Catch a Falling Star (21 page)

162

Mom’s recent dinner topics. “The new housing development on

Madison Hill? Or that company that’s dumping stuff near the

river?” I lowered my voice. “Think of the salmon.”

She wiped at trickles of sweat on her face. “Yeah, I see what you’re

saying.” She peered at the movie set. “They’re real y gone early July?”

I motioned behind me. “They’re barely here; they’re a blip on

Little’s radar.”

“They’re obnoxious.” She glowered in the direction of Hunter,

who sat up and gave her his best We’re-all-in-this-together smile,

but it melted quickly under her hot gaze. “Yesterday, one of them

parked on Edna Barkley’s front lawn. Her front lawn!” The pro-

testers murmured behind her.

Edna Barkley was a crazy person about her lawn, which spilled

dangerously close to the sidewalk on Pine.
Many
people had parked

on Edna Barkley’s front lawn. But I agreed, diplomatically. “That’s

terrible. I’ll talk to them. But think of the salmon, Nora . . .” I

trailed off, gazing out in the direction of the river, as if I could hear

their fishy cries for help.

She followed my gaze, listening. With a nod, she moved to

huddle with several of the other protesters, whispering and slip-

ping quick glances at me, motioning to the others with big sweeping

hands. After a few minutes, they lowered their signs and headed

back up the street.

Tiny Tom stared at me, his antlers sagging in the heat. “You

ever think about a career in politics?”

“No, thanks.” I returned to my seat and (no longer icy) water.

Hunter gave me a thumbs-up and called for last looks, then quiet

on the set.

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Enter the former nerdy classmate.

The guy playing him, an actor named Ryan who’d given me a

quick smile earlier, stubbed out a cigarette and pulled on a wool

jacket. He got a pat of makeup from Kelly and meandered into the

snowy street scene.

Adam came out of the kitchen store, wearing a red ski beanie and

carrying a brightly wrapped present. After bumping into his Christmas

Past, he started to move around him when Ryan said,
“Scott?”

Adam squinted through the falling snow, clutching his pack-

age.
“Do I know you?”

“It’s Tommy. Tommy Winter-Smith from Washington Elementary?”

Everything looked dreamy, the falling snow, the green of the

wreath on the door, the gleaming pots . . . until a scrub jay decided

to land in the middle of the scene, twitching its blue head.

“Cut!” Hunter yelled. “Can someone get the stupid bird out of

my shot?”

A crew member shooed it away. At least it wasn’t carrying a

picket sign.

They ran the scene about five times, each time dealing with

something summery that decided to infiltrate the winter-scape.

Final y, Hunter seemed happy with the result and they broke for a late

lunch. I pul ed my bag over my shoulder and walked over to Adam.

He swept off his hat, winter coat, and sweater. “Man. It’s a

hundred degrees.” He seemed older with all the makeup. “We

need to go swimming later.”

“Chloe’s uncle lives in a cabin on the river.” I imagined the cold

river water enveloping my sticky skin. “It’s got a great swimming hole.”

“Perfect.” He gave me a tired smile, his eyes straying past me,

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lighting on a pack of girls, maybe two dozen, gathered near the

cordoned-off edge of the street where the protesters had been, clutch-

ing small notebooks. They took pictures of us with their phones

and cameras. Mik stood there quietly, making sure they didn’t

cross the rope.

“Adam!” one of them screeched.

He gave them a wave and his turbocharged smile. “Hi, girls.”

More screaming.

The girls had become their own sort of snowdrift, piling

almost on top of one another to get as close to the rope line as pos-

sible. Behind them, like a layer of flotsam caught against the

screaming blob of girls, paparazzi waited, smoking cigarettes in

various phases of boredom.

Adam gave me an apologetic version of his smile. “I should go

sign some autographs.”

I waved him on. “Of course.” He could try for apologetic, but

he clearly loved it, and perked up as he neared them, the attention

like an espresso shot.

