On Monday, Benny and I get to school way before the first bell. MetaReel’s not allowed on campus, so I actually wake up early just to hang out in the Taft parking lot. The first episode doesn’t air for three more weeks, but I already feel tense, every muscle in my body poised to run at the sight of the paparazzi. Even though they haven’t released our photos, MetaReel is already promoting the show; on our way to school, we passed a new billboard that has a picture of thirteen stick figures with two bigger ones off to the side. It says, THEY’RE BACK, with the MetaReel logo in the corner. It would only take a little bit of detective work and a couple of gossipy MetaReel employees for the media to know where we are.
My eyes hungrily scan the familiar school buildings, and I feel a pang of—this is going to sound so strange, but it’s the only way I know how to explain it—I feel a pang of homesickness. More than any place in my life, Taft has been mine, uncorrupted by the pervy camera eyes and the crew and my parents and my million siblings. Before this weekend, I had actually started to feel normal. It was delicious. But now I’m already saying good-bye. Soon, every moment will take on significance. It’s going to be a month of lasts. There will be a last class, of course, but also a last opening of my locker, a last caf lunch, a last trip to the weird world of camaraderie in the girls’ bathroom …
Benny’s voice punches into my reverie. “Penny for your broody thoughts?”
“Leave me alone. I’m busy wallowing in self-pity,” I say.
“Thought as much.” He tries to make his voice sound light, but I can hear the nervous energy underneath it.
We press our fingers against the heater, watching the student body sleepily make its way into the parking lot.
“Where’s Matt?” I finally ask, taking a sip of my extra-scalding mocha. Usually they meet up during our Starbucks run, but today Benny had insisted on the drive-thru.
“Freaking.”
I curl up on my side and take in the dark circles under Benny’s eyes.
“But you’re still together,” I say gently. Part of me is jealous—I haven’t been able to tell anyone about this crap, but Benny not only has someone, he has a significant someone.
“For now,” Benny says. “But when it all starts really happening … I mean, I’d be fine if people found out I’m gay, but if the Vultures go after Matt…”
I nod. The cultlike megachurch where Matt’s family goes is most definitely not supportive of the Benny and Matt persuasion. Case in point: his pastor had recently said that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
“Subject change: what did Sheldon have to say when you called him on Sunday?” he asks. I hadn’t mentioned anything about a date, just that Patrick had given me his number.
I was really hoping to avoid this conversation. “I didn’t call him.”
I jump as Benny shouts, “What?”
“I couldn’t! All I have is my MetaReel cell. I can’t call Patrick on a bugged phone! I tried to leave the house, like, five times to get to that old payphone they have at the gas station, but Chuck kept making us redo all those shots.”
And, okay, I psyched myself out. The more my attempts to call Patrick failed, the more certain I became that this was a sign from the universe. It’s not meant to be.
“Tell me you contacted him in some way,” Benny says.
I shake my head.
“E-mail?” Benny asks.
Another shake.
“Text?”
Nope.
“Smoke signals?”
I sigh. “I like him too much to lead him on, Bens. It wouldn’t make sense if I was all of a sudden like, Oh hey, I can’t ever see you, but I like you, too.”
“So write each other love letters! He’s old-school—I bet he only listens to vinyl and shit like that.”
I start tearing at the sleeve of my Starbucks cup, just to give my hands something to do.
“Benny. Even if he doesn’t care about our crazy-ass family, I could never go on a date with him—I’m not interested in inviting Chuck and the rest of the crew along to dinner and a movie. So there’s no point in leading him on.”
He shakes his head. “Seventeen and never been kissed.”
I shove him. “Low blow, Benton™ Baker.” I drain my mocha and put it back in the cup holder. “This will be a moot point after the show airs.”
“Why?”
“No more Taft High,” I say. “It’ll be homeschooling until we can get the heck out of Mom and Kirk’s house.” Kirk had converted the garage into a classroom, complete with whiteboard and projector. From nine to two every day, the Baker School for Children on Home Arrest is in session.
