Man, I want this guy around all the time to spin my screwups into “brilliant, perfect instincts.” I guess we’re done with that shot because an assistant takes me to an RV and tells me to hang out until they need me again. The door shuts and I immediately collapse to the floor. Oh my God, this is sooo STRESSFUL!!!
I’m not sure how long I was asleep when Hilary knocks on the door. In a fog, I open it and she walks in with a bathrobe on and curlers in her hair.
“Hey,” I say.
“Good morning,” she says, walking into the kitchen area and pulling a Diet Coke out of a mini-fridge. “Sorry I’m late.”
It’s my first day of filming the lead part in a movie. I’m alone in a trailer with an international superstar wearing a skimpy robe, and all I can think to say is, “Whoa, we have Cokes!”
She slides up onto the countertop and tells me that her mom got bored and went back to L.A. last night. She says that she’s glad she left, but I can tell she’s bummed.
I awkwardly ask, “Merrian was too much for her, huh?”
She looks out the window and sighs, “If I didn’t have to be stuck here, I guess I’d leave too.”
She’s fidgeting and doesn’t seem right this morning, so I ask, “You okay?”
She tells me that she’s just amped up because she’s nervous. She really wants to do a good job on the scenes today and prove to the world that she’s a serious actress. Like me, she wants C. B. to see how great she can be.
I tell her what my mom told me as I was rolling out this morning: “You just have to relax and be yourself. Everybody loves you. You’re special, and you’re gonna be great!”
She shakes her hands around frantically, and angrily says, “Well, I’m trying!”
Mom also told me to take a deep breath, so I give her that one too. She does, but I can see her chest trembling as she inhales. I got a hug as well, so I pull Hilary off the counter and give her a good squeeze. I rock her back and forth a few times until she starts laughing, and I say, “Better? Good.”
She looks up at me with a smile, and we get a bit more serious. I may not be a Cassanova playa but I know a green light when I see it. Intellectually, I know that there is no way that this chick should be into me, but I know that look and she wants to kiss me! So I whisper, “You wanna work on the make-out scene?”
She leans in closer, closes her eyes and sighs, “Sure,” but just as our lips are about to meet, I catch a whiff of her breath. The “Sure” puffs out like a cloud, and it stinks . . . like alcohol.
My head automatically tilts back. Dang it, has she been drinking . . . at nine a.m.? I should be really turned on right now. This a very sexy situation, but I’m totally upset. I don’t want to flip out or seem like a choirboy, but I do not want to kiss her either. She seems aware of my stiffness and probably wonders why I’ve left her hanging.
She asks, “What’s wrong?”
I smell it again and I try not to make a face. I could be wrong, and I don’t want to accuse her of anything, so I say, “I-I-I’m just not sure if we should, you know? It’s the first time our characters kiss. It might be better to save this moment for the camera.”
She nods as her mind races. She looks angry but then decides not to be. She kind of slurs, “Sure, sure, sure. You are sooo right, Carter!” and kisses me on the cheek.
I reply, “I-I-I’m all about character!” as the door to the trailer flies open.
Matilda’s head bursts in just as Hilary’s lips are pulling away from my face. The trailer shakes as Matilda steps up and pushes me away from her client. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes!”
As Hilary’s being dragged out the door, she shoots me an embarrassed smile.
I tell her, “Don’t worry about it, my mom might fly through that door any minute and bust me for having soda this early.” The door slams and I try to laugh it off, but I need to sit down. I feel sick. Why would anyone get up in the morning and have a cocktail, especially Hilary Idaho? My boys have started drinking at parties, but I don’t think they hop out of bed and crack a beer. And this feels worse to me because Hilary has been to rehab. So she’s made a real effort to not use drugs or alcohol. I wonder if I should tell someone? Do they already know and not care? Her mom is out of the picture, and C. B. and Phil would flip out from the additional pressure, and Matilda would pull the plug on the whole movie. Am I looking out for Hilary or am I being selfish? Am I just using her like everyone else? I really want to talk to Abby.
