My Unscripted Life Read online

  “No, but…I mean, he should be nice.” Already my explanation sounds thin, because the truth is I was actually hoping to see a lot of Milo Ritter. My ears burn as I realize I was hoping to more than see Milo Ritter, like some ridiculous fan-fiction fantasy. Ugh, so embarrassing.

  Naz rolls her eyes. Even though I didn’t say it out loud, she’s known me long enough that she can probably tell. “Don’t worry, it’s not you. He’s probably in some kind of deep, dark, broody depression over the whole Lydia Kane situation.”

  At this, I perk up. “What Lydia Kane situation?”

  “The pictures,” she says. I shake my head. I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Lydia Kane cheated on him with some dude. Maybe a director? A producer? I’m not really clear on how those are different jobs, but it was some Hollywood guy.”

  Now I’m sitting bolt upright. “Where did you—I can’t believe you know that!”

  “I can’t believe you don’t,” Naz says. And she’s not wrong. Of the two of us, I’m much more likely to be up on the celebrity gossip of the moment. The DailyGoss is part of my usual morning Internet circuit, along with checking the weather and scrolling through SocialSquare to look at all the artfully edited photos of people’s outfits and what they had for lunch. But two weeks ago I spilled a jar of paint thinner on my laptop, and my parents refuse to replace it until closer to the start of school in the fall. And since I hate reading on the tiny screen of my phone, I’ve been mostly Internet-free ever since.

  Naz reaches over to pull her laptop from her desk and quickly types into a search bar. Immediately the screen is filled with a list of increasingly hysterical news stories about the scandal, all with little thumbnails of the offending photos. Naz clicks on the top one, which is accompanied by a dire warning about Milo’s impending emotional destruction. The photo fills the screen. It’s sort of grainy, but it’s unmistakably Lydia Kane. And the man standing behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist, kissing her neck with what may be an errant pixel but is most likely tongue? Yeah, that’s unmistakably not Milo Ritter.

  “Oh my God,” I mutter, my eyes moving over the text of the story. It happened two weeks ago, but the images came out only a few days ago. The man turns out not to be a director or a producer, but a lowly camera guy working on Lydia’s latest film. No statement from Lydia, and no statement from Milo. In fact, the only image of Milo that’s been captured since the photos came out is one of him barreling through a sea of photographers at LAX before boarding a flight to Atlanta to begin production on his first film.

  It boggles my mind that I have a more recent sighting of Milo Ritter than the DailyGoss or any of the press. And oh could I tell a tale about it. Naz is right; he’s apparently in a deep, dark place, and he’s taking it out on whoever is unfortunate enough to come across his path. Which, today, was me.

  “So they’re broken up,” I say, as much to myself as to her. I’m letting the information sink in, because Milo and Lydia have been a thing for almost as long as I’ve been paying attention to gossip. In fact, I barely remember a Milo before Lydia. Shortly after he burst onto the scene with his first album, a slew of singles, and a collection of smoking-hot videos, he met Lydia and they became a unit. They were the perfect pair: he a teen pop idol, she a teen screen starlet. It was sort of surprising that they managed to stay together as they both grew out of those identities. Milo’s music took on a different sound, and Lydia’s movies got darker and more obscure, and yet still they appeared on red carpets together and in countless paparazzi shots—pumping gas, buying coffee, grocery shopping, or simply trying to hide. But those days are over, apparently.

  “I mean, nobody’s confirmed the breakup, it seems, but I certainly wouldn’t stay with someone after that.” Naz clicks on the photo so it fills the screen, and my annoyance with Milo starts to fade, replaced with a growing sympathy. It must suck to count on a thing for so long, only to find it yanked out from underneath you.

  Actually, I know that sucks.

  “Poor Milo,” I say. And now those images that were hiding in the back of my brain are starting to creep out, the ones of us eating lunch together, of us laughing on set, of…maybe more. They were pure fantasy, practically science fiction, when I thought he was still with Lydia. But now? I feel a small smile start to form, the corners of my mouth tugging upward. I bite my lip, which does nothing to hold in the massive grin that’s now there. Sure, he was a total jerk to me, but now I know why. And eventually he’ll get over it, and then maybe…

  “Oh no,” Naz says.

