Page 33 of My Unscripted Life
My own phone vibrates in my back pocket. I whip it out to see a text from Naz. I haven’t heard from her since the beach photo, which is partly my fault. Once I made the decision not to tell her about Milo, I felt guilty sending her anything else. A lie of omission feels slightly better than a slew of outright lies, which is what anything I’d send her at this point would be.
I swipe at the screen, and the message pops up.
IS THIS YOU???
Below the text is a link. Without even clicking on it, the bottom of my stomach drops out. I try to calm myself. When I finally click on the link, service is so slow it takes a moment for the page to load. And once it does, I immediately want to hop the next van back to my house, crawl under my covers, and never come out again.
The picture is small and grainy, and looking again, I have to blink a few times. It’s like one of those magic eye puzzles where you have to relax your eyes to get the image, but once you do, it won’t go away. The parking lot. The big black truck. Me on my tiptoes, my hand against Milo’s chest, while he stoops, his lips pressed to mine.
“Holy shit, is that you?” Carly is by my side, peering over my shoulder.
My silence is answer enough, apparently. Because the grainy cell phone photo is most definitely me. Not that it looks like me at all. I can’t believe Carly was even able to come to that conclusion. I can only tell it’s me because, well, I was there. And though the memory of the kiss gives me the usual sizzle, it quickly fizzles as the reality of my situation sinks in.
Apparently one of those old-timers at Lowell’s knewexactlywho Milo was.
I scan the page, my finger flicking up and down on the screen, but I’m not identified by name.Thank God.
“They don’t know it’s me,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
Another text from Naz pings onto the screen.
Normally I’d tell you not to, because it’s the #1 rule of the Internet, but read the comments…
I navigate back and take a deep breath, then click on a hot-pink link below the picture that reads “Comments.” I gulp.Dear God.
Four hundred and ninety-three bits of text appear. I don’t even have to read them to tell that they’re full of snark. Between the questionable capitalizations, the strings of emoticons, and oceans of exclamation points, it’s sort of hard to miss. Some aimed at Milo, some aimed at Lydia, and quite a bit aimed at me. But that’s not what I really focus on. Nope, I can’t care about the words “slut,” “skank,” “rebound,” or “nobody,” because the “Top Comment,” noted with a yellow star and about sixty bajillion likes, simply reads DEANNA WILKIE. Below that is a link to my SocialSquare page (which, thank God, is still private), as well as an article about a community art show I did sophomore year (that’s accompanied by areallyunflattering photo of me holding a blue ribbon…let’s just say face-framing layers arenotmy best look).
“Look, I know you’re having, like, a massive existential breakdown right now, but if you don’t put that phone away Rob is going to fully lose his shit,” Carly says, glancing around to see if Rob is about to leap out from behind one of the many potted ferns that props has brought in to add some more color and texture to the space. “But we aresogoing to talk about this later.”
Oh, we aresonot.
“Okay, go for rehearsal!” Rob calls. Music kicks on through the speakers placed behind the ferns, and the extras begin dancing. Then, just as abruptly as it began, the music cuts out. But the extras continue as if it were still playing. Lydia enters in a blood-red, gravity-defying strapless dress, a giant white magnolia behind her ear holding back a cascade of cinnamon-colored waves, but she doesn’t get a line out before Rob calls cut. “Hey, uh, PA girl? You’re in the shot.”
I feel the sting of a minimum of fifty pairs of eyes on me. My cheeks burn with the heat of the embarrassment I feel when I realize that yes, I’m standing right in front of the camera while all around me, people in formal wear are fake-dancing to silent music. I glance up to see Lydia shoot me a withering look before turning on one of her impossibly high heels and stomping back to her starting mark at the top of the stairs. And as my eye follows her, Milo appears from around a corner wearing an immaculately tailored black tuxedo. He doesn’t notice me standing below in a sea of extras, but I see him. I see him looking devastatingly handsome, and I see him reach over and grab Lydia’s hand. He laughs, and then she laughs, and I swear there are literal bolts of electricity zapping back and forth between them.