He trotted over, making casual small talk as he signed their note-

books, their glossy head shots of him. One had the magazine cover

Dad had shown me this morning — Adam and I sitting on a bench

outside of Little Eats, Adam grinning at something fascinating I was

saying (scene 9: look like I’m saying something fascinating). The head-

line read: “A Little Love.” These magazines were getting redundant.

I wandered a bit closer to the line. Adam signed the magazine,

and I heard the girl, an overdressed tween in plastic-heeled san-

dals, say loudly, “What do you see in
her
?”

Not really interested in the fake answer, I drifted toward the

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table set with coffee and tea service. My stomach rumbled, so I

fished around in my bag for the sandwich I’d brought. I had it half-

way unwrapped when Ghost of Christmas Past Ryan wandered

over. He nodded at my sandwich. “Where’d you get that?”

“I brought it.”

“Looks good.”

I offered him half. Shaking his head, he told me, “They feed us

great on the set. Yesterday, we had lobster salad.”

“Cool.”

He nodded distractedly. “Yeah, we get steak and all sorts of

stuff. We had this killer chicken Caesar the other night.”

A flush of pride went through me. “I made that.”

“You did?”

“Well, it’s my parents’ café, actually, that made it. Little Eats.”

I pointed in the general direction of our café.

“Well, we can’t
all
be the star of the show.” He meant it as a

joke, I could tell, but it sounded heavy in his mouth.

“Just the star of salad dressing, I guess.” I glanced around the

empty set, trying to manufacture a reason to escape this particular

conversation. Something in this guy seemed sad, like he was wear-

ing his own ghost of something past. I folded the wrapper back

around my sandwich and jammed it into my bag.

Ryan made himself a cup of coffee. As he swirled some cream

into his cup, he sighed. “I’ve been doing this ten years,” he said,

more to himself than to me.

“Acting?”

He laughed, the heaviness slipping into an edge. “Yeah,
acting
.

I have a degree from CalArts, you know.” He sipped the coffee.

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I flashed him the kind of smile I’d seen Adam give fans, kind

but distancing. “How would I know that?” I tried to sound like I

was teasing him but, unlike Adam, I was a terrible actor.

His eyes fell on me, and he held up his hands as if in surrender.

“Okay, you’re right. Of course you wouldn’t know that. Half the

world knows what Adam Jakes had for breakfast, but four years of

toil shouldn’t be something people know.” He took another short

sip of coffee. “Of course, you would already know what Adam

Jakes had for breakfast.”

I squinted at him as if he were out of focus. “Are you being

mean to me on purpose?”

Ryan’s shoulders slumped. “I’m being a jerk, aren’t I?”

Looking at him, I held up my thumb and forefinger in a pinch.

“Little bit, yeah.”

His face softened. “I’m sorry. I’m doing that so much lately.

My girlfriend said if I don’t knock it off, she won’t care if I live in

my car as long as I’m not living with her anymore.” He watched

Adam signing more autographs, his face slack.

I didn’t know whether to flee or give him what was clearly a

much-needed hug. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He peeled his eyes from Adam and gave me a smile that was

more like a shrug. “Sure. It’s just, all this time, and I’ve gotten a

Sprint commercial, a bunch of TV walk-ons, a few bit parts in

movies, a couple of plays. At least I have lines in this film. And I

was in a play with Bart Jemson, you know, Matt Jones from that

sitcom
Keeping Up
?”

I told him I’d never heard of it. He blinked a few times, deflat-

ing like a balloon. “You’ve never heard of
Keeping Up
? It won, like,

167

six Emmys.” At my shrug, Ryan shook his head. “See, I should just

quit the business now and move back to Michigan.”

I fiddled with the little packets of sweetener they had in a bowl

on the coffee table, organizing them by color out of habit. “Please

don’t quit acting because I’m an idiot about random television

shows. I mean, I live in Little, California.” I tried to give him a

self-deprecating smile.

