Tangled (9 page)

SKYE’S STORY

This afternoon, I asked my mom if I could give her a blowjob. She shrugged and said sure. I pressed my lips together and glanced at her crotch. We both paused for a moment. Then she tapped her script against the edge of the table, smiled at me, and said, “I think you’ve got it.”

We’d been through the scene fifteen times already, a few where I gazed romantically into my mom’s eyes and one where I flipped my hair bitchily over my shoulders. In the end, we decided this character would be all about the crotch.

It was a racy week for auditions. Earlier today, when my mom read the breakdowns that Janet emailed us, she called my manager and said, “Skye’s a prostitute for one night and now everyone thinks she’s a slut?”

A week ago, the independent movie I shot last fall had its television debut. I played a runaway teen who trades sex for crack. It aired on Wednesday evening in sixteen million homes and, all of a sudden, everyone and their doorman was freaking out about how they’d seen me on TV. I’d been stopped once in Starbucks, twice at the gym, and once when I was buying moisturizer at L’Occitane. People seemed surprised I wasn’t wearing stiletto boots and skintight jeans. Even so, they asked for my autograph and pulled out their phones to take pictures with me.

And then, first thing this morning, Janet told us to clear the decks, that I’ve got two auditions tomorrow. Her assistant at Talent, Inc., emailed us the breakdowns and the sides. That’s what they call scenes in the business. I was taking a shower, so my mom printed them out. I wrapped up in a towel and we read the new sides as we sat on the edge of my bed, my wet curls dripping onto my shoulders. The first audition was for a show where I’d play a boarding-school slut who goes down on every guy in New England. The other is a full-length feature by an up-and-coming writer-director. I’d heard about Pete Fesenden on the industry blogs. Everyone was saying his short swept Sundance this year. Janet told us I’d be auditioning for a lead role in his film,
a fifteen-year-old girl who is having an affair with a business associate of her father’s.

“Well,” my mom said, rubbing my back dry with a towel.

Then she picked up the phone and called Janet. As I got dressed, they launched into this conversation about my slut potential and whether, now that I’m seventeen, it’d work to my advantage to turn up the sex appeal. I’ve been auditioning since I was ten and, other than the crackhead, I’ve always booked wholesome parts. I’m half-Brazilian and half-Caucasian, so I tend to get cast as the adorably multicultural girl-next-door. Or I guess I should say
used to
get cast. I’ve had a dry run for a while now, haven’t gotten a serious nibble since last Thanksgiving.

I was pulling on some yoga pants when my mom motioned for me to grab my phone, that she was going to conference me in. We sat next to each other, listening, as Janet reassured us that the slut thing wasn’t a trend, that she was most likely going to line up a squeaky clean audition next week. As she talked, my mom and I were nodding. We both know we can trust Janet. We’ve been working with Talent, Inc., since the beginning, when I was plucked out of my ballet class and invited to model.

“Skye, honey,” Janet said in her hoarse smoker’s voice, “these are some meaty roles.”

My mom looked over at me. “What do you think?”

“They’re mature,” Janet said. “They have huge potential.” She paused before adding, “It may be just what you need, a change of pace from the usual.”

Neither my mom nor Janet said anything, but I knew they were thinking the same thing, that maybe this would get me out of my rut, keep my career from coming to a screeching halt.

“But are you comfortable doing them?” my mom finally asked.

“They sound interesting,” I said. “Especially the Pete Fesenden film.”

“What about you, Luce?” Janet asked my mom. “Are you okay with it?”

“If Skye’s okay, I’m okay,” my mom said.

“Great!” Janet said. “So call me with questions. I’m around all day. And as I said, I think this is just what Skye needs.”

After we hung up, I rubbed moisturizer onto my hands and glanced out the window. It was almost nine. I could see a few younger kids scurrying across Central Park West in their plaid uniforms. It was weird to think that today was a school day, that everyone was
in class at Bentley Prep. I’d been there since kindergarten, but I left in April. If I’d stayed, I would have gone to the prom last Saturday. As it is, I spent the weekend at our house in Sag Harbor, where I ran on the beach and watched movies and didn’t talk to a soul except my mom. If I don’t book any big jobs, I’m set to take the GED exam in August, which will land me with the equivalent of a high-school diploma.