Of course, when I step outside, she’s standing about fifty feet away from my trailer, and I immediately lock eyes with her. She’s standing next to the lighting guys, who are rushing around getting ready for Hilary’s and my first scenes. I’m so surprised and happy to see her that I forget about Hilary for a second and wave to her like a total idiot. “Abby! Hey!” If you can’t be cool when you’re starring in a movie, when can you? She only gives me a nod because the camera guy is holding a tape measure to her chin. He’s trying to figure out his focus, and she’s trying to ignore me and do her job. She’s all lit up beside the broken basement door. She looks so professional and sooo hot!
Hilary bounds out of her trailer a few minutes later, and she seems much better. She asks me, “Are you ready to shoot?”
I look at her suspiciously because she seems to have a lot more energy. She leans in to ask, “Are you okay?”
Her breath wafts into my nostrils after her “okay” and it smells like freshly added Listerine. I start acting a few minutes before the cameras roll by smiling and saying, “I’m great, let’s do it!”
She grabs my hand and tells me not to be nervous. Abby pretends that she doesn’t notice who I’m holding hands with.
Our first scenes go pretty well. It’s after I’ve broken into the house and she’s watched me crawling under the fence. She follows me inside the basement. They do a bunch of shots of us almost running into each other and me hearing a noise, and then we scare the crap out of each other in the doorway to the basement. We do some walking shots, and that’s not as easy as it looks! I had decided that when I tell her what happened to my parents, I wanted to try to cry a little bit, but C. B. can see what I’m doing and he knows it’s forced. He yells “CUT!” and looks up from the camera before he seethes, “Keep it real.”
I try to forget about Hilary’s breath, and I’m so glad we’ve been able to hang out like we have, because the characters are supposed to be friends. I’m still able to joke around with her, and I think it adds a layer to our friendship, now that I know how truly screwed up she is.
C. B. was right about doing the scenes a million times. It takes all day to shoot a little nothing-type scene. They shoot us from every angle you can think of. The crew guys tweak things a thousand times before they decide it’s right. They recheck their light meters and raise their gel stands a half an inch and lower them a sixteenth; they play with the microphones and boom poles every chance they get. You’d think that shadows or camera angles had the ability to make or break a movie, the way everyone worries about them. I think they’re all just trying to look busy. I do stuff like that a lot, so I can spot it. If you’re talking loud and hustling all over the place, who would dare accuse you of being a slacker?
At about six thirty p.m., Matilda tells Phil’s assistant to tell Phil to tell C. B. that Hilary has worked for eight hours and fifty-five minutes, and if they go ten minutes longer, she’ll call the starlet’s union and they’ll slap them with a child labor suit that will shut the movie down. We’re just about to shoot our first scene inside the house. It takes place during a thunderstorm, and the guys have just figured out how much rain to shoot onto the windows and how much lightning they can flash without it looking fake, but C. B. has to wrap for the day, and he’s pissed. I should point out that I started three hours before Hilary, and I’m actually younger, but it doesn’t seem like anyone would care, so I don’t.
I wash off my makeup bruises to let the real ones breathe. I remove my costume Levi’s and T-shirt to put on my own for the ride home. I’m just hopping on my bike when I see Abby walking out of one of the RVs. I really want to talk to her about Hilary’s booze breath this morning and what she thinks I should do, but since we haven’t hung out in such a long time, I don’t think I should just bombard her with my issues, so I hit her with a warm-up question. “Uh, how are you doing?”
She doesn’t stop to talk to me, though. She just keeps walking, and mutters, “I’m fine.”
I reply, “Great, great, so standing is okay. . . . Being a stand-in is going good, then?”
She’s directly in front of Hilary’s trailer when she stops and turns toward me (questions are so awesome). Unfortunately, Matilda is guarding the door and listening to our every word, so I’ll have to move this conversation if I’m going to get into the Hilary situation.
