Chapter 9 Schrödinger’s life.
Schrodinger’s life.
Josie
MY CONVERSE SLAP the film lot’s concrete as the sky slits one orange eye to the day. I’m part of the so-called “early shift,” which includes mostly makeup artists and the actors we’re turning into aliens. Sean won’t be here, so that’s a relief. Still, a low-grade dread grips me.
Freaking Sean! He picked me on purpose. I mean, Yay, I got chosen by a superhot movie star. That’s how a normal person would react.
I avoided looking at any entertainment news last night or this morning because, well… Schrodinger’s cat. As long as I don’t open the box and see the carnage, good things are still possible. For me, it’s also Schrodinger’s name. Schrodinger’s career. Schrodinger’s life.
The only thing I allowed myself to do was compare the photo of Sean and me on the Date Your Celebrity Crush! website with my old headshot. The woman with the short purple hair, glasses, hat, and scowl looked very little like the blond, smiling teen. I hope it’s enough.
Am I overreacting? Maybe. I mean, how many celebrities have done stupid shit, especially when they were young, and we all forgave and forgot?
Although, for a lot of young fans, Chuy was an icon.
There were lunchboxes with his face on them.
T-shirts, too. We needed security to protect us from the swarms of children that would descend upon us when we appeared with him in live venues.
So, yeah. I basically killed Mexican Elmo. And then hid his body.
Body? Is that the right word? What do you call something dead that was never alive to begin with?
I should have just apologized in the moment.
Faced the consequences. But that’s older me talking.
I did consider making an official statement on social media a few months after I ran away, but every time I tried, these little bullets of fear ripped through my chest. What did I expect to get out of waking a sleeping dragon?
Did I really want to reopen that wound? Plus, I was a little bit scared of the conspiracy theorists out there searching for Chuy. There’s a fervor there.
Truthfully, though, I was more scared of facing my stepfamily.
Mom told me to just talk to Juan Ernesto, that he wasn’t mad, not anymore, just deeply hurt and disappointed.
If that was supposed to be convincing, it wasn’t.
And Lupe? Well, apparently, she wasn’t banging down my door to kiss and make up, so that was settled.
I’d had a chance at a family, and I’d blown it. Now, too much time has passed. If I ever had a chance to redeem myself, it’s long gone. Too little, too late.
Besides, my secret little life isn’t so bad. I found a place to belong with Emmy and Peyton, and now Jason and their new little baby on the way. Yes, I’m on the outside, but Emmy never makes me feel that way. The universe has given me one more chance. I won’t overstep again, I promise.
I stare at the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign on the side entrance to Studio 11. I can’t afford to stall any longer. I push open the door.
My client, Chelsea, is already in the chair, grande mocha skim no whip in hand. She’s chatting with Howie, who relaxes in Li Jing’s chair as they stretch a bald cap over his slicked-down afro with practiced, tattoo-covered hands. When I enter the room, all conversation halts.
“What?” I say, all nonchalant. “Am I late?” But inside I’m bracing for it.
Why didn’t you tell us you were a child actress?
It says on the news your real name is Savannah Bateman.
I think we studied you in school. Friends Para Siempre, right?
Whatever did you have against that puppet? Where is it, anyway? Under your bed?
Instead, Chelsea holds out her fist for a bump. “Sean O’Sullivan, eh? Impressive.”
I brush my knuckles over hers. “It was a dumpster fire. You don’t have to pretend.”
“You get stage fright?” Li Jing asks, their facial piercings shifting in sympathy.
I stuff my tote into my designated cabinet. “Something like that.”
“It was the blurting that did you in,” Chelsea says. “It’s always the blurting.”
“Yeah.” Howie snickers. “Butt Cheek Girl.”
“Look.” I interrupt their laughter. “Some people are in-front-of-the-camera people, and some people are behind-the-camera people.” I twist Chelsea’s hair into a knot and clip it to her head. “I’m the latter.”
They hum in understanding. At least we all know our place.
Relief begins to overshadow dread as I pull out my brushes and tray.
If all they have to talk about is how weird I acted on the show, that means I’m in pretty good shape.
But despite the resurgence of the Flaming Chuy meme and the possibility that I taught one or more of them how to ask for directions in Spanish back in high school, these guys aren’t the audience I’m most concerned about.
If I really want to know if I’ve been recognized, I need to tune in to Hollywood, De Repente with Hugo Valencia during my break.
That dude has been reporting Latinx entertainment news since before I was born.
He’s Mexican-American, and he was one of a handful of media personalities who never stopped searching for Chuy’s carcass (corpse?).
Whatever. He never stopped searching for him.
If anyone is going to recognize me, it’s him.
“Where are you going?” Chelsea asks as I brush a cotton ball with witch hazel over her skin.
“Does it look like I’m going somewhere?”
“I meant on the date you won with Mr. O’Sullivan.”
It weirds me out that she calls him Mr. O’Sullivan. I should probably refer to him that way, too, but Emmy introduced him to me as Sean. “I’m supposed to get a call from someone to set something up.”
“That’s romantic,” Howie deadpans.
“You’re just jealous,” I reply. “You wish you had your own fake celebrity charity date.”
“They’re gonna have cameras in your face the whole time, you know,” Chelsea says, and a fresh wave of anxiety lights me up.
“People are gonna know her name better than ours,” Howie complains to her. “I should’ve applied to that contest.”
“We’ll get our day, Howie.” Chelsea shifts in the chair and frowns as I continue prepping her to become a green-skinned Heltaroth. “It’s coming.”
“Well, next time you’re in front of the camera, just act like a complete imbecile. That seemed to work for me,” I say.
“Howie’s already tried that,” Li Jing quips.
“Ooo, burn!” Chelsea replies.
Howie shrugs. “All publicity is good publicity.”
Not true, but I’m not about to broach that subject now. “You know what?” I squeeze green makeup onto my tray. “I don’t want to go on that date. One of you can have it—whoever wants to buy me lunch for a week.”
“I’ll buy you lunch for a week!” Chelsea and Howie cry at the same time.
“It appears we have a bidding war. I’ll accept your best offers in the break room at noon.”
We work in relative silence for the next couple of hours until the rattle of a service cart breaks through our noise-canceling AirPods and Yesenia pokes her head into the room.
“Breakfast?” she asks with a big smile.
We mutter a bunch of affirmative replies, and she begins to hand out tacos de papa and red enchiladas and something she calls “breakfast tamales” although, even with my deep and long-standing relationship with the tamal, I can’t for the life of me figure out what makes them different from lunch or dinner tamales.
“?Quieres salsa verde?” she asks me. Yesenia is like everyone’s mom around here, and she knows I love the spicy sauce in the squeeze bottle peeking out of her catering bag.
“?Claro que sí!” I dress my mayo-slathered potato taco with a long, wiggly squirt.
Yesenia’s potato tacos are the best—the outside golden and crispy, the inside soft and savory.
Broken in two with each half stuffed into a warm corn tortilla, they remind me so much of the ones I used to get in Mexico.
She and I chat a few minutes in Spanish. She didn’t see the show last night, apparently, and I don’t mention it. Yesenia has never shown any sign of recognizing me, and I plan on keeping it that way.
Yesenia repacks her things and is just about to push the service cart out of the room when a man in shiny black leather swoops into the doorway. He grips the doorframe and studies the room as if he’s been sent to extract a high-value target. The potato taco in my stomach does a flip-flop.
It’s Sean O’Sullivan.