Chapter 12 Cynthie
“Okay, I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided I’m totally in,” I tell Patty as she fusses with the wig on my head.
“In what?” Patty asks absently, adjusting one of the curls framing my face.
“In on payback for Jack.”
It came to me as I was walking away from the rehearsal, clinging to the last scraps of my sanity. I need a distraction, and Jack needs to be taught a lesson. Hadn’t Patty already offered up a suggestion for both?
I watch my face in the mirror as a villainous smile spreads, like I’m the damn Grinch about to steal Christmas. “Let’s hear what ideas you have to make him suffer.”
“Yes!” Patty hoots. “This is going to be so much fun.”
“What happened to being professional?” Hannah asks drily.
I scoff. “According to Jack, that ship has already sailed, so we might as well make the most of being rogue agents of chaos.”
“Ooooh, love that for us,” Liam whispers, delighted.
“Besides,” I add, “it doesn’t matter what we do… as long as we’re sneaky about it and don’t get caught.”
“Hmmmm,” Liam tilts his head. “We’re not talking, like, actual murder, right?”
“Tempting”—I widen my eyes in an expression of innocence—“but no. Only a few harmless little pranks. We just want him… squirming a bit.”
With the added benefit that thinking about pranking Jack will take my mind off the fact I’m going to have to go and film my first actual scene soon…
and it’s incredibly likely I’m going to fall flat on my face.
(I mean this metaphorically, though given my newfound inability to walk in a straight line I’m not ruling it out as a literal concern.)
“Hmmm,” Patty says thoughtfully. “Well, obviously you’ve got your classics—sign him up for a load of weird mailing lists, fill his trailer with balloons, swap all his sugar sachets for salt, fill his tea bags with gravy granules, Vaseline on all his doorknobs, pins on his seats…”
“Yes, yes.” I nod, already imagining Jack’s disgruntled reaction and the way I will drink it up like fine wine. “All of these are very doable.”
Even Hannah starts nodding. “Okay, as long as we’re not doing actual crimes , I’m in too… It’s like vigilante justice.” Her face darkens, and she’s obviously remembering what I told her about the argument between Jack and me this morning.
“But the real payoff is going to come when we draft in a couple more crew members,” Patty says. “I have a few people who could come in handy. And if you change your mind about the murder”—she flips her hair over her shoulder—“let’s just say I know how to clean up a crime scene.”
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Hannah says.
“You have no idea—” Liam begins, but he’s cut off by a knock at the door.
“Hi.” Jasmine sticks her head in the trailer. She stands and scrutinizes me for a moment, then nods. “Yes, this is looking good.”
“Cynthie’s face makes it easy.” Liam smiles.
“I actually wondered if I could borrow her for a couple of minutes?” Jasmine looks to them. “Is now a good time?”
“Sure.” Patty hits me with another blast of hairspray. “I think we’re about done here. Let me take a couple of Polaroids.”
Patty snaps the pictures, and I glance at them, surprised once more by the transformation offered by the wig and the makeup.
I really am becoming Emilia. I’m so close to her, I can feel it, like she’s there in my brain, waiting to take over.
Although I know that sounds objectively like the premise of a horror movie, I’m actually thrilled by the idea.
“Can we talk in your trailer?” Jasmine asks.
“Of course,” I reply, and I’m hit with a fresh rush of nerves, particularly as I eye the laptop tucked under her arm. I have no idea what this can be about, but given the way things have been going for me lately it’s probably safe to assume it’s not good.
Oh god, maybe she’s going to sack me. Maybe missing my mark was the last straw and they’re going to fly in some actress from LA who actually knows what she’s doing.
By the time we reach my trailer I’ve worked myself into such a state of anxiety that I’m practically humming like a tuning fork. I worry that the frantic pitch of my nervous energy is going to start shattering windows like the world’s most rubbish superhero: Anxiety Woman.
“Can I make you a cup of tea?” I ask, marveling at how calm I sound when my body can’t decide if it wants to cry, scream or throw up.
Jasmine shakes her head, pats the seat beside her. “No, thanks. I actually want us to have a quick chat.”
“Oh?” I sit down, bracing myself for the inevitable bad news. “What about?”
Jasmine opens her laptop and starts clacking at the keyboard. “I know that you’re new to filmmaking, so perhaps you’re not familiar with the concept of dailies?”
