Catch a Falling Star Page 7

Later that night, someone tapped on the door to my room. I looked up from the book I was reading. “Yeah?”

  Chloe poked her head in. “It’s me.”

  “You knocked?” Chloe never knocked.

  “Well, you might be making out with Adam Jakes,” she told me, coming into the room with a red shoe box and, after pushing Extra Pickles out of the way, sitting next to me on the bed.

  “I’m not.” I smiled, tossing the book aside.

  “So I was kind of a spaz earlier and I’m sorry. You know I adore you for a billion reasons and Adam Jakes will, too. So, to show you I’m sorry times infinity, I brought you something.” She set the box in front of me.

  “A present?”

  “Sort of.” She opened the lid. “It’s a Celebrity Survival Pack.” She pulled out a pair of Audrey Hepburn Breakfast at Tiffany’s–style black sunglasses. “You’ll need these, trust me.”

  I tried them on; they felt like wearing a couple of salad plates on my face. “They’re huge.”

  She studied me. “They look awesome.”

  I slipped them off, setting them on my nightstand.

  She pulled other items out of the box: a flowered cell phone case for my Adam iPhone, a bottle of “smoothing” conditioner for my hair, some lipstick, a picture frame — deep blue and spotted with stars (“for a picture of you two!”) — and a pale pink silk scarf.

  I held up the scarf, my face questioning. A breeze came through the open window of my room, carrying the smell of night — barbecue, wet grass — and fluttering the scarf, just slightly, in my hand.

  She grinned. “In case you ride in a convertible, so you won’t mess up your hair.”

  Guilt welled up in me, finding small channels I didn’t know I had. But I couldn’t tell her, I couldn’t. I’d promised Parker that only my parents would know. Too many potential leaks, he’d said. It couldn’t get out or it would ruin everything. I reached over and hugged her. “Thanks, Chloe. You’re amazing.”

  “It’s nothing, really,” she said, pulling away and fiddling with the items, packing them back into the box, before letting her eyes rest on me. “I’m so excited for you, Carter. This is huge.” She pushed the box toward me on the bed, half the scarf lolling like a tongue out the side.

  I picked carefully through it again, examining each item closely, mostly so I didn’t have to meet her gaze, hoping she couldn’t sense my apprehension. Folding the scarf neatly into the box, I tried to sound light and hopeful when I said, “We’ll see.”

  the next morning, the Range Rover pulled up to my house at 8:35. I slipped into the backseat with Adam, who was once again lost in his phone. Seriously, if any girl in this world wanted to trade places with me, she should really wish to be Adam’s iPhone. That would be a deep, meaningful relationship. Parker sat in the passenger seat, also in iPhoneLand. “Morning,” Parker mumbled, not looking up.

  Adam said nothing.

  I decided to go for cheerful. “Good morning, Adam. Good morning, various iPhones.” No reaction. I eyed the Nordic God in the front seat who’d driven me home yesterday. “Good morning, um, guy driving us.”

  “That’s Mik.” Adam typed away. “My bodyguard.”

  “Good morning, Mik.” I smoothed my skirt over my knees.

  Mik nodded but didn’t take his eyes from the road. We headed toward town in silence, and I snuck a glance at the movie star sitting next to me.

  Adam Jakes had been a childhood sitcom star since he was five on a successful family ensemble show called All of Us that ran for eight years. Sitting next to him in the plush backseat of the Range Rover, it struck me that he’d been raised a bit like a goldfish, swimming through his childhood in the same bowl, alongside a tank of bigger, flashier fish. I’d only seen some of the show, but it streamed on Netflix, so I’d tried to watch a few episodes last night. Adam’s role was the typical cute but pesky little brother who said precocious things and fell into sticky situations the older characters were forced to get him out of. (In one, he spent the entire episode locked in a toolshed talking to an initially scary but ultimately epiphany-inducing spider.) Overall, he was good at his part, sweet and convincing, had won some awards, and was noticed for small roles in movies by the time he was ten. In the last couple of years, he’d ditched the goldfish bowl and now swam freely in the ocean of stardom.

