Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
I MANAGE A NEUTRAL FACE AS I WALK BACK TO MY OF FICE . Nathan has assured me that Jack’s involvement will get this thing green-lit. And why wouldn’t it? Jack singing a song from our soundtrack to a packed arena would sell a gazillion movie tickets.
Mandy follows me into my office. “Looks like that went well?”
“It did!” I say, my voice too high. I sit at my desk and straighten a pile of note cards. “Just a few details to work out, and we’ll be good to go.”
“Need my help?”
“No, not now. I’m just going to make a few calls.”
I smile the smile of a person who is being flushed down the world’s largest toilet but wants people to think she’s enjoying the ride. When Mandy’s gone and the door is closed, I slide off my desk chair and sit on the floor. I don’t know what I was thinking. It wasn’t even an exaggeration; it was an outright lie. I haven’t spoken to Jack Quinlan since I was fourteen and he laughed at me. I wonder what he’d think about me now, trying to slide my desk drawer open from below to find candy.
Turns out this fourth date has gone like every other. The exuberance of my red dress mocks me as I take in the shoddy construction of my desk from below. “Made in Van Nuys,” says the sticker next to all of my “pleases.” I want to laugh this off. I want to stand up, go on with my day, and saunter— no, sashay!—into my next meeting. I want to call Clem and bust on Dan, who made this movie sound sleepier than it is. There is a thrum in my heart that this script has activated. I do not believe in love. I do not believe in finding The One. All of that is nonsense, but this script has given me this tiny ache, the sneaky kind that attaches itself to hope.
I had ached with hope on the day I auditioned for Pop Rocks. I remember being discovered in my middle school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors and asked to audition. I couldn’t believe it, being discovered. I’d just gotten braces and perfected a full metal smile that was like a cheat code to lifting my mom’s mood, softening her tired face into a giggle. I was a young twelve and didn’t know enough about Hollywood to be nervous. It all just felt fun. It was fun to make the stiff casting people laugh. I gave them something, and they gave me something back—an exact exchange of energy. I love you, followed by I love you too. I ended the audition with my full metal smile and got the job.
The studio found me an agent, and it all took off—the meetings, the contracts, the transition to on-set school and a life where I would only know three other kids: Hailey, Will, and Dougie. As the awkward keyboardist, I was the punch line of almost every scene, but it was fun. My job was to show up at fake band rehearsals with a gooey rack of ribs in my hand. Intermittently, I’d be on the receiving end of a thrown milkshake, chucked right in my face. I’d walk into the student lounge and sit on someone’s nachos and frown my oof into the camera while the rest of the fake band said, “Poor Janey,” followed by that special guitar riff.
The irony was that this was the first time in my life I wasn’t actually poor. My mom and I stayed in the Westwood apartment I grew up in, but we had new shoes and rotisserie chickens. It was a sharp change—a single mother and child living on welfare one day and then having money for new shoes and prepared food the next. This was a thing I’d been craving my whole life, and I luxuriated in being casual about the basics. Oh, sure, let’s grab lunch. I still get a rush every time I put down my credit card and say, “I’ve got this.”
“I’ve got this” means I have this. I am not without.
The first time I ever saw my mother walk into a store, run her hand over a sweater, and then buy it, I felt actual joy. I do not exaggerate when I say that watching my mother purchase things that she didn’t need was the great joy of my childhood. It was hope fulfilled.
And there it is, the thought that turns my tiny ache of hope into actual hope. I can figure this out. When I was twelve years old, I turned our lives around. I’m not going to squeeze an original song out of the biggest recording star in the country, but I have bought some time. I’m going to figure out how to catch this movie a tiger.