Finding June (22 page)

“You two ready?” Bates finally called out. We
both nodded, not mentioning that we had been ready for a while.
“Camera?”

“Speeding.”

“Sound?”

“Speeding.”

“Action.”

Rafe walked grandly to the middle of the
stage, his presence now anything but small. He grinned out at the
empty audience and bright lights before giving a majestic sweep of
his hand, indicating toward the disappearing man trick. I followed
quickly behind him, trying to look like I had any idea what I was
doing. I definitely thought we would spend more time blocking this
scene out, or that Bates would at least tell me what he wanted me
to do.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Rafe began—rather
stereotypically, I thought. “Tonight you have seen many a strange
wonder. You’ve experienced the excitement of my lovely, levitating
lady,” he exclaimed in his thick accent, bowing slightly in my
direction. Apparently I was the levitating lady. I looked out at
the "audience" and put my hands up in a "ta-da" gesture.

“You’ve felt the suspense of sawing this
sweet supporter clean in half.” He once again gave me a little bow.
It was starting to sound like Imogen Gentry really got beaten up
during this show. No wonder Cutter and Charles suspected her.

“But now, prepare yourselves to dive into the
dramatic denouement of the disappearing man!" he exclaimed. I
hadn’t read any of these lines in the script and I wondered if it
was Edward or Rafe who was taken to speaking in alliterations.

Attempting to keep a straight face after
Rafe’s ridiculous rant (apparently now I was thinking in
alliterations), I followed him to the large painted box at center
stage. He spun the box around to show that there was no way he’d be
able to escape through the back and then stepped in, giving a
hearty wink in the general direction of the camera before I closed
the door on him.

And there I was—standing alone in the middle
of the stage with a camera and millions of lights pointed at me. I
had absolutely no direction to go on except, "make a few gestures
and give him about a minute in the box."

Trying to interpret those directions as best
I could, I looked back out at the audience with a mysterious smile
on my face . . . or at least, what I hoped looked like a mysterious
smile. I presented the box, looking something like Vanna White, and
tried to do a little spin in front of it so that I could get to the
other side and hold my arms out like an idiot. Unfortunately, that
didn’t happen. Instead, my toe caught on the uneven wooden floor
halfway through my spin and I came tumbling into a heap on the
floor right in front of the box. And of course the best part was
that it was all caught on tape. Lucky me.

“Cut,” I heard Bates yell from behind the
camera. There were a few scattered snickers, but I couldn’t make
out where they were coming from. Then Rafe opened the disappearing
man trick and poked his head out.

“What happened?” he asked Bates, not even
seeing me on the floor. It didn’t take long though, and he soon
emitted a loud, rumbling laugh.

“Thank you,” I said sarcastically, my cheeks
feeling like they were on fire. At least Lukas hadn’t been here to
see that. He probably would have been polite enough to not laugh
(unlike Rafe), but I still wouldn’t have wanted to trip like a
clumsy oaf in his presence.

“Are you okay, June?” Bates asked from his
mysterious position behind the lights. At least he sounded like he
was trying to be sympathetic, even though I could hear the smile in
his voice.

“I’m fine. Sorry. The floor is uneven,” I
mumbled, trying to pretend like nothing had happened. I quickly got
to my feet (with no help from Rafe, I'd like to point out) and
dusted off my skirt, relieved that I hadn’t ruined the
feathers.

We reset and shot the scene a few more times
after finally receiving some direction from our director. You’d
think, given his title, he would have told me what he wanted me to
do in the first place, but no such luck, I guess. I messed up a few
more times, much to Rafe’s amusement, but we finally got the scene
captured. Bates was as happy as a kid at Christmas by the end of
it.

I was anxious to get back into the cramped
confines of the makeshift makeup room so I could tell Candice how
embarrassing the whole ordeal had been. I quickly checked in with
the assistant director to make sure I knew what my next scene was
and then scampered away to see Candice.

