Chapter 4

GOOD TIME GIRL? Does Madison Dahl have a new romance? We caught the “Family Style” star getting cozy with a mystery man on a sunny Sunday at the Calabasas Commons.

—The National Enquirer Looking back, I’m really glad we had that trip to New York. Even though it wasn’t the ideal vacation by a long shot, it was the last break I was going to get for a while.

The minute I got in the door from LAX, Victoria grabbed me by the neck, squealing, “You got in!” It turned out I’d qualified for the filmmaking boot camp, plus I was getting a free ride. Even better, Jenna had gotten in as well, so I already had a friend in the program.

When I called Madison to tell her the good news, she had her own reasons to celebrate. “Have you seen People?” she asked eagerly. “Seriously, go check your mail, quick!”

I ran into my room (I was sure Victoria had squirreled it away in there somewhere), and there was the big news right on the cover in huge yellow letters. “NIKKI PETERSON: TRAGIC DRUG BUST.”

“Oh my God,” I muttered, flipping to the inside story. There in full color was a picture of Nikki in a ratty sweatshirt being cuffed by a policeman.

“The police were doing this big drug sting on Skid Row, and an LA Times reporter just happened to be there to cover the story,” Madison howled. “Look at the girl! She’s not even wearing lip gloss!”

I examined the picture more closely. Nikki looked even thinner than usual, and dark circles ringed her eyes. Without make-up, her skin looked grey, and her lips were almost non-existent. She looked awful.

She looked like a junkie.

“I can’t believe she was scoring drugs on Skid Row,” I said. If you’ve never been to Skid Row in LA, well, skip it. It’s your worst nightmare, no kidding. Don’t even walk down there in broad daylight. There’s trash all over the streets, addicts with no teeth picking cigarette butts off the sidewalk, and a hive of boxes and cardboard cobbled together into makeshift living quarters. You can smell the place from a block away. At one point the city put in portable toilets, but people just moved into them like they were apartments. Basically, you’d only go there for drugs if you were really, really desperate. And Nikki looked desperate.

“I feel kinda bad for her,” I admitted.

“God, Erin, get over it,” Madison sighed. “This is her own mess, you know?”

“I guess.” It would have been easier to gloat over Nikki’s fall if the picture hadn’t been so awful. I knew Nikki, and I bet the worst part of all of this for her was knowing there was photographic evidence that she’d hit rock bottom.

“Anyway, you had news?” Madison asked. When I informed her that I was on my way to boot camp in a week, she was almost as excited as she had been about Nikki’s downfall. “That is so awesome!” she shouted. “You’re going to own that class, you know.”

“Well, I have to make a short film before I ‘own’ anything.”

“Cast me as a spy. Or a detective. I definitely need some practice. Benny says I run like a girl, which looks really bad on film. Especially when you’re carrying a gun.”

“I don’t even know what I want to do yet,” I hedged. I liked the idea of getting an experienced actress in my movie, but I didn’t want her to write the script, too.

“Oh, come on! It’ll be fun,” Madison whined. “I’ll get Clive to do it, too. We could be like ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ or something. And I can see if someone on the set could do blood squibs. You’d be the only person in class with real special effects!”

I’ll admit it—that kind of excited me. It would be like making a real movie, just really short. “Let me think of something,” I said, hurrying to get off the phone. If I was going to make a great movie, I needed to get started on it yesterday.

I was scrambling into the living room to use the computer when my phone chirped. I’d missed a call, and when I checked, I saw that it was Jeremy.

I was desperate to talk to him, but a little scared, too. Our last conversation had been awkward at best, and I’d been too busy with Miss Do and Madison all weekend to figure out what was broken in our relationship, much less a way to fix it. But still, he was my boyfriend. For the time being, anyway.

“Hey,” he said when he picked up the phone. He almost sounded bored. “How was your trip?”

“Good. Weird. Fun. I have to tell you all about it,” I said, trying to sound upbeat.

