I can’t help but feel shivers each time I see him. Rex is dangerously alluring, long and lanky, tattooed and pierced, dark stubble covering his chin, dark hair falling down his face, past his eyes, strands of beads and medallions hanging from his neck, leather and silver bracelets around his wrists. He enters the kitchen bare-chested, a pair of torn jeans hanging provocatively low on his skinny hips. Believe me, once you’ve met this man you won’t blame Willow for her “innocent mistake.” This is a guy whose animal magnetism is on par with the megagravity of a black hole.
Willow may be more famous, but Rex is way, way more thrilling.
“Hey,” he mutters with a raffish smile as he slides onto the stool beside me, planting his elbows on the counter and running his fingers through his hair. Even though I myself have been featured in magazines and on TV, I cannot get used to the idea that I am sitting next to someone this famous, even if all he’s really known for is drug abuse, on-stage brawls, hotel room destruction, and numerous arrests for assault, public lewdness, and disorderly conduct.
“Good morning, Mr. Rex,” says Maria. “You like coffee?”
“Morning, Maria. Yeah, lots of it, strong and black.” He turns to me. “How’d you sleep?”
Each time he levels his gaze at me I feel like I’m melting into a pool of jiggling goose flesh. “Okay, you?”
The smile increases, and he gets a dreamy look in his eyes. We both know where he spent last night (well, actually, this morning), and the look he gives me is just so sheepishly filled with wonder, delight, and happiness. Rex Dobro, animal magnetic love puppy.
If only the world knew. . . .
But the world must never know.
I like the contrast of what I’m seeing—the soft, relaxed happiness of Rex’s face here in the kitchen set against the background of this morning’s extra-bright light glinting off the surface of the pool.
“Hold that,” I tell him, and reach for the camera. “Just one for my personal collection, okay? I swear no one will ever see it.”
APRIL OF TENTH GRADE, ON THE TIJUANA TROLLEY
THEY CALL IT A TROLLEY, BUT IT’S REALLY A FIVE-CAR-LONG, modern electric street train. On board are maids, cooks, and gardeners headed home for family visits, tourists on day trips, amped college kids eager to sample the illicit pleasures on the other side of the border, and European adventurers lugging backpacks. The trolley also carries people like me, who would just as soon not say where we’re going or why.
Tijuana only an hour’s ride south from San Diego, and not the most comfortable when you’ve got thousands of dollars taped around your waist. And they always have the air-conditioning on way too high. We’re only halfway there and already I’m shivering.
Good thing I only have to travel this way for the trip down. In a few weeks, when my new calves have healed, I’ll catch a ride on a private yacht on its way back to America’s Finest City from a fishing trip along the Baja. In the unlikely case that we get stopped by the Coast Guard or DEA, it’ll look like I’m just some rich guy’s kid. (Hey! Know what’s funny? I actually am some rich guy’s kid!) Anyway, I don’t exactly fit the profile of a drug smuggler’s mule. From San Diego I’ll catch a bus to LA, deliver the goods to Bernie, and walk away with a new pair of calves all paid for. Not bad for less than three weeks’ work.
And then I’ll go back to New York, deal with my parents, and hang with Jamie.
MARCH OF TENTH GRADE, FIRST DAY OF SPRING VACATION IN LA
N,
Hi from La-La Land. No texts or e-mails from you :-(. Please write and don’t be angry. Like you said last night, you can’t expect me to know more about you if you don’t tell me, right?
Anyway, I couldn’t believe the man outside Willow’s--his name is Sam--was serious. Weapons? Drugs? Sorry, just cameras.
The inside of Willow’s mansion is all marble, glass, and dark wood. Lots of beautiful blue and yellow Spanish tile. I met Maria, the cook, and Daphne, who’s in charge of everything technical, from the TVs and computers to Willow’s BlackBerry. I’m staying in the guesthouse behind the mansion (there’s also a pool house and a gardener’s cottage--it’s a HUGE property).