  Until recently.

  Over the last year or so, he’d had a stormy relationship with the Disney star Ashayla Wimm that ended in an ugly public breakup. In most of the recent candid photos I’d found online, he’d either been scowling or staring sadly away from the camera much like in some of the photos on Chloe’s wall. Watching him now, I had to push back the impulse to ask him how he was feeling, to put my hand on his designer denim–clad leg and just say, How are you? It seemed like he might need someone to ask him that and actually listen, not just fish for a sound bite. As if reading my thoughts, he glanced at me, barely disguised a sigh, and returned to his staring out the window.

  My throat started to close up and, blinking into the morning sun, I tried to imagine myself through Adam’s eyes. Small-town girl in an old thrift-store skirt and a messy ponytail. He must be wondering how he got stuck with some hick barista. I liked who I was, liked where I was from, but it was incredible how suddenly dull I felt being flung into Adam’s sparkly waters.

  Mik turned the Range Rover onto Old Greenway, the road that snaked away from downtown, but twisted abruptly into the empty, fenced McKenzie property. A two-minute drive from downtown, the McKenzie property felt a million miles away. Rumor was, Mr. McKenzie was former CIA. He’d been kind of a sight around town, in his dark glasses and vests with too many pockets. The people who didn’t believe the CIA story thought he must be some sort of journalist or adventure photographer, always leaving town for months at a time, never really talking to anyone. Whatever he was, he’d been a total security nut. His five-acre property was completely fenced with sleek boards topped with barbed wire. Prison chic. Over the years, many a teenager had been busted for trying to sneak over that fence and past Mr. McKenzie’s cameras. He didn’t even have a house, just a gleaming Airstream and five dogs that looked bred to eat people. When he left town last year, pulling that gleaming trailer behind his massive truck, most people assumed he’d been sent on some sort of government assignment. Dad said that was way more fun than admitting he’d probably just decided to live out the remainder of his years on a golf course in Florida.

  After punching in the code for the main gate and passing through it, Mik bumped the car along a dirt road secluded by thick pines on either side. Finally, he pulled into a clearing where a series of trailers sat in filtered sunlight.

  “What is this?” I gazed through the windows. The trailers were the size of small houses, each with the bright green words Star Shacks scripted across their sides.

  Parker gave a general wave toward the trailers. “Base camp. Cast trailers. The director, producers’ trailers —”

  Adam interrupted him. “Stop showing off your big Hollywood terms, Park. She doesn’t care that it’s called base camp.”

  Parker’s shoulders tensed.

  Mik stopped the Range Rover next to the largest of the trailers. I nodded at it. “This is where you’re living?”

  Adam shook his head. “This is just where we hang out during shooting.” He quickly pushed his door open. “Come on. I’ll show you. It’s got a gym and a milkshake maker.”

  Every kid loves a good fort. I begged my parents for years and, when I was nine, finally got a pretty respectable tree house in the low limbs of the old maple in our backyard. It had smooth plywood walls and floor, a real ceiling, a rope ladder, even some curtains Mom made from a green tablecloth hanging on the one wide window. I had a rug in there, bookshelves full of found treasures like river rocks and smooth acorns with their little hats, and a white plastic table where I could set a vase with a rosebud or maybe a slim branch of dogwood blooming. I didn’t use it as much as I had when I was younger, but I still
liked to sit up there sometimes, especially at night, and watch the stars emerge through the large window.

  Adam’s trailer was nothing like my tree house.

  His fort was on steroids. In fact, I knew quite a few families in Little who could move in and live out the rest of their years in a place like this. Hardwood flooring gleamed, a sprawling dark blue suede couch faced a flat-screen TV, and off to one side was a mini-gym, complete with treadmill and weights. The kitchen had a microwave, cherry cabinets, a fridge, and, as promised, a stainless contraption that clearly made milkshakes.

  “You want one?” Adam motioned toward it. “I can send out for fresh strawberries.”

