The Year of the Great Seventh (6 page)

At least there was something to console me. I wasn’t going to have to face Nate at school the next day. Megan had a guest role in
Criminal Defense
, a detective show, and had asked me to spend the day with her at the set. I wouldn’t be back at school until the day after.

If the high school years weren’t already complicated enough, after this evening, life was going to be even more difficult. This wasn’t something that anyone could get over. Beautiful Nate had made it loud and clear how he felt about me. This wasn’t my suspicion anymore; now it had become the plain truth.

It didn’t matter how long I postponed going back to school; sooner or later, I was going to have to face Nate.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEXT MORNING, MEGAN picked me up on her way to the set of
Criminal Defense,
where she had a guest role for five shows. Most teenagers would be thrilled with the idea of spending a day at a TV set, but ironically, even with Mom in the industry, I hadn’t fallen under the Hollywood spell. The only thing that mattered to me was history. At least I was glad to have something to keep my mind occupied. After the way Nate treated me the day before, it was going to be difficult to trust anyone ever again. I couldn’t forgive myself for having believed in Cinderella stories. I’d learned the hard way that clichés exist for a reason. The high school pretty boy was always a heartless narcissist, and that was never going to change, whether I liked it or not.

I longed anxiously for the end of my high school years. Nate’s cruelty had been a wakeup call. As of this day, I’d accepted defeat. I didn’t fit in and never would. Now, more than ever, I knew L.A. wasn’t going to be where I would find my space in the world. I was counting down the days to get onto a plane to New York, never to return. The end of my high school years seemed more distant than ever.

Megan had never asked me before to spend the day with her at a set, which is why I felt compelled to accept. I understood the gesture as a silent cry for my attention. She usually loved acting and was more than happy to be at the set by herself.

Thankfully, Mom provided no resistance to me skipping the day’s classes. I suspected she was still hopeful Megan would lure me into an acting career. The chance of that happening was bordering on zero.

Today, my self-esteem was at a record low. I was sure I was never going to get over Nate’s bitter words. I couldn’t stop replaying them in my mind.

Trying to piece myself together, if only for a moment, I intended to make Megan my priority. She’d asked me to accompany her today because she needed my help, and I didn’t want to fail her.

Megan was focused on her driving, as it was the morning rush hour. The street was busy with cars. She bit her lip, frustrated by the traffic jam. She was wearing an old blue-checked shirt and a pair of ragged jeans, showing that none of her show business success had gone to her head.

“Grrrrr.” Megan groaned under her Ray-Bans as a car cut her off.

There was something about Megan’s body language that told me something was deeply tormenting her. Megan and I knew each other so well that we could almost read each other’s mind. For that same reason, I was a bit worried she could intuit that something had happened to me, too.

I really wished I could share with Megan my anger toward Nate, but now it was too late; I’d chosen to act behind her back. Megan wasn’t fond of Nate, and she would’ve advised me not to meet with him. I’d been in absolute denial. I didn’t want to hear the obvious. This is why I kept it from everyone. My friends would’ve told me this was a mistake from the first moment.

I’d once again let my imagination weave out of control. I secretly wished Nate would turn my monotonous life into an adventure, and now I was paying for my daydreaming. He’d burst my bubble with a slap of reality. Nate revealed the secret that forces you to become a grown up: life is sadly not a fairy tale and tends to be quite unfair.

I tried to leave my gloomy thoughts to one side and focus on Megan. My intuition was telling me she needed my full attention. My silence was making her uncomfortable. I wanted to ask directly what was going on with her, but I didn’t know where to begin.

She turned on the radio and skimmed through stations. None of them seemed to suit her, as she finally turned it off. Eventually, she spoke. “What’s up with you today? You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m just a bit tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. That’s all.” I rushed to explain, trying not to give too much importance to the subject.

“You’ve been absent lately. Is everything all right?” Megan seemed unsatisfied with my explanation. “It’s still about the fight, isn’t it?”

She was aware I was hiding something from her and was heading straight for the evidence. In a not-too-subtle attempt to get Megan focused on her problems and not mine, I tried turning the conversation around. “I’m fine. I got over it. What about you? You seem a bit stressed lately.”

Megan’s eyes hardened behind her sunglasses. Then the awkward silence filled the car again. She seemed immersed in her thoughts. Her eyes fixed on a black Hummer ahead of us.

“I guess I can’t really fool you… There’s actually something that’s bothering me,” she announced. I could tell by the seriousness of her voice the conversation was going to take a twist that I might not like. She slid her sunglasses up and caught my eye as she drove. A piercing pain punctured my stomach. She’d caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready to discuss Nate with her.

Megan brought the car to a halt behind the black Hummer. The traffic was terrible and a caravan of cars blocked the road. “Do you remember Alex Giordani? He was at Ethan’s party.”

I nodded silently, inviting her to continue.

“He just got signed to play the main character in a new production, and I’ve been offered the supporting role.” She tapped her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel.

A wave of relief invaded my body. She wasn’t going to bring up Nate.

“And that’s what you want, isn’t it?” I asked, as I couldn’t imagine what the problem was. Megan appeared in movies often, and I didn’t understand why she was worried.

“The thing is that I don’t know if I want to do this anymore. I think I need a break. I want to have a normal teenage life. I do enjoy acting, but I never chose this. My parents did. It isn’t my choice anymore. It’s become an obligation.” Megan spoke with a trembling voice.

“What are you going to do?” I didn’t really know how I could help her overrule her parents’ decisions.

