Everybody Knows Your Name (12 page)

“This girl likes the color of your hair. But this girl wants to pull it out because, quote, ‘Ford is dreamy and she needs to keep her hands off him.'” My hands were never on him, but potato, potahto. It's pretty shocking to learn how emotionally invested some people are in the show when it's only been on a week. Maybe these are the same kind of people who can feel connected to almost everyone they meet.

“But then, look! There's a whole message board group that's sprung up to discuss how they think the two of you would be cute together. Mag, I think it's all good news because you're a topic of discussion.” My mom gives me a look. “And next performance, you'll be more bubbly and upbeat.”

Anyway, the day goes by like that, tulips and graphs, and then the van takes us back to the mansion. I'm feeling weirdly low by now, and all I want is an evening to be myself, to write some more of
Ships
, to not have to talk. I'm so tired of acting, which I don't even think I'm decent at, and I'm tired of being filmed.

But the producers have the cameras follow us into the house to tape a “making pasta dinner” scene. And I just can't take any more show stuff, so I slip out onto the patio while they're checking everyone's light. It's a busy shoot, so no one notices. I'm wearing a black cropped tank top and jeans, but there's no way I'm risking going back inside to get my bikini, so I walk into the pool, just like that.

I duck under the water and shut my eyes and it feels so great, really comforting and still and removed, and I swim underwater until I get to the other end and have to come up for breath. The sun is going down, and the sky is tilting purple. It looks and feels like fall is coming. It feels like I should be in school.

Before anyone spots me, I duck under again, eyes closed, and start swimming back across the pool.

Then there are lips on mine.

I open my eyes underwater. The chlorine stings them. Ford is pulling back from my face. He's in his clothes too. We stare at each other, finally, finally, finally where no one else can see us. I hold on to his shirt, pull myself up to him, and this time, I kiss him.

When we were kids, Sissy and I were the movie addicts in the family. We could watch three or four in a night. After she got her permit, she would drive me down to the video store, and we'd argue over what to rent. She'd insist on renting one of those teenage romance movies from the eighties, like
Pretty in Pink
or
Some Kind of Wonderful.
Those movies where the cool/rich guy falls for the awkward/poor girl. Or where a nerd takes off his glasses, slaps some mousse in his hair, and suddenly he's the hottest person in school. Or where someone finds out the person they really loved was right in front of them all along. Those kinds of movies.

What Sissy loved about those movies was the big romantic moment: that scene where a guy makes a fool of himself to win the girl back, usually by making a speech in front of the whole school, or waiting out in the rain like a wet stray dog.

“I hate the guys in this town,” Sissy would say. “Not one of them would do something like that for me.” But I know for a fact if a guy showed up outside our house holding a boom box over his head, blasting music like John Cusack in
Say Anything
, Sissy would do something terrible to him. She likes to sleep.

Now that I've had a couple of girlfriends, I've learned those movies are not a trustworthy guidebook for romance. I'm telling you, that stuff usually doesn't work. In real life, the big romantic moment often just ends up being embarrassing for everyone involved. I've always known better than to go around holding my heart up over my head.

But this once, I didn't even have to think about what I wanted to do. The big romantic moment just happened on its own. I couldn't have done any different. All I know is when I saw Magnolia walk into the pool with all her clothes on like a lunatic, I didn't stop to think it over. I just found myself diving in.

I swam until I found her, and I kissed her like I was supposed to. When we came out of the water, we went separate ways so we wouldn't have to answer bothersome questions. But later that night, when everyone else was asleep, I went and got her. Without saying anything, we started again.

Now that we've started, we can't keep our hands off each other. Whatever animal magnetism is, that's what we've got.

I pull Magnolia into the little photo booth at this producer's house. He had the whole
Spotlight
cast over for a fancy dinner. I thought he was trying to show us some West Coast hospitality, until we got there and saw that the table was surrounded by lights and cameras. It was more like a high-pressure performance than a dinner. People cranking their personalities up a notch for the cameras.

Everyone else is upstairs in his insane white master bedroom, sitting around his grand piano, listening to him play songs from the old days. But Magnolia and I have snuck off downstairs. In his front hallway he has a booth like the ones in malls back home, the ones that print those strips of black-and-white photos. We hit the button and wait as a beep counts down to . . .

