Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance (5 page)

Before I even put the phone down, it buzzes again. “Oh, what now?” I ask aloud and click to find out.
MOB SCENE. WORSE THAN SYDNEY. PREPARE YOURSELF.

“I have to go,” I tell Nicki. “My agent’s coming for you—really. She’s outside. But I can’t … I just …” My lungs can’t fill with enough air. A hive of trouble outside, all waiting to pluck at me, dissect me, shove microphones in my face, asking the same questions over and over again: “Where’s Fielding? Is it true? What will happen to Jenna and Jonah?”

As though I know any of the answers.

6
SECRET AGENT MAN

Fielding

My James Bond act is the dumbest thing I have ever thought of. Which makes it kind of weird that it works. I know I’m supposed to be mad—my world is collapsing and all that stuff—but I’m having a hell of a time.

Before we even got out of the restaurant, I was on the phone with my parents, explaining to Mom that, no, I’m not gay, I just have gay friends, which I guess to them had as much credibility as the old “I didn’t, but some other people at the party did” excuse, because Dad chimed in with “Son, I knew it at your first talent show. We’ll always love you no matter what.” I guess it was a mistake for me to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” but—what the hell—I was seven years old.

“Charlie!” some photographer yelled. “How’s it feel to be the beard?”

Charlie responded by kissing me deeply and passionlessly and squeezing a part of me she normally doesn’t have access to as though it was the cliff she was clinging to for dear life. Or dear career, anyway.

We parted, and I went home, having to go through a phalanx—power SAT word number forty-two!—of photographers to get into my house. The phone was ringing nonstop. I took the first seven calls from Jo, but I ended up just turning the phone off after she told me I had to make personal calls to the fan club presidents in twelve countries telling them that the rumors are false.

I went to bed instead.

And then I got up and looked out my window. Phalanx. Swarm. Mob. Turned on my phone—twenty-five new voice mails, a hundred text messages. I didn’t check them.

I did call James, though. “Hey,” I said. “How are you doing?”

“I feel great,” he said. “Do you have any idea how freaking fantastic it feels to not have to live a lie anymore?”

I sighed. Nope. I told James I’d call him later.

I needed a pick-me-up, so I called Jo and set my plan in motion. One of Jo’s assistants, Ryan, drove over to my house with a box. He then left in my car, and the jackals followed him.

I emerged fifteen minutes later in a Dodgers cap and the maintenance uniform I had Ryan bring over. It’s five miles to the studio from my apartment and, this being Southern California, it’s a beautiful day—seventy-six degrees and sunny. I had a great bike ride and got all the way to the studio door unnoticed. I pressed my key card against the security pad, and I was in. And still invisible.

I enjoyed being invisible so much that I kept it up, walking past all my coworkers without even getting glanced at. I have to say it was really nice.

So here I am, next to the studio door with Charlie and The Contest Winner, whose name I don’t know and who is too young for me and who will most likely hate me when she finds out that I’m secretly gay and my romance with Charlie is a lie. Or that I’m not secretly gay but everything with Charlie is untrue.

“Excuse me, miss,” I say to The Contest Winner. “Are you sure your tour’s complete?”

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” she says, then looks under the Dodgers cap. “Oh. My. GOD! Jo— Fielding!”

I put my finger up to my lips. “Yeah, I’m kind of going incognito here,” I say, smiling. I look at Charlie. She’s looking terrified of the sounds of the hungry sharks outside the door. “What’s up, sweetie?” I say to Charlie and plant a big kiss on her just because I’m pretty sure she’ll be horrified at the idea of kissing a maintenance guy.

“Oh my God, you guys are so cute,” The Contest Winner says. “I just hope I can find a relationship like yours one day.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Charlie says into my ear. I smile at her—a genuine smile. We’ve got our misery in common, anyway.

“So,” I say to The Contest Winner, “we’re going to do a Great Escape number here. Do you wanna come?”