  “What?”

  She stands up from her desk chair and comes over to take a seat next to me on her bed. She pulls one leg underneath her so that she’s facing me, and places her hands on my shoulders.

  “Dee, can we have a moment of friend talk?”

  I nod and brace myself for what will follow. “Friend talk” is the term we came up with for when we need to be honest with each other, even if it might sting. Declaring friend talk means the other person has to take a deep breath and not freak out about what the other person is going to say. The last time we had friend talk, it was because Naz was so busy studying for her AP chemistry exam that she neglected sleep, hygiene, and anything resembling nutrition. I caught her eating a lunch consisting only of leftover packets of oyster crackers and a flat, day-old ginger ale. It was not okay.

  Naz takes a deep yoga breath, pulling her hands up, and then letting them float down to heart center with the release. It’s a patented Nazaneen move that comes just before she puts on her most grown-up voice.

  “Dee, I know you’re having a hard time right now, and I suggested you needed a distraction—”

  “I do!” Naz silences me with a stern look and one long, thin finger held in my face. “Right, friend talk.” I clamp my mouth shut and mime a lock and key for added effect. Naz rolls her eyes but nods.

  “I said you needed a distraction, but you’re on the first step down a path toward a total lobotomy,” she says.

  When she doesn’t expand, I jump in. “What are you talking about?”

  She takes another deep breath, and then out comes the voice of her mother. “The dumbest thing you could do this summer would be to fall all over yourself chasing after some overexposed pop star who may or may not be heartbroken. It would be a distraction for sure, but not the good kind. And I can see from that look in your eye that you’re already planning your outfit for your first date.”

  “Jeez, Mom,” I say, my voice light to hide the fact that her words have hit a little close to home (my favorite broken-in jeans and the gauzy yellow top with the little ties on the straps). I flop back onto her bed, and she falls back next to me, both of us staring up at the apex of her turret.

  “Dee, I know you. You are a person with a lot of…” She breathes in, searching for the right word. “Well, a lot of feelings. And sometimes those feelings can take on the properties of a heat-seeking missile.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Remember Ryan Burke?” I can’t see her face, but I know she’s cocking an eyebrow at me right now.

  “Low blow,” I mutter. Oh, I remember Ryan Burke, he of the black jeans and the wallet chain, who skulked around last year muttering about his graphic novel and shaking his shaggy, dyed-black bangs out of his eyes. He was a year ahead of us, but because it’s a small town and small school, I’d known of him for years. And one day, while we were going through the lunch line, I experienced some kind of mysterious lightning bolt. I can’t explain it, but all of a sudden I saw Ryan Burke in a whole new light.

  “You followed him around for weeks until you finally worked up the courage to ask him to a movie,” she says.

  “Which was a disaster,” I reply, nodding. When my best friend is right, she’s right. I dated Ryan Burke for the entire month of October, culminating in a horrific Halloween incident where he took me to a poetry slam in Atlanta and got so stoned he forgot who I was and left without me. Naz had to make the hour-and-a-half d
rive up the interstate to get me, because I was too scared and embarrassed to call my parents.

  “Ryan Burke is the reason you still have six black T-shirts in your wardrobe and a stack of comic books on your shelf.”

  “Graphic novels,” I reply, thinking about the unread works of Alan Moore that at least look pretty cool alongside my collection of vintage art books.

  “See? Who cares what they’re called. You’re never going to read them, but you just had to have them because all you could think about was Ryan Burke. And if you don’t watch out, you’re going to find yourself in some other ridiculous disaster spending your whole summer pining for Milo Ritter.”

  My cheeks burn, partly out of embarrassment and partly out of shame. I nod and sit up, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them to pull them tight. My eyes are on my feet, where royal-blue polish is chipping off my right big toe.

