Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance

For Adam, costar of my favorite romance

—E. F.

To my parents, who gave me the gift of theater

—B. H.

1
NOT THAT YOU CARE

Charlie

I will never like a boy like Fielding Withers (and, yes, I know I used the word “like” twice in one sentence, but meaning different things). If there’s anything I’m aware of, it’s the words that come out of my mouth, since half the time I don’t choose what they are.

Fielding Withers, known to the better part of the world as Jonah Jacobs, sits to my right in a chair with both names on it. One could make the argument (and I have) that he needs JONAH and FIELDING written in block letters because reading isn’t his strong suit, but he probably needs both because he’s not smart enough to know who he is at any given time.

“So are we gonna make out or what?” Fielding asks like he’s trying to get me to pass the ketchup.

I shrug. “Depends. You think Bret Huckley’ll be there?” We are forever being chased by legions of paparazzi—on the way to the set, at the Grind (our coffeehouse of choice), shopping on Melrose, getting pedicures (me), biking to the Santa Monica Pier (Fielding), or running (both of us, side by side, agent’s orders). But Bret Huckley is the worst. He’s known for snagging shots when you’re down and really out—like if your mom’s having surgery, he’s there in the waiting room, or if the spray tan goes horribly wrong, he’s the first to sell the snaps to tabloids. And he’s been on our case ever since rumors started about this being the last season of
Jenna & Jonah
.

And the thing is, the rumors might be true.

Cut to three years ago: I was fourteen. Fielding was fourteen and a half. The Family Network was going under—no one wanted their weird pet shows anymore (I mean, honestly, are
you
interested in watching tiny Maltese dogs learning to do ballet? No. It’s beyond creepy)—so they tried one last thing. We were the last thing.
Jenna & Jonah’s How to Be a Rock Star
premiered to, like, three people. But word got out and pretty soon more people—like, maybe twelve—were watching. By day, Jenna and Jonah, next-door neighbors who are perpetually on the verge of falling in love, were your average straight-A, car-wash-for-charity-organizing teens. But come night, they (and by “they” I mean we) rock. So we had mild success. Not bad for a former child star (me) and a total hick (Fielding).

“I think we should go for the arm around the waist. You carry this,” Fielding says and thrusts a thick block of paper at me.

“What’s this? The Great American Novel?” I sneer, because the last thing in the world this boy could do is write, even though he swears one day he will. He can’t even leave a note that says more than three words, and those are limited to “Coffee,” “Meet me,” or his signature “Outta here.”

Fielding pushes his hair—really a cocoa brown but now carefully streaked with very real-looking blond since we’re shooting summer scenes—out of his eyes. He puts his hand on my arm and I fight the urge to flinch. “I
will
write that book someday,” he says in his best believable voice. Sometimes he’s so convincing it’s hard to believe he’s full of shit. “But this is a prop.”

I check it out. It’s the weight and size of a script, complete with
Jenna & Jonah’s How to Be a Rock Star: Season 5
written perfectly. I check the time. We’re due for our next scene in a few minutes—one where we sing a duet, a love song called “Not That You Care” that’s already been leaked online and is rising in download popularity. The lyrics are pure mush—“You’re so sweet,” “How come you can’t be mine,” “I’ll find you wherever you are,” and so on—which, if you ask me, is totally creepy, because it makes love sound like stalking. Plus, we’re just fake neighbors—how far apart could we be? But people have a hard time remembering that.

Cut to two and a half years ago. I’m fourteen and a half, and Fielding is fifteen and taller now, his shoulders a bit more broad, his face decidedly appealing. And the show’s fine. It’s okay. Then—I swear it might have been overnight (that’s what the tabloids claimed, anyway)—it happened. I got boobs. One headline read, “C Track Run,” in honor of my name, Charlie Tracker, and my unfortunate jogging-bra issues. Before there could be more doubt about the realness of said breastage, my mom (then my manager, as well as a B-movie actress herself), went on E! saying it’s genetic, look at her, showed her old school photos, and, sure enough, everyone’s convinced. And they
are
real. But what isn’t real is this: everything else.

“So we’ll do the song, I’ll grab my stuff, and let’s just do the walk ’n’ snug.” Fielding and I lock eyes—his are green; mine are normally blue but I have brown contacts in. I’m probably the only actress around here with naturally blond hair. Another real thing, I guess. But producers felt that the blond/blue-eyed thing was too beachy, too cliché (but somehow next-door neighbors who fall in love aren’t?), and that I was perceived as “warmer” with brown eyes. So my fake brown eyes look back at Fielding’s green ones and we agree. The walk ’n’ snug it is.

