Finding June (8 page)

“I’m Anna,” she explained, though I knew
exactly who she was . . . and I’m sure she knew that too.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” I replied,
hoping I didn’t sound too star-struck, even though I was doing
flips inside.

“Very nice to meet you too,” she answered as
the phone in her hand buzzed. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” she
said, looking down at the screen in concern before leaving the room
with one hand over her ear and the other holding her phone.

“She’s British?” I asked the two boys the
second she was out of earshot.

“Happens every time,” Benjamin said with a
sad shake of his head.

“Why is it that no one ever knows when a
British person puts on an American accent, but the second I do my
English accent, people are all over me about how awful it sounds?”
Ryan asked Benjamin and me.

“Probably because your English accent
is
awful,” Benjamin replied with a laugh. Ryan reached
behind my back and shoved him playfully, but Benjamin had gotten
his phone out and barely noticed as his thumbs flew across the
keyboard.

“Hey, Candice is picking up coffee. What do
you want?” he asked without missing a beat in his text.

“Iced café mocha,” Ryan said, now looking
down at his phone as well.

“New Girl, what do you want?” he asked, still
not looking up.

“I don’t drink coffee,” I said simply. Both
boys stopped texting and looked over at me as if I were from an
alien planet.

“That’s weird,” Ryan finally said, as if he
had made a study of me and had come to this conclusion after much
deliberation.

“You don’t drink it ever?” Benjamin asked,
unable to comprehend this.

“Never,” I said, feeling very out of my
element. The uncomfortable moment was gratefully interrupted when
an angel walked into the room. The angel, of course, was Lukas
Leighton. Today he was wearing tight jeans, a plaid button-up
collared shirt and aviator sunglasses, making him look like a
walking piece of art. He had his trademark five o’clock shadow
covering his cheeks, and his dirty blonde hair stuck up stylishly
in every direction.

He was staring down at his phone when he
walked in and didn’t look over as he took his seat at the table
opposite us. I didn’t take this as rude, however, since he was
obviously very preoccupied with his phone. It was probably someone
important. He kept his head down, engrossed in his phone and
occasionally touching the screen.

“Here we go,” Ryan said in hushed tones.

“Another one bites the dust,” Benjamin agreed
in an equally reverent voice.

I turned a playful glare on them. “Do you
guys have to have a running commentary on everything?” I asked.
They nodded in unison, their faces completely serious.

“Listen, New Girl. I don’t care if you like
the boy . . . just please don’t sleep with him until after we do
your episodes,” Benjamin said, making me blush a deep crimson.

“It’ll really make your on-screen chemistry
awful,” Ryan agreed.

“I can absolutely promise you that won’t be
an issue,” I reassured them as I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
Benjamin shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention back to
his phone, but Ryan apparently wasn’t giving up that easily.

“You’re kind of conservative, aren’t you?” he
asked, the joking tone gone from his voice.

“Yeah, something like that,” I replied,
trying not to bring up the fact that I was Mormon. It wasn’t that I
was ashamed of my religion—not by any means. Mostly I just didn’t
want to get into a religious or political argument during my very
first table read. I was used to getting weird questions from people
at school, and it had kind of trained me to know when the mention
of my religion would be a teaching opportunity or when it would
turn into an argument or an excuse to make fun of it.

“Good for you,” he said unexpectedly, smiling
and making me feel like I had already made a friend in the
cast.

“Thank you,” I replied, in an equally as
good-natured tone.

Anna eventually returned to the room and took
her seat near Lukas. He looked over at her and the two began to
talk about something. I strained my ears to try to catch snippets
of the conversation but couldn’t really hear anything. I normally
wasn’t a nosey person, but when Lukas Leighton was sitting a few
feet away from me, you could bet I was going to try to hear what he
said.

Right before one o'clock, the last two stars
on the show walked into the room together, talking in low, playful
tones. Joann Hoozer, who played Jackie the medical examiner, was in
her mid-twenties and absolutely gorgeous. She had long blonde hair,
honey brown eyes, and a smile bright enough to land airplanes on.
She was tall, skinny, and graceful, just like a movie star should
be.

