“We have a scene together?” I asked. I couldn’t remember ever reading anything with Ryan in the script.
“Well, sort of. We don’t speak or anything, but we are in the same scene . . . ” he trailed off. “But it should be fun, anyway. At least you won’t feel like you’re outnumbered by The Tall Ones,” he said, using Candice's phrase to refer to the show’s stars.
Mentally going over the cast list, I could see why Ryan and Benjamin chose to isolate themselves from the rest of the cast a little . . . or maybe why the rest of the cast kept them at a distance. Will Trofeos, Lukas Leighton, Joann Hoozer, and Anna Farthing were all big names in Hollywood. They were constantly in movies and the paparazzi followed them obsessively. Ryan and Benjamin, on the other hand, were best known for Forensic Faculty. They had been in other movies before, and every once in a while I’d find a picture of them in a magazine, but they didn’t cause the same feeding frenzy the rest of the cast caused. It was like they were part of the show, but not part of that elite group of acting royalty. Somehow, as crazy as it seemed, it made me like them more. It made them feel more approachable.
“Well, at least I know I’ll have someone to talk to on Thursday if it turns out Lukas isn’t as sweet as he seems,” I said with a wan smile.
“I know we teased you about him, but I think he’s a pretty good guy. I mean, I haven’t spent much time with him outside of work, but he’s a nice guy to work with so I don’t have any complaints. We just know his reputation, which is why we feel the need to warn you. If what they say is true, then he’d love to snag some sweet, innocent, unsuspecting victim like you,” Ryan said darkly.
“I appreciate your concern,” I said honestly, “but I’ll be fine.”
CHAPTER 12
The chaotic atmosphere on set was far different from the laid-back feeling of the makeup trailer. I had already changed into my costume and was now sitting on a chair behind the camera while a stand-in took my spot under the glaring lights. They measured the distance from her nose to the camera, made little changes in lighting, and did all sorts of imperceptible alterations that required a warm body to be in my spot.
My studio teacher and I had met earlier that morning, so I used my free time to work on the assignments she had given me. It was definitely nice that my on-set curriculum corresponded with my actual classes, because it made the transition between the two seamless. I was able to complete assignments in fast motion without the distractions of school, though, and I soon ran out of work, leaving me to stare at the crew as they bustled about. I looked over my shoulder every five seconds to see if Lukas Leighton and Will Trofeos had come in yet, but they were running late.
I let out a deep sigh and closed my eyes, trying to steady my nerves for the moment when I actually had to do some acting. The studio was cold, since acting under all of the lights would be like sitting in an oven. Behind the camera, I was forced to wear a coat over my costume to I wouldn’t become a human popsicle. There wasn’t a whole lot to my costume, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Gran would be a bit angry with me when she saw how immodest it was. Granted, it wasn’t immodest for normal TV standards, but I can safely say it wasn’t something I would ever wear to a church dance.
I was supposed to be dressed as my character, Imogen Gentry, after she had come home from a performance. I had on black fishnet tights, low black heels, and the most amazing dress I had ever seen. The bodice was tight black satin with a corset back that they had laced so tight I could hardly breathe. It had thick straps and a sweetheart neckline that, combined with the corseting, emphasized my . . . well . . . we’ll say, womanly features. It was definitely not something I was used to flaunting, that’s for sure, and I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable being so on display. I had even loosened the laces of the corset when the crew wasn’t looking, just a bit to make me feel at least a little more modest.
The skirt of the dress was the really incredible part of the costume. The entire thing was made of long, iridescent, dark green feathers that ended a few inches above my knees and bustled out behind me, giving me a very particular Victorian Gothic look. The crowning jewel of the costume was a black lace choker with a single dangling ruby pendant that, I felt, looked like a target to draw attention to my bust. The more I thought about it and the more looks I got from the crew, the more I felt like I wasn’t being paranoid. That was definitely what they were going for with this particular piece of jewelry.
The sound of a door opening behind me announced the entrance of Will and Lukas, and my stomach automatically tightened once more. I tried to keep the blood from rising up in my cheeks and took a steadying breath before standing up to greet them. Will got to me first, since Lukas had stopped to check his reflection in his phone screen.
“Miss Laurie, you look beautiful,” Will Trofeos said in his thick Spanish accent. His eyes roamed over me appreciatively and I resisted the urge to shudder a bit at this blatant display of admiration. I was definitely going to have to talk to the costume department about my revealing outfit. “I’m sure it will be a pleasure working with you,” he stated with a wink before walking over to the director. I watched him walk away, getting a distinctly creepy vibe that made me wonder how I had ever thought he was charming and attractive. There was a big difference between thinking an older man is attractive on TV and having him hit on you in real life. Maybe "big difference" isn’t the right way to put it—there’s a very creepy difference.
“You clean up nicely,” said a decidedly more welcome voice, so close to my ear that I could feel his breath on my neck.
“Lukas,” I replied breathlessly. It appeared that the only way I could ever greet him was by saying his name.
“Are you nervous for your first scene?” he asked, his eyes roaming in the same way Will’s had, though I did notice I didn’t mind this nearly as much.