“Which one do you want to start with?” My mom set down her phone and took a squirt of my hand cream. “The boarding-school show or the film?”

“How about the boarding-school blowjob one,” I said drily. “We can work up to real sex by afternoon.”

My mom groaned. We always practice my lines together. Sometimes we take time to discuss the character. Other times we dive right in and then she’ll give me notes later. After seven years of auditioning, we’ve done practically everything. She’s confessed that she’s addicted to pain medication. I’ve told her to fuck herself. She’s said she has two months left to live. This winter, we had two scandalous scenes in the same night, one where I was going to murder her and one where she was going to murder me. After that, she poured us some chardonnay and we collapsed onto the couch, decompressing.

Back when I was at Bentley, my mom and I had this joke that we did sides before homework. It was sort of true. Sometimes, I’d be on my way home from school when my mom would call and say, “Janet got us an audition tomorrow morning.” I’d jump in a cab and we’d spend the next few hours practicing. It’s not like my mom let me slack off at school, but she never nagged me. Granted, half the time I’d be scribbling my homework assignments in the waiting room of a casting office.

“Living room in five minutes?” my mom asked, collecting the pages and heading across my room.

“Sounds good,” I said.

My mom reached the doorway and then turned and studied my T-shirt and yoga pants. “If you’re going to be a slut, you should dress more provocatively. Something to get you in the mood. How about that lacy camisole? And remember those red shorts you wore to the prostitute audition last fall?”

I grinned at my mom. “You
so
want my body.”

My mom rolled her eyes and headed down the hall. As soon as she was gone, I turned toward my closet and let the smile slide off my face.
You so want my body
. That’s something I would have said last year, and I genuinely would have laughed about it. Now I was
reciting the lines, grinning the grins, but I wasn’t feeling it.

What other choice did I have?
I thought as I pulled off my T-shirt and wriggled into a slinky black camisole, adjusting my boobs so the right amount of cleavage was exposed. Most days it seemed like if I stopped going through the motions I was as good as dead.

In case it’s not obvious, I’m one of those rich, privileged, New York City kids that the rest of the world loves to hate. I had an Italian tutor when I was two. Etiquette classes at four. Broadway dancers performing for my birthday parties and, later, professional aestheticians on hand at my sleepovers. I’ve always had the right clothes and the right shoes and the right friends and, basically, whatever I wanted five minutes before I wanted it.

I’m the perfect storm of overindulged offspring. I’m an only child. My mom lives off a trust fund from her oil tycoon grandfather so we have all the money in the world and she doesn’t have to work to get it. And there’s no boyfriend or husband to siphon away her cash or attention.

My dad died before I was born. From what my mom has told me, it was this tragically magnificent love
story. His name was Andres Oliveira and he was an artist from Brazil. He came to New York for a year on a painting fellowship and my mom met him at his gallery opening. They fell in love and she got pregnant but then he went back to São Paulo and died in a motorcycle accident. All we have now are some framed photos of him around the apartment, and one of his paintings hangs in our foyer. We don’t talk about him much, but sometimes I catch my mom looking at the painting and I imagine she’s thinking about him, wondering how things would have been different if he’d lived. As it is, I don’t know a word of Portuguese. And my only relatives are my mom’s family. They live in Texas and hate the East Coast, so we have to go out there if we want to see them.

That’s probably why my mom and I are so close. My acting made us even closer. For the past seven years, she’s accompanied me to everything—auditions, classes, headshots, taping, more classes, more auditions, another round of headshots. In a way, acting takes over your life. All through junior high and high school, when my friends were blowing off their afternoons in Central Park, I was practicing lines, auditioning, being rejected ninety-nine percent of the time, occasionally booking a role. When I wasn’t audi
tioning or working, I was taking singing lessons. I was doing tap and ballet and Pilates. And then, every Saturday morning, I had my on-camera class. I did that for three years, at the Ron Clarkson Studio in the west twenties. Ron’s a well-known acting coach. Now I only see him one-on-one if I have a complex audition. At first, Ron had me in the teen class, then he graduated me to the adult one. Basically, it was a bunch of us sitting in a circle. We’d do scenes in front of a camcorder, and then we’d watch the footage and Ron would give us notes, how to improve our skills and how to use the camera to maximize our looks. My mom used to wait for me at a restaurant across the street from the studio. When I met her afterward, I’d be so wiped from the emotion I’d just want to sleep. Other times I’d cry the entire car ride home while she petted my hair and said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Of course I wanted to do it. There’s no way to describe the exhilaration of being on set, all made-up and in costume, playing someone else for a few hours or days or weeks. All these directors and producers and costars cooing about how you’re so beautiful and mature and talented. Not to mention that the kids at school thought the acting thing was incredibly cool. I never bragged about it, but word spread around
Bentley. I could tell in the way people were always complimenting my clothes, laughing at whatever I said. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I never had a problem making friends or getting guys interested in me.