“Er,” I riffle through all the information I’ve crammed into my brain over the last few weeks. “When you send the first unedited copies of the day’s filming to the producers, right?”
“That’s it.” Jasmine nods. “And different directors work in different ways, but Logan and I have decided we’re not going to be sharing the dailies with the cast. I don’t think it’s helpful when it comes to informing a performance.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. That’s probably for the best—I can see how watching all the raw footage out of context would make a performer get in their own head… and I certainly don’t need help in that department.
“But before we start filming, there is something I want to show you.” Jasmine turns the laptop screen to face me, and she has my audition cued up on-screen.
“Oh.” My eyes widen. I haven’t seen this before, and even though we filmed it only weeks ago, it feels like a lifetime has passed.
“Just watch.” Jasmine hits play, and the sound of my voice pours from the speakers.
At first, I can hardly get past the fact of my face and my voice on the screen; I wince as I make a mistake with a line, but gradually, I relax and then… I start to see it.
I watch myself laugh, watch my body language change, watch as I stop being Cynthie and become Emilia.
The tone of the scene shifts, and there’s sadness in my face.
The camera picks up the sheen of tears in my eyes.
My voice trembles with emotion. It feels so…
real. I’m absorbed enough that I make a sound of surprise when the video comes to an abrupt stop.
A heavy silence hangs in the air.
“Why are you showing me this?” I ask, finally.
Jasmine closes the laptop with a snap. “Because I know how anxious you’ve been since we offered you the part, and I think you need to know exactly why I fought hard for you to get this role.
” She drums her fingers across the computer in her lap.
“I’m not going to tell you that everyone was on board with casting an untested performer in our lead role.
There are a few people who think the idea is…
eccentric at best. But I wrote those words, and when you said them I believed them.
I saw them come alive. You have a wonderful natural instinct. ”
“I feel so out of my depth,” I admit quietly. “I don’t want to let you down.”
Jasmine huffs, her tone brisk, pure business.
“You haven’t made a film before. It’s not a surprise or a secret.
We all know that. If it takes you a little longer to grasp the technical aspects of your performance, that’s understandable.
It’s going to be worth the delay, the extra work”—she looks me in the eye here—“for the sort of performance I believe you are capable of. That you and Jack are capable of together.”
She gets to her feet. “You can do this, Cynthie. I need you to trust me when I tell you that. It’s going to be almost impossibly hard work, but I swear at the end of it, I am going to get a brilliant performance out of you. Not just adequate, not promising for a first role, but brilliant .”
“That means a lot,” I reply ardently.
She hesitates, frowning at me. “Look, I’m not here to be your friend or your mentor,” she says finally, clearly horrified by the very idea.
“No,” I murmur, “of course not.” Even though my heart sinks and I want to ask her why she can’t be those things. “That would be… bad ?” I manage to make it sound like a question and I try not to look as pathetic and desperate as I feel.
“I’m going to be your director,” she continues, the words sharp.
“We’re making this piece of work together .
Bring the joy and energy that you brought into that audition room onto set with you.
Turn up, do the work. Be prepared to do it over and over again, until you hate me, until you’re dead on your feet, because we’re not settling for anything less than perfect.
You have it in you to be great at this and we’re about to prove it. Do you understand?”
I feel like if the directing thing doesn’t work out, Jasmine could have a career as the American football coach to a scrappy team of underdogs, because that ended up being some rousing half-time speech. It’s all I can do to stop myself from leaping to my feet and starting to applaud.
“I understand,” I say instead, and I mean it.
Because I can feel my heart beating harder, because I hear the truth in what she said.
She really believes that I can do this, and after being so ruthlessly pummeled by self-doubt for the last few weeks, it’s a lifeline, a hand reaching down and offering to help me to my feet.
I know, somewhere deep inside me, that she’s right, that not only can I do this job, but that I can do it brilliantly .
If she’d been kind and gentle and told me I only needed to do my best, it would have flattened me, but this—this demand that I reach my potential—has me practically levitating off the ground.
Maybe it’s madness, maybe it’s ego, maybe it’s just what a person has to have to be able to make something like this happen at all—but my outrageous self-belief is what has got me this far, and I feel it settle around me now.