But all Abby’s able to say is, “Yeah, it’s not too—” before Hilary flies out of the RV and interrupts our first chat in weeks by yelling, “Carter!”
We both turn to see Hilary bounding out of the trailer, followed closely by Sport Coat Phil. Hilary gives me a couple winks before she asks, “Where are we having dinner again?”
I look at Abby, who raises her eyebrows. Ms. McDougle’s first rule of impov is, “Never deny.” So no matter what the other actor gives you, you just have to roll with it. I’m pretty good at improv, so I calmly tell her, “Uh, weee . . . are going to eat at . . . my house?”
She smiles and says, “Perfect, I’d forgotten.” Then she jumps on my pegs like we weren’t pretending. Did I invite her to dinner and space it? I’ve never asked anyone to “have dinner,” so I doubt I’d forget. She theatrically yells to Phil and Matilda, “Yeah, so, I’m going to eat with Carter’s family, for research!”
Phil gives me a suspicious look, along with Matilda and Abby. How is this my fault . . . whatever
this
is?
Hilary smiles at Abby, then asks me, “Will your friend be joining us?”
I reply, “Uhhh—”
But Abby interrupts. “No.”
“Have you guys not met?” I ask. “Hilary this is my— uh, Abby.”
Pretty bitchily and almost in unison, they reply, “We’ve met.”
Abby looks slightly wounded when she says, “I’ll just see you guys tomorrow. . . . Have a good dinner,” and then walks down the driveway.
I watch her go and wait for the Escalade to fire up before rolling out. I guess I don’t really need Abby’s help. I make a right turn out of the driveway and pedal toward my house. Maybe I can find my own way to talk to Hilary.
We ride in silence for a while before I ask, “S’up?”
I was trying to ask her about her substance abuse problems, but my question may have been a little too open-ended. She tells me that Sport Coat Phil was just giving her a lecture in the trailer when she saw me ride by. “You totally saved me! Phil is so annoying.”
I really want to ask her what he was lecturing her about, and why her breath smelled like a wino’s this morning, but I chicken out and just explain that she’s having “breakfast for dinner” tonight. “It sounds weird, but we always do it on Tuesdays and it’s really good. It’s just, like, waffles and scrambled eggs.”
She giggles. “Sounds awesome, I can’t wait.”
“Yeah, my mom always makes extra food so my dad can take it to work the next day. . . . He won’t mind if Hilary Idaho eats his lunch.”
We take the shortcut behind Pizza Barn, and I describe my bike wreck in all of its gory detail. I may exaggerate a bit, but she seems entertained. I know that I’m talking too much, and I should be asking more questions, but everything that pops into my mind today is really negative. Finally I ask, “Hey, did Matilda really make you take a drug test when you got home the other day?”
She ignores the real question, and replies, “That’s not my home. It’s just a hotel room and a bodyguard.”
I look back at the Escalade on our heels and say, “I think Matilda really cares about you.”
She scoffs, “It’s her job. She gets paid for that, you know?”
I feel like Matilda’s job is just to protect her from stalkers, but I don’t say it.
We walk into the house and I can smell waffles burning. My mom’s not around, and I can hear Lynn yapping on the phone, obviously ignoring her cooking duties. I lift the lid and crunch a fork into the smoking black squares. “You like ’em well done, yeah?”
Hilary laughs as I throw them in the trash. I pour more batter into the cooker and ask Hilary to keep an eye on them. “When the light turns green, eject ’em.”
She gives me a thumbs-up as I walk into the living room and wave to get my sister’s attention. “Hey.”
“On the phone, dickhead!” Lynn replies.
I motion for her to lower her voice, and whisper, “Hilary Idaho is having dinner with us.”
“What?” she asks. “Hang on. My super-important movie star brother is telling me something about Hilary Idaho, and I need to take notes.”
I shake my fist at her and whisper, “No . . . she’s having dinner here . . . with us.”
Lynn scrunches up her face and barks, “Who is? I can’t understand you when you mumble!” She says into the phone, “Yeah, he thinks he’s friggin’ Marlon Brando.”
