, and holding a colossal smoking spliff in my hand.

“Wow. That looks kinda incriminating, huh?” I will never be able to thank Kyanna enough for this, since she provided the spliff—not actually full of marijuana because she didn’t want to waste her stash if we weren’t going to actually smoke it—and recruited the boy toys
and
took the photo. “Geez. Might be hard for a guy to get a job in family entertainment after that photo makes the rounds, huh?”

Jo is speechless.

“Well, Jo, will you please let me fire you now? I mean, I’m pretty sure Mom will make it official if you can ever get ahold of her.”

“You ungrateful little—” Jo launches into a string of curses that are incredibly vivid even by her standards.

“I’ll just give you a minute alone. See you!” I run along the path from my cabin, and it’s all I can do not to skip with glee.

I guess I should formalize the end of my relationship with Jo, so I call Mom and leave her a voice mail asking her to fax Jo an official letter severing our relationship. But I realize that without Jo, I might have to figure out all kinds of stuff about my investments, the money I’m owed for
Jenna & Jonah
DVD sales, and all that stuff I never have to think about. I’m not ready to be that much of a man just yet. But I think I might know someone who is.

“Hey.” Ryan answers on the first ring.

“Ryan. I have a— Hey, I have an idea. You want to work for me for a while? I just fired your boss. I don’t need an agent, but I need somebody to take care of all the business stuff for a few months. I’ll pay you whatever Jo pays you. No, you know what? I’ll pay you ten percent more than Jo pays you. You make sure the real estate taxes are paid, meet with the accountants, stuff like that. I can’t imagine it’ll be as much work as you’re doing now. How’s that sound?”

“When do I start?”

“Right now. Just harass my mom until she agrees to fax a letter to Jo terminating her employment, voiding her power of attorney, stuff like that. And you can draw up a letter of understanding that you and Mom can sign and formalize our agreement. Okay?”

“Better than okay. Let me just back up my data and then I’m going to send Jo an e-mail and tell her where she can put her nonfat lattes.”

“Awesome, Ryan. Thanks.”

“Thank
you
, Aaron.”

Aaron. I smile as I hang up the phone.

I guess I must be a little drunk with the excitement of taking charge of my own life, because I decide to go talk to Charlie.

I bound down the path to her cabin and knock on the door. She answers the door, BlackBerry plastered to her ear. “Okay, Mart. Lemme call you back,” she says and puts the phone down.

“Why?” she asks.

“I was afraid either you or Jo would talk me into this reality show nightmare, so I had to make it impossible for me to say yes.”

“Great. Do you think you could have prepared me? Do you think maybe you could have talked to me about—”

“Charlie.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s not what a man would do. A man would take charge of his own life.”

“A
man
takes the other people who depend on him into consideration when he makes a decision! A
man
—”

“The photo’s genius, though, don’t you think? Do you know I was actually smoking dried rosemary we lifted from the kitchen?”

“Do you know how much I care? Dammit, Aaron, I needed this show. We needed this show. It was our ticket back!”

“But I don’t want to go back. I’m done. I keep telling everybody that, and nobody believes me. I’m done. You’re going to have to get back without me.”

“How could you? After all this time, how could you?”

“You know what? It was actually shockingly easy.”

“You selfish—”

“No. Don’t start with that. I’ve lived my whole life for the show, for the fauxmance, for the career, for the last four years. While most people are in high school having normal fun, I was working all the time. And I’m done. I’m not doing it anymore. You know why? Because I’m a grown-up, and I don’t have to.”

I turn and close the door to Charlie’s cabin quietly as she begins some creative swearing of her own.

It’s all I can do not to skip down the path to my cabin. I feel lighter and happier than I have in years.

Today I am a man.

19
ADVANCED EMOTIONS

Charlie

The fine print on my
Jenna & Jonah
contract was so explicit that there were only two flavors of ice cream I was allowed to consume in public. Vanilla “suggests purity and innocence” and strawberry “implies a fun spirit and youthful nature,” so when Al invites me into town for gelato, the first thing I do is order against type. Or at least against my contract.

“I’ll have caramel and deep chocolate,” I say, leaning against the freezer and relishing the cool air.

“Living on the edge?” Al asks.

“Is caramel daring?” I ask with a smirk, wondering if chocolate is slutty or wistful, what
Celebrity Weekly
or
Gossip!
might say if they were to report my choice. But the beauty of it is, they aren’t here. At least not yet. “It is sort of daring. I mean, per my contract I couldn’t gain more than one pound, change my hair, or get any sort of piercing or tattoos. Caramel is about as daring as I can get.”

Al takes his dish of pistachio outside, leading us to a small metal table on the sidewalk in the shade. The town center is close to the compound, and along with regular people, various costumed actors dash in for a quick gelato fix, careful not to stain their wardrobe.