I throw some faux sparkle into my voice. “I can’t wait to have one of the Hulks try to teach me Spanish. On the plus side, I bet we’ll get to do art projects with pipe cleaners and fingerpaint.”
The Hulks are these two ladies who teach my brothers and sisters five days a week, so named because they’re both over six feet tall.
Benny’s eyes widen. “Did Mom seriously say we’d have to quit Taft?”
“No.” I shrug. “But I can’t imagine coming here after the show airs. That would be, I don’t know, suicide.”
Benny’s face darkens. “Not funny, Chlo.”
Right. Season thirteen, episode nineteen, “The One Where I Get My Stomach Pumped.” I kiss my fingers and place them against his forehead.
“You know what I mean,” I say. I’m not interested in hanging around Taft once my family’s dirty laundry starts airing every Tuesday at eight and streams 24/7.
We both jump as someone raps on the back windshield. Tessa waves, and I start to open my door, but Benny puts a hand on my arm.
“You’ve got to make it right with Patrick. I won’t live with lovesick Chloe for one more second. He wants you. Just … go for it, already.”
I point to a handsome boy across the parking lot, a young Taye Diggs in a football jersey. Benny was right—Matt looks freaked. “You first,” I say.
Benny follows my finger and sighs. “See you later.”
As I get out, Tessa practically pounces on me. “Aghhhhhh!”
“Aghhhh.” Tessa ignores my mocking tone, probably taking it for embarrassment. She knows I hate being the center of attention, which is fine because she and Mer are always happy to take on that burden.
“What did he say? Did he confess his undying love? Did he say he has wet dreams about you?”
“Eww! God, Tessa, it’s like seven thirty in the morning. Can this line of questioning wait until I’ve digested my breakfast?”
“You eat coffee for breakfast. Now, spill,” she says.
This was one of three things I was dreading today. The other two were running into Patrick (shocker) and going to Schwartz’s class.
“There’s nothing to spill. I was busy, so I didn’t have time to … call him.”
“What?”
People have got to stop looking at me with that expression and saying “what?” Mer spots us as we enter the hallway and pretends to be a cheerleader doing a victory cheer. Have I mentioned she’s an exhibitionist?
“Gooooooo, Chloe!” she yells.
A few people look my way, and I send up fervent prayers that a hole will mysteriously open in the ground and swallow me up. As usual, God ignores this kind of thing.
Tessa takes me by the shoulders. “What is going on with you?”
I can’t look her in the eye, so I stare at my All-Stars like, Oh wow! I have shoes on! Cool!
“Seriously. It was craziness at home. I told you that,” I say.
At least this isn’t a lie. It was total mayhem yesterday. Chuck put us through what amounts to a reality TV bootcamp, going over all the dos and don’ts for Kirk and the kids who are too young to remember about acting natural when a camera’s in your face and not talking about the show outside the house and yadda yadda yadda.
I shrug off Tessa’s grip in a friendly kind of way as the bell rings. Thankfully, she’s got AP math and science class
es I’m not smart enough to take (it’s true—TV rots your brain, especially when you’re on it), so I won’t see her until lunch.
“Don’t forget I’m a journalist, Chloe Baker. I’ll get to the bottom of this!” she says as I make my way up the hallway, toward English lit. I’ve no doubt she’ll try—she isn’t the editor of the school paper for nothing. I raise my hand in a backward wave as I continue walking away. I don’t have to turn around to know she’s scowling at me. Honestly, I’m not sure which is more complicated: high school or being on TV.
I’m sure my outburst in Schwartz’s class is why I keep getting weird looks from random people in the halls, but I try to convince myself this is a good thing; it’s like I’m cross-training for the marathon of shame that’s coming up in three weeks’ time. If this regimen of people staring at me, friends grilling me, and me avoiding a certain absurdly sexy boy continues, I will be in great shape for our pilot episode that airs on Thanksgiving night.
I’m two hours into the day, and I already need more caffeine. Trying to be invisible is exhausting. I see Benny and Matt having an intense discussion by the lockers between second and third periods, and Benny shoots me a tortured look before going back to their conversation. I must have a similar expression on my face too. It feels like it looks like that.