Flash!
Making faces into camera.

Flash!
Pretending to strangle each other.

Flash! Flash!
Making out. Making out until we hear the printer drop our photos into the slot outside the booth. Making out until we hear the piano upstairs stop and footsteps coming overhead.

We step out of the booth and take the evidence. The last two photos are basically of our hair and hands.

It's hard to believe that we weren't always like this, her and me.

Monday morning, the cameramen are back with Lucien. The three of them walk in on Magnolia sitting on the edge of the pool table, me between her legs, our mouths interlocking perfectly.

“Uh, this is a private moment,” I say.

“Great. Passion! Obviously, we're going to do the romance story line, since this is now clearly happening,” Lucien says like he didn't hear me.

“I don't think so,” says Magnolia.

“Come on, it's showmance time!” Lucien bounces his eyebrows. He's making fun of the term. “That's Catherine's favorite word. But it'll be good for you getting votes. I promise.”

I think about that.

“But are you going to make us cheesy?” asks Magnolia.

Skip and Hector are already setting up their equipment while joking around.

“Oh, Ford, your body is so amazing,” Skip says in a girly voice.

“No,
your
body's amazing,” Hector says back. Admittedly, his fake-sexy voice sounds pretty funny coming from his big round body.

“No, yours is totally more amazing.”

I throw the cue ball just to the right of Skip's head, purposely missing.

“Well, now I'm confused if you're a lover or a fighter!” Skip laughs.

“You can give this footage whatever voice-over you want, but I'm not talking about my feelings!” Magnolia yells. It's pretty cute, and I could kiss her, but instead we just frustrate the three of those guys by sitting there and talking about our newfound connection without saying one nice thing about one another.

“I get along with Ford because he's an idiot. And that makes me feel more secure about myself,” Magnolia says.

“And Magnolia reminds me of this pet lizard my brother used to have, always wanting to hide under rocks and such. She has the same cold-blooded charm.”

I think the people at home will be able to see what's going on between us no matter what we say, though. How could they not?

Of course, it gets around to the rest of the group. Up until the shoot in the game room, we've done a pretty good job of sneaking around. But now we figure there's no real point in even trying.

I pull Magnolia into my lap on the downstairs couch, where Felicia's flipping through a celebrity magazine, and Felicia says, “How am I supposed to do research in here with your guys' pheromones flying back and forth?”

Gardener comes through on his way to go take a run in his bizarre version of workout clothes: a cut-up black tank top, pentagram headband, black pants that are half pleather, half lace, and black boots. He stops and looks at me and my girl. “Love will tear us apart,” he says. “Again.” I think he's quoting something.

But mostly everyone is cool about us. They're in good moods. Things feel different around the mansion since elimination night. For one thing, with Belinda gone, there's less incense smoke in the upstairs hallway. But the bigger change is that the rest of us are still here—if that makes sense.

Now it's like we're survivors, like we've all jumped off the same cliff and lived (except for Belinda, RIP). Last week we were like nervous kids the first day of high school, and now everyone is lounging around the mansion like overconfident seniors.

I guess your sense of being home accelerates when life gets this weird.

I wish I could say that all the making out has left me so dizzy that I don't know who I am. But there's still the living ghosts of my family rattling their chains inside my head.

The good news is I haven't heard from them since Cody called. I'm praying, even though I'm not close to religious, that this means he was drunk and forgot about it the next morning. I tell myself that driving to California is exactly the sort of thing my family will sit around on the couch talking about while they're wasted, but never get it together enough to actually do.

Even though this is probably the truth, I still feel the threat of them every time Magnolia confides in me another memory of her dad.

“This is his sweater,” she says tonight. We're sitting facing each other on the stone bench in the flower garden in the yard. Her legs are on top of mine. We're supposed to be in bed, but the mansion isn't exactly Alcatraz. The producers are pretty relaxed about curfew when we're on grounds, or when they're making us go to promotional-type parties. Then they don't care when we come home. I got my ass handed to me by Catherine for my TMZ appearance at the Whisky the other night, though. She threatened to throw me off the show if I take out my bike again. She says it's an insurance nightmare.