“It was on for
eight
seasons. Oh well.” He sighed and held up

his coffee cup, a sad cheers of sorts. “At least they feed us.”

Adam sidled up beside me. “Did you say something about a

swimming hole?”

I looked at Ryan. “We’re going swimming later if you want

to come.”

His eyes brightened, darted to Adam. “Seriously?”

Adam gave him a quick smile. “Hey, man, no offense, but I was

sort of just hoping to hang out with Carter. You don’t mind, right?”

The balloon deflated a second time, but he managed to sound

breezy. “Totally. No problem. Great scene.”

Maybe four years of CalArts did come in handy.

After Adam finished shooting for the day, we stopped to grab our

bathing suits and some food, and Chloe texted us the combination

to the lock on her uncle’s chained gate so we could go swimming.

Her uncle was out of town attending some sort of survivalist

training in the Oregon wilderness, so we’d have the swimming

hole to ourselves. She signed off,
Jealous!
and I was hit with another

sickening surge of guilt that I hoped the river would wash away.

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When we arrived at the secluded property, Mik parked under

the shade of a massive ponderosa pine. He waved off our invite,

rolling down the window and opening a novel instead.

“Your bodyguard’s reading a romance novel,” I pointed out as

we picked our way over the river rocks to the water’s edge.

“
Spy
romance; more manly,” Adam clarified, shooting me a

teasing smile, and balanced a cooler on a flat rock. “Wow, this is

great.”

Nodding, I didn’t tell him how relieved I was that Chloe’s uncle

was gone. I’d always thought he was crazy, with his darting eyes and

constant need to be canning some fruit or vegetable and stockpiling

supplies in his one-room cabin by the river. Alien Drake always joked

that his place would make a great setting for a horror movie. Which

was true.

But I loved his private stretch of the river, the sweep of the

wide water into the swirl of the swimming hole, deep green and

still, the trees secluding it from view, the granite boulders huge

here, rounded elephant backs in the water. Somehow, even in the

early evening heat, the air felt tinged with a damp coolness. We

could be the only two people in the world.

I squeezed some sunscreen from a tube and rubbed it onto my

face. “Chloe’s uncle’s kind of a recluse. He only leaves to go back-

country camping or to survivalist workshops. He’s lived here for

over thirty years. He was a stockbroker who sort of just cracked

one day. Moved here. We have a lot of people like that in Little,

especially in the remote areas. Really off the grid.”

“How very Henry David Thoreau of them all.” Adam pulled

any icy bottle of water out of the cooler.

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I offered him the sunscreen. “Some of them. Some of them are

more Unabomber than ‘sucking the marrow out of life’ sorts.” I was

about to go on, to say something about the different kinds of people

who felt drawn to this river, to its flow, its gurgle and click over the

rocks. It would have sounded really smart, too, except that Adam

took off his shirt, and then I couldn’t think of anything to say at all.

Movie stars really shouldn’t be allowed to take off their shirts

in front of normal people.

To say that the expanse of his smooth tanned skin struck me

mute would be an understatement. It had some sort of paralyzing

body-mind-soul reaction and I became a river rock statue:
Ordinary

Girl Struck Dumb
. He must have seen my face because he hid a smile.

“I’m going to jump in before we eat.”

I wore a pale green bikini under my pair of cutoff Levi’s and

white tank. I loved this bikini mostly because it managed to cover

enough of me while not pulling or puckering in any wrong place,

but suddenly, standing next to The Body, I felt like keeping my

clothes on. Which was probably the exact opposite of what most

girls felt when they looked at Adam Jakes. Especially shirtless.

I plopped down on top of a rock half submerged in the river, wig-

gling my toes in the cool water. “Why didn’t you want Ryan to come?”

He frowned. “Ryan?”

“That other actor.”

Sighing, he turned and waded out into the river a bit, the water

churning around his shins. For the record, the back of him was just