The dusty and hot makeup room was piled,
floor to ceiling, with Candice’s makeup cases and men. More men
than usual, that is. Benjamin and Ryan sat on the floor texting
like fiends, while Rafe, who had somehow managed to slip past me
unnoticed, was sitting in the makeup chair with Candice fawning
over him in a disconcerting manner.

“Don’t give Candice flowers and candy to woo
her,” Benjamin began saying to no one in particular, “Give her fake
blood and liquid latex. Apparently I’ve been playing this all
wrong.” He looked up at me, indicating that I was the one he’d been
talking to all along.

“Looks like you’ll have to rethink your
strategy,” I said knowingly as I picked my way through the piles of
makeup to sit next to Ryan. I stumbled slightly over a powder brush
and Ryan instantly sprang to his feet, surprising me by his
gentlemanly behavior.

“Careful, June, the floor is a little
uneven,” he said with a smirk, making me forget my mental
impression that he was a gentleman.

“It
was
uneven,” I muttered under my
breath, taking a seat beside him.

“So, how was your date with Mr. Wonderful?”
Ryan asked casually. Benjamin gave him an odd look that I couldn’t
quite decipher, but he ignored Benjamin, so I did too, focusing on
the more worrisome fact that they somehow knew about my date with
Lukas.

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously,
wondering if there was any point in pretending like I didn’t know
what he was talking about.

“June, this is a film set. You can’t keep a
secret here for long. It’s just too many people, too close
together,” he explained.

“For
way
too long,” Candice added,
sounding pretty happy despite her sour comment. I figured it had
something to do with the blisters she was now applying to Rafe’s
face.

“It was fine. We just went out for coffee,” I
said, purposefully picking up a discarded magazine on the floor and
holding it up over my face.

“You don’t drink coffee,” Benjamin pointed
out, never taking his eyes off of his phone.

“I had hot chocolate,” I answered, keeping
all of my responses short so that I wouldn’t be implicating myself
in any way.

“And what happened after that?” Rafe asked
with sarcastic enthusiasm, obviously not happy that they were all
so interested in my love life when there were other topics to be
discussed, like nail biting and anxious twitches.

“I went home,” I said.

“Did you invite him up to your place so you
could 'slip into something a little more comfortable’?” Ryan asked,
his voice lighthearted.

“Yeah. I introduced him to my grandma who I
live with because I’m sixteen years old and in high school, slipped
into something more comfortable, and then told him to hurry up and
have his way with me because I had to be in bed by curfew. It was a
pretty steamy night,” I said dryly.

“I see your point,” Ryan said, breaking the
awkward silence that followed my little story.

“That sounds like a good night to me,” Rafe
exclaimed, giving his two cents in a thick accent.

“I don’t know why you went out with him in
the first place,” Candice remarked in her familiar monotone.

“New Girl is obviously too blinded by his
charms to see his true evil, Candice. We can’t fault her for that,”
Benjamin said with a sad, slow shake of his head. “Maybe a dunk in
the tank will do her some good.”

I groaned audibly at the reminder. I had been
doing a pretty good job of letting myself forget about my little
"stunt" throughout the morning, but there was no avoiding it now. I
only had a few more scenes to shoot that day before I took the
plunge, and I prayed with all my might that the tank didn’t somehow
lock once I was in there. I told myself over and over in my head
that there was no way this stunt could go wrong, but somehow I
wasn’t very convincing.

CHAPTER 18

The thick, itchy rope wrapped around my
wrists did little to keep me dangling high above the water tank. In
fact, I was pretty sure it didn’t do anything at all. Hidden
strategically behind my hair and beneath my sparkly costume was a
body harness that reminded me of a very revealing bathing suit made
of thick straps. While the harness did distribute my weight pretty
evenly, it was still amazingly uncomfortable. I had no doubt in my
mind that if I weren’t a "nobody," they’d have a stunt double do
this scene for me. But as it was, there I stayed, dangling above a
tank full of icy cold water and slowly losing feeling in my legs
(which I was pretty sure wasn’t supposed to be happening).