“Tell me, Beatrice, what think you of this sweet?” Al asks, his body all relaxed but his voice as eloquent and deep as it is onstage.

I try to respond as Beatrice, but I don’t know what to say so I just shrug. “Methinks it …” I fumble. “It’s really good.”

Al puts his spoon down and leans forward conspiratorially. “I declare I might never have seen a girl with ice cream seem so downtrodden.”

I take another mouthful and sigh as a maiden in full Elizabethan regalia, save for her sneakers, walks by, savoring her cone as though she hasn’t a care in the world. “It’s just … how do you know when you’re, actually, you know …”

“Acting?”

I nod. “When I watch you, or Kyanna, I’m totally caught up in the words and how convincing you are. Sometimes I have to remind myself you aren’t actually your characters.”

“Have you gotten to the advanced section of the book?”

I nod. “I even made the lists it told me to and whispered and yelled and made faces.”

Al chuckles. “Maybe some of the book is drivel.” Al continues to laugh, swooping his spoon into the green gelato and closing his eyes to the sun for a moment. “Acting is a lot like love. You know it only when you’re in it. There’s no doubt.”

The cold gelato clashes with the heat from my blush. “Oh, well, maybe I’m just a loser in both …” Back in Season 2 of
Jenna & Jonah
, I sang a song called “ ’Cause I’m (Un)Lucky in Love” in the pretend high school musical—very meta, because it also was a hit on the radio, at least in Eastern Europe. I had to intentionally act and sing badly because Jenna’s rock star self is hidden from her high school class. So my costumes had to reflect the thrown-together nature of school plays, my timing was decent but not perfect, and I had to stumble over a line—at least in rehearsal—and everyone believed it. They actually thought I could be that bad. Sing off-key. Miss a line. Wear poly-blend clothing. It made me laugh, but it also made me feel bad for Jenna, or sort of for myself, like no one knew Jenna well enough to figure out her secret identity. I mean, come on, how convincing can a wig possibly be? Anyway, when it came time for the big night at Westfield High, Jenna wore the crappy costume and did a respectable job for a talented sophomore, but even though I’d planned on performing the song perfectly—out of spite for the producers and out of respect for myself—I unintentionally stumbled on the line “But when push comes to shove, I’m just unlucky in love.” Ratings were great, but I was furious they wouldn’t let me reshoot the scene. “It’s so authentic,” someone said when we stopped rolling. It was inauthentic in twelve different ways.

“How is what I’m doing now different from what I did before?” I lick my lips. “I mean, how do I know I’m not faking my way through a fake world in a fake way?”

Al shakes his head. “You saw the cast the other night after you rehearsed the final scene. Come on. Everyone was sucked in and completely at your mercy. Television history or no, you have
it
.” He peers at me. “It. Onstage, it’s all there.” He finishes his gelato and clears his throat. “You know, when I played Sergeant Malloy—this was way before your time—I once had a scene with this woman … She was a criminal, a bank robber or a government spy—who can remember such details now? Anyway, I had to shoot her.” He points to his chest. “Right here. Big network scandal, can a man really fire at a woman? Again, this was when you were a fetus.”

I twist my hair back into a knot and lick every last bit of caramel and chocolate from my spoon, stopping short of sticking my face in the bowl. “So what happened? Did you do it?”

Al mimes pulling a gun from an imaginary holster. “We were filming live, okay? This was cutting-edge back then. And I pulled the gun out, fired at her, and the blood bag inside her shirt didn’t explode—so, as you know, this means no gore. No real blood, no fake blood, no nothing. Cameras are rolling, so I do what all good actors do.”

I lean forward, eager to hear his tricks of the trade. “What’s that?”

“I improvised.” He stands up so we can walk back to rehearsal, where legions of actors—some better, some maybe worse—wait for me to perform.

“How’d you improvise—? I mean, obviously, I’ve done that a little, like on the show my line was ‘How’s it gonna look, Jonah?’ and I said, ‘How’s it gonna seem, Jonah?’ ” The minute this is out of my mouth I start to laugh. Could that be lamer? I mean, one word? That’s a substitution, not an improvisation!

“You’ve read the book, right?” Al wipes his forehead with his sleeve, heat reddening his face. “Advanced emotions. That’s what it takes to improvise, because improvisation comes from instinct, not memorization. Your gut!” He pounds his own stomach. “Your gut’s where the improv hides.”

Al and I walk away from the sidewalk cafés and small shops, past the costume building with its wide porch, and toward the big main stage where we will be performing as the main attraction soon.

“I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life,” I say to Al.

Al nods as though I’ve just offered him a choice of donut. “Me neither. Maybe I’ll hawk undergarments for the elderly. Maybe I’ll star in a new film about an aging baseball coach who finds his long-lost son.”

“Really?”