I whisper as slowly and clearly as I can, “Hil-ar-y Id-a-ho is—”
“Yes, Hil-ary Id-a-ho-BAG . . . I got it . . . and you’re a rock star because you’ve talked to that skinny, fake bitch? I’m ooon the phooo—”
Her words trail off and her eyes double in size when Hilary walks into the living room with two waffles on a fork and says, “Carter, I need a plate for these.”
I nod my head judgmentally at Lynn, and mouth the words “Nice job” before walking back into the kitchen.
I compliment Hilary on her grill skills. “You could get a job at Waffle House if the movie star thing doesn’t pan out.”
Hilary laughs, and my dad stomps in the front door from work, tosses his briefcase on the table, and asks, “Who’s that big momma out in the Escalade?”
I throw my hands up and sigh, “Please!!! Be cool.”
My dad is not one to be told what to do, so he makes a goofy face, hunches over, and puts on a goofy voice when he says, “Ohhh, so sorry, I’m not cool enough to
hang
with your friends, Will. Hello, young lady. I’m Carter’s dorky dad . . . and what’s your name?”
I shake my head and gasp. “Daaad, this is my costar.”
He sticks out his hand for her to shake and says, “Sorry, I don’t know what a
coaster
is, either.”
She lets go of his hand when she realizes that he’s not kidding around. He really has no idea who she is. I tell her, “He lives in a cave and sometimes forgets who I am, so don’t be offended.”
She mumbles, “It’s okay,” and removes the next batch of waffles.
My mom plays it cool (thank God). She just welcomes her to our house and tells her she’s doing a great job with the waffles. She’s cracking eggs for her famous (not) “trash-can scramble” when Nick Brock slams the front door and stomps into the kitchen covered in dirt. He yells his usual greeting. “S’up, Carter family?”
Mom swings the spatula at him and barks, “Dirty boots, off!”
He sits on a chair and is untying his Red Wings when I ask him, “How is your construction job going?”
“It sucks a fat one. How’s the movie?”
My mom smacks his shoulder and dust flies into the air. Hilary lets out a giggle as Nick gets up and leaves a mud print of his butt on the chair. He gives her a sideways look and asks, “Heeey, don’t I know you?!”
She smiles proudly in the hopes that someone will start to properly kiss her ass around here, but Nick continues, “Yeah, you cut grass for Harding Landscape, don’t you?”
Her expression shifts to disgust. “No, I do not
cut grass
.”
My sister bursts into the room to save the day: “NICK, this is Hilary Idaho!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know that name too. . . . You’re not a weed eater?”
Hilary pulls a couple more waffles out and mutters, “No, no I am not.”
“Gravel girl?”
Lynn is looking at him like he’s kicking the dog. Hilary has checked out of the conversation and is pouring batter with all of her focus when Nick wraps his massive arms around her shoulders, lifts her off the ground and laughs, “I’m just messin’ with you, Hilary! I was a
Get Up Gang
member in eighth grade!”
I laugh with everybody else at the thought of this all-American linebacker watching tween TV and joining a fan club, until he throws up the
Get Up Gang
sign and Hilary returns the corresponding finger move, and they shout in unison, “G.U.G. fo’ life, baby!”
Lynn grabs my arm during the second round of laughs and quietly tells me, “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you.”
“Who would believe me?”
The doorbell rings and my dad lets Matilda in the front door. Her jaw is flexed and she stares Nick Brock down, before saying, “No touching.”
Nobody tells Nick what to do, so he asks, “Excuse me?”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t make physical contact with Ms. Idaho.”
Nick is as embarrassed as Hilary when he says, “Yeah, sure . . . I’m . . . sor—”
Hilary screeches, “Matilda, get the hell out of here and stop embarrassing me!”
The mood is very tense until my mom asks Matilda to stay for dinner. Hilary pulls out more waffles and snidely says, “You’re going to need a lot more batter.”