“You mean … I mean, well, the studio has a car taking me back to my hotel.”

“Cool. Where you staying?”

“Disneyland Grand Californian. We added a few days on to the trip because my little brother really wanted to go to Disneyland, and since, like, when are we ever going to be in Southern California again, well—”

“Anaheim. Awesome. It’s perfect. Like really, completely, totally perfect.”

“Field, honey,” Charlie says, smiling. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, Charlie dear,” I say and lean closer to her, “I know you were busy escorting— I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Nicki Kenny.”

“—Nicki around, but today’s shooting has been canceled. I think the network execs have a major case of mad about the fake script. Or possibly a case of ‘Oh my God, Fielding is gay!’–itis.”

“You’re gay?” Nicki says.

“No, I just—”

“That’s cool. My cousin’s gay. We go to high school together. He’s in drama, too. You guys would probably be cute together. So, like, the hugging and kissing and stuff, that’s just like a cover because you’re afraid America won’t accept the real you?”

“That’s it, pretty much,” I say. Charlie is grinding her heel into my toe trying to get me to shut up, but now that I’ve tasted freedom, I’m not going back in my cage. “So, anyway, Nicki, Charlie and I have no work today and we’re being stalked by evil paparazzi. So we’re going to escape in disguise and maybe go hide at your hotel for a while. Does that sound okay?”

“Oh my God. That is like the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard. How you have to hide the real you. I mean, I totally get it, of course. But, yeah, of course I want to do the Great Escape. It sounds awesome! But are you guys, like—are you allowed at Disneyland?”

Everybody knows the Family Network doesn’t like the Mouse. It’s not in our contracts or anything, but Charlie and I know very well we’re not to be photographed on Disney property, seeing one of their movies, or pretty much acknowledging the existence of the Mouse in any way. Which means nobody will be looking for us at one of their hotels.

“No,” Charlie says. “We are not.” She’s giving me the look of death I’ve grown so familiar with.

“Yeah, sure we are,” I say.

“No,” she says. “We’re not.” And then she stops pretending to be nice in front of our guest. Nicki’s going to have a hell of a story for her blog. “Dammit, Fielding, we are not going to go set foot on Disney property! We may as well announce that we don’t want to work anymore! We may as well just tear up our contracts, and maybe you’re that irresponsible, but I was born into this business and I know how it works and what you do and what you simply don’t do. And one of the things you simply don’t do is infuriate your employer at a delicate time! Call Jo and ask her!”

“Yeah, I’m kind of not taking her calls right now.” I turn to Nicki. “I’m really sorry. Looks like we won’t be able to escape to the Magic Kingdom after all. Do you know where Candi’s office is? The producer who, unless I miss my guess, escorted you in here?”

“Down the hall to the left?”

“Yeah. Go tell her you’re ready for the car to the hotel. And have a great time at Disneyland.”

“Thanks!” I kiss her on the cheek—since I’m gay now, I can do something like that without it seeming creepy—and send her blushing down the hall.

As soon as she’s out of sight, Charlie turns on me. “ ‘Unless I miss my guess’? Is there another seventeen-year-old in America who says stuff like that?”

“Hey, baby, I told you I’m not like the other guys.” I flash my best charming grin, the one I use at all the teen magazine photo shoots.

Charlie hits me on the arm. Kind of hard.

“Ow!” I shout.

“Toughen up, Denise. Now we have to think. What the hell are we going to do? This is a crisis! We have to get out of sight! But there’s nowhere for us to go!”

“Well. First you have to get a uniform. As much as it pains me to do this, I’m gonna have to call Jo.”

“ ‘
As much as it pains me
’? Is it, like, you being pretentious, or is it you being weird?”

“Do I have to choose? Can’t I be pretentious
and
weird? And sex
ay
?”

“Yeah, listen. I don’t care what that bimbo in the green bikini thought, but talking like that is definitely not sex
ay
.”

