Melody Burning (4 page)

“So, what we got?” he whispered to Gilford as he peered into the fridge, looking at the food arrayed on the shelves.

He fed Gilford some milk.

Then he heard the telltale sound of the elevator door opening. Somebody getting out on forty—no way he could take a chance. So he took Gilford’s face in his hands and gave him a quick nose smooch and went back to the foyer closet.

The key clattered in the lock. Continuing to lift himself, his heart hammering, Beresford slipped into the crawl space and carefully closed his hatch.

He wanted to race up the chase, but he forced himself not to make a sound.

Moving slowly at first, climbing hand over hand, he made his way back up to fifty, back to his station behind Melody’s wall. Through the thin plasterboard, he could hear her breathing softly and steadily.

Sleep, little angel, for I will watch over you.

C
HAPTER 5

I’m goin’ far and far and far and far
Up past the trees and the sky and the stars.
Far and far and far and far,
Where it’s soft forever, soft and blue, soft and blue,
And I can reach out, and I can touch you
Far and far and far and far.

T
he set is blazing hot, and I’m dying. Thank heavens Ted the Elf called a break. (That’s my own private nickname for our tiny, hoppity director.) Now I’m in my trailer, where I’m supposed to have a little peace and quiet, but Mom is screaming at Mark, my manager, over the fact that
Swingles
isn’t using my music in the dance sequences.

Mom says into her phone, “We have to do this, Mark. We need the exposure! Plus, it’s in her contract. . . .
Why not?
She’s the star—it can only help the show! . . . So what’s he doing? Does he have another ingenue in the wings? Some tramp, Linda Lady or somebody?”

Linda Lady is my competition—sort of. She’s all electronics, though. She can’t actually sing, so she’s gonna do a concert sooner or later that reveals she’s lip-synching. There will be no forgiveness.

Mom paces, she makes a whistling sound through the plastic cigarette she uses whenever she is near me, and all of a sudden I feel this amazing love for her. She tries
so hard
. If we go down, it’s not just going to break her heart—it’s going to break her totally.

There’s a knock. Mom looks at the door like a rabbit looks at a wolf, but it’s only Thor Bradford, my acting coach.

Thor comes in. He appraises me, his eyes taking in every detail. He grins and twiddles his fingers at Mom, who takes this as her cue to leave us alone in the trailer.

As she goes out, she crushes the plastic cigarette to pieces in an ashtray. By the time the door closes, she’s already back on her BlackBerry. She’s calling for the box office overnights. The question every afternoon is the same: How is the Greek filling? What if I have to play to a half house? Or if I have to make up an excuse and cancel? “Miss McGrath has sprained her elbow and cannot perform.” Behind every excuse like that lies the same reality: empty seats.

These are dangerous times for any performer, especially somebody like me, just building an audience.

Thor asks me, “Honey, do you have a problem with Alex?” “No.” (That is to say, YES!)

“Because on the dailies, we’re seeing you kind of bend away from him when he tries to kiss you. Like he smells bad. Not like you wish he’d follow through.”

“I thought I was supposed to be unsure. It says in the script, ‘unsure.’ ”

Then Thor takes me in his arms and says, “My Tic Tac loves your Tic Tac!” (Yes, the show is stupid. And yes, it’s full of product placements. They have to make money, and anyway I actually
do
like Tic Tacs.)

I lean back—but then he stage kisses me. This is not a real kiss, but it looks like one. You keep your mouths closed. It’s very clinical feeling. So I melt into it. I try to imagine that this elderly gay acting coach is the guy who never quite comes into focus in my dreams.

“Now, that’s good. That’s what we want to see.”

“But Alex doesn’t kiss me in the script.”

As Thor leaves, he says over his shoulder, “Oh, that’s changed. He kisses you now.”

“It’d better be a stage kiss.”

“Not my problem, beautiful.” He leaves, and I go to the fridge, crack a Diet Coke mini, and chug it. I have to face facts: I just plain loathe Alex Steen. Loathe, loathe, loathe. Not only does he smell weird, he has skin like some kind of an amphibian. Maybe he’s a skink.

I shouldn’t be repulsed by him when half the girls in America would like to jump him, but I can’t help how I feel.

“You’re wanted on set.”

“Thanks, Michael.”

Michael is Ted’s personal assistant. He’s about twenty-two and starting out on the ground floor. I’m always polite and thankful to him. Mom doesn’t even know his name.

As I go across the street to the soundstage where our set is, I see Mom huddled over her BlackBerry like it’s a bird she’s captured. Her back is to me. Whatever she’s talking about, she’s hiding it from the world, which makes me feel kind of sick inside because it can’t be good or she’d be all over me, whispering good news as she listened to it coming in.

“Hey, sugar,” Alex calls to me.

He