Chapter Four
Four
I stand in the woods behind my cottage, halfway down the slope that separates it from the lake. Now in my blue dress, I close my eyes, feel the late-summer breeze on my face, and try to become Daisy.
An impossible task. I’m too present in my own skin—not to mention my own roiling thoughts—to pretend to be anyone other than myself. Even though the table read ended an hour ago, it lingers like a hangover, making me woozy, weak, and on the verge of throwing up.
Not because the script is bad. On the contrary, it’s good.
Very good.
Nausea-inducingly good.
What Ronan has come up with is spooky and atmospheric and very much an indie movie.
Yes, it has Ronan Peters directing and Violet Wright as its star, but it’s too strange and ambiguous to be considered mainstream horror.
Still, if done right, this movie could be a hit with both critics and audiences.
But it’s not just the script that has me spiraling. It’s also the role of Daisy and what it could mean for me. It’s an incredible part. A potentially career-making one. Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. Or Tippi Hedren in The Birds.
If done correctly, that is. The script is so tightly constructed that one false note or a single wrong scene could cause the whole thing to fall apart. Hence the nausea. More than at any moment in the past seventy-two hours, I understand that I could make or break this movie.
Yes, Violet is the nominal star as Ruth Hume Semple, but it’s Daisy audiences will latch onto. Because it’s based on her diary, she’s their entryway into the story, guiding them through the plot from start to finish, with dialogue on almost every page.
She’s also, incidentally, the only one to make it to the end credits.
To do the part justice requires a performance I’m not sure I’m capable of giving.
The table read didn’t provide any insight.
Not to me, anyway. It felt like taking a test I hadn’t studied for.
I knew some of the answers, but most of it left me stumped.
As everyone filed out of the parlor, I looked to Ronan for a sense of what he thought.
He responded with a single nod. Though subtle, I knew exactly what the gesture meant.
You’re welcome.
He might feel differently once cameras start rolling next week.
The fact that I have only that long to figure out how to play Daisy prompts a panic attack I try to stave off with a mental pep talk.
This is what you wanted, I tell myself. This is what you’ve dreamt about.
Seize it. Own it. Put in the work and make what little time you have count.
It helps, to an extent. Although still simmering with panic, I also understand the gift I’ve been given.
Not just the role of Daisy, but the opportunity to exist in the same place she did.
That is, after all, why we’re here. To take the time to find our characters.
To become them. If I take advantage of the situation, there’s a chance I’ll understand Daisy by the time I leave New Avalon.
On the way back to my cottage, I note the way it feels to walk in the woods.
How the setting sun filtering through the trees warms my face.
How the leaves crunch beneath the sturdy soles of my boots.
How the hem of my dress swishes along the ground.
A dress, I might add, that’s not nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it would be, although I left the period-specific undergarments in the dresser.
Those bloomers, for lack of a better word, can be saved for another day.
Daisy could have made this same trek, I think, strolling from her cottage to the water’s edge and back again. Maybe I am literally following in her footsteps, which makes me wonder how she walked. Timidly, I decide. Like a deer alert to every threat in the forest.
I try it out, moving lightly, carefully choosing each step before I take it. It feels…good. Literally like a first step toward becoming Daisy. I continue moving that way to edge of the woods near the wrought iron arch, stopping only when I notice something on the last tree before grass takes over.
The same strange symbol I spotted at the main house.
This one is carved into the tree’s trunk, nothing more than a faint scar etched into the bark.
I run a finger over it, tracing the circle.
Ronan’s screenplay mentions the hex signs only in passing.
Like they’re mere set dressing. But in real life, they seem to be everywhere, including the tree next to this one.
And the tree after that.
I study the tree line ahead and behind me. What I see is as unnerving as it is confusing.
Every single tree that borders the village at the top of the island contains a hex sign.
There are so many that it makes the ones in the main house seem tame in comparison. It’s like a wall of symbols surrounding the center of the island. What hell did the Semple family think was in these woods?
I follow the hex signs the same way a hiker does trail markers, moving past the back of my cottage. I’d keep going if not for the two women standing behind the cottage next to mine.
