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Authors: Nia Stephens

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“I have a really good feeling about this,” Sutton swore. “He's not an actor who thinks he's irresistible to women and he's not trying to get into one of your dad's videos. He's just a normal guy. It'll be great!”
“Maybe you're right. Maybe it will be great. But first I've got to get through this screen test.”
“That'll be great too! You'll be great! The word of the day is
great!
And today's the day that the girl who has everything gets exactly what she wants!”
Bree tried to match Sutton's cheeriness as they wandered through the rest of the store. Bree secretly bought her friend fifty wineglasses and arranged for them to be delivered at school the next day.
 
All that afternoon, even on her way to the screen test, Bree worried about her date with Sean. He didn't seem like the type who would freak out if she didn't sleep with him right away—by this point she knew how to spot those guys, even if she tended to lie to herself about it until date five. And if the conversation got dull, they could always talk about movies, so the date would probably be fine.
She was still thinking about Sean as she walked into the studio, rehearsing her lines. She had changed back into her usual self before heading over, makeup carefully applied, her hair washed, dried, and glossed to perfection. She had traded her baggy cords for Seven jeans, which hugged her curves, and a pale blue sweater with a deep V-neck. It was her lucky sweater—she wore it in the coffee shop scene in
Sleep to Dream
where she served Orlando Bloom coffee, and she wore it under her coat when she fed the ducks with Thandie Newton in
Tomorroworld
.
A secretary led Bree to a corner of the
A World Apart
set that Bree had never seen before, though it looked a lot like Sutton's bedroom, all satin and lace. Seven or eight people sat in director's chairs facing the set, and a video camera stood on a tripod nearby.
“Have a seat,” said Molly Grouper, the thirty-something casting director of the show. Her chair was in the middle of the group.
“Anywhere in particular?” Bree asked.
“The bed is fine. Robert, your stepbrother, is going to come in and then you'll do your lines. We'll do the scene three times, and then you go home. That's it,” Molly explained, tucking wild red hair behind her ears. “Ready?”
“Sure,” Bree said, sitting on the edge of the bed. She was not all that nervous. Her lines were pretty simple, if somewhat cheesy. Her character was in love with her stepbrother, who would probably turn out to be a real brother by the end of the season.
“Action!” yelled Molly, and Robert strode into his stepsister's bedroom, his dark eyes smoldering. The last time Bree had seen those eyes, just two days before, they were smoldering with anger as she kicked him out of the apartment.
Oh, no,
Bree thought, as her lines went sliding out of her head.
Why was I worried about Sean? I should have been worried about Jake!
Chapter 4
The Power of the Internet
A
few hours later Bree had Sam, her usual driver, drop her off a block away from the theater so she could walk the rest of the way. She had washed away her screen-test makeup in a two-hour bath, trying to drown her embarrassment in vanilla-scented bubbles. She'd completely flubbed the first run, though she pulled herself together in the second and did a reasonably good job in the third. It was too eerie to be back in Jake's arms, especially since this time she was trying to drag him into bed and not the other way around. But that last run, she put a lot of heat into her pleas.
“Oh, Robert! You know you want it just as much as I do!” Jake had stared at her with either lust or disgust or both, shoved her onto the bed and stalked out of the room. Bree thought he had shoved her a little harder than necessary. Working with him would be a nightmare—why hadn't her agent mentioned that Jake had been cast as Robert? Fiona was his agent too! But it didn't matter. Bree was still dying for the role, even if she had to pretend to be in love with Jake Richards.
The one good thing about the disastrous screen test was that she was no longer worried about her date. At the very least it would take her mind off the screen test, and at the worst—well, she'd had bad dates before. She would survive.
“Are you all right?” Sean asked her when she reached the theater. “You look like you've had a rough day.”
“It's been interesting,” she shrugged. “Full of surprises.”
Sean surprised her then by giving her a hug. Not a sneaky, groping hug, either, but the kind of hug Kylian would give her at the end of a long day. Both of his hands stayed well clear of her rear, but it was a lingering embrace. Bree had plenty of time to appreciate his warm, spicy cologne and the more subtle smell of his skin.
“You've probably seen
Do the Right Thing
a hundred times, right?”
“Maybe a thousand.” Bree loved early Spike Lee movies. They were so intimate, it was like watching a play, but also very cinematic. She'd actually seen it twice at this very theater with her dad, and Spike Lee had been there to give a talk before the last screening.
“Maybe we should just grab some coffee and talk. That'll be a little more relaxing.”