“I’m writing a paper for my mythology class,” he sighed. “But let’s get together on Monday at work. We’ll skip out early or something. Ozzie won’t care.”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. When we first started dating, I would have sworn that Jeremy had dropped out of school or something because class never seemed to interfere with our time together. Now it felt like an excuse. A bad one. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “I just get stressed at midterms. You know how it is.”

“Of course,” I said, even though I didn’t, not really. I was still in high school, but I wasn’t going to remind him of that.

The conversation kind of stalled, and we stumbled through our goodbyes. I tried not to worry. After all, I’d talk to him soon. And before then, I had a whole movie to write.

***

At school on Monday, I had a hard time concentrating. First there was Jenna, practically bouncing off the walls with excitement about boot camp. Well, not about boot camp exactly. “I don’t have to spend Thanksgiving with my mom and grandparents in Long Island!” Jenna hooted when she saw me at my locker. “This is gonna be the best holiday ever!”

Then there was Madison. Since I’d told her she would be playing a sexy Russian spy in my five-minute movie, she’d been calling me every ten minutes with new ideas. “I’ll get a black wig from wardrobe,” she’d suggested. “And a gun. Or maybe she’ll carry a Japanese sword. Oooh, I like that!”

Finally, there was Jeremy. He didn’t call or text me once, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I could feel our relationship slipping through my fingers and I didn’t have a clue how to stop it.

When I got to work, Jeremy smiled at me quickly, then held up a finger letting me know he was in the middle of taking a message for Ozzie. I tiptoed past him into my office. He could come to me when he felt like it, if he ever did.

“Hey, want to grab a coffee?” he asked a few minutes later, leaning in my doorway. He smiled, unconvincingly.

We walked out to the commissary and bought our coffees. I remembered that we were sitting in the place where, in a sense, we’d had our first date. It was the day when I realized Jeremy wasn’t the jerk I’d thought he was. I wondered if we were coming full circle, if Jeremy was about to do something to convince me once and for all he really was a jerk. It had occurred to me more than once that he might be dumping me because I hadn’t wanted to sleep with him that day in his apartment.

“Look, I feel really weird about our last date,” Jeremy said once we’d found an isolated table in the back of the commissary.

“Me, too,” I said, bracing myself for whatever was coming next.

“I kind of blew it with you, didn’t I?” Jeremy couldn’t look me in the eye, instead focusing his attention on dumping sugar into his cappuccino.

I was so shocked I didn’t even think to argue with him. “How so?” I asked. I had thought I was the clueless dork in the scenario, not him.

Jeremy ran his hands through his hair nervously. “I’m…I’m not very experienced.”

“Me, neither,” I admitted.

“And I’m a virgin.” Jeremy looked paler than usual. “So I think I just kind of got overwhelmed and clumsy and screwed everything up.”

“Wait, you’re a virgin? Seriously?” Okay, maybe that wasn’t the nicest thing to say after your older college boyfriend admits something like that. But I couldn’t believe it. He was so cute and charming, and I’d seen his hot ex-girlfriend. It wasn’t possible that he hadn’t rounded the bases, if you know what I mean.

“I was really fat in high school,” he said in a low, sad voice. “Up until last year, I was eighty pounds heavier than I am now. Girls just wanted to be friends with me, that’s all.”

“Marlene didn’t seem like a friend,” I shot back. I’ll admit, my gorgeous blonde competition was always a sticking point for me.

“She wasn’t,” Jeremy admitted. “But she’s waiting until marriage. She’s kind of religious.” I thought of my dad and how his attempts to indoctrinate Victoria and me in the ways of the Protestant faith were failing pretty miserably. When we went to church the day before, I’d worn my hair down so Dad wouldn’t see I was sporting earbuds and rocking out to Dua Lipa all through the sermon.

“I’m a virgin, too,” I said, and now it was Jeremy’s turn to look surprised.

“You always seemed so much older than you are, I just assumed you were, you know,” Jeremy stuttered.

