Not in the Script (4 page)

My first big purchase was this town house, and even Dad agreed that it was a good investment. It smells like wet paint, new carpet, and an apple-cinnamon candle, which Rachel brought along as a housewarming gift. I'd asked her to help me move because I knew three days of shopping and organizing with my mom would likely lead to all sorts of stupid arguments, and Rachel is always a good buffer between us.

Mom has to be here because, according to her, I have no idea what kind of stuff I need to “set up an actual household.” She also doesn't want me living out of boxes for the next several months,
so we're trying to get everything put away in its proper place—wherever
that
is—before the weekend is over. And Mom was the one who got the utilities up and running, like the water, electric, city services, and the security system. She was actually right about me having no clue how to do any of that. But I probably could've handled the rest of it.

I jump off the sofa and reopen the blinds to let the sunshine back in.

Immediately out my window is a patch of prickly pear cacti. The plants have round padded leaves with needles that I wouldn't want to mess with, but they aren't nearly as impressive as the gigantic arms of the saguaro cactus. Saguaros are everywhere and as big as trees. The landscape here is seriously cool, except for the rocks that are used in place of grass. I'll miss the smell of a freshly mown lawn.

“I wouldn't call this place a desert,” I tell my mom. “With all the trees they've planted on this property—and the waterfall at the pool—it's more like an
oasis
.”

“I suppose,” she replies. “But just so you're aware, there's an eight-inch lizard on your front porch.” Mom says this as if it will send me running back to Arkansas. “And look, there's another one.”

“Then you see? I'll be fine. I already have friends.”

Rachel joins us at the window, and we all watch the brown gangly creatures scurry over the concrete, going no place in particular.

“Great,” Rachel says. “I'm being replaced by two lizards who eat bugs, can't talk, and lose a limb whenever you frighten them.”

“Nobody's perfect,” I reply. “But I bet I can teach them to play fetch.”

Rachel puts on a pout. “Then they
will
become your new best friends, because you know how bad
I
am at sports.”

“Says the girl who almost won the hula hoop contest in the third grade!” I remind her.

She sighs and leans her head against my shoulder. “Darn that Jenny Perkins and her supernatural hips.”

I give Rachel a tight, supportive squeeze. “I heard that her hips were actually mechanical and made of gold. Who could compete with
that
?”

My mom laughs, which is a nice break from her usual glares of disapproval. That is, until she says, “You two should try to act like grown-ups once in a while. You might like it.”

Rachel scrunches up her face. “I did try it once—a few summers ago—but it gave me hives. I think I'm allergic.”

Dang, I love this girl.

Rachel and I are always at our best when we're goofing around, like we did all the time before tabloids, audition opportunities, and award-show swag bags began to dominate our conversations. I realize we can't make jokes about hula hoops and lizards forever, but couldn't we somehow return to … a better balance?

Mom's phone rings, so I tell her Rachel and I will be finishing up the boxes in my bedroom, and we head for the stairs.

“Holy crap, Emma,” Rachel says as soon as she sees what I'd already accomplished on my own. “It's like a giant marshmallow exploded in your room. What's with all the
white
?”

“Oh,” I reply, having earlier thought the room felt perfectly calm and peaceful this way. But now that I look at it as a whole, I get what she's saying. So far I have a white four-poster queen bed with matching dressers, a white eyelet comforter set, and no kidding, swooping white curtains. I must have been in one of my
clean-freak moods when I bought it all online. “I'll have to add ‘brightly colored, fluffy pillows' to my shopping list.”

“Yeah, that and a few new posters of Brett!” she says with a playful nudge. “I saw some seriously delicious ones the other day.”

I'm sure she did, but she still isn't getting how desperate I am to desensitize myself to the
actual
, seriously delicious Brett. I'll be working with him in just five days.