I unpacked and took a walk around the pool, tennis court, and grounds. Then a large cream-colored Mercedes convertible pulled up in front, and Willow got out wearing a short white poofy dress with big bright flower patterns, cinched at the waist with a thick pink belt and a matching pink hair band. Zach grabbed red, blue, and yellow shopping bags out of the trunk. Willow blew kisses to two women in the car, then went inside, with Zach staggering behind with the shopping bags.
I went into the front room with Sam. Willow was going over her schedule for the rest of the day with Doris, her personal assistant, who looks like she’s in her early thirties and is kind of dowdy. Willow shot me a high-voltage smile. “Jamie! I am so happy you’re here.”
Is it possible for human beings to radiate? If so, Willow does it.
“I am dying to get in the pool,” she said. “Let’s go!”
Of course, what’s the one thing I never thought of packing? A bathing suit. So Willow told Doris to call someone named Bobby at Le Tuc, then headed upstairs, saying she’d be back “in a flash.”
After a while a green jaguar came up the driveway and a skinny guy wearing all black came in with a dozen swimsuits still on hangers. I picked the cheapest one-piece ($289!), plain black. When I tried to pay, the guy looked at me like he didn’t know what money was.
I changed into the suit, and Willow still hadn’t come downstairs. I guess here in La-La Land “a flash” is more like “the time it takes a glacier to travel across Greenland.” Next a bright red Lexus convertible came up the driveway. The raven-haired driver got out. With a big frown Sam gestured at her shoulder bag, emptied its contents on the car’s hood, and inspected them. The dark-haired woman had her hands on her hips, and even though she was wearing sunglasses, you could tell she was seriously PO’d.
Still waiting for an e-mail from you. Come on, N. You know how stressed I was last night. I said I’m sorry. xoxoxo
OCTOBER OF NINTH GRADE, NYC
HERE’S ONE WAY TO TELL PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS APART. At lunch in private school we sit in the dining room at round tables covered with tablecloths.
I put my elbows on the table and yawned. “I wish they served coffee.”
“Where were you last night?” Avy asked as he spread 8 x 10 glossy color head shots out on the table before Nasim and me. “I sent you about a thousand IMs and text messages.”
“Club Gaia,” I answered, and glanced at Nasim, who was reading The Brothers Karamazov and didn’t seem to hear. Shouldn’t it have been he who wanted to know where I was last night and who sent a thousand IMs and texts? Why hadn’t I heard from him at all?
Avy jerked his head up and stared at me with wide-eyed astonishment. “No way!”
“Uh-huh. I would have hit you back, but my cell phone died.”
The amazement in Avy’s voice caught Nasim’s attention. He looked up. “Sorry?”
“Dude, last night your girlfriend got in to the hottest club in all of New York, which basically means all of the East Coast, which basically means the hottest club between London and LA.” Avy had a wonderful knack for exaggerating.
Nasim looked at me with a curiously raised eyebrow. A sign of mild jealousy, I hoped.
“I was with my dad and his last night’s girlfriend,” I explained.
“How did you get in?” Avy’s expression went from astonishment to wonder.
“The New York Weekly article?” Nasim guessed. His astuteness could at times be otherworldly. Clearly he paid attention to a great deal more than one might have thought.
“Who did you see?” Avy asked eagerly.
I reeled off the names of the rich and famous who’d showed up after we arrived.
“Did anyone recognize you?” Nasim asked when I’d finished.
I shook my head.
“That’s not fair.” Avy came to my res
cue. “She was totally out of context. If you’d put a camera around her neck and stuck her in the middle of a pack of paparazzi I bet ninety percent of the people at Gaia last night would have known who she was.”
“Point well taken.” Nasim nodded.
“I did get a couple of long, don’t-I-know-you-from-somewhere looks,” I said.
“Exactly. But enough about you.” Avy swept his arm over the head shots he’d spread around the table: Avy in a dozen different poses, all looking back at us. A plethora of Avys. “Let’s focus on me. You have to help me figure out which one to use.”