“Hey,” a voice says.
I look up, and my heart stops, then clenches. Patrick cocks his head to the side as he takes me in.
“Hi,” I mumble.
This is one of those eloquent conversations that are super painful to watch on teen dramas, when you want to throw something at the TV, because why can’t anyone just say what they mean? Here’s the thing: I’m dying to just tell him everything right now. And I wonder what it would feel like to have my cheek pressed against his flannel shirt, to have him wrap his arms around me—
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine!” My voice when I say this is high and fluffy. A cotton candy voice.
He falls into step beside me as I make my way to the gym for third period.
“I didn’t take you for an ‘I’m fine’ kind of girl,” he says.
I have internal squirming and, I hope, external calm. I like to think I’ve become what he’d called me that day in gov—an enigma—during these hermitlike years away from the camera.
“Well, I am. Fine. I’m not sure what an ‘I’m fine’ kind of girl is like, but…”
I make the mistake of looking up, and for just a second, I let myself fall into his brown eyes. I don’t want to be one of those girls who’s like, Oh, his eyes, his eyes, but damn. They really are fantastic. Golden sand and deep brown earth all mixed together. He smiles, which in my current circumstance is like someone shoving a knife in my stomach.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks.
This is the thing about Patrick: he asks in this totally nonjudgmental way, like I could tell him I thought he was ugly or that I’d love to just find a backseat—any backseat—and make out with him right now, but I happen to be really busy and can I get a rain check? I feel like he’d take either response in stride, but something glimmers in the corners of his eyes that makes me think he wants it to be the latter.
“Patrick … I’m sorry, I wanted to but—”
“Don’t listen to a word my sister tells you, Patrick Sheldon. Unless it’s that she wants you.”
I. Am. Going. To. Kill. My. Brother.
Ever calm, cool, and collected, Patrick gives me a sardonic raise of his eyebrows, then he turns and flashes Benny a half smile. “Excellent.”
I try to shoot daggers at Benny, but he throws me a look that says I’ll thank him later. He’s bigger than me, which is so unfair, because I’d love to beat his ass right now.
I turn to Patrick. “Well, I guess there’s nothing left to say then, is there?”
Patrick shrugs. “Unless your brother’s a liar.”
“Yep. Totally pathological.”
I’m not sure how he takes this or how I even want him to take it. A few hours ago, no, a few minutes ago, I’d been committed to telling him in a demurring kind of way that I’m not dating right now. But then I had to go look into his goddamn eyes. And I lost all my nerve. Even if Benny hadn’t walked by, I really don’t know if I could have done anything but bat my eyelashes and say yes, yes, and more yes.
I stop in front of the girls’ locker room. “This is my unfortunate destination. You?”
“Bio.”
“Lame.”
He nods in agreement. “See you in gov.”
He doesn’t say anything more about me not calling him, and I pretend like I’ve forgotten. I flash him my easy breezy beautiful Cover Girl grin and then push through the wide double doors that lead to the locker room. I sneak a look over my shoulder to watch him lope down the hall, his ratty backpack slung over one shoulder and one hand in the pocket of his worn jeans.
Sigh.
* * *
Schwartz’s class turns out to be fine because there’s a sub and we have mindless bookwork to do in preparation for Friday’s branches of government test. Nobody says anything to me about my freak-out, and once I’ve dutifully reddened and ignored a few looks, everyone goes back to not seeing me. Patrick sits behind me because someone had already taken his seat in the back corner (Right? Or is it because he wanted to sit here?). Other than the usual pleasantries, we don’t talk much. It could just be me being hyperaware of him, but it feels like something’s different between us now. My skin wakes up when he’s around. Every noise I hear behind me—a cough, the scrape of a chair, the sound of a pen tapping—feels like a love letter in code.
“Gum?” Patrick asks, tapping me on the shoulder.
He holds out a single stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint.
“Thanks.”