“But why would I need
that
view when I already have this one?” I ask, and throw open my bedroom curtains to expose the gorgeous mountain range out my window. I had expected it to be totally flat here and covered by nothing but dirt and sagebrush. And, yes, there's plenty of that in Tucson—and it feels like the sun is a million miles closer than anywhere else I've ever been—but here in Sabino Canyon, I'm a full twenty minutes away from the hot pavement of the city center. I even have a river out my back door. “Check out that sunset!”

“Wow,” Rachel breathes. “It looks like someone smeared orange sorbet across the sky. I have
got
to capture this on film.”

Rachel has been getting into photography this summer and she's a real natural at it. She mostly just uses her phone to take photos of whatever inspires her, but then she manipulates them in ways that make them look like stunning digital art. Some of the so-called snapshots she's taken of me are better than magazine covers I've been on.

Her Twitter feed, which used to just be a constant stream of her latest thoughts on casting news, tabloid rumors, movies, and television shows, is now peppered with professional-quality images that she presents as perfect shooting locations for this or that upcoming film, or ideal mood-setting shots, such as this sunset. She's even chronicled my move to Tucson, which has been half-fun,
half-annoying, but her followers have doubled this past week, so I'm okay with it. They'll soon see that there's much more than boring old me to stick around for.

“Marshmallows, ‘seriously delicious,' and now orange sorbet?” I ask Rachel. “Either you didn't eat enough today, or your sweet tooth is acting up.”

“Definitely hungry again. Didn't I also say that I wanted to eat bugs?”

I laugh. “I thought you were talking about the
lizards
doing that.”

She considers this. “Oh yeah.” She takes a few shots of the sunset from my window, says she can't see enough of it from this view, then races for the door. “I'm gonna be a while!”

With photos on my mind, I decide to start unpacking my big box of pictures. I unwrap the first frame to find a photo of Rachel and me in the English countryside last summer. We're standing in the color-infused flower garden behind William Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and smiling like we'd found our motherland. I'd had a movie premiere in London earlier that week—for a historical-novel adaptation that I wished I could've lived in forever—so Mom let me splurge and bring Rachel along. The two of us spoke to each other in perky British accents the entire week, and my mother wanted to toss us into the Thames.

It was my favorite vacation ever.

We spent our days visiting dozens of sites that totally blew my mind, and at night we went to play after play in London's West End, and were awestruck by the quality of the acting.

I doubt I could ever perform live like that. I love that if I mess up on film, the director just says, “Cut! Go again!” and I can fix my mistake as if it never happened.

How great would that be in real life?

The next picture I unwrap is of my family. Levi and Logan, who are seven now, grin back at me with half their front teeth missing. I was an only child for over ten years, and I'm pretty sure my parents had meant to keep it that way. But whenever I get homesick, my brothers are almost always the reason. My heart twists a little, wishing they were here.

I unwrap the next frame, but it's the paper, rather than the picture, that catches my attention. Rachel packed some of these boxes for me, and although I'm grateful she sacrificed some of her tabloid collection to use as packing material, I notice the publication date on this particular issue of
Celebrity Seeker
and feel a stab in my side: March.

Everything about last spring was … ugh.

I tear through the rest of the box anyway and find the cover:
EMMA LOSES TROY TO SAND SIREN
. I never actually read this article, so I open the pages and force myself to do it:

Poor, poor Emma Taylor. Her eyes are probably red and swollen today after learning that yet another one of her boyfriends has cheated on her. Troy Dawson, her beau of six months, was seen at the Santa Monica Pier this past weekend wrapped around another beauty in a barely there bikini.

“He definitely wasn't trying to hide anything,” reported an onlooker. “It was hard to tell whose hands were whose.”

This shameless display in broad daylight supports recent rumors that the superstar relationship is on the rocks. “It's about time Troy moved on,” said a friend of the young actor. “Emma is impossible to keep happy.”

Another source claims she saw Taylor and Dawson arguing at a party the night before his fling on the beach.
“I could hear Troy screaming at Emma over the music. She kept trying to calm him down and saying that they should leave.”