They had lifted me up above the water tank at
the very last second when they were ready to film so that I
wouldn’t be dangling there long, but after a few takes this painful
position was beginning to lose its appeal. I closed my eyes against
the headache that had been slowly forming and silently cursed the
itch on my cheek that I couldn’t scratch with my hands suspended
above my head.

“Are you doing all right up there, June?”
Bates called from somewhere below.

“Fine,” I mumbled around the damp cloth
acting as my "gag," trying to sound like a good sport when I was
actually quite unhappy with my current predicament. If I’m being
honest, though, the dangling above a water tank thing wasn’t the
worst part of it. The worst part was that after we captured this
scene, I’d be dropped into the tank below, have the lid shut over
my head, and pray that something didn’t go wrong with the
stunt.

The stunt coordinator told me before they
tied me up that if need be, they could empty the tank in less than
ten seconds through the grate in the bottom. While this did comfort
me a little, it gave rise to new and more complex worries. What if
I panicked in the tank when there wasn’t anything wrong, and they
emptied it in response? Then I’d have to get dried off and do the
scene all over, subsequently costing the show hundreds of dollars
in time spent because I’d freaked out over nothing.

I hadn’t ever realized how stressful acting
was. You didn’t just have to worry about lines. You had to worry
about how much you were costing the studio every time you made a
mistake, especially with a water scene. I always loved watching
bloopers on DVDs with Joseph, but at that moment, dangling above a
tank of freezing cold water that they had sworn was room
temperature, the concern about creating my own bloopers made me
feel slightly nauseous.

“Okay, I think we have the scene where we
want it up to the drop, so this next shot we’re actually letting
you go June,” Bates called up to me.

“Sounds good,” I lied around the gag
cloth.

“Now just remember, when you hit the water,
don’t panic,” he said slowly, making me wonder if my worries were
that evident on my face. At least acting scared wouldn’t be too
difficult. “The lid will shut and you hit the glass and pretend to
push up on the lid until Lukas runs over and gets you out.”

The way he said everything made it seem much
easier than I was imagining it. If I could just see it as a list in
my head, I might actually be able to pull it off.

“The most important thing is what we see when
you first drop in the tank. We can shoot your underwater shots all
day long, but the first scene where you go from being dry to wet we
want to get just once, if we can.”

Oh great. No pressure.

Bates called action and Lukas, Will, and Jim
Little (who was playing the theatre owner in love with me) all
sprang into action, shouting at each other and making threats while
waving guns like crazy people. I tuned them out for the most part,
getting into the zone while allowing myself to look distraught and
helpless, like a damsel in distress.

I was vaguely aware of Jim’s cue line about
me making a lovely corpse when I felt the click behind my back. The
mechanism holding me suspended in midair released and there was a
moment where nothing happened and I wondered if the stunt had
broken. I felt everyone’s eyes turn to me, cast and crew, before
the sickening feeling of falling finally hit me and air rushed past
my head. I let out a little involuntary scream which was muffled by
the gag in my mouth, and then hit the water as Will and Jim ran out
of the shot for the chase scene that would be spliced with my
rescue scene.

At first everything was silent (and freezing,
might I add) when I hit the water. All of the shouted lines turned
into nothing more than thick, heavy words muffled by the water.
Then I felt a thousand little bubbles rush up my body, making a mad
dash for the surface in the icy silence.

And then I heard it.

The dull thud of the heavy metal lid closing
above my head.

My eyes shot open wide, and I became
terrified that I would drown right then and there. The world
outside of the tank looked glassy and blurry all at the same time
,and I could see a dark shape rushing toward me. I assumed it was
Lukas, but if the stunt coordinator had decided to come rescue me
early, I wouldn’t have minded that either.

Remembering that I had to do some actual
acting, I slammed my bound hands repeatedly against the glass wall
in front of me. I looked around hysterically, beginning to actually
believe that I was Imogen Gentry, trapped in a water tank and about
to die. Some of the long feathers of my skirt floated up around my
face, making me feel even more claustrophobic, while the tiny
fishing weights holding the rest of my skirt down made me feel like
I would be pulled down to the bottom of the tank, preventing me
from swimming to the surface at the end of the scene.