In a nutshell, my life has been relatively perfect. Until last Christmas when, all of a sudden, it wasn’t anymore.

By late afternoon, my mom was back on the phone with Janet. I’d memorized all my lines for tomorrow and I’d watched clips of Pete Fesenden’s short on YouTube and we’d picked out my clothes for both auditions. The casting session for the boarding-school role was at eleven in the Flatiron district and the film audition was in Tribeca at two forty-five. Now Janet and my mom were debating how I should wear my hair. I have dark brown corkscrew curls, but I can blow them out so they’re straight. We debate this for every audition, whether it’s a curly or straight-haired character. We even have two sets of headshots. I could overhear my mom and Janet talking. It sounded like they thought the slut would be curly, all wild and rebellious, while the girl having an affair with her dad’s friend would
have sleek, upper-class hair.

As the conversation lapsed into my voiceover demo tapes, I wandered into my room and closed the door. We’d been working so hard on the auditions, I hadn’t had a chance to see if anyone IMed me or wrote a message on my ReaLife page. No, not just
anyone
. Matt. He was my boyfriend for almost two years. We broke up at the end of March. He still writes me occasionally. Whenever I see
Matthew Hudson
on my screen I get quivery and I wonder if this could be it, if he wants to get back together. But his notes are never more than,
Hey, Skye, what’s up?
Which is typical Matt, meaninglessly friendly to everyone, the golden retriever of teenage guys.

A few people had dropped by my ReaLife page, girls from Bentley like Sophie Desmond and the twins, Bella and Drew. That used to be my posse. I guess we’re still a posse, but I haven’t seen them as much recently. Partially it’s not being in school. But also, I haven’t been in the mood for the parties and the club-hopping. The twins both wrote me today, raving about my movie and saying that everyone in school was calling me a celebrity now. Sophie tagged some prom photos for me. I checked them out and then, before I could stop myself, I jumped over to Matt’s page. He hadn’t put up
any prom pictures yet, which is a good thing because I didn’t want to see him with
her
.

I closed ReaLife and glanced out the window. Matt lives on the Upper East Side and I live on the Upper West Side. My apartment is on the eleventh floor, facing Central Park. Back when we were together, Matt used to call me when he was in the Sheep Meadow so I could look out and see him. Now the Sheep Meadow was a blur of bodies. It was a warm afternoon in early June. People were laying out in their bikinis. There were babies crawling around on the grass. On the loop, I could see runners and cyclists and horse-drawn carriages.

I opened my window a few inches, then a few more, stealing a quick glimpse at the sidewalk below. As I did, my heart thumped nervously against my chest and my stomach seized up tight. I quickly closed the window, latched it, and grabbed a pen. I jotted down a few lines and folded the paper in half. Then I changed into shorts and a jog bra, smeared sunblock on every exposed inch of my skin, and headed into the living room.

“I’m going for a run,” I told my mom as I leaned over to tie my sneakers.

“Hold on,” my mom said into the phone. “She’s
going for a run.”

There was a pause, and then my mom glanced at me. “Janet wants to know if you have sunblock on. She says they’re casting fall commercials soon, so you shouldn’t look too dark.”

“Tell her I have sunblock on,” I said. “SPF fifty.”

“She has fifty on,” my mom said. Then she looked up again. “And you have your phone?”

I patted my pocket.

As I headed toward the door, my mom laughed and called out, “Janet says watch for branches!”