I bolt from the parlor muttering apologies to anyone who catches my eye. Having visited the Charlesmark House so many times, I know that if I make my way through the atrium and into the kitchen, I’ll find a small wooden door painted bright red that will lead me down a flight of stairs into the servants’ quarters, which is what Southerners call the slaves quarters so they don’t have to think about slavery. I doubt they’ve got anything set up down there for filming, and sure enough, when I arrive, I find it blissfully empty. Which means I can park myself on the stone floor of the basement, pull out my phone, and further twist the knife by scrolling through the comments.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing and sobbing emojis from girls who were hoping Milo would stay with Lydia, or better yet, datethem.One girl refers to me as a skunk, but I assume she was going for “skank.” I keep telling myself I should stop, but just like picking a scab, I can’t quit until I’m bleeding. I keep scrolling, keep reading, and with each comment on my hair or my outfit or my face, the pit in my stomach grows.
If they know who I am, it’s only a matter of time before there are more photos, these taken with sharper lenses wielded by professional hands. I’ll end up on more websites, and maybe even in magazines. I could end up on freakingTV.
I think back to Lydia’s words the other day, about how I’d get tired of all this. About how I wouldn’t last. And I’m starting to understand how she could be right. This sucks. It sucksbad.
I can’t watch Milo and Lydia filming today. I can’t watch them have their meet-cute or whatever and start falling in love on-screen, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to separate that from real life. Or if it evenisseparate from real life. So I tell Adrian that I’d be happy to man the extras tent for her. She looks at me like I’ve just offered her a kidney, and then actually hugs me. She sends me over to get a walkie-talkie and headset and tells me she’ll call for me on channel two when she needs me to send extras to set.
“Just keep them quiet and contained, okay?”
It sounded like an easy-enough assignment, maybe even my easiest since I started work on the film. But it turns out that keeping extras contained is like herding kindergartners who are hopped up on Pixy Stix and Mountain Dew. They keep wandering out of the tent to smoke or sneak onto set to get in more shots. While they have their own craft services table in the tent (okay, so it’s only a giant tray of Chex Mix and a big orange jug of water), several of them try to sneak out to the back of the property to hit up the crew table. I don’t blame them. Today is burrito day, and the smell of cilantro and marinated chicken is enough to make your mouth water, but I quickly learn that nothing sends a crew member over the edge faster than having to stand in line behind an extra to get a bite, especially when they have only a precious few minutes between shots.
Inside the tent is no better. I keep getting approached by extras, all asking in new and different and not-so-subtle ways if they can go to set soon. Several of them try to pump me for contacts, not knowing that I’m an intern with none to speak of. I can’t help any of them get famous, which seems to be why most of them are here.
Ultimately I grab one of the folding chairs and take up post outside the tent so I can watch the comings and goings, and hopefully catch them before they make their way to the burrito bar. The rest of the time I spend alternately staring at my rapidly growing in-box and shoving my phone into my pocket, telling myself to stop—no, really this time, stop!—obsessing over the photo.
Production has set up sawhorses around the perimeter of the property, which seemed weird to me until, over the course of the day, people began showing up on the sidewalk. Some just peer around, hoping for a sighting of a celebrity; others have phones and cameras and are busy snapping photos. It’s not a big deal—there’s really nothing to see outside save for the stacks of equipment the lighting crew are storing on the front lawn. Someone may have gotten a truly impressive shot of Steve’s butt crack as he hauled a giant stand up the front steps. But otherwise, not much going on.
But there’s a flash of something jewel-toned and satiny over by the crowd that catches my attention. I stand up and shield my eyes from the beating sun to try to get a better view.Has someone from the cast gone down to sign autographs? Oh, that’s really nice.
Only I don’t recognize the brunette who’s down there, pen in hand, posing for pictures. She’s not in the cast, at least not that I know of.