Megan resignedly raised her eyebrows. “Mom already signed me up for the role and she didn’t even ask me.”

“Can she do that? That has to be illegal,” I said in shock.

Megan shook her head from side to side. “She’s my manager and my legal guardian.”

The car behind us honked. The traffic was flowing again, but we hadn’t noticed. We could see the sign for the studios at the end of the street. Megan shunted the accelerator and sped toward it.

She spoke in a tone as if to convince herself. “This movie is different. This is a bigger budget movie. Up to now, most of the films I’ve done were independent and almost no one watched them. Some of them didn’t even make it to the theaters. After this, I won’t be able to walk on the street without being recognized.”

I knew Megan enough to realize she was speaking with real anxiety. From what Mom told me, Megan’s parents were pushy and expected her to “maximize” the talents God had given her. Leaving the family pressure to one side, I knew Megan loved acting. She needed a friend to reassure her she could definitely fill her shoes, and that was where I came in.

“You have to do it,” I said firmly.

“What?” Megan murmured, stunned. She drove past one of the studio warehouses with a number “1” painted on the steel gate.

“I’ve heard you explain too many times what you feel when you’re acting. You can’t let your parents’ pressure make you forget that. Think of it like this: opportunities like this won’t come often, so you need to make the most of them. You’re sixteen, and in two years you’ll be able to have absolute power over your own decisions. This situation is only temporary.”

“What about my life? My friends?” Megan complained, bringing the car to a halt outside warehouse number 12. The huge steel gate was wide open. We could see the crew working around the set.

“We’ve known each other for a long time, and I don’t care what changes around you. We can see right past the fame nonsense. To me, you will always be Megan.”

Before Megan could formulate a word, I continued, “You can’t let this one fly by you. You have to do it.” This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I wasn’t going to allow her to ruin her career.

Megan turned off the engine and took a deep breath before turning to face me. I was stunned to see that her eyes were brimming with tears. She was definitely going through a tough time. She made me feel guilty by having been so upset about Nate’s behavior. Megan’s worries involved life-changing decisions; mine were high school absurdities. I reached out and gave her a comforting hug. I wanted her to know she needed to gather the courage to do this.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” I whispered, holding her hand tightly. “Will you be able to stay at school?” I tried to keep my composure, hiding the thought that potentially losing one of my best friends frightened the hell out of me.

A faint smile appeared on her face. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

I smiled back. “I’m going to miss you anyway.”

I wasn’t going to admit it to Megan, but her need for a break was completely justified. I’d heard Mom commenting that the workload that Megan’s parents put her through was crazy for a sixteen-year-old. Megan’s Mom signed her up for anything that came her way: movies, TV shows, ads, or plays. For Megan’s sake, I was glad to know that absolute control over her career was only two years away.

“And on top of this,” Megan added, “to add to the pressure, Shreyashi Sandhu, the woman who plays the chief detective in this series, absolutely hates me. The other day I was hanging around the set and I overheard her telling one of the producers that she wanted me out of the series as soon as possible.”

“Megan, you need to relax. You enjoy playing whoever it is you’re playing, and I’ll keep an eye on Shreyashi Sandhu!”

But I was concerned that Megan was going to snap at any moment. Unbelievably, the wellbeing of her entire family, including her six-year-old sister, rested upon her shoulders. Neither of Megan’s parents had a job—something she tried to keep secret.

Megan fixed her hair using the rearview mirror and, employing her best acting skills, put on a smile that seemed almost genuine. She was indeed a great actress. Probably no one else suspected what was going on inside her. We got out of the car and then saw Megan’s mom pacing up and down by the warehouse gate.

“Here we go…,” Megan murmured to herself.

“Megan, you’re late for makeup. Go get changed!” Megan’s Mom ordered, escorting us into the warehouse.

There were around thirty crew members buzzing around the courtroom set, which was illuminated by bright lights. The rest of the warehouse was almost in complete darkness. The director was instructing two cameramen how to move the cameras’ position to get a new angle of the set.

“You can watch from here,” Megan said, setting a canvas chair behind one of the cameras. Then Megan and her mom hurried down a corridor.

A makeup artist was applying eyeliner on a woman. She was on the defendant’s seat. She checked herself in a mirror handed to her by a makeup artist. Then she dismissed her with a disdainful wave of her hand. A second makeup artist walked onto the set and reapplied her makeup again, but after checking herself in the mirror, she still didn’t seem satisfied with the result.

The woman took off her blazer and handed it to a member of the crew. Minutes later, someone brought her a new mahogany-colored blazer that she also refused. I hadn’t watched the show, but I was confident the woman behaving like a diva was Shreyashi Sandhu. She treated the members of the crew like her slaves. She seemed to think everyone in the building was there to satisfy her needs, and hers alone.

The director was behind a small TV screen that was displaying the set. He was talking to the light technicians and they were switching on and off different sets of lights.

Twelve actors appeared through the corridor and took the jury seats, and an African-American man sat at the judge’s stand.

Megan emerged from the corridor with a lot of makeup that made her look really pale. Her lips were purplish. She was wearing a pair of pants and a sweater twice her size. She seemed very thin in the baggy clothing. Megan took the stand and sat next to the judge.

A man clapping a board sign with a digital watch screamed, “Action!”

“Defense, please take the stand,” the judge announced with authority.

Shreyashi Sandhu got up and approached Megan. She strode up and down, rubbing her hands. “When did you start feeling sick?” Shreyashi asked without directly looking at her.

“A year ago,” Megan replied, as if she were talking to her own hands.