They were referring to the time, two summers ago, when I’d landed a second callback for a Clearasil commercial. It was down to me and another girl. The afternoon before my audition, I ran too close to a tree and got a bloody gash on my cheek. All the makeup in the world couldn’t hide it. Janet warned the casting people, but when I arrived at the callback everyone was still expecting me to have perfect skin. It goes without saying that the other girl booked the part.

“Tell Janet no branches,” I said.

“See you soon,” my mom said. “Love you.”

“You too,” I said.

Then I headed into the hall and hit the down button on the elevator.

My mom always says I can tell her everything, but by that she means everything
good
. The other stuff, the ugly stuff, there’s not a place for that in our beautiful lives.

I never did tell her what really happened with Matt. I just said we grew apart, that it was mutual. Because to tell her about Matt would open up everything and to open up everything would mean revealing way more of the ugly than anyone wanted to hear.

The weird thing is, I can pinpoint the exact second when it started. It was Christmas last year and my mom and I were at this benefit for the Central Park Conservancy, where she’s on the board. I’d been feeling off-kilter all evening, but I figured I was probably premenstrual. I was chatting with some freshman girls from Spence, and they were being all worshippy, squealing things like,
You’re together with Matt Hudson! I want your life!

That’s when I saw this woman rushing around, an intern for the conservancy. She looked like she was fresh out of the suburbs, her first society event, and she was working triple-hard to fit in. Heels, mascara, the whole deal. But then I noticed this rip in the back of her dress, about two inches long. For some reason,
that rip made me sad, so sad I ended up walking around the block in the freezing cold until I got over the urge to cry.

My gloominess didn’t go away for all of break. It was a rainy week, so I thought maybe it was the weather. But January arrived, full of abundant sunshine, and I still felt down. It’s hard to describe, except that I could see happy off in the distance, but even if I stretched my fingers really far I could never reach it.

My friends at school were like,
What’s up with you? You never want to go out anymore
. My mom took me for facials and massages and even surprised me with a long weekend in South Beach. Janet was lining up auditions, but I wasn’t getting as many callbacks and, even when I did, I couldn’t seem to book the smallest part. I was trying harder than ever, but all the trying made me so tired I wanted to burrow in my bed and sleep.

With Matt, it was harder to pretend. It’s not like we were sex maniacs, but we’d been doing it since sophomore year. Now I would cringe whenever he touched me. I just felt too removed from my body, too shut down. At first Matt was patient, but after a while he was like,
Come on, Skye, it’s not like you’re
saving yourself
.

In late March, Matt broke up with me. Most guys would have done it a lot sooner, so that’s testimony to his retriever-like devotion. I said I understood and, to be honest, part of me was relieved I wouldn’t have to fend him off anymore. But then, five days later, he started going out with a blond freshman named Diana. And everywhere I looked, in every stairwell of Bentley, they were kissing and hugging and proclaiming their love.

That did me in. It got so bad that one morning I blacked out at my locker. When I came to, I was flat on the floor and the nurse was standing above me, talking to my mom on the phone. On the cab ride to my doctor’s office, I told my mom I wanted to leave Bentley. I said I’d collapsed from exhaustion, that it was too much trying to juggle work and school. We know a lot of professional teen actors who are homeschooled, and we’d even discussed it as an option before. My mom agreed, as long as I got my GED and applied to colleges. The following morning, she called the headmaster and withdrew me from Bentley.

It was a relief to be away from the Matt-and-Diana show, from the daily pressure to put on a happy face,
but it’s not like I felt better. Mostly, I just kept waiting for the old me to return. That’s why these auditions tomorrow are so important. I’ve decided that if I can book one of these jobs, everything might turn around. And if I can’t, well, I’m not sure I can go on pretending anymore.

When I got downstairs, I waved to the doorman and jogged across Central Park West. I headed into the park near Tavern on the Green, but before I reached the running loop I dug into my pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper. I read it one more time.

I folded up the note and dropped it on a bench. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me, then hopped over the curb and started running south. As I ran, I blasted my music and tried to focus on the rhythm of my sneakers hitting the pavement.

I ran the entire loop, all six-point-two miles of it. When I got back to Tavern on the Green, I jogged over to the bench. My note was gone. Someone found it.
They probably opened it. They probably read it.

Even though I don’t know who that person is, a small part of me felt better knowing that someone out there in this world knows just how bad it can get.