“I like the one with you smiling,” I said.
“I think you should use the serious one,” said Nasim.
“We have to decide, guys,” Avy said. “The American Movie and Television Academy convention is this weekend. I have to pick a shot and get a couple of hundred dupes for the agents, since my supergood friend Jamie won’t use her connections to help me get one.”
“That is so not true!” I gasped, feeling hurt. “I did too try to help you get an agent.”
“Oh, right,” Avy scoffed playfully. “Carla sent me to two talent scouts, and then she stopped answering my calls. Some people have to see twenty or thirty agents before they find one they connect with.”
“Will there not be many aspiring actors just like you looking for agents at this convention?” Nasim asked.
“It’s not about numbers,” Avy said. “It’s about desire. You’ve got to show them you want it. That you’ll eat it, sleep it, kill for it. You know that Elijah Wood, Ashton Kutcher, and Constance Kelly were all discovered at the AMTA?”
From inside my bag came a vibrating buzz.
Avy checked his watch. “That would be Carla.”
I held the cell phone under the table, where it was less likely to be spotted by a lunch monitor. The text message read, 63 5th Ave. Naomi F. Preggers?
“What’s the assignment?” Avy asked.
“Catch Naomi Fine with a baby bump,” I said, and, because Nasim was seriously celebrity challenged, I added, “Big TV star. She plays Cassandra on Single and Loose.”
Nasim nodded, although I had a feeling he had no idea what Single and Loose was. I turned back to Avy. “Is she married?”
Avy, the school’s numero uno celebrity media slut, shook his head. “She’s dating that high-end Italian hairdresser? Marco with no last name? He used to go out with Ashley Olsen. Only . . . I thought I read that Naomi was shooting a movie in Toronto.”
I started to get up, pulling a tattered copy of the school directory out of my bag and dropping it on the table. “Do me a favor? See if anyone at school lives at sixty-three Fifth.”
While Avy checked the directory, I headed for the washroom. Cell phone use is supposed to be against the rules, but in private school we’re taught to be discreet about breaking them (rules, not cell phones). I locked myself in a stall and called Carla back.
“Nice spread in New York Weekly, my dear,” she said in a voice made gravelly by years of smoking.
“More like totally amazing, right?” I said. “Just imagine, your client goes from teen newshound to teen newsmaker.”
“Don’t get a swelled head,” my agent cautioned. “What goes up always comes down.”
That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but Carla’s advice was not to be ignored. She was old enough to be my grandmother and had been in the celebrity business forever.
“Word is that Naomi’s ob/gyn doc is here in the city,” she said. “My source says she was displaying morning-sickness-like symptoms on the Toronto movie set.”
“We know who the doctor is?” I asked.
Carla sighed. “If only, sweetcakes. Wouldn’t that make life easy.”
I flipped the phone closed. After school, I would have to join the usual cast of scruffy photogs and videographers who were no doubt already hanging around outside 63 Fifth hoping to get a lucky shot of Naomi losing her lunch on the sidewalk. But I didn’t have to wait until then to start working the assignment. I had other resources at my disposal.
“Bingo.” Avy was pressing his finger down in the school directory when I got back to the dining room.
“You found someone?” I asked excitedly.
“A fifth grader named Ethan Taylor.”
We located him sitting with a bunch of boys, collars unbuttoned, ties askew, shirttails hanging half out. Ethan had thick blond hair and a cute upturned nose that belied a long ancestry of lockjawed, God-fearing, WASP bankers.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” I said. “In private.”
The other boys began to grin nervously, but Ethan met my gaze calmly. A cool character.
“Go on,” one of his friends urged. “See what she wants.”
Ethan pushed his chair back, and we walked toward some windows that faced out at a small courtyard garden marked with a plaque that read GIFT OF THE ROCKEFELLER FAMILY.
“You know who Naomi Fine is?” Avy asked. He always got a charge out of being on the case.
Ethan shook his head.
“An actress who lives in your building,” I said. “Possibly the penthouse.”