So Charlie was searching Twitter for pictures of me. Purely for professional reasons, I guess. “Me call Jo now,” I grunt, caveman style. “If can figure out how use phone. Girl always on phone. Maybe can help.”

Charlie smiles. “It’s actually an improvement.”

I hit number one on my speed dial and Jo picks up before the phone even rings.

“Jesus, Fielding, you have to answer your phone sometimes. How am I supposed to manage a crisis if you’re out of touch? This is really not helpful!”

“Okay. Um … thanks for the uniform and the car and stuff. I need another favor so we can get out of sight.”

“Well, at least you’re talking sense. You guys need to be completely off the radar for at least a week or until some drunken singer gets out of a limo with no underwear on, whichever comes first.”

“So, early this afternoon?”

“Hilarious. What do you need?”

I tell her, and then add, “Uh, and we need a place to stay. Like, I don’t know, somewhere out of the way where nobody’s gonna look for us. But somewhere we can drive to, since we can’t really go to an airport. It’s not like we can check in to the Hotel Bel-Air and camp out.”

There’s a long silence. “Fielding, remember where half your money is?”

“In your fleet of Lexuses?”

“Funny,” she deadpans. “No, real estate.” I hear tapping on a keyboard. “Okay. How does a beach house in Carpinteria sound? You’ve owned it for a year, and it’s currently without tenants. My notes here say it needs some work.”

“Who among us doesn’t?”

“Great. Now you’re a philosopher. I’ll have Ryan bring keys. Call me when you get there and I’ll keep you updated.”

I have to give it to her. She delivers. Or, more accurately, one of her assistants, Ryan, delivers. Again. He shows up in about an hour—an hour we’ve spent cowering in the greenroom for
Stacey’s Sorcery for Girls!
, another Family Network production, about a teen witch at a boarding school, and which the Family Network lawyers will tell you is nothing like any other show or series of books about teen wizards.

“Hey, Fielding,” Ryan says.

“Ryan,” I say. “ ’Sup.”

“Thanks for getting me out of the office. She’s a complete nightmare today.”

“I can only imagine. Sorry about that.”

“Eh, I knew what I was signing up for. Here are your keys, here’s Charlie’s uniform, and the van is outside.”

“Great. I’ll get Candi to call a car to get you back to the office,” I tell him.

“No worries. I packed my bike in the back of the van.”

“It’ll take you an hour and a half to bike back to your office!”

“Yeah, if I’m lucky,” he says, smiling, and disappears.

“Here,” I say, handing the uniform to Charlie.

She unfolds it, looks at it, and says, “No. No. Fielding, what if I get photographed in this?” Charlie twists her hair into some kind of knot and scratches her eyebrows, which she always does on camera and I’m only just now realizing maybe it’s something she does normally.

“See, the whole idea is that nobody would ever look for you in this because they know you’d never wear it, so we can get out of here without being photographed.”

Charlie glares at me and stalks off to her dressing room.

And half an hour later, we cruise right past the overwhelming paparazzi—all eighty-something of them—in our blue coveralls and climb into a bright yellow van with KOLODNY BROS. RUG SUCKERS—WE CLEAN YOUR CARPETS RIGHT! on the side.

Charlie pops her Bluetooth headset into her ear and talks nonstop to her agent about strategy, about what an idiot I am, about how she wants Martinka to handle the network, and about what an idiot I am. After about an hour, we make a pit stop. Well, I do, anyway. Charlie is afraid of gas station convenience store cameras recording her in coveralls, so she is doing her camel imitation, staying in the van. I make my way inside, use the bathroom, and buy us a couple of drinks—this being California, even the gas station convenience store has Purest Water for Charlie. Nobody notices me. The tabloids at the counter are several days old and still about some other celebrity couple, one of whom may have had a “Naughty Night with the Nanny!” Soon that’ll be me and Charlie on the cover of all those tabloids.