Unscripted Joss Byrd (17 page)

“Please don't make me go back,” I blurt through my tears.

Chris chokes back his own tears. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Norah,” he sputters. “I should've been there. We won't go back. I promise.” He holds me closer, and I know that it's really Chris hugging me, and he knows that it's the real me who's hugging him. “We're not goin' back.”

I'm crying so hard for me and for Norah when she was little and for Norah now that I can't stop. If I squeeze my eyes against the light, maybe the camera will be gone when I open them.

“She got it,” Terrance says from behind the monitor. “That was it. That was Norah. Cut!”

“You did it, Joss. It's over.” Chris tucks his chin to whisper in my ear, under the strength of our mics. His tears slide down my earlobe. “Screw all these assholes. To hell with them. Everything's for
us
now,” he reminds me, smacking the sand. “It's all about
us
from here on.”

“Checking it…” Terrance calls.

Everyone holds still while we wait for Terrance to check if the tape is any good. But the ocean is moving—it's rolling and crashing, rolling and crashing—even “Cut” can't make it stop.

“Did you get it?” I grit my teeth from the cold or anger. Both. “Did you get what you need,
TJ
?”

“Beautiful, Joss. It's perfect. We got it!”

My tears sting. I run to Norah in the warming tent where I asked her to wait. I didn't want her on the sidelines or watching the monitors. She didn't need to see all that. Norah hugs me without a word as Monique wraps a heated towel over my shoulders. The towel doesn't make a difference; I'm colder now on the inside than I am on the outside.

This was the first emotional scene I've ever done without using a trigger. But the next time I need to remember a terrible moment, I'll just think of this.

“Joss!” Terrance calls, catching up. He ignores Norah, who's stiff as a soldier beside me. Either Terrance is crying or his eyes are shining from the moonlight. Either way, I know that he will never, ever cut the scene. “Wow, kiddo. You were so, so—”

I push his heavy hand off my shoulder and run with Norah straight up the path toward the trailer. Terrance got what he needed. I'm done here.

 

16

Don't think for a second that I'll forget this.

My mother's note is written on the back of Chris's:

Joss is in my room.—Chris

It's mother/daughter double-crossing on one piece of paper.

Viva's makeup bag and toothbrush are gone, so it's official. I've got the room to myself for the night. But if I got what I wanted, then why do I feel so lousy?

“Joss! Joss!” Someone's pounding on my door. “Open up!” It's Jericho pushing his eye close to the peephole and Chris standing with him.

“What are you guys doing?” I open the door and squint at the overhead light with the mosquito corpses frying inside it.

“We just saw Viva hangin' on Terrance all the way to his room!” Jericho cackles.

“I know. I know. That's what you came to tell me?” I shake my head and start to close the door. “Haha. It's so funny. My mom's a big whoretauk. Big deal.”

“No.” Chris stops the door with his toe. “We came to tell you that you're free. Get dressed.” He grins. “You're coming out with us.”

*   *   *

The local kids flick their flashlights on once the streetlamps are far behind us. The path isn't much. The grass on either side is as high as my hip. Ray and another boy are up ahead. Me and Jericho and Chris are in the middle, and Arianne and Ray's girlfriend, Keri, are behind us. The sound of the ocean is fading under angry crickets. My ears itch from the sound.

“You should go up and walk next to him,” I hear Keri say to Arianne. I stick my elbows out to take up the trail.
Single file,
I want to tell her.
He's with me.

“Where are we going?” I tug Jericho's shirt and whisper. “The locals don't like me. I shouldn't be following them into nowhere. Let's just hang out the three of us. Besides, we've got a surf lesson tomorrow. I don't want to stay out too late.”

“Don't worry about it,” he whispers back. “And if anything goes down, I got my dad's watch. It has a glow-in-the-dark compass.”

“Should we be worried about ticks?” I zip up my sweatshirt even though I'm warm.

“No. We should be worried about murderers. The Long Island serial killer. I read about it online and in the
Daily Montauk
. They found bodies up and down this stretch of beach. All girls, some were prostitutes.” Jericho slows and looks back at me. “About your size and hair color.”