As we start eating, my dad asks Matilda what she does, and she cheerfully replies, “I’m an armed, legal body guardian.”
We all kind of stiffen and think about the “armed” part of her job description. But Lynn is very interested in new careers, because being an assistant to the assistant costume designer is not as fun as she thought. She asks, “What does that mean?”
Matilda replies, “I’m a legal representative for Hilary, like a parent . . . but I’m also authorized to shoot people if they threaten her safety.”
Everyone is staring at her, waiting for her to smile and tell us that she’s joking, but the smile never comes.
My sister excitedly asks, “Do you have to go to school for that?”
Hilary answers, “No, any idiot can do it; you just have to get lucky.”
Matilda smoothly says, “Or unlucky.”
“Oh, that’s a burn,” I add.
Hilary smiles and playfully pushes me. “Shut up, Carter.”
Nick keeps us laughing through dinner by making fun of my mom and singing his version of “Go! Fight! Win!” Hilary howls with laughter when I join him for the “Weeeeiiiiieeauuuna!” She’s not used to people dogging her to her face, and she seems to love it. My life would be a lot easier if I enjoyed it more.
Matilda gives Hilary the death stare when she puts her knife into the butter tub, and takes the syrup out of her hands before she can flip the lid. I try to eat mine dry, too, but it sucks, so I sneak some syrup when she’s not looking. Hilary only eats two bites of eggs, and half a waffle. My dad tries to take the other half off her plate, but my mom shoots the action down with her own death stare.
We finish, and everybody is clearing their dishes. Matilda tries to clear Hilary’s plate, but puts it down when she realizes that Hilary wants to do it herself. As my mom is loading the dishwasher she tells everyone about our family rehearsals. I’m red with embarrassment until Hilary asks if she can join in.
Matilda says it would be okay and asks if she can read the stage directions. My dad hands her his script like it’s no big deal, but she seems really excited to get the job. Shockingly, I know all of my lines. Even my sister is impressed as I rattle them off. I sit on the floor because my character doesn’t own chairs. Hilary sits down next to me. The third scene we work on is the one that we were supposed to shoot this afternoon inside the mansion. Hilary/Maggie asks me why I won’t play sports, go to parties, or do anything fun anymore.
I/Chris think about the answer for a second, then shrug. “‘Those things seem silly to me now, I guess. It was my mom . . . She always wanted me to play sports so I’d fit in, and she bought me nice clothes. I really thought I cared about all that . . . but now it doesn’t matter.’”
Hilary/Maggie asks if I miss having a mom, and I begin my biggest monologue in the script: “‘I still have a mom. She takes me shopping at Target about once a week and she buys me anything I want and we walk out with, like, twenty bags of stuff and she’s so happy. I’ve had the dream about fifty times now, and I’ve figured out that when we reach the parking lot, it’s about over, so I put down the stuff and try to give my mom a hug and thank her, but I never get to do it and I always wake up crying. It’s funny because the muscles in my face hurt the next day from smiling so much during the dream. I really do try to be happy, because I know that’s what she’d want, but it’s hard.’”
I wasn’t trying to deliver a performance or anything. I was just trying to say the words in the right order because it’s a lot to remember, but I did it almost perfect. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that my mom has started crying.
A tear rolls down Hilary’s cheek as she reads, “‘We can work on that, but I wasn’t talking about clothes. I’m talking about fun—’”
I interrupt her. “‘I have fun with you.’”
“‘What would your mom say if she knew that the only time you smiled was when you were asleep?’” she asks with real compassion. She’s a much better actor without all of the producers and cameras around.
I just look at her for a second and shake my head. I’d like to say the next line quietly, but my mom is openly blubbering, so I have to turn up the volume when I say, “‘She wouldn’t like it, but she’d like you.’”
Matilda reads, “‘Maggie passionately kisses Chris.’”
Hilary looks at me intensely, like she might. I’m into the scene, but I’m still aware that my parents are in the room and her body guardian is “armed.”