Magnolia is wearing an oversized sweater that looks like it belonged to a guy who was nothing like my dad. It's a really nice sweater. Like the kind I've seen pretend dads wearing in those department store circulars that come with the Sunday paper.

“Did you save any of their clothes?” she asks. She means my parents.

“Some stuff, sure. Things that meant the most.” I look down at how she's pulled his sweater sleeves over her hands. It makes her look vulnerable in a way she usually doesn't. I feel like a piece of shit. Why am I continuing this lie to her? Why can't I just come clean?

Well, it's because I feel so great when I'm with her. Because I don't want her to go away. Because I feel like someone different when I'm with her, and I really want to be that person.

“He would wear this a lot on the weekends,” she continues. “Even when it was too hot for it.”

“My dad used to have a sweatshirt like that,” I say. I'm such a fraud. He's still got it, still wears it. Has an eagle and an owl fighting on the front, God knows why.

“Wearing it is like my version of visiting his grave. Or sometimes I talk to him in the car. It's not like I believe in ghosts, but I can get this feeling when I'm in the car like I could say something out loud to him. It makes more sense there. That sounds wacky, I know—”

“Nah. I get it.”

“Do you visit your parents' headstones?”

“Mmmm,” I say, and that's just my bullshit way of sounding like I'm telling her yes when really I'm saying nothing at all.

Since we got together, I've learned so much about Magnolia's dad. Every day she tells me a little more. I know about how he would listen to music in the middle of the night because he had trouble shutting his brain off. Couldn't sleep. I know that Roxy Music was one of his favorite bands. I can even picture him lying in bed with his headphones on, like Magnolia said he did. I can see him.

I have to get off this subject or I'm not going to be able to look at her face.

I shiver. “Didn't think it was supposed to get cold in California. False advertising.” I'm wearing a T-shirt. I put my hands underneath the hem of Magnolia's sweater.

“You're supposed to layer here. Southern California weathermen have been preaching the virtues of layering my whole life.”

“And my whole life I thought my only choice was jacket or no jacket.”

“Stick with me,” she says. “I'll teach you things.”

I slide a hand up into her magenta hair, tugging at it while I lean into her and kiss her. I close my eyes and I lose track of everything: time, the garden. Hell, the planet. I'm only aware of the shape of her lips and her legs intertwined with mine. It doesn't make any sense at all, but I feel like I belong here.

What gets me is this feeling when she's in my arms. I have a hard time saying anything is meant to be, but there you go. I've never felt anything like it before. How else could I make any sense of it? It's like a red carpet rolling out in front of me that I have to follow.

We hear voices coming from the other side of the pool, and glance over. Nikki and her girlfriend are out searching. They look around nervously as they flip chair cushions and peek under planters, looking for the Superstar. I had lost track of everything. Even that we're in a competition. Inside me, a cold wind shakes the walls of the warm little world I've got going with Magnolia, making it feel like a cheap movie set of plywood and glue. There are things trying to wake me up from this dream and drag me back to myself.

They go inside, and Magnolia leans her head back, tossing a few strands of hair out of her eyes. She stares into the sky. Above us reach the black silhouettes of the palm trees, blacker than the sky. The LA sky doesn't get truly dark at night—it's just a big purple smear, washed out by the city lights. You can only see a handful of stars, only the brightest ones. Unless some of those are airplanes?

Her eyes are heavy-lidded and dark and deep, and when they meet mine again, I can't look away, even though it's almost too intense to keep this up. I feel that I'm gone for sure.

“It's so weird,” she says. I know she doesn't mean the purple sky. She means us. She means how big this feels. I'm right there with her.

“That we like each other?”

“That we ever even met. That we're us.”

“I need to tell you something,” I say. My voice is slow, like I've finally fallen in line with my family and become a drunk. There's this second where I think I'm going to come out with it. I'm going to tell her about my people. Lying to her has become excruciating.

But the words change on the way from my brain to my mouth.

“I had them put drugs in your hair color, like mind control drugs,” I say. “You got no choice but to like me.”

“That feels close to the truth.”

We kiss again. And again. I can only liken it to a form of short-term amnesia. It's new every time.