Page 9 of Marisol Acts the Part
Have you ever experienced lucid dreaming?
On a scale of 1–10, how comfortable are you with liminal spaces?
Would you feel comfortable being locked in an enclosed space for up to ten minutes?
If you spotted a dangerous creature in the woods, would you stand your ground or run? Explain your choice.
“Uh—”
“Just approximate,” the casting assistant replies as if I’d asked a question aloud. He disappears back into the room off the hall before I can get another word out, locking the door behind him.
Well. This is definitely the most interesting audition I’ve ever been to.
I should’ve seen this coming when the initial self-tape asked that I “emulate an animal that speaks to me.” It took almost three hours of shooting and four scrapped animals before I finally settled on a take where I genuinely felt like a cow. Delia had praised my performance when I sent her the final clip, but it’s impossible to tell if my moos were any good. Bruiser started to growl at me during the last few takes, so I must’ve been somewhat convincing, at least.
And lo and behold, it got me here. To what is gearing up to be the weirdest experience of my life.
Filling out the questionnaire at least gives me something to concentrate on. I fudge my answers a bit. Tight spaces have always made me feel uneasy, but there’s no way I drove all the way out to this creepy warehouse only to have my claustrophobia get me written off before I can even get into the audition room.
I’m so focused on rating my comfort level with liminal spaces that I don’t notice another person sitting across from me until the casting assistant reappears, handing her a clipboard and the same terse “just approximate” instruction before leaving again.
Carefully, I peek at the girl with bouncy curls on the other end of the room. I’m instantly relieved that I saw the light and booked a keratin treatment last week. A gift to my poor, neglected hair after leaving it in my postbreakup messy bun for over eighteen hours. The pin-straight curtain falling delicately over my shoulder gives me the perfect cover for scoping out the competition.
The girl doesn’t fit the typical LA actress mold. And she clearly doesn’t know about the weather. My nose wrinkles as I take in her black long-sleeve shirt and jeans. It’s not a bad outfit—it actually really suits her. But the thought of wearing long sleeves—and black, at that—makes my skin clammy. The temperature here is higher than in the city, clocking in somewhere in the mid-eighties, according to my car’s dashboard. Along with not having bathrooms, this warehouse doesn’t have AC either. We’re both trapped in a torture dungeon. Yet there’s not so much as a single bead of sweat anywhere on her.Meanwhile, I’m here struggling not to sweat through the three layers of deodorant I applied after I parked my G-Wagon in the lot out back.
But it’s not the too-warm outfit that draws my attention. It’s the unfairly perfect curve of her lips as she reads the questions on the sheet to herself, and the glossy shine in her thick spiral curls that would put any conditioner model to shame. And her dark, arched brows that probably never need to be shaded in, and the soft, natural glow of her warm brown skin.
She’s so pretty that looking at her makes my heart pound like I just ran a marathon.
“Marisol?” the casting assistant calls out from the doorway.
I pry my eyes away from the girl, cheeks flushed from the suddenly too-hot room and the fear of almost getting caught acting like a total creep. I fan myself with the clipboard and follow the casting assistant, making sure to keep my gaze fully averted from Ridiculously Beautiful Girl. Now isreallynot the time to get hit by bisexual panic.
The door closes behind me with a menacingthunk,the casting assistant sliding behind me to lock it before ushering me down a dimly lit hallway. The sketchy vibes are through the roof. If I wasn’t already sharing my phone location with my mom, Delia, and Lily and Posie, I would’ve immediately turned back around and gotten the hell out of here. At least if something suspicious goes down, my people will know where to find my body.
We step into a room painted a blinding shade of white with nothing inside it except for a camera on a tripod, a black foldout table, three chairs, and two vaguely familiar faces.
“Hi, Marisol,” Marie Williams, the casting director, sayswith a warm smile. I’ve read for her a couple of times over the years, and even if I’ve never landed any of the roles she’s called me back for, seeing someone I know and (kind of) trust eases my nerves.
Beside her, hunched and scribbling furiously in a notebook, is who I can only assume is the infamous Rune. There aren’t many photos of him online, but from what little I found, he seems to fit the bill. Hair so blonde it’s almost white with pale skin to match. His blue cotton sweater is mussed, wrinkled as though it’s never seen an iron. Various splotches stain his black skinny jeans.