Nick saves me by jeering, “Go for it!” and everyone laughs.
The next scene allows my sister to read the part of Maggie’s friend, who thinks my character is a dirtbag, so she’s having way too much fun flicking her hair around before reading, “‘He probably has lice!’”
Nick plays the principal of the school with a funny deep voice. He tells me that although he enjoyed my essay, he had to call social services. Hilary asks him with disgust, “‘How could you?’”
It’s a sad and serious scene. I’m supposed to be depressed but also relieved that I don’t have to be homeless anymore. Nick is done with his lines, but he jumps up and yells, “Do not question the PRINCIPAL!!! I have absolute power!” The scene turns into a
Saturday Night Live
sketch when he picks me up and starts tossing me around the room. Everyone is cracking up.
After about an hour, we’ve done most of the script. The crying scene was a bit wonky because Hilary did her fake crying, and Nick thought she was trying to be funny and so he started fake crying, too. It pulled me out of the scene, and Hilary seemed pretty embarrassed. Matilda picked up the slack and started reading the next scene, so Hilary couldn’t stay down for very long.
We run through tomorrow’s scenes twice, and finally Matilda says, “Fade to black.”
Nick adds, “That’s it?”
Lynn asks Hilary, “Isn’t it too short to be a movie?”
Hilary says, “No, this is actually really long. You should read the crap I usually work on. We’d have been at a club doing shots by now!”
Everyone just looks at her. That joke may fly in Hollywood, but at the Carter house it goes over like the time my mom tried to sneak sugar-free pudding into her cream puffs.
Matilda clears her throat angrily and gives the script back to my dad. “We should go. Hilary needs to do cardio and tan before bed.”
Brock tries to lighten the vibe by stretching and saying, “Whew, me too,” but nobody laughs.
Hilary is embarrassed and clarifies, “I was joking.”
I make a face, like “It’s not a big deal,” and offer up a high five before saying, “So, I’ll see you at the butt crack of dawn?”
She halfheartedly returns the five and tells my mom goodnight before following Matilda to the SUV. We all watch from the kitchen window as Matilda shuts Hilary’s door and they drive off. Mom mutters, “Poor thing.”
Lynn scoffs, “Whatever, she’s a bazillionaire.”
Dad adds, “She’s gonna need that money when she realizes she never had a childhood.”
It’s not even dark yet, but I’m exhausted, so I hug my mom and start down the basement stairs for bed. I stop to look at the photographs that cover both sides of the walls. I space off, staring at them for about ten minutes. Baby pictures, sports, birthdays, vacations, family reunions, anniversaries, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all the pictures are filled with smiling faces and captured laughter.
After a while my mom throws a dish towel down at me and says, “Focus, please. You were going to bed.”
“Yeah, have these pictures always been here?”
She laughs. “I change them every once in a while, but yeah, we’ve always had family pictures on these stairs.”
She walks back toward the kitchen, and I say “Huh” to no one. I must’ve run up and down these steps a million times, but never stopped to look at the pictures. I swear I’ve never seen this one of my grandma. She’s about my age, and she’s riding one of those Budweiser horses. The picture’s got a few years of dust on it, so it must have been here a while. The frames are different sizes and only a couple of them match, but they’re laid out carefully and spaced just right. What a pain in the ass it must have been to hang them. Not to mention, live the lives.
I’m looking at my parents’ wedding picture when I hear my sister tell someone, “No, he’s still on the stairs, zoning out.”
Dad snaps me out of it and asks, “You need a ride to the set tomorrow?”
I tell him, “I’m good.”
He asks, “Are you?”
I don’t think he’s talking about giving me a ride anymore. “Yeah. Sorry if I’ve been a dick lately.”
He smiles. “Yeah. We don’t have to see eye to eye all the time.” He motions to the pictures on the wall and says, “But just remember, whatever happens with this movie . . . we’re always here for you. Okay?”
I nod and he walks back into the kitchen. My family is pretty great.