“Shut it,” I say.

Chris pushes him on. “Keep walking, Jericho.”

“I'm not kidding. The news is everywhere. Haven't you been reading the papers?”

What does he do? Read the newspaper with his coffee every morning? Once again, Jericho is the know-it-all and I'm the know-nothing.

“There
is
a Long Island serial killer,” says Arianne. “It's true. And he is still out there.”

“You mean, out
here
,” says Jericho as we weave forward. “Serial killers always have a type.” His voice gets breathier as the path gets steeper. “Criminal psychologists say that serial killers are probably killing the same woman over and over in their minds, usually their mother.”

Now he's making sense.

“They think this guy might be someone in the community, a fisherman, maybe, because the bodies were found wrapped in fishing net. Some of them are so badly decomposed that they're
unidentifiable
. The killer is probably someone close. Someone very, very close.” He turns and grabs me so fast I lose my breath, and Arianne and Keri scream behind me. Jericho lets go of me to put his arm around Keri. “Easy, easy. I'm just kidding around. I'm sorry.” He walks with her, keeping his arm slung over her. “Don't worry, I'll protect you.”

Voices up ahead are joking and laughing, but as we get closer, the voices hush.

“Approaching! Approaching!” Flashlights swirl in our direction, swinging from side to side.

“Who goes there?” somebody asks. “Friend or foe?”

“Friend!” Ray says as he leads us up a steep hill.

Keeping guard at the top of the hill is—no surprise—Gwen holding a flashlight and a walking stick tall as her. She is a top-of-the-hill kind of girl. “Hey! You said
friend
!” she yells, working her flashlight over the boys and me.

“They're friends.” Ray points a stalk of sea grass at us.

“No. They're infiltrators!” she yells.

If she starts throwing rocks, I'm throwing them back. After the scene I did tonight, I'm allowed to be wherever I damn well please.

“Nah, just actors,” Ray says.

“Yeah, an actor with an arm around your girlfriend.” Gwen shines her flashlight behind me. “Keri, you traitor!”

Ray points his flashlight from Jericho to his girlfriend. “Keri, what are you doing?”

“Nothing, Ray! I swear!” She runs up the hill after him. “He was just being stupid. Don't be mad. Not now, when things are going so good.”

“For who?” Ray yells. “Tell me, Keri. Who are they goin' good for?”

Leave it to Jericho—who's laughing his guts out—to break up a three-month romance.

“Way to bring the drama, actors!” Gwen stares straight into my eyes. “Approach at your own risk.” She turns away, and I notice the gigantic concrete box behind her, sort of like a garage that's partially buried in the hill. Most of it's covered in graffiti, not fancy like bubble letters on subway cars, just scratchy stuff. Nothing you'd print on a T-shirt.

“What is this place?” Chris asks Arianne.

Arianne swoops in on him, touching his arm with her fingertips. Now I know what
infiltrator
means.

“It's a World War II bunker,” she says. “It's been here, like, forever.”

How about, since World War II?

“Naw, for real?” Chris asks, fascinated.

“Come, I'll show you,” Arianne says.

If you want my opinion, she's shown him enough already. But Chris is walking away with her, and Jericho is already talking to another local girl who's wearing a skirt that's so short it could be a tube top or even a headband. So now I'm all alone in the dark. I'm left standing here to get Lyme disease or serial killed by a fisherman when Arianne ends up with Chris—again!

I'm the one Chris came to get tonight. I'm the one he hugged through the very worst scene. How could I film something so disgusting, and then afterward, end up with nothing? I feel like starting World War III.

I keep remembering Jericho's stupid T-shirt from the other day. Is that all boys are? Hot dogs chasing buns?

“What, do you think you're cool or somethin'?” Gwen stares at me and holds a beer can at her hip. Her friends are crowding around.

“Do I think
I'm
cool?” I say. I want to bite this girl's head off. I can handle the Queen of Montauk now that I've stood up to Viva. “You're the one standing on a hill asking ‘friend or foe' and waving your big stick!”