  “You’re right,” I say. I meet Naz’s eyes, and she’s nodding right along with me, a sympathetic smile on her face. That’s another thing I love about my best friend. She’s so confident she’s right that she doesn’t have to gloat. I fling my arms around her neck and hug her, tears pricking my eyes. “I’m going to miss you this summer,” I say, my words muffled in her hair.

  “I’ll miss you too,” she says, then pulls back. “But if you need me, I’m only a text away.”

  INT. PARAD FAMILY DINNER TABLE.

  DR. PARAD

  So who is this Milo Ritter person?

  DEE AND NAZ (singing)

  Fast girl, you never go slow

  You come find me and get real low

  Red lips, soulful eyes

  Can’t stand to think of any goodbyes

  THE OTHER DR. PARAD

  That’s music?

  NAZ

  Not the way I sing.

  DR. PARAD

  That’s going to be trapped in my head all night, isn’t it?

  DEE

  Maybe days.

  THE OTHER DR. PARAD

  Oh dear God…

  At this moment Naz is in the backseat of her parents’ Prius cruising down I-16 en route to campus, ready for the summer of her dreams being a science nerd with her fellow science nerds from around the state. Simultaneously, my fellow art nerds are convening on campus, ready to art-nerd their little hearts out without me.

  And for the first time since my rejection letter arrived, I kind of feel like I don’t care.

  I tried my best to follow Naz’s advice, I really did. But as soon as I crawled into bed last night, my brain kicked into overdrive. Suddenly I was imagining Milo onstage accepting a heavy golden statue and thanking me while I beamed up at him from a red velvet theater seat (wearing a killer couture ball gown, of course).

  I know. I’m pathetic.

  It’s a cool morning, and I hop on my bike and get pedaling quickly so I can work up a little heat in my legs. It won’t last, though. The forecast is calling for another blazing-hot day, with the temperature rising steadily through lunch. At least I don’t have Dad driving me. I told him in no uncertain terms that having him drive me to work each day made me feel like I was getting dropped off at day camp. He agreed, but flatly denied my request for a family car to take. It’s not like my parents are going to need two cars at home. Mom is a writer and spends most of her days wandering from room to room, carting her laptop and trying to make the cushions of whatever chair she’s fallen into mold to her lower back so it doesn’t spasm. And since Wilder College doesn’t offer a summer program, my dad spends his days alternately working on whatever research he’s been sucked into or putting miles on his running shoes on the long back-country runs of Holland County. Despite that very well-presented argument, if I do say so myself, I’m still stuck pedaling through the heat and humidity.

  My wheels bounce over the railroad tracks as I turn onto the avenue toward the studio. There’s no bike rack that I can see, so I pull up next to a No Parking sign and lock my bike to it.

  Behind me, I hear tires squealing. A shiny black sports car, the same convertible that pulled up in front of the Coffee Cup last week, skids into an open parking spot. The door flies open, and I expect to see Rob step out, but it’s not Rob.

  It’s Milo.

  It’s weird that they’re driving the same car, but I guess if you show up at the car-rental counter and tell them you want the Hollywood Special, that’s what you drive away with.

  I don’t realize that I’m staring at him until he glances my way and narrows his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s squinting into the sun or shooting me a death glare. He shakes his head slightly, then disappears inside the studio door. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt, remind myself that he’s heartbroken, but it’s hard. He’s being kind of a jerk. Which may just save me from the romantic lobotomy Naz warned me about.

  I wait a beat before heading in so Milo doesn’t think I’m following him and give me another signature dirty look. Once I’m satisfied that I won’t run into him, I head inside.

  Carly sends me back to props, which she also tells me will be my home until further notice. I assume “further notice” is until I do something that makes Ruth decide I’m totally useless. She scares me, but I like the challenge of trying to impress her. As I walk into the prop room, I decide to make it my mission to earn some praise—and maybe even an honest-to-goodness smile—from her before filming is over.

  I spend the next two hours checking things off lists and packing boxes. It sounds mindless and boring, but I like it. It’s something I can finish, something I can accomplish. It’s not going to reject me. And by lunchtime, I’ve even leveled up a bit in Ruth’s eyes. Or at least I think I have. So far an appraising look and a brisk nod appear to be her highest forms of praise.