With Joann was Will Trofeos, the actual star
of the show. Everybody loved him as the hotshot detective Charles
Bagely, who had taken Lukas Leighton’s character Cutter under his
wing to teach him the art of deciphering a crime scene. He was
probably in his mid-to-late forties, though I wasn’t exactly sure
of his age. That was the thing with Hollywood—everyone looked a lot
younger than they really were. He had a thick Spanish accent, dark
skin, black hair, and chestnut eyes. For an older guy, he was
definitely good-looking.

Joann and Will sat in the two seats right
next to Lukas, and the rest of the crew soon joined us at the
table. I was glad that Benjamin and Ryan were sitting on either
side of me. They had been so friendly already that it felt like
they were my own private moral support. Looking around the room, I
couldn’t help but notice how glamorous everyone looked. Joann was
leaning on her elbow and talking to Will, her diamond encrusted
watch catching the light perfectly as her blonde hair cascaded down
her bare shoulder in loose curls. Even Lukas, who you could tell
was trying to go for the artsy "I don’t care about wearing trendy
clothes" look, had probably spent more on his plaid shirt than I
had on my entire wardrobe.

Something about these people just said they
were important, and I suddenly felt inadequate in the sundress I
had bought at the thrift store because I thought it made it more
"vintage." I tugged at one of the cap sleeves on my dress
uncomfortably, wishing it looked more expensive in this room
jam-packed with designer labels. Ryan and Benjamin somehow sensed
my discomfort, because they exchanged a quick glance before leaning
in to me again.

“Just relax,” Benjamin said quietly.

“Yeah, table reads are honestly no big deal,
all right? Half of the time we don’t even act . . . we just read
through the script like robots so that the department heads can
stop us every five seconds and tell us what kind of clothespins
they’ll need to keep the lighting right . . . or something,” Ryan
said in exasperation.

“Most of the time we have no idea what the
crew is talking about. They have weird names for things,” Benjamin
said, looking confused at the mere mention of these supposedly odd
nicknames.

“Like what?” I asked. I was actually pretty
interested in what new vocabulary I’d pick up on set. That, and I
really wanted something to distract me from my nerves.

“Well, like clothespins. They call them . . .
what is it, Benjamin?” Ryan asked, snapping his fingers as if that
might help him remember.

“C47s . . . or C42s . . . I'm not sure. I
know it has the letter C in it though.”

“Right! Why not just call them clothespins?
Is it really that much easier to say C47?” Ryan asked, to which I
just shrugged. Benjamin looked like he had thought of a clever
response for Ryan, but he was silenced when Mr. Hill stood up at
the table to indicate we’d be starting the table read.

“Okay, so today we’ll read the script for
episode ten in season six, titled ‘Vaudeville Vice’,” he said
stiffly, looking like he’d done this so many times that it now
bored him to have to be here. “We’ve got a new face with us today,”
he said, instantly making my stomach churn. “Give a little wave,
June.”

I waved nervously at the room full of faces
I’d seen every Thursday night for years. Joseph and I watched the
show every week, never missing an episode. And now we’d be watching
me. This was all so weird. As I looked at the people surrounding
me, I started to feel like maybe I could do this. Everyone seemed
to be smiling, except for Joann—she just wore an expression of
pained boredom. I couldn’t tell if she had spaced and didn’t hear
Mr. Hill ask me to say hello, or if she just didn’t care and
therefore didn’t acknowledge my existence. Whatever the answer was,
I was glad that everyone else seemed happy to see me. This might
not be too bad after all.

After my brief introduction, we began the
table read. I didn’t have a single line until halfway through the
script, so I let myself get lost in everyone else saying their
lines. It was so bizarre to see all of the characters around me,
acting like they were in character, but not actually moving around
and doing the things they were talking about. It took me a few
pages to get used to the actors saying lines like their characters
would, but then breaking character to look at one another, laugh at
a line they had said wrong, or ask a question about how a scene
should be played. It didn’t feel like watching actors playing a
character; it felt more like the people I had seen on TV all these
years suddenly stepping out of their typical personalities.