  I shook my head, wondering who would get that job — strawberry fetcher. “I’m okay, thanks.” The whole place smelled too good, something muted and spicy. Boys’ rooms weren’t supposed to smell this good. Alien Drake’s room always smelled like Doritos and stale pizza. Which was better than how my brother’s room used to smell — old sponges and, inexplicably, rotting limes.

  Parker plopped down on the couch with his phone, kicking his feet onto the coffee table. After scrolling his thumb along the screen, he told Adam, “You don’t shoot until noon, but you wanted to run one of the hospital scenes.”

  “Oh, right.” Adam opened the fridge and pulled out a blue glass bottle of water. He kicked his flip-flops in the direction of what appeared to be a bedroom. They thudded against the cherry-wood door frame, leaving scuffs, and landing splayed out in the hallway. “Carter can read Cheryl.”

  “Who’s Cheryl?” I sat on the edge of the couch, and Parker handed me a script much thicker than the one detailing my fake relationship with Adam.

  Adam leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping from the blue bottle. “She’s sort of the Tiny Tim figure in the movie.” He went on to explain that the movie was a retelling of A Christmas Carol. He played Scott, the Scrooge character, who was the teenage son of the largest donor of a small-town hospital. Cheryl was a teen girl with cancer. Her father, the Bob Cratchit figure, worked for Scott’s father. When he talked about the film, Adam’s face lost its usual sullen haze; it brightened the room. “I need to run the scene where I come to her hospital room. The one before she gets to go home.”

  “Page 102,” Parker added.

  I flipped to it. “Wow, you guys are already near the end?”

  “We’re at the hospital tomorrow, so we shoot all the scenes there,” Parker told me.

  “Out of order?” I scanned Cheryl’s lines. Mostly, she said things like, “You can be my first Christmas present,” which made me cringe but probably sounded better in context and would make me sob like a baby when I saw it in the final version of the movie, with all the music and lighting.

  “You shoot based on location,” Parker told me, pushing himself off the couch and helping himself to some blue bottled water from the fridge. “We have the hospital for only two days.”

  Adam cleared his throat. “Let’s run it.” He motioned to the script.

  I frowned. “I’m not an actor.” My mouth felt dry, like I was about to give a speech at school. “Maybe Parker could do it.”

  “I’d rather run it with a girl.” Adam plopped down next to me on the couch. “Don’t think too much about it. Just read it.” He cleared his throat again. “I brought the music box, Cheryl.”

  “Don’t you need a script?”

  He shook his head. “No, I know it. Go ahead. Say the line.” He leaned forward, saying his line again.

  I swallowed, wishing I’d asked for one of those bottles of water. The script said (whispering), so I tried to whisper “Scott? Is that you?” but I sounded creepy, like an old woman in a horror movie. Adam and Parker exchanged a look.

  “You’re thinking about it too much,” Adam said, giving me a flicker of a smile. “Just read it.” Morning light filtered through the trailer window, tiny dust motes catching in the air around us. Outside, I could hear other people coming and going, trailer doors opening, closing. A dog barked.

  Licking my lips, I tried the line again.

  Adam nodded, his eyes locked to my face. “It’s me. I’m sorry, Cheryl. I’m sorry for all of it.”

  I forgot to look at my script. “All of what?”

  He frowned. “That’s not the line.”

  “Sorry.” Scanning the page, I read, still whispering, trying for my best sick voice. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  “I’ve changed.”

  I had a question. “How can you be Scrooge if it’s not your money? It’s your dad’s money.”

  He shook his head, letting his earnest face drop away, replaced with a wash of annoyance. “It’s a retelling. We’re turning the story on its ear. It’s a teen version. I’m the son of the wealthiest man in town, and I’m the one who has let money dictate my life. My dad’s not the jerk in the story. I’m the jerk in the story. I don’t care about the right things. I’ve lost sight of what matters. Partying all the time. Sleeping around …”

  “This is a family movie?”

  “They don’t show any of that, really,” Parker interjected from his perch by the fridge. “It’s backstory.”

  Adam explained, “It’s Christmas Eve, and Scott’s just screwing around, making things hard for the working people at the hospital, forgetting about what really matters in life….”