“Works for me,” Bree said. She knew she didn't sound terribly enthusiastic, but she hoped that was a good thing. Sutton had told her to turn off the charm and let guys get to know the real Bree. Unfortunately, the real Bree was very often unenthusiastic after a bad audition.
But once she and Sean had settled into a couple of armchairs at a nearby coffee shop and she had finished her first nonfat, sugar-free caramel latte, she had to fight the urge to blast Sean with all the charisma she had. When she told him about her screen test debacle, he was so sweet, distracting her with funny stories about working at Ikea and about his film studies courses at NYU. Like so many people Bree knew, Sean wanted to direct, but meanwhile he was trying his hand at screen writing.
“I shot my first short film last semester,” he told her, shyly examining the wales on his grey cords. “It's about a couple trying to put together a sofa.”
“Tragedy or comedy?” Bree asked.
“Both. The couple has a fight, but they manage to get the thing built, and it doesn't look right, but they're happy, and that's what matters.”
“Sounds like fun,” Bree said thoughtfully. “I'd like to work on a project like that.”
Sean stared at her over his coffee cup and said, “That's a very realistic possibility.” He placed one of his smooth dark hands on Bree's much smaller one and looked deep into her eyes. “Ikea sofas start at two hundred forty-nine dollars, and many of them require assembly.”
Bree laughed, but she didn't pull her hand away. “I meant the movie. I like roles where the character is revealed through conversations. Of course, if you screen test first, I'll just screw it up.”
“I bet you got the part,” he insisted. “There's a reason why they make you do the scene three times. The greatest actress in the universe could mess up once or twice and she'd still be the best actress in the universe.”
“And who is the best actress in the universe?” Bree asked, curious about his taste.
“Thandie Newton,” he replied with no pause for consideration whatsoever.
“She was pretty amazing in
Crash
,” Bree agreed. She almost mentioned sharing a scene with her in
Tomorroworld
, a tiny independent film that almost no one had seen, but she worried that Sean might be intimidated. She was having too much fun to risk that. She had never gone out with someone as down-to-earth as Sean. She loved being able to talk movies with someone who loved them as much as she did, someone who actually listened.
“She's amazing in
everything
,” Sean said firmly. “Another latte?”
“Sure. But I may need that one to go. I get up pretty early in the morning,” she said regretfully. She wished she never had to leave this cozy café or end such a great conversation.
“One nonfat, sugar-free caramel latte to go,” Sean confirmed, squeezing her hand. “Coming right up.”
“Thanks!” Bree smiled up at him as he left, but once his back was turned, her face fell. What if he offered to take her home? He was the gentlemanly sort, the kind of guy who wouldn't let a girl ride the subways alone at night. Bree was sure of it. She was equally sure that she didn't want him to know that she lived at the Edwardian. It was nice pretending to be a perfectly normal person who went to a perfectly normal school and had a perfectly normal life. Not that she had lied, exactly, but when Sean had asked her where she went to school, she answered “a tiny Catholic school.” There were a hundred in New York, though none on the same level as Rittenhouse, which was still technically Catholic, though the board had gotten rid of the nuns, chapel and uniforms in the early sixties. And when he had asked about her family, she said that her mother worked for a nonprofit and that her father didn't do much of anything. All of which was true in its own way. Her father might be a hotshot producer, but he seemed to spend all of his time jogging on the beach, talking on the phone, or drinking mineral water on the rocks, with artists, agents and directors.
“Do you live far away?” he asked when he came back with her coffee.
“Clear across Manhattan.”
“Let me take you home. It's safer than taking the subway alone.”
“I can't ask you to do that. It's too far out of your way. One of my mom's friends has a driving service. I'll just call them.”
“If you're sure . . .”
“I'm sure.”
“All right. But it's freezing out, and this place is about to close. Why don't you wait in my apartment? It's just around the corner.” He paused, then added, “I can show you my movie.”
“Um, sure,” Bree said after a long and thoughtful pause. Sean didn't seem like a serial killer, and if he planned on killing her, he wouldn't let her give his name and address to her driving service. So she walked arm in arm with him to his tiny studio apartment three floors up from a used bookshop. A few snowflakes fell, making the short walk a little more romantic than it already was. After the run of luck she'd been having, Bree was surprised to find she was looking forward to an extended goodnight kiss.
“It's nowhere near work or school, but it's rent controlled, so it's worth it,” Sean explained, letting her in the front door and up three flights of stairs. Inside the small studio, there was a battered white sofa like one she had seen in a showroom earlier that day, a surprisingly large TV, and an enormous movie collection—and not much else, though she suspected that the tall wooden lattice screen in one corner hid a bed from view. It was covered with black and white photos of jazz musicians. Bree recognized Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald, but she couldn't name any of the others.