He gives me that mysterious hint of a smile that made me fall for him in the first place and then goes back to mindless bookwork. I slip the gum out of its outer wrapper and open the foil. As I fold back the thin silver paper, I see that what he’s given me is more than just a stick of gum. It’s hope, and fear, and plain old giddiness all in the form of a note written in perfectly precise letters:
For the phone phobic:
[email protected] The bell rings, and as I leave the classroom, I catch his eye and hold up the gum wrapper with a smile. Good, he mouths.
My new Chuck phone vibrates, and Sandra’s face flashes on the screen. I’m tempted to let it go to voice mail, but I know Sandra. She’ll just keep calling me until I answer.
“Hola, mija,” she says.
“Hey, Sandra. Um, I’m at school. I can’t really talk right now.”
“That’s okay, I just wanted to let you know that you have to be home as soon as school is out. You and the girls have a photo shoot today.”
“I can’t. I’m busy,” I lie. Photo shoots are Lex’s thing. “And I don’t want my picture taken, anyway. I already told Mom that.”
“Bonnie™, we need shots for the promos, the website, the show credits … don’t worry. No Seventeen or Teen Vogue. Although I think you’ll change your mind about that once we get into the swing of things.”
I sigh as I struggle to open my locker. “Fine.”
“XOXO,” she singsongs.
I roll my eyes and hang up just as the final bell rings. Now Señora Mendoza is going to make me explain in Spanish why I’m late.
“Dammit,” I mutter, grabbing my Spanish book and slamming my locker shut.
I could ditch. But I wasn’t going to let MetaReel steal my last few days of high school.
SEASON 17, EPISODE 8
(The One with the Tell-All)
Tessa and Mer are the only friends I’ve ever had, but not once have I assumed they would take my secret in stride. If I were to visually represent the lies I’ve told them for the past year, they would look like those concentric rings inside an ancient tree trunk, the circles getting bigger and bigger as they expand toward the outer bark. The closer to the present,
the bigger my lies. I’ve invented my entire past, down to weird details like breaking my arm in fifth grade (never happened) and saying half of my siblings are cousins (wishful thinking). I’ve created family vacations out of stardust and childhood friends out of 100 percent pure fancy. I don’t need to imagine the hurt looks my best friends are going to have on their faces when they find out who I am; I’ve seen those expressions before, when people realize their spouse is cheating on them or their father isn’t coming home. Betrayal.
Now Benny and I are huddled in a deserted corner of a huge bookstore, poring through copies of Mom’s book, which just hit bookshelves today. We considered buying it, but that would mean giving money to an evil cause.
Mom made a mysterious trip to LA, but Benny and I Googled her and figured out she had some big book launch where MetaReel RealStars™ from Monster Parents and Sweet Sixteen Mom were pretending to be excited about her book.
“Is it true that Dad tried to hit Mom on several occasions? Have I blocked this out or something?” This is what chapter seven says.
Benny shakes his head. “That never happened. I mean, sure, Dad cheated on her and he drank too much, but he was never, ever violent.”
From the time I was nine until I was thirteen, all I can remember from my parents’ interactions are arguments. Sometimes loud, but always in front of the cameras. They usually ended with one of them stomping off into the interview room to bitch about the other. Still, we’d just been kids. We didn’t know what went on behind closed doors.
I read out loud from the chapter. “Andrew was so sweet with the kids, but only a year after we got the triplets from China, he was hurling insults in my direction every day. It wasn’t until he pushed me against a wall that I knew for certain that he hated me. It took me four more years, but I finally found the courage to kick him out. It was only a matter of time before he started hitting the kids. I didn’t want to be a statistic.”
Benny leans his head against a stack of art books and briefly closes his eyes. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
I run my fingers over the glossy photos with captions underneath that imitate a family album in the middle of the book. There’s me, being born—on camera. There’s the day when Ronald McDonald installed a fry machine in our house. There’s Dad, giving me a bouquet of flowers on my twelfth birthday. There’s Lexie™, posing for the camera like a preteen Playboy model.