This isn't the first time Taylor has attempted to curb a boyfriend's appetite for wild parties. It also isn't the first time she's failed to curb a guy's appetite for other women. “For whatever reason, Emma can't keep a guy faithful,” said a Hollywood insider. “And having three boyfriends in a row cheat on her, she's gotta be wondering if she's the problem, not them.”

The conflict has yet to reach the boiling point. Taylor and Dawson still have another month of filming before their television series,
The First Family
, wraps for good. Heartthrob Dawson was brought on to play a love interest for Taylor's character this season, likely to distract viewers from the real-life drama taking place behind the scenes between another Hollywood couple.

That's when I stop reading because my eyes are burning, and I refuse to cry even one more tear over Troy Dawson. The story is right about us arguing the night before he cheated on me, but I wasn't trying to “curb his appetite” for anything. That particular night, another guy—who was one of my
Mountain Home
costars—gave me a big hug when he saw me. And then we had talked … too long, and too friendly, and too everything for Troy. He had acted overly possessive a couple of times before, but that night was the first time he yelled at me.

I knew I wanted out right then, but I decided to cool things off slowly to draw less attention to the breakup. My apology—explaining
how I knew the other guy, and that he was
ten years
older than me—wasn't enough, though, and Troy thought he could teach me a lesson by showing up on a full-page tabloid cover, playing his own version of Twister on the beach.

That was nothing compared to what followed.

I refused to take him back, so for weeks after we broke up he left creepy phone messages, saying he was watching everything I did, and he proved it by listing specific places I'd been. Then after his last day of work on
The First Family
, he chased me for over an hour, with me darting my car in and out of crazy L.A. traffic. I thought I'd ditched him, but when I returned to my aunt's house, he was waiting in the driveway.

I unrolled my window just an inch to try to defuse the situation, but he immediately started swearing at me, saying how stupid I was being, that I had started all this by flirting with other guys. “Come on, Emma. Get out. Let's talk,” he said, finally in a calmer tone. But he'd held my arms so tightly before we left the studio, I could already see bruises forming. So I was scared to unlock the door.

That's when he tried to put his fist through my window.

There was blood all over the broken glass, but I backed up and sped off again, too shocked and horrified to consider how badly he'd hurt himself. And I haven't seen him since.

I sometimes wonder if he's more freaked out about what he did than I am.

I realize I should've filed a restraining order, but I still can't get past what feels like the
equal
threat of the media. Even now, tabloids would slap together whatever pieces of the puzzle they could find, filling in the missing details with pure, tantalizing fiction. They would dig up photos of me looking weepy, terrified, or
both—
poor, poor Emma
. And they would splash my face across every cover for weeks, alongside photos of Troy looking cruel and menacing. But they would likely have to pull those from acting clips, since Troy so rarely shows that side of himself in public.

He's always the charmer. Always the guy every girl wants.

Exactly the type of guy I'm fooled by.

“Emma,” Mom says from the doorway, making me jolt and scramble to my feet. She eyes me suspiciously. “The studio just called. Brett Crawford has a conflict with his appointment with the costume department next Monday, so he'll be there during
your
time tomorrow morning. I just thought I should warn you.”

What?
No way.

“Let's reschedule,” I reply. “I think I'm getting sick, and I'll probably be worse in the morning. My hands are shaking. See?”

They really are.

“We've been through this Brett thing—you're over him, remember?” she says. “And you'll have to meet him in a few days anyway. It might as well be tomorrow.”

Why? So she can be there to stop me from swooning?

I fall back onto my bed like dead weight. “It isn't Brett,” I reply, because it isn't, not really. I shouldn't have read that article, a stabbing reminder that being in the “public eye” gives tabloids the legal right to share my every mistake, mishap, and humiliation with the world, for the sake of
entertainment
. “I just suddenly feel like crap.”