Cut to the end of Season 1.
Jenna & Jonah’s How to Be a Rock Star
has picked up viewers after the boob buzz, so when our agents wake up Fielding and me in the middle of the night and tell us to meet them at four a.m. at the Twilight Diner in West Hollywood, we figure it’s about a salary increase. Or a summer special—
Jenna & Jonah’s Summer Splash
or something. What we got instead was a cheap cup of watery coffee with no soy milk anywhere in sight and an ultimatum: fall in love or fall apart.

So we chose love.

Or it chose us.

And we’ve been faking it ever since. Because even if the ratings were climbing courtesy of my breasts, they would fade like overwashed denim if we didn’t give the audiences something more to cling to than cotton candy songs and stilted dialogue. Fake romance wins a lot of followers.

“You hear we’re number two in Japan?” Fielding swigs water from a plastic bottle that he will later throw out before leaving the set with his camera-ready refillable eco-friendly metal bottle.

I nod. “Martinka told me,” I say. Martinka’s my agent and texts me every three to six seconds about any and all news. My thigh buzzes and I check the text. “Correction. Number one.” Fielding reacts as though I’ve told him I like his socks (which I don’t, because they’re Jonah’s socks, and therefore polka-dotted to accent Jonah’s quirky style that is now showcased in every mall around the country).

“Yeah. Number one.” He swigs the water again and then hands it to me. “You want this?” I’m about to be just the slightest bit touched—he remembers I get parched in the midafternoon. “It tastes like crap.”

I nudge him and then water spills on his shirt. He jumps up, flailing like he’s on fire, and assistants rush to his aid. “Don’t even think of the walk ’n’ snug now,” he threatens, his green eyes glaring, his wet shirt clinging to his sculpted chest.

“Oh, like you have a choice,” I say and then am quickly aware of the crew paying too much attention to our spat. I raise my eyebrows and Fielding Withers does his best Jonah smile—plump lips with just a little bit of teeth—and opens his arms wide. I know the drill. I know this choreography of love. So I step forward, letting him embrace me, while the crew breathes a collective sigh.

Aren’t they sweet?

Cut to headlines: “Track and Field! Jenna and Jonah’s Real-Life Love”; “Getting on Track—Charlie Leaves Her Wild Past Behind”; “Fielding Withers and Charlie Tracker—So in Love!!”

It’s not difficult, really. I mean, they hold hands, the guy touches the girl’s hair, the girl whispers something in his ear at the awards show, he fixes her dress strap on the red carpet, and you throw in some “candid” shots of them at the beach, go-carting, and, most recently, on vacation in Tahiti. Now that was fun: Fielding Withers—the boy of few words—a supposedly deserted island, and fish. Not exactly my version of a good time. I spent most of my days reciting Shakespeare to the marine life. I’d snorkel and rehearse lines for the ultimate play—
Much Ado About Nothing
. Everyone always obsesses about
Romeo and Juliet
: the words, the poetry of forbidden love, real love, love so deep it destroys you, and so on. But to me,
Much Ado
has it all: the banter, the hidden emotions, love tucked away like the secret you can’t tell for fear it will ruin you. That’s what I recited on Tahiti and all of it would wash away in the water, where no one could hear it. I know every line of that play. Memorizing comes easy for me. The part about getting in touch with your true feelings, not so much. That’s the price of Jenna and Jonah. No one can see us as anyone else.

We keep hugging. We’re known for our long hugs. And I’m used to Fielding’s smell—one part sweat, one part Sweet Teen cologne, which he has to wear since he’s the face of their campaign. Three years and I still loathe the scent of it.

“It’s time to sing,” Fielding says into the top of my hair.

The stage is set. Makeup comes in and pats my chin and forehead with powder, touches up Field’s hair.

I drop the fake script for Season 5 in my chair and can already imagine the walk ’n’ snug. We perfected the move and coined the phrase way back in Season 1: arms around each other’s lower back, Field moves his right hand just to my rib cage—all innocent, no feeling-up allowed—I laugh, snuggling into his shoulder, and he whispers something into my ear. Cheese. Smile. Snap. Photographers love it. Only this time I’ll be holding the script for everyone to see, so everyone knows that yes, there’s another season; no, we haven’t been canceled; no, no problems on set with a director who is checking into rehab; no parent managers who take all the money and spend it; and, no, for the last time, we are not breaking up. We will walk ’n’ snug and convince everyone that everything’s fine. And for that moment, caught on film, it will be easy to believe.