“Very,” I admitted.
“Well, don’t worry too much. If you just do as well as you did in the audition, you’ll be just fine,” he said kindly, smiling down at me. I couldn’t help but feel drawn to his smile—not because it was perfect and famous, but because it seemed so sincere.
I could hear the warnings of Joseph, Gran, Candice, and Benjamin in my head, but they didn’t matter to me. They could have been wrong. Even Ryan had admitted that he didn’t know enough about Lukas to make a fair judgment; he was just going off of the rumors. Everyone knew tabloids would stretch the truth to its breaking point to make a story sound better.
“Thanks,” I replied, looking (I’m sure) very intelligent. I couldn’t help it. I was helpless in the face of such beauty.
“All right, June, can you come and stand here please? We’re ready for you,” Charlie Bates, the director, said.
Suddenly feeling very naked despite my efforts to sabotage the revealing costume, I took my place under the glaring lights. I was positioned so that I was leaning over a table in Imogen’s apartment a few days after the initial discovery of the body. The table was covered in my own "research" on the murder case, which would, of course, look very bad when Cutter and Charles burst in with their suspicions that I may have something to do with the murder. I was fully aware that my leaning position did nothing to make me feel more comfortable about my tight and too-low bodice, but I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t just put the entire cast and crew on hold because I was feeling uncomfortable, could I? I knew what Gran would say to that question: Isn’t your personal integrity worth more than avoiding a socially awkward situation? I closed my eyes against her imagined words and tried to put the thoughts out of my mind, convincing myself that this is what I had to do if I wanted to be a famous actress.
I tried to pull the bodice up when Bates had his back turned, but the thing wouldn’t budge. It was just tied too tight. Giving up, I prepared to resign myself to discomfort for the sake of the craft, although one last tug proved effective enough to bring the neckline up a few centimeters.
Once Lukas and Will were on their marks and ready to start fil
ming, something odd happened to my body. As the director settled into his chair behind the camera, preparing to start shooting, my tongue went numb and a slow, creeping sweat began to spring up all over my body. I tried to give myself a mental pep talk, but my whole body felt weird, as if it were shutting down pore by pore. The air around me seemed to pulse, and then one word brought me instantly back to reality.
“Action!”
Cutter and Charles burst through the door into my apartment and I looked up at them from my leaning position over the table. They crossed the small threshold of the set in a few long strides and came to a halt right in front of me. It was difficult to ignore the cameraman moving around us, but I summoned all of my acting experience and immersed myself in the emotion of the scene.
“What are you doing here? You can’t just break into my apartment without a warrant,” I exclaimed, drawing myself up to my full height to confront them.
“We do have a warrant,” Charles said in a controlled-yet-sinister voice. “And judging by what we have here,” he went on, gesturing to the table full of research, “we got one just in time.”
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I pleaded, trying to look as desperate as I could in the face of such overwhelming evidence. “I wanted to try to help solve the murder myself.”
Charles just scoffed at this, but Cutter shot him an icy look. “She could be telling the truth,” he said defensively.
“Would you keep your hormones in check long enough to see the obvious?” Charles said with no measure of kindness in his voice. Charles made a grab for my wrist, but Cutter hit him away, ensuring that he didn’t touch me. “Are you insane?” he asked Cutter, his eyes flashing dangerously.
“You don’t have to manhandle her. If you ask her to come to the precinct with us, she will,” he said in a low voice. Cutter looked over at me to confirm that I would, in fact, come quietly. I looked between the two men for a moment, assessed the situation, and nodded slowly, letting my big doe eyes proclaim my innocence.
“And cut,” Bates said happily. “That was brilliant, guys.” He said it with so much enthusiasm that I wondered if he’d even want us to run the scene again.
So naive.
We probably ran that same exact scene about fifty more times, from seven more angles, before they were satisfied with what we had done. After the second or third take, I became immensely at ease in front of the camera and slightly less uncomfortable in my revealing costume under the warm lights on set. If I had to be immodest, at least it was serving the purpose of keeping me from getting heat stroke. By the time we were finally finished, I walked back to my seat and drank my entire bottle of water, finding that I had somehow become dehydrated.
“June, we’re going to have you stay in that costume and makeup for this next scene,” Bates said, catching me off guard with this deviation from the original shooting schedule. “We’re going to have you do the scene where you find that your files are gone and you run out of the apartment over to the precinct next. Then we’ll do your sleeping scene, and then your last scene of the day with Lukas,” he said, ticking off a list on his fingers.
"That sounds good to me,” I said cheerfully, though I wasn’t sure he was asking for my opinion. Will had already left the set—apparently he was needed for another scene somewhere else—but Lukas lingered behind for a moment, walking over to where I was watching the crew prep for the next shot.
“I really enjoyed acting with you,” he said smoothly, moving a stray curl away from my face with his strong hands.
“It was a lot less stressful than I thought it would be,” I offered, glad that I had managed to get a whole sentence out despite my heart pounding like a drum.
“You have to have fun with it, June,” he said with a slight smile, taking a step toward me and dragging his heavenly scent with him. “Acting can be a lot of fun when you’re not worried about what everyone else is thinking.”