“Mind if I use your restroom?” Bree asked. She hadn't wanted to interrupt their conversation earlier, since it was going so well in the coffee shop—and she also liked to snoop in bathrooms whenever she could. Selah and Melikka had taught her that you can learn a lot about someone from what they had in their medicine cabinets. In LA that mostly meant what prescription drugs they used or abused. A man might have a nice house and fully stocked wet bar, but if he also had a lot of bad habits, or one bad disease, then Selah and Melikka stayed away. Bree didn't expect to find evidence of a meth habit or the AIDS drug cocktail behind Sean's bathroom mirror, but as her mother liked to say, “People will surprise you.”
And her mother was right. Bree had not expected to find a
Tomorroworld
poster taking up most of the wall opposite the shower. Thandie Newton's queenly profile stood against a backdrop of a post-apocalyptic New York with a skyline full of burning skyscrapers. The major studios thought America wasn't ready yet to see any more burning skyscrapers in New York, so the movie was in very limited release, despite winning awards at Sundance and Cannes. So Bree was amazed to see the poster in Sean's bathroom. Amazed, but not exactly pleased. What if he figured out that she was in the movie? This could be bad. But Bree had to find out what he knew.
“So, big
Tomorroworld
fan, huh?” Bree asked, returning from the bathroom and settling onto the couch.
“It's not Thandie's best,” he said casually, fiddling with his DVD player. “But I love that poster. Doesn't she look amazing?”
“Yeah. She's beautiful.”
He sighed happily and joined Bree on the couch. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close. He whispered in her ear, “I maintain the most complete Thandie Newton site on the Internet, and I monitor her IMDb site every day.”
“Um, that's very interesting,” Bree said, wondering when he was going to stop talking about Thandie Newton and kiss her.
“I hear Joseph Lasser was really mean to her when he was directing
Tomorroworld
. God, what I wouldn't do to work with her, and he treated her like crap!”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Someone posted it on IMDb.”
Bree's face fell. She hated the Internet Movie Database. When she first found out that her picture and film credits were listed there, Bree was so excited she called both her parents and all of her friends. But in the months that followed, she watched people debating on the message board whether she had slept with Joseph Lasser to get her role, whether she and Beyoncé were distantly related, even a very spooky comment about her birthmarks. She had two, and they weren't anyplace visible in her bikini, but someone knew exactly where they were. Kylian and Sutton swore that they hadn't divulged the information, and Bree still wondered who had. Gossip had to be much scarier for big stars like Thandie Newton, especially when it included outright lies. Joe Lasser didn't spend a lot of time on small talk, but he wasn't mean to anyone—big stars or extras like Bree.
“Don't believe everything you read on the Internet,” she said, wriggling out of his embrace. “Especially message boards.”
“I think I know a little more about Thandie's experience on set than you do, Bree,” he said loftily.
“Actually, you're wrong,” Bree said. “I was on the set for two days. I'm in a scene with Her Thandiness herself.” She was so offended, she no longer felt the need to be discrete.
“You weren't!” he whispered.
“‘Girl by pond' in the credits. That's me.”
She smiled at his shocked expression.
“So you've met her?” His eyes were a little too intense. Bree scrambled off the sofa and toward the door.
“Well, yeah, I've met her, but I don't have her home number or anything,” she said quickly.
“You've really met Thandie Newton?” he said with even more awe, still sitting on the couch, his face slack with shock.
Before Bree could think of a graceful exit line, her cell phone rang.
“That'll be my driver. See you later,” she said, plunging for the door. Once she was on the other side, she fished the phone out of her favorite Louis Vuitton purse. Her new phone was so small she could barely keep track of it among the jumble of keys, tissues, and rolled-up programs that filled her bag. Pretty soon cell phones would be as thin as credit cards, and then she would never find it.
“Briona Black,” she answered when she finally fished it out.
“Bree, it's Fee,” said her agent, Fiona. When she was ten, Bree had picked Fiona because their names rhymed. Now that she was older Bree knew that was quite possibly the stupidest reason anyone had ever chosen an agent. Luckily, Fiona had turned out to be an excellent agent, and she represented a lot of the up-and-coming New York talent. The only thing Bree didn't like about her was the way she always tried to cushion bad news. Bree would much rather hear it straight. So when Fee started talking about the dangers of taking a recurring TV role, how that could make it harder to get decent roles in film, Bree interrupted her to say, “Okay, I understand. I didn't get
A World Apart
. It's totally my fault, too. I actually forgot my lines in the first run.”

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