  When Ruth calls lunch and bolts for the door, I retrieve the lunch I packed for myself this morning. I make my way back down the hall, through the set, outer office, and lobby, all of which are completely empty. Everyone seems to have gone out for lunch today. Outside I head to the picnic table where I ate lunch yesterday, take a seat in a spot that looks mostly free of bird poop, and unpack the brown paper bag. It’s not much. We’re in desperate need of provisions at the house, but Mom is deep in deadline mode on the sequel to her new novel, the first of which comes out in two weeks. She’s doubly stressed because apparently this book is different from what she’s written in the past, but that’s all I know because as soon as she starts talking about writing her books, I start tuning out. I made the mistake of cracking the spine on one of them a few years ago and ended up flipping directly to a page that contained way too many euphemisms for male anatomy. I’m no prude, but no one likes to imagine her mother writing that, so I mostly stay out of it.

  All that means I’m going to have to remind Dad that he’s on grocery duty. Otherwise it’s going to be cheese-and-mustard sandwiches all week. And not even good cheese, just two limp squares of individually wrapped “cheese product” that I found in the back of the deli drawer of the fridge. I try not to think about when we actually bought those singles as I take a bite of my sandwich. It’s not what I would call good, but it’ll do. Turns out all that packing and moving and stacking will work up an appetite for just about anything that can legally be sold as food.

  A car door slams behind me, startling me and sending a bit of cheese product down my windpipe. I cough and gag, knowing in my head I need to chill out and take a breath but unable to convince my body to actually do it. I feel tears springing to my eyes as my coughing fit grows, and that sense of panic that wells in your chest when you’re wondering where your next breath is going to come from.

  There are footsteps behind me that I can barely hear over my wheezing, and then a hard slap on my back, followed by another. The shock of it stops my coughing long enough that I can get a breath in through my nose. A bottle of water appears on the picnic table in front of me, already open, and I grab for it and toss back a gulp. I feel the bite dislodge, and then I’m able to get a good deep breath.


  “Oh my God, thank you.” My voice is hoarse and scratchy from my near-death-by-cheese-product moment. I turn and see a tall shadow backed by the sun. It takes a minute for the tears to clear from my eyes before I recognize my savior, all tall, dark, and broody.

  Milo.

  “You’re welcome,” he says. He stares down at my sad sandwich, the little baggie of tortilla chips that contains mostly the broken bits from the bottom of the bag, and one carrot, peeled and chopped into thumb-sized bites. He grimaces, as if he’s caught me eating out of a Dumpster. “Why are you eating that?”

  “Um, because it’s all I had at home?” What I really want to say is, Why are you judging my lunch, you pretentious prick? It’s a sentiment I’m glad I’m able to keep to myself.

  Milo reaches down and sweeps my entire lunch into a pile in the center of the table, then wads it up and tosses it into the nearest trash can.

  “Hey! What the hell?” Granted, it wasn’t the greatest lunch in the world, but it was food, and it was mine. We can’t all have personal chefs or reservations at whatever restaurant is hot at the moment.

  “Come with me.” He doesn’t wait to see if I’m going to follow, just assumes I will. He’s halfway across the parking lot in a few long-legged strides before I’m able to shimmy out of the picnic table and follow him back into the studio. I’m at his heels through the lobby and the main office, which is completely deserted. Where is everyone?

  When we get to the end of the hall, instead of going through the warehouse, where set and props and everything I know is, he turns left down another short hallway that dead-ends in a pair of fire doors. He leans into one of them and it swings open.

  The first thing I notice is that this is where everyone is. I see Ruth at a table in the corner, and Carly at another table laughing with a bunch of other people her age. The guys who were building the sets are all at another table, their tool belts hanging off the backs of their chairs. And at the table against the back wall, I see Rob sitting with an older woman with thick black glasses and wild curly hair. They’re leaning in having a very intense conversation, Rob tapping hard on the table with his index finger, his mouth turned into what is becoming a permanent frown.