I shrugged. I had come pretty close to crossing the line with Dax not so long ago, and I was eternally happy I hadn’t. “I’m just waiting for the right time with the right person,” I said. “I want it to be special.”

Amazingly, Jeremy cracked a smile. A real one, not like the pinched expression he’d worn earlier. “You mean doing it on a futon while watching a horror movie wasn’t special?”

I laughed so hard, I almost blew mocha latté out my nose. I’d been more wound up than I realized about our little conversation, so it felt good to release some tension. Even if it totally burned my sinuses.

“Not my fantasy, no.” When I calmed down a little, I realized exactly what I had implied. Wrong time, wrong person. Oops. “And I’m not saying you’re not the right person or anything,” I stammered.

“I didn’t take it that way. Unless you’re trying to tell me something. And that’s fine,” Jeremy said, putting his hand over mine on the table. “I’d rather we just be honest about stuff.”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything.” I sighed, thinking about how much of the last week I’d spent worrying about what Jeremy was thinking. “But if I was, I’d be straight with you. I should have told you I was a virgin a long time ago.”

“Ditto.” Jeremy gave me a kiss on the forehead, but today it didn’t feel like a kiss for a grandma or a baby. It felt sweet and romantic. Sincere. “We should take our time. There’s no meter running on this. When it’s right, it’s right. And we won’t feel awkward and freaked out like we did before.”

I smiled. “Thank God,” I whispered as his lips grazed my forehead again. “And you know I’m gonna make you cough up your high school yearbook picture, right?”

Jeremy kissed me again, this time on the lips. “I thought as much.”

***

I managed to breeze through my reading (a script about a sensitive teenage boy who sees ghosts… yawn) despite my coffee break and decided to head over to the “Family Style” set. After all, I needed to get started on my boot camp movie, and it never hurts to make nice with your leading lady.

I found Madison on the set between scenes. She was actually picking at a deli tray on the craft services table. I never thought I’d get excited about seeing another person snack, but I was starting to suspect Madison had a handle on her anorexia. I mean, I didn’t know then what I know now, but she certainly looked good. Her arms were a little muscular instead of grotesquely scrawny, and her face wasn’t gaunt anymore.

When she saw me, she didn’t let her mouthful of turkey stand in the way of conversation. “OH my GOD,” she spat, little bits of food flying in my direction. “I so have to show you something!”

“Chew first,” I suggested, as Madison ran to her director’s chair and flung her phone at me.

She had the National Enquirer site open, and there was a photo of Madison and Benny walking arm in arm. There wasn’t even a story, just a caption describing Benny as Madison’s new “mystery man.”

“What’s the big deal?” I asked. Of all the tabloid stories Madison had been in, this seemed like one that was almost nice.

“The big deal is Patty,” Madison fumed. “She actually called me and said I shouldn’t spend time with Benny in public unless we’re working out.”

“Why?” I looked at the picture again. Was I missing something? Was Benny a convicted killer or a child molester?

Madison snatched the phone out of my hands. “She said that having a black boyfriend who’s at least 15 years older than me doesn’t serve my image well. That I’m no Heidi Klum and Benny is no Seal and they’re divorced anyway.”

I’m not sure how long I stood there with my mouth hanging open, but I had no idea what to say. But I didn’t need to speak. Madison was just getting wound up.

“Seriously, could she be more racist?” Madison continued. “Here’s this good looking, smart guy, and it’s a bad PR move for me to date him? What century is she living in?”

There was something about the way Madison described Benny that caught my attention. “Are you guys dating?”

Madison blushed lipstick red. “That’s not the point,” she protested. “But we aren’t. Not yet. I don’t think he knows I like him.”

“So, what are you going to do about Patty?” If Madison had her sights set on dating her trainer, she was going to have to either keep her love life way off the radar to appease her publicist or tell Patty to take a hike.

Madison shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ll date who I like. And if I want to walk around with my trainer, I will. I mean, Patty acts like the guy’s supposed to be walking two steps behind me and carrying my purse!”