“I definitely believe that after today,” I replied, shifting my weight so I was leaning toward him. I was trying not to be too obvious about my desire to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him right then and there.
“Good. I look forward to our scene later today,” he said softly.
I could suddenly feel his large hand on my corseted waist, sliding slowly to my hip. He brushed his lips over my cheek and then pulled away, giving me one last smile before leaving to join Will in their next scene. I watched him go mournfully, wishing he could stay a little longer. My legs still felt like Jell-O when the director called me back to the set to do my next two scene, and all I could think of during those scenes was the way Lukas’s lips felt against my skin.
Oh yeah. I was in serious trouble.
*****
“I am speechless New Girl. You look good,” Benjamin said as I walked into the makeup trailer to ask Candice where I was supposed to go for my next scene.
“Do you ever actually act on the show?” I asked, trying not to blush too much from his compliment. “Or is your only job to hang around the makeup trailer all day?”
“His main job is annoying me, I think,” Candice said drolly.
“Wow,” I heard Ryan say behind me as he walked into the trailer. “They were definitely going for a . . . certain look . . . weren’t they?” he said with a wry laugh, bringing whatever blush I had suppressed right back again. “You may want to wrap something around your neck to cover up your feminine wiles, or the rest of the crew won’t be able to get on with their jobs.”
“Ryan, stop. You’re embarrassing her,” Candice said in a rare show of loyalty.
“I’m sorry June. You look lovely.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, still feeling very uncomfortable walking around in this costume. All I could do was hope that my next costume would be a bit more dignified, or I might have to stand up for myself like I had failed to do earlier that day. “So, do I come to makeup first for my next scene, or costume?”
“How is it that they’re getting so disorganized?” Candice asked no one in particular. “Go to the wardrobe department and they’ll give you your next costume, then you can come back here and I’ll do your makeup. Have you already had lunch?”
“Yeah, I ate after my second scene. I also had my schooling for the day, so I’m a little ahead of schedule,” I said proudly.
“Good job,” Candice replied, not sounding at all like she cared. “Now go change into something that will distract the boys a bit less and get back here so I can do my job.”
*****
A little while later, standing outside of the makeup trailer and willing myself to walk in took all of the courage I could muster. I had to summon what dignity I could so that it wouldn’t be obvious how disappointed I was in my new costume. It didn’t help that the second I walked in, Candice burst into laughter and Ryan and Benjamin (I swear they didn’t do any actual acting on set) let their mouths drop open.
“Oh no, New Girl,” Ryan said apologetically.
“This is just ridiculous,” Benjamin agreed with a nod.
“It’s like they’re doing it on purpose,” Candice chimed in. There I stood in Imogen Gentry’s pajamas, which consisted of nothing more than a pair of very short black silk boxers and a dark red lace spaghetti-strap top that revealed about an inch and a half of my stomach.
“I think they hate me,” I wailed, trying to keep it together even as my eyes welled up. It wouldn’t be so bad if the people on set were the only ones who would ever see this costume, but it was going to be broadcast all over America, not to mention everyone in the world who could see it online. I was absolutely trapped and had no idea what to do. It wasn’t like they would have a spare costume just in case the little Mormon girl playing Imogen didn’t like her pajamas.
“Actually, I think they really like you,” Benjamin corrected.
“He does have a point,” Ryan agreed. “They want to show you off.”
“You’re like the hidden gem they found to guest star on the show, and they want everyone t
o know how clever they were for taking a chance on a nobody,” Benjamin explained.
“He doesn’t mean 'nobody,'” Ryan quickly added, seeing my face fall even more.
“This is just humiliating,” I said in distress. My tears were threatening to fall now.
“You are definitely a different breed, New Girl,” Benjamin said with a shake of his head.
“I’d have to agree with that. I don’t think I’ve ever had an actress on the show complain about looking too sexy. Most of the time I have to argue with the corpses over how much makeup they get to wear,” Candice remarked.
“I just really don’t feel comfortable being sexy,” I admitted, taking a few calming breaths to ensure that I didn’t burst into tears over the humiliation my costumes were causing.
Ryan looked sympathetically over the top of the magazine he was reading but said nothing, obviously knowing that there wasn’t a whole lot either of us could do about the situation.
“The clothes really aren’t that bad,” Benjamin said suddenly. “I think you feel like they’re a lot worse than they are because you aren’t used to dressing like that.”
“And you’re not used to the way people respond to ‘sexy June,’ so it makes you uncomfortable,” Ryan finished.
“I guess you’re right,” I acquiesced, trying to convince myself that this was something everyone my age would wear. (Although everyone my age wouldn’t be seen by the nation in these clothes, but I’d just push that little detail to the back of my mind, along with the crushing guilt I was definitely feeling for not living up to the standards I was always so proud of.)
*****
As I walked somberly to the set in the scraps of cloth they called pajamas, I decided to take a sporadic detour to the costume room. I stood outside of the door for a moment, taking a deep breath and saying a silent prayer that this would go over better than I expected it to. Giving a quick knock, I stepped into the small room that was stuffed with clothing, and was glad to see that none of the other actors were there.