Al nods, his white hair flopping in the wind. “It’s called
Finding Home
—it’s not bad, really.”

“And the diapers for old folks?”

Al grins. “The pay’s not bad and I get a lifetime supply of them!”

I smile at him, feeling for the first time a sense of how much I’ll miss him, miss this—the cast as family. Even when the director yells at me, it feels okay, like a sibling or scary aunt shouting for my best interest. “I’m sorry I won’t get to do this again,” I say when we’re outside the theater. “Stage always seemed so small when I was on TV, but being here—it’s weird. Suddenly that tiny screen—even though it’s in all those houses—feels more remote.”

“Maybe that’s why they call it a remote control,” Al says as we wave to Kyanna, who is heading inside with a silent Aaron next to her. He doesn’t even look my way.

And maybe it’s true, that I’ve been controlled by remote, by contracts, right down to what I’m allowed to eat or wear or say or who to share my days with. I glare at Aaron as he slams the front door. “Subtle, Aaron, really.” I kick the ground and puffs of dirt go into the air, sending a wave of grime over my flip-flops. How dare Aaron decide for me, for us both, the future of the reality show? How dare he put his foot down when it stomps on mine?

“He’s a dimwit,” I say, my pulse racing, even though my heart beats double-time just thinking about his mouth. “Everything about him makes me want to slap him. To shove him and demand an apology … for ruining everything, or changing it.”

“Who?”

I shake my hair free of its knot. “Benedick—Aaron, I mean. He’s so … so … He’s a weasel.”

“Even a weasel needs understanding and compassion.”

“Don’t defend him! He’s undefendable.” I pause. “Indefensible? Whatever. The point is, he has such a high opinion of himself, but he doesn’t even want to admit who he is, where he comes from. At least I acknowledge my bizarre upbringing. I don’t hide my past from the viewers …” My cheeks redden as I think about the way Aaron’s fingers felt laced in mine.

“What about your future?” Al asks. “And what about the past you had with Aaron?”

“He wasn’t Aaron. He was Fielding.” I pause, thinking back. “You know what’s so weird? When we first started, way back before the show took off and we started pretending, we were starting to get really close.” I bite my lip, remembering. “We could’ve been …”

“Good friends?”

I think back to the diner where we used to eat late at night or at four in the morning before our call, just us, orange juice, and French toast—I took the crusts and gave him the mushy middles—and we’d make up inappropriate songs or share our latest complaints about agents, or just quote our favorite movie lines. “More than that.” Inside, I feel a clenching. My stomach churns and my throat tightens. My eyes sting but don’t fill. “It’s like I’m losing …” I pause, take a breath. “Like I’ve lost my friend and my job.”

Al pats my back. “And what have you gained?”

I don’t answer. I just watch Al go down the steps toward a woman I don’t know. “It’s instinct, Charlie,” he calls up. “Your mind and heart will take over—on stage and off.” He hugs the woman and then comes back to me to explain. “By the way, that scene? I shot her, nothing happened, the script guy’s having a coronary, the director is mouthing, ‘Stab her, stab her’—not that I had a knife.”

The feeling that I might actually cry disappears. “So what’d you do?”

“I grabbed her, looked her in the eyes, and kissed her.” He smiles and looks at the woman he hugged and motions for her to come over. “Highest ratings ever … but more importantly, I got an Emmy out of it. You know why?”

I shrug. “People like romance?”

“People schmeople.” He takes the woman’s hands in his. “They didn’t care that I never shot her. Didn’t care that it wasn’t the most sensible thing for Sergeant Malloy. I did what I felt. That’s acting. That’s living it. That’s real. You’re acting real stuff, not fake. Beatrice cannot admit to herself how much she really loves Benedick, so she convinces herself that she loathes him. It’s the other side of the coin and it’s safe. What happens when both sides meet?”

I stand there, feeling everything at once: rage that I would have to do yet another stupid show that will typecast me not only as the star who failed, but the star who failed alone, and annoyance that my instinct was to say yes to the show as though I had no other option, while Aaron did what he wanted. Maybe that says something about him. Maybe he’s more of a whole person, a man, than I gave him credit for. As I fume and seethe, Al hugs the woman. She tells me her name is Gertrude Wilck, which sounds familiar, but I don’t know why. She has a long rope of silver blond hair tied in a loose ponytail and an ankle-length denim skirt. They hug. Al says something to her. She studies me and Al says, “This is the girl.”

I furrow my brow. “The girl … ?”

“He shot me,” the woman says. “In a manner of speaking.”

There are no bullet wounds, but I know what Al means. I leave them to their reunion, amazed that one split-second decision could change their lives. What if the blood had exploded? Would he have kissed her anyway? How do you know when to act on your instinct and when to muffle the inner voice? What happens when the script is learned but there’s more to figure out?