Chapter 15 #3
“I’ll call her,” I said, and then got off the phone with Bob.
Whenever Bob says, “This one might not go our way,” that’s it.
They never really fully reject you; they just ghost you and one day there’s the movie poster with Charles on it.
I felt a rush of failure and shame, the two horsemen of my apocalypse, and a void opened up in my abdomen, just beneath my rib cage.
I remembered that I had to fly home. I didn’t even know what time my flight was.
I was so wholly incompetent, an idiot faking my way through the world.
For some reason, something Matthew said to me once came into my mind unbidden: You get famous by getting roles, and you get roles by getting famous.
Right then, Ellen called. “Where are you right now?” There was tension in her voice. It almost sounded like she’d been crying.
“I’m in my hotel room. What’s up?”
“Okay, don’t leave. Stay in your room. I’ll be there in, uh, fourteen minutes.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m about to say something I never say to actors: Google yourself. I’ll be there in thirteen and a half minutes.”
_____
So I googled myself. I’d only seen the first headline—Hero Starlet Kai Laramie Put His Molester in Jail—when a call came in from Juniper.
“Where are you right now?”
“I’m in my hotel room waiting for Ellen.”
“So you know.”
“I know.”
Bob was calling. I sent it to voicemail.
“I’m so sorry, Kai.”
I took a few breaths, but I couldn’t feel the air coming in or going out.
I didn’t know what to say or do. Everyone would know now.
The casting director would know. Brian Arawas would know.
Matthew Malone would know. My phone was vibrating again.
My brother. Jesus. Everyone knew. “Kai,” Juniper said.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing shameful about this coming out.
It’s just a gossip site, anyway. Nobody reads that shit. ”
“My brother is calling,” I said.
“So maybe your brother reads it.”
My phone buzzed again. Matthew. “I gotta go,” I said. “Matthew’s calling.”
I clicked over. “Kai,” he said, with the calm confidence that defined him in the public imagination. “How are you?”
I could feel the heat behind my eyes. “I feel pretty scared right now.”
“Kai, you saved a lot of other young people by testifying. There are a lot of kids who’ll never know what you have to know.”
“Thanks, Matthew.”
“We’ll have your back during the junket. Me and Junie. We’ve got you.”
Phone buzzed. Bob again.
“Listen, Matthew, I need to go. My agent won’t stop calling.”
“You’re going to be okay. I mean, in the long run you’ll be dead, and in the short run it’s gonna be bumpy, but in the medium run, Kai. In the medium run, you’re golden.”
“Thanks, Matthew.”
I clicked over to Bob. “You got the fucking part, kid.”
“I what?”
“They said why buy a star when we can fucking make one.”
“Congrats!” Zoe jumped in.
“You and Juniper, starring in another movie together. Great for Warhol. Great for the future.”
“Have you seen the article?” I asked.
“Oh, about that teacher? Yeah, someone just sent it to me. If anything, kid, and don’t take this the wrong way, but if anything, it helps us. You’re a hero twice over—saving America’s sweetheart from a creepy fan and America’s children from a pedophile.”
“It helps us,” I repeated. My stomach hurt. I remembered him making me sit on his lap, grinding against me. He always kept his clothes on. He would say sometimes, how can it be inappropriate when you’ve never even seen my cock? I just like to give you pleasure. Pleasure can’t be wrong.
_____
Sometimes I thought maybe it didn’t actually happen; maybe it was like he said at the trial and I imagined it all, or made it up to hurt him.
But then how do you explain the others? The article, which I scanned through once and then read slowly while waiting for Ellen, made it seem like I had been the one to out my abuser, even though it was another kid who said something to the principal.
I was picked to testify because the other kid had a drug charge and wasn’t seen as reliable.
It made me look like a hero I wasn’t. I hadn’t stopped him. Someone else had stopped him.
But how do you explain what it’s like? How do you explain that he’d play the nervous game with you, asking if you were nervous when he put his hand on your thigh, and you’d say no, and then he’d put his hand farther up your thigh and say are you nervous now, and you’d say no, I’m not nervous.
Why did you say that? Why didn’t you say yes I am fucking nervous and freaked out and I don’t feel right about this?
Then eventually he’d get near your cock and you’d say yes I’m nervous and he’d grab your cock anyway.
I thought about the statue in his office, this bronze statue of an emaciated cowboy riding a horse, the cowboy wearing a hat with the brim pulled down low over his forehead.
It is strange what gets remembered, what refuses to be forgotten.
“We got it up to seven hundred fifty grand up front,” Bob said.
“Wow,” I said.
“Eight hundred for the first sequel, one million for the second, and these movies make you a fucking star. The stone-cold balls on you, to tell the studio you don’t want to play someone’s brother and rocket yourself into the male lead.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Take the deal.”
“That’s what I love to hear. Enjoy this, kid. Fucking drink it in.”