The first half of the script seemed like a
normal episode of
Forensic Faculty
. I was actually in the
very first scene, but all I did was scream. I was supposed to be
onstage during a performance; the "lovely assistant" to my magician
co-star. In the scene, he steps into our disappearing man trick (a
large painted box on the stage) and instructs me to close the box.
I wait and make a few grand gestures before reopening the box, only
to have my co-star’s body fall out—dead as a doornail. Then I
scream and the opening credit sequence rolls.

There was someone sitting near Mr. Hill
saying all of the non-speaking parts of the script. He was a mousy
little man with thinning hair and thick-rimmed glasses, but he
spoke his part with gusto. He read the descriptions, actions, and
settings between dialogue to give the cast some exposition for the
scenes.

After my mostly silent opening scene, the
cast fell comfortably into reading their lines. The case of Edward,
my dead co-star, made its way to the detectives, where Rich and
John (played by Ryan and Benjamin) made a few cracks about
vaudeville being dead. I had to stifle a laugh at the easy way they
said their quick back-and-forth remarks across my seat between
them, but was quickly silenced by Anna’s terrifyingly powerful
voice as she read in character as Captain Juliana Ryder. Her
British accent had vanished completely. The captain was, of course,
telling off Rich and John for the cavalier way in which they
discussed the crime scene, as per usual. While the captain was
scolding the boys, Charles Bagely and Cutter came into the scene,
ready to be assigned to the case. That's when the real action of
the script began.

Lukas and Will read their parts, which seemed
to make up a good chunk of the script. At one point their
characters visited Jackie, the medical examiner, and it was the
first time I’d really heard Joann speak since she’d come into the
room. Her voice was deep and smooth, instantly making me think of a
smoky-voiced lounge singer. She twirled her blonde hair as she
read, and I couldn’t help but stare at how elegant she was. There
was something about her that just made me feel like I was a little
girl in a room full of grown-ups: tolerated, but not really
expected to participate.

After Charles and Cutter talked to Jackie to
discover the means of the murder (arsenic), they decided to head
over to the theatre, where they’d meet me. Up until this point I’d
been relatively relaxed about the read through. Honestly, it just
felt like I was watching another episode of
Forensic
Faculty
. But now I was actually going to have to participate. I
cleared my throat nervously and scanned my lines to make sure I
wasn’t about to sound like a five-year-old trying to read
Shakespeare.

“Interior. Day. Charles and Cutter walk into
an empty dimly-lit theatre,” the mousey man next to Mr. Hill
read.

“This place is a dump,” Will Trofeos read,
pulling a face as if he were actually looking at a dingy theatre. I
tried to pay close attention to exactly what Will was doing. I
wanted to make sure I didn’t sound like I was reading the script
and have the whole cast think I couldn’t act, but at the same time,
I wanted to make sure I didn’t over-act and seem like I didn’t know
what to do at a table read.

“Yeah, and they hire killers,” Lukas said
with a smirk at Will. I couldn’t tell if Lukas was smirking at him
because that’s what Cutter would do, or if he just thought the line
was funny. Was I supposed to be making my character’s facial
expressions? Should I gesture too, if the script called for it, or
should I hold the script and not move my hands at all? I was
definitely over-thinking this whole thing. I really needed to take
a step back and relax. It wasn’t that big of a deal—I just had to
do what I’ve been doing my whole life.

“We don’t know that, Cutter,” Will said, his
tone suddenly serious. “Remember what I told you about coming onto
a crime scene? You have to go in with a blank slate or you let your
judgment get clouded by preconceived notions,” he chided in his
thick Spanish accent.

“Got it,” Lukas mumbled moodily.

“All right, so the body was found in that box
over there,” Will said, pointing across the room at me and making
my heart skip a beat.

“Who found him?” Lukas asked, glancing at his
phone under the table. I peeked around the room to see if anyone
else had noticed, but they all had their eyes trained on the
script, so I quickly dropped my eyes back to the page.