Gwen steps back and laughs, mocking me. Something snaps inside me, and if I don't let everything out, I'll blow. I gave orders to an executive producer today. I'm not gonna stand here and let the surfer girl make fun of me.

“I don't think I'm cool at all. I think I'm a Bessie.” I widen my stance. “That's what the director calls me. Do you know what that is?”

Surprised, Gwen shakes her head. “Uh … no. What?”

“It's a
cow
. It's a piece of meat that Hollywood chops into little pieces so that they can make money off of it movie after movie.” I clench my fists. “And then as soon as I'm not cute anymore, they'll trade me for magic beans. And it's
over
for me!” I yell and wipe my sweaty face with my arm.

Unidentifiable. That's what I'll be. Unidentifiable …

Gwen's eyes sparkle in the darkness. Her friends gather in a horseshoe around me.

“So what?” One of the Montauk boys shakes a can of spray paint. “You make a shitload of money.”

“No, I don't. My mother does. For her dud business ideas.” I rip a tall blade of grass out of the ground and tear at it. “The rest she puts away for my future, for when I'm a has-been.”

“Your future? Ha! Right!”

“You better check under her mattress.”

“You'll get your Coogan money,” Jericho chimes in over the new girl's shoulder. “The Coogan Law is a rule that makes showbiz parents save fifteen percent for their kids,” he explains to the girl. She gazes at him as if he's the smartest guy on the planet.

I cross my arms. “What's fifteen percent? I work a
hundred
percent!” I'm no math whiz, either, but I know what I deserve.

“True,” Jericho says.

“I need this money, Jericho.” I point at my chest. “I'm not like you. This isn't just
fun
for me!”

The locals close in on us. “Oh, boo hoo. Come on, you've got it made.”

“Yeah, poor baby!”

“No, hey. It's true,” says a boy with a flashlight hanging from his neck. “She needs to watch her back. Remember that guy from Nickelodeon? The one with the Mohawk?”

“Cameron Coombs!”

“Yeah! He's, like, homeless now.”

“That's right! He's washing cars under the highway.”

“I loved
Cameron's Truth about the World
,” Jericho's girl says. “He's homeless? How sad!”

“Who cares?” The boy with the spray can steps forward. “You get to sign autographs and stuff.”

“
Autographs?
You want my
autograph
?” I lunge at him and snatch the paint from his hand. Then I stomp up toward the bunker.

Reaching high against the concrete wall, I rise to my toes. I imagine I'm climbing a beanstalk up, up, up, all the way to Terrance's castle in the sky. The paint fumes hit me hard when I press the nozzle. I breathe deeply. I'm dizzy in seconds, spraying my loopy handwriting across the brass knocker on Terrance's fancy front door while he and my mother eat lobster at his long dining room table. They're laughing it up about what a klutz I was climbing through the deli window. He's wearing a tuxedo and bow tie. Underneath her dress, Viva's wearing a dance leotard that makes her magically appear ten pounds slimmer. They're toasting, “To Rodney and what a completely swell guy he is!”

But they can say whatever they want about Rodney. It doesn't matter to me anymore if it's true or untrue. If it's true? Good for him. If it's not? Good for me for telling him off. I'm done being pleasing.

The only thing that matters from now on is: No one. Is messing. With Joss Byrd!

MOO!

—CASH COW

I stumble back, thrilled and terrified by what I've done. I'm shocked at how bright, how red, how loud the letters are. The other kids shake their heads as they watch the W bleed down the wall. If I were sure how to spell Bessie, I would have.

“That's mucked up.”

“A Hollywood tragedy.”

“Make room under the highway.”

Gwen steps forward, offering me her beer can. “Here. It looks like you need this more than I do.”

I take it—my first beer—without thanking her, and in my second wow performance today, I pretend to drink it without gagging from the smell and this strange girl's saliva.

“But you're wrong, you know.” Gwen's expressionless face comes very close to mine.

I want to ask how she got to rule the ocean and become Captain of Bunker Hill because I am going to be Captain of
The Locals
, Captain of the Byrd Girls, Captain of Hollywood!