  “Which is what?” What could a guy hanging out in a decked-out trailer with its own milkshake machine and private gym know about real “working people”? I thought of Mom, off somewhere fighting for farm aid, while I declined a freshly made strawberry milkshake in a tricked-out fort. Not a proud moment for the Moon family.

  Adam seemed caught off guard by my interruption. “Um, well, like family and stuff, I guess. And love.”

  “And he loves Cheryl?” I studied the pages as if they’d answer for me.

  “He doesn’t realize it until this scene.” I listened as he described his part, the way he saw Scott as this lost soul, how this Christmas Eve everything would change for him, and it struck me that he really seemed invested in Scott’s story. Maybe it wasn’t just some stupid blockbuster to him. Then it hit me. It wasn’t just having me as a girlfriend that would try to change his public image. He wanted to be seen as Scott. The guy who got emotionally body-checked by three visiting ghosts and realized he’d been screwing up his life.

  Kind of like Adam.

  It wasn’t subtle. Did they think the public was that gullible?

  “And so he’s visited by three ghosts who teach him these things.” I was ready to go back to the script, but I’d unleashed something in Adam.

  Adam stood, pacing the small room. “Sort of ghosts, but not like in the original story. We’re not taking a paranormal angle with it. It’s different. Contemporary. I run into a kid from my elementary school days, and he acts as sort of a reminder of Christmases past.” It took me a minute to register that when he kept saying “I,” he meant his character, Scott.

  “Then, I see my history teacher from school, who acts as a sort of Ghost of Christmas Present, and finally, you see my future. Me as an old guy — like thirty-five — who has lost the love of my life because I was greedy and shallow. I get to wear old-guy makeup.”

  I frowned. “Won’t that be paranormal? You seeing a future version of you?”

  He shrugged, finishing the last of the water, tossing the bottle into a blue trash bin. Everything in the trailer was polished wood. Or blue. Like it had all been designed to match his eyes. Which it probably had been. “I don’t know. They have people to figure that out.”

  I struggled to remember the story. “So the movie won’t show your own death?”

  He clutched his hand to his chest. “Just the death of my heart. It’s ultimately a love story. It’s going to kill at the box office.”

  “A love story?”

  “A Christmas love story. With Cheryl. We’re going to crush.”

  Parker stood up, brushing out some wrinkles in his linen jacket. “He’s brilliant
in it.”

  “I’m sure.” Truth was, I’d watch pretty much anything if you sprinkled some snow on it and lit up some twinkle lights — I loved Christmas movies, loved the way they glowed — but I still wondered how some rich movie star who’d spent his whole life in L.A. could really understand a small town enough to convince us he’d gone through some big life awakening. What I’d seen of Adam so far didn’t convince me he could look much beyond his own nose. Still, they called it acting for a reason.

  I’d read somewhere that actors often did research, studied a character to get to know them, walked around in their shoes and all that. And we happened to have a Scott right here in Little.

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You want to see the guy you’re playing in the movie?”

  From the open window of the Range Rover, Parker told us we had about forty-five minutes and then we needed to get back to town. “We have to make sure we get in a few more sightings of you two today before Adam starts shooting.” He peered up at the hillside. “This looks too private. No one will see you.” This was not in the script, and I could tell it made Parker itch a little. Mik handed us the picnic basket that had magically appeared in the back of the Range Rover. “No more than forty-five minutes,” Parker reminded us before he had Mik park the car in the shade of some trees.

  “Is he your manager or your babysitter?” I smiled so Adam would know I was kidding.

  “What’s the difference?” Adam shrugged, looking suddenly young, like a kid who’d been told, No, we won’t be stopping at the pet store today.

  He followed me up the narrow footpath that snaked its way along the green hillside at a mellow angle. It was warm, and the ankle-length grasses around us had browned on their tips. When we reached the top, Little High stretched out below us. Here, we looked directly down on the new football stadium, its rubberized track a black eye surrounding the expanse of green field. Stadium bleachers rose in a metallic blossom all around it. Directly across from us, a crisp white-and-blue sign read: Bryce Field.