Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance (3 page)

“Forget something?” It’s the voice of evil in the form of Bret Huckley.

I’m about to deny it when I see what he has in his hands. He dangles something between two fingers, stretching it out in front of him as though it’s lingerie.
Jenna & Jonah’s How to Be a Rock Star: Season 5.

“That’s mine,” I say and snatch it back. But the damage is already done. He’s snapped a picture of it with his microcam, the one permanently attached to his wrist.

“Of course,” Bret says. “I wouldn’t want you to be without your script.”

I sigh. Maybe there’s nothing juicy here. He got the shot we were hoping for, right? Season 5, everything’s cool. At the bottom of each script it always says the same thing—“PROPERTY OF CHARLIE TRACKER/FIELDING WITHERS” (alphabetical)—and then the number of scripts that have been distributed, which is always only two—one for each—to prevent plot leaks to the press or online. Even camera and on-set crew have scripts only on the closed set. I swing my bag on my shoulder and start toward my car.

“Say, Jenna,” Bret says a bit too loud. “I shouldn’t overinterpret the fact that you’re reading Season Five without Fielding, should I?”

Shit. Here’s the juice.

I pivot and smile my widest. “Of course not! He’s got a copy, I’ve got a copy, we’re all set!”

Bret raises his bushy eyebrows and smirks.

I walk away. It’s only when I look at the script in my hand that I notice the fine print at the bottom of the script: “PROPERTY OF CHARLIE TRACKER—Copies Distributed: 1.” Fielding’s name is nowhere to be seen.

4
IT’S OVER

Fielding

Just driving down the boulevard in James’s convertible is awesome. Wind’s in my hair, and every time we stop the car, bikini-clad hotties literally squeal. We’ve been in God knows how many cell phone photos in the last ten minutes, and we’ve had six phone numbers chucked into our car. The crumpled pieces of paper sit in my lap. I suppose this is how Tantalus felt. Tormented forever in the Greek and/or Roman afterlife by being ankle deep in water that would drain away whenever he bent over to drink, and by tree limbs groaning with succulent fruit right in front of his face that would shoot out of reach whenever he tried to pick something. My studio tutor taught me that story right before I took the SAT.

It’s where we get the word “tantalize”—to put something succulent (number 28 in
50 Power Words for the SAT!
), like that girl in the green bathing suit three traffic lights back, just out of reach. I can’t call her—apparently her name is Holly—because I’m locked in fake love. And James won’t call her because he’s not interested.

“Thanks for rescuing me. I think I was about to strangle Charlie and thereby ruin my career.”

“Thereby? Who says that?”

“Um. Me?”

“Bookworm.”

“You know, it wouldn’t kill you to read something once in a while.”

“Yeah, well …” James smirks.

“In fact, you know what? Friends of the Library is having a book sale—let’s stop by. We can get armloads of books. Last year I got twenty books for forty bucks.”

“Sounds awesome, but I’ve got other plans.”

“Ah, no. Come on, James. Let me out of the car. I’m not— I suffered through fake romance all morning; don’t make me do fake friendship all afternoon.”

James stops the car and looks at me. “Please, man. I need your help.”

The car is still. I could hop out. I mean, I’m being used again. Still a pawn, but now I’m in a different game. I should have stayed with Charlie for another ten minutes. Then I could have gotten the shot and been done with it. Instead I’m sucked into more deception.

We’ve done this before. We’ll pick up another young Hollywood B-lister, and a C-lister that James is inexplicably fond of. We’ll make a big show of going into GameStop and buying the latest Xbox 360 releases. And then we’ll be seen buying lots of chips and energy drinks.

The way this was pitched to me the first time—by my agent, Jo, after she took a lunch with James’s publicist—was as a win-win. I get to be seen as a good influence on young Hollywood’s bad boy—look! When he hangs out with Fielding, he plays video games and drinks energy drinks instead of clubbing till the wee hours! And James gets some alone time with Casper Harvey, the aforementioned other closeted B-lister. What really sold me on it, though, was this: it’s the kind of thing that college students do on TV. I don’t know if it’s what they do in real life, but it makes me feel kind of collegiate, which keeps the full-time-student dream closer.