“She’s on Single and Loose, a TV show you’re probably not allowed to watch,” Avy said.
“You may have seen her with a tall, thin guy who wears his hair in a ponytail?” I added.
Ethan blinked with astonishment. “Oh, yeah. I know who she is!”
“Want to make a hundred dollars?” I asked.
Ethan’s eyes widened briefly, then narrowed suspiciously. “You’re the one who takes pictures of famous people, right?”
“Help me get the picture I need, and if it gets printed in a magazine or online, it’s worth a C-note.”
“How?”
“That actress is in the city for a couple of days to see a doctor,” I said. “I need to find out who that doctor is. Ask around your building, okay? Chat up the doormen and elevator guys. See what you can learn.”
“Why can’t I ask my mom?” Ethan asked.
“It would be better if she doesn’t know,” I said. “She may not be too happy about you making money this way.”
“She won’t care,” Ethan said. “And she’s a doctor, too. Actually, I think maybe that Naomi actress could be one of her patients. I remember her once saying she had a really famous patient in the building.”
Avy and I exchanged a surprised glance. It sounded too good to be true. “There could be more than one famous person in your building. So you better check it out. Only, this is just between you and me, right?”
“Gotcha.” Ethan turned toward the table where his friends sat.
JUNE OF TENTH GRADE, NYC
ON THE SCREEN OF YOUR MACBOOK, AVY WILL ASK HIMSELF, “What got you started acting?”
Then, in the role of interviewee, he will reply, “We did a lot of plays and musicals in school, and I discovered that I felt different when I was on stage. Like, more fulfilled, you know? I liked knowing that everyone was watching me. It wasn’t like some actors who have to be the center of attention all the time. But when I was in the spotlight I definitely got off on the idea that everyone in the audience knew who I was. And let’s face it—I was good at it. People started to say that it seemed like I was born to be on stage. Like I innately knew what to do up there, how to deliver lines, how to project, and where to stand. I had stage presence. Some people get lost on a stage. You hardly know that they’re there. Not me. When I was on that stage, everyone knew it.”
Your insides will convulse and your heart will twist. Tears will start to run down your cheeks and drip onto the keys of the MacBook. That part is so true. Avy was good on the stage. He was funny and full of energy, and he really did seem larger than life. It would be impossible to count the number of times you told him he was the most talented person you knew and how sure you were that he could have a fantastic future as an actor. You believed every word you said. And he believed it, too. Avy Tennent was going to be famous. He was going to be a star. r />
Next, he will ask, “It’s a big leap from school performances to an actual career. How did you prepare for it?”
And he will answer, “I took acting and voice lessons. I went to the acting and modeling conventions and cut school to go to open auditions. That’s where the agents saw me, and that’s how I signed with Elaine Mazur, my first agent. That really helped, because she could schedule me for auditions after school.”
And then he will ask, “How did your parents feel about what you were doing?”
And he will answer, “Truthfully? They weren’t paying attention. Elaine would give me papers for them to sign, and I’d forge their signatures. My parents opened a bank account for me when I was fourteen, and I had my own debit card, so when I started getting checks for commercial work I’d deposit them and then use the card to get the money. Elaine’s bookkeeper filed my taxes. Everything got sent to our address at home, but my parents almost always worked late, so I’d get to the mailbox first, take out the things for me, and leave the rest of the mail for them. All my parents knew was that I’d done some commercials, and they thought I was going to a few auditions a month. They had no idea I was out there hustling almost every day.”
“But they must have found out at some point, right?”
On the screen Avy will say, “Oh, yeah. It all came to a head when I got offered the spot on Rich and Poor. The teen reality show, you know? It would have meant being out of school for April and May of freshman year, but the producers promised to hire tutors to help the kids keep up with their schoolwork. You know that kid Brad Cox? The one who’s now starring on Nickelodeon’s Dave in Deep? He got his start on Rich and Poor the same season I was supposed to be on the show. And now he’s one of the hottest teen stars on TV. That’s how close I came. That would have been me.”