I was thinking that sounded like a description of Miss Do when I felt two hands slap over my eyes and a face nuzzle my ear. “Guess who?” a voice whispered.

I grabbed the hands and spun around. “Clive!” I yelled, earning myself a dirty look from a production assistant.

“None other,” Clive purred. “Hey, where’s Miss Do? I was going to ask her if she’d be interested in seeing my hair stylist. That Korean ‘fro gotta go.”

I didn’t have time for a snappy comeback, because the first A.D. was yelling for Madison and Clive to take their places, and before I knew it Madison was shoving me into her director’s chair and asking me to stay put until she was done. I didn’t mind hanging out, though. Considering I was going to be a director soon, I was eager to watch and learn.

Even though I didn’t pick up any helpful hints from seeing Madison and Clive bitch about their fictional love lives in the scene, I could tell from just that five-minute segment that “Family Style” had gotten back on track. The dialogue was sharp and funny, and when the scene was over, I was itching to see more. I hadn’t felt that way about the show for a long time, at least not since Ren arrived to ruin it.

I found myself wondering where Nikki was (in jail? Or rehab?) but didn’t have time to dwell on it once Madison, Clive and I got back to the Dahl House. Madison had something more important to discuss. My movie.

“So, I’m a spy? Caitlin will be so thrilled!” she squealed. “I hope Clive is a spy, too!”

“I’m in this? How fun!” Clive said, bouncing up and down on Madison’s sofa a bit. “What are you using to film with?”

I hadn’t even thought of that. God, could I be more stupid? What was I going to turn in, cave drawings? “I don’t know. My phone?”

Clive nodded. “I have a Sony PXW-Z150. I can loan it to you. Super fast autofocus and amazing picture quality. You’ll blow your classmates out of the water.”

I liked the sound of that. “Thanks!”

“It’s a little complicated, so I’ll have to help you with it. Where are you shooting this, anyway?”

“She’s totally shooting it here,” Madison cut in. “I asked Jasper, and he’s fine with it.”

That was news to me. “I had been thinking about shooting in Runyon Canyon,” I countered.

Madison and Clive gave each other a knowing look, like I was a little kid who had announced she was digging a hole to China. “Sweetie, you’ll never get a clean shot,” Clive explained. “Too many people up there.”

“And too dusty,” Madison chimed in. “And spies don’t run around on rock formations anyway.”

I nodded and kept my mouth shut. Sometimes I forgot that Madison and Clive were professionals who got paid a lot of money to work in the entertainment industry, whereas I was barely making enough scratch to cover my car insurance.

“Do you have a script yet?” Madison asked.

“Almost,” I lied. I had a few pages of scribbled notes, and that was it.

“We’re going to need it by tomorrow if you want to shoot this coming weekend,” Clive said casually, as if writing a script was as easy as doing laundry.

“Would you mind checking on props?” Madison asked Clive, as if I wasn’t in the room. “We’ll need guns, maybe a suitcase, some fake money—”

“How about a bomb? A bomb would be good,” Clive said, pounding his fist on the sofa. He turned and looked to me. “A ticking clock adds dramatic tension to your plot. And a bomb with a timing device will definitely add tension.”

“Maybe Benny can show us some fight choreography!” Madison yelled. “Clive, I am totally going to take you down in hand-to-hand combat!”

I sat silently on the sidelines as Madison and Clive battled over which one of them would emerge the victor in my short film. In just five minutes (and without even meaning to), my friends had pushed me right to the brink of panic. I hadn’t thought about what kind of location would work best, or what kind of props I’d need, or even what my story was.

Luckily, I had Madison and Clive to help and knowing there were two highly trained experts in my corner helped me shake off my nerves.

At the time, I actually felt sorry for my classmates who probably didn’t have the connections that I did. I mean, whatever my movie ended up being, it had to be better than whatever low-budget amateur crap they turned in, right?

Well, at least even at that early stage I had one characteristic all directors share nailed down. I was a total egomaniac.