Yeah, so this is the big thing James and I have in common: we both have secret lives. Which is probably why we’ve come to be friends even though our friendship began as a publicity stunt. People think I’m secretly gay because I can sing and dance. Also, I do think some people might somehow get that my public canoodling with Charlie isn’t completely on the level, and they assume this means it’s a cover for
my
homosexuality.

James, on the other hand, is thought to be an insatiable womanizer and nightclubbing party machine. Despite the fact that, at nineteen, he’s technically too young to get into clubs, he likes to get photographed leaving them with two girls at three in the morning; he’s got permanent stubble and tousled hair; he couldn’t sing if his life depended on it (as we discovered when we all played Rock Band for a couple hours before James and Casper’s alone time a few months ago); and he and Casper are completely, cutely, disgustingly in love.

I don’t mean disgusting like, “Ew, gross, they’re guys”—I do work in Hollywood after all—I just mean disgusting like as soon as we get back to James’s place, they get goofy and hand-holdy and start calling each other Snuggles. Yes. Now it can be told. James Linden, indie film stud and sex symbol to bespectacled college girls everywhere, calls Casper Harvey Snuggles.

I don’t know why they don’t just live together and pretend they’re bad-boy roommates. And I don’t know why the Xbox tournament is strictly necessary, but James’s agent says having a boys’ club that he hangs out with helps James sell the public on the idea that he’s heterosexual. In any case, it beats the hell out of playing Xbox by myself, and it is nice to hang out with people besides Charlie. It probably gives me enough of a break to keep playing the role of her boyfriend.

Whatever the case, now we’re outside the apartment occupied by Devin, who plays the oldest son on a sitcom on the CW that even his mom doesn’t watch. James is honking the horn and my phone buzzes.
Jo,
my phone reads. Less than a year ago, before she went back to Cincinnati to devote her time to my little sister’s gymnastics career, Mom put me in the care of an agent who appeared warm and folksy. Jo is about as warm and folksy as a cobra, but she did put on a good show during the time when Mom was here. Now that Mom’s gone, the show is over.

“Yeah, Jo?”

“Fielding. Can you explain this Twitter stream I’m following? I saw a picture of you with a bosomy blonde leaning into your side of a convertible.”
Bosomy,
she says. Like she’s my grandma, though she’s only forty.

“Fans, Jo. You know, they want—”

“I guess I’m just wondering why you’re not at the farmer’s market with Charlie getting the script shot.”

“Well, I ran into James, and he invited me over to play Xbox.”

“What about the shot?”

“Well, I figured—”

She gives a deep, heavy sigh. “Fielding. I had assistants making that fake script all day yesterday. I’ve got a call with the network first thing in the morning, which is why we needed to get those pictures out today. The negotiations are at a critical period, and I need you on board with our strategy. We talked about this, Field. I can’t understand why you would sabotage yourself like this.”

“Charlie’s there with the script, I gave her sunflowers—”

“But you didn’t get the shot.”

“No. I guess not.”

There’s a long silence. Devin climbs into the backseat and fist-bumps both of us, and the car is moving again. Off to pick up Snuggles.

“Fielding. This is a very, very delicate time in the negotiations. I am going to need you to cooperate. You have to help me help you.”

“Okay.”

“Call Charlie. You guys need a romantic dinner out.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jo!”

“Field. Do you want my help here? I know you’ve been very good about saving your money, but I also know everybody’s investments are in the toilet right now. My 401(k) isn’t even worth 200K anymore.” She waits for a laugh, and I give a little chuckle, though daily repetition hasn’t improved this joke. “You need to work, I need you to work, and I think we’ve got at least one more season on the gravy train. Then I promise I will get you that indie comedy you want right after Season Five wraps. Okay?”

“Okay.” Just one more season. Twenty episodes. Less than a year of my life until my life becomes mine. It doesn’t seem too much to ask for—after all, I’ll still be eighteen. The age when normal people graduate high school. I can go to college and be one of them. Except I’ll never have to go work for people I hate doing stuff I hate like Dad did. If I can just pull off one more season of this.