Susie and Heather.
They, too, have changed into their “island clothes,” which are far more stylish than mine.
Susie wears a white knit top trimmed with satin over a pleated maroon skirt that brushes her knees.
Heather has on a navy dress with white polka dots and a matching cloche hat.
Even their shoes—black leather with ankle straps and kitten heels—are nice.
Seeing them makes me feel like an Amish woman who’s just stumbled onto extras from yet another version of The Great Gatsby.
That’s especially true when Susie produces a vape and, holding it to her lips, says, “Do you really think this is going to work?”
“It should,” Heather says. “I guess it all depends on Marin.”
Hearing my name makes me edge back into the woods, the hex signs temporarily forgotten. I crouch behind a blessedly unmarked tree, out of their line of sight but still within earshot. From my hiding spot, I watch Susie take a short, surreptitious puff from the vape.
“It’s a really good script,” she says.
“Better than any of the shit I’ve been offered lately,” Heather says with a nod. “And for once, the Black girl doesn’t die first.”
Susie gives her arm a playful swat. “No, I do! I’d kill for a role like Daisy. I should be playing her. I have no idea what Ronan was thinking when he cast that nobody.”
“I think she did fine,” Heather says, earning a point on the mental scorecard I didn’t realize I was keeping until just now. “I was impressed by what I saw during the table read.”
Another point for Heather.
“Acting is more than just saying lines,” Susie says, blowing out a stream of vapor. “Can she express her character through body language? Can she emote?”
“You worked for Disney,” Heather says. “That’s not exactly Juilliard.”
“Excuse me for not having a better pedigree. So I haven’t taught acting like Julianne and I’m not a fucking legend like Violet.
But I learned a lot at the Disney Channel.
More than our new Daisy knows. There has to be a reason Ronan chose her over literally everyone else.
” Susie’s face brightens. “Do you think she slept with him?”
The question is such a shock that I almost gasp, forcing me to clamp a hand over my mouth before it can escape.
“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion,” Heather says.
“I bet she did,” Susie says. “Or else Ronan thinks she’s willing to. She better not be, if she knows what’s good for her.”
I retreat farther into the woods, too hurt and angry to hear the rest. I’m not mad that they questioned my acting ability, especially since I’m a novice and so much is riding on my performance.
Since I don’t even know if I’ll be able to pull it off, I can’t expect them to feel any different.
No, what irks me is the assumption that I slept with Ronan to get the part.
I am not naive. I know the casting couch still exists.
Even now, after the #metoo movement was supposed to change the culture in Hollywood.
But I would never, ever fuck a director just to get a part.
Not that I think Ronan expects that of me.
It’s a ridiculous notion. Ronan Peters is objectively hot.
I am certain he is not lacking for romantic partners.
I’ve seen the gossip sites linking him to various pop stars and stick-thin supermodels.
He has absolutely no reason to give a big part to an unknown actress in the hope that she’ll sleep with him.
I’m not the kind of actress directors actively try to seduce.
I’m the kind who gets cast as the bridesmaid with eczema.
Yet what Susie said itches like a rash. Why did Ronan hire me? Why did he give me, an actress with no experience save for a single humiliating commercial, the role of a lifetime? Especially when someone else had already been cast?
I can’t stop myself from thinking about that last, ominous text from the previous Daisy, the mysterious LG.
don’t set foot on that island. if you do, i swear, you WILL regret it
While it’s possible bitterness or jealousy made her send it, my gut tells me it was something else.
Maybe she was trying to warn me about Susie, who uttered a threat of her own—I better not want to sleep with Ronan if I know what’s good for me—which I take to mean Susie wants him all to herself.
And while I guess I should be flattered she considers me a threat, all I can think about is that maybe Susie felt the same thing about LG and drove her off the film.
Whatever the reason behind her departure and my casting, it’s something I need to know now and not later, after filming has begun and it’s too late to do anything.
I don’t want to spend the next six weeks having Susie’s unwarranted anger distract me from performing what could be the role of my career.