“So call Charlie, will you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I’ve got stuff to say—the hell with you, the hell with Charlie, the hell with
Teen Scene
magazine, the hell with all of it. I don’t say this, though. I may be an animal in a cage, but Dad was a cog in a machine for twenty-five years and he’s got exactly nothing to show for it. I can be a caged animal for one more season.

“Good boy.” I feel like she has just patted me on my head and given me a liver treat.

And the phone goes dead. I call Charlie, who informs me that Martinka tore her a new one and tells me when and where we’re having dinner. Just as a gag, I ask, “What am I having?”

Charlie doesn’t seem to get that I’m busting her chops. “You’ll get the lemon chicken with couscous and seltzer from the bar, not mineral water in the bottle on the table.”

I snort. “See you there.”

She hangs up without saying good-bye.

“Sorry, everybody,” I say to the car.

We pick up Snuggles, go buy
Extreme Robo-Football 3
, enough energy drinks and salty snacks to keep us wide awake and chap-lipped for a week, and head back to James’s house.

The Xbox 360 tournament is unremarkable except that I actually win a game of
Extreme Robo-Football 3
against Casper, the Xbox king of young Hollywood. That and Devin is texting constantly, saying he’s up for a part in the new Tarantino movie. Right before James and Casper retreat to the second floor, Devin says, “Yo, J”—Devin, a white kid, affects hip-hop slang in his personal life—“my sidekick is dying, yo. C’I check my e-mail on your computer, yo? I’ma hit up that casting director on AIM.”

“Go nuts,” James says and disappears up the stairs.

Devin installs himself in front of the computer, leaving me holding my controller and looking at the pause screen of
Extreme Robo-Football 3
. It’s not much of a one-player game. I’d grab a book off the shelf to read but, of course, this being James’s place, there are no bookshelves and no books. Just “media.”

But, this being James’s place, there is a deck with a chair that looks out at the ocean. I ease into the chair, close my eyes, and listen as the white noise of the traffic easing by blends with the white noise of the surf, and before I know it I fall into a dreamless sleep.

I wake up a while later feeling happy, hopeful, and refreshed. Maybe I just haven’t been sleeping enough. Late at night is the only time that feels like mine, so I guess maybe I stretch it out too much.

“Hey!” I say as I open the glass sliders and enter the living room. The TV is off and Devin is not here. “Hello?” I look at the clock on the microwave: it’s apparently six fifteen, and I’m supposed to meet Charlie at seven. I’m in someone else’s house, unshowered and not dressed for having romantic dinner shots taken. And I don’t have a car.

I call up the stairs, but there’s no answer from either of the Snuggleses. And the Porsche is not in the driveway. Great.

I borrow a bike, ride the two miles to my place, throw on some free clothes that one of the lines I do ads for sent over, and go meet Charlie at À la Maison, the new French-Moroccan place with the maître d’ in the red fez. Sadly, there are no belly dancers. A photo of me showing any interest at all in a belly dancer would be bad for the image. It’s seven ten when I arrive, and Charlie’s wearing a smile that looks like she wants to spit nails at me.

“Ten minutes late, snookums,” she says. “People saw me standing there all alone and think there’s a problem. That’s how rumors start.” Instead of sitting across from me, she sidles up next to me.

“Then gimme some tongue, baby,” I say, pulling her in close for a deep kiss that has all the passion of a trip to the dental hygienist. My particular dental hygienist is a very attractive young woman, so the analogy holds: I know this is just professional, not personal, but it’s kind of arousing anyway.

She does a great “almost overwhelmed by passion” face when she pulls away. I know it’s disgust she’s almost overwhelmed by, but I have to give her props. She is really good at acting like someone who’s in love with me. So good that I almost fell for it once. Okay, twice. But those were embarrassing incidents I’d rather not talk about.

I order what Charlie told me to, the preserved-lemon chicken with couscous. Charlie knows I’m a vegetarian but makes me order meat whenever she does. She has outlined five reasons for this, but I always stop listening at reason two. I just pick around whatever the dead beast is. Jo likes this, too—she’s afraid that revealing what I really eat will make me seem “too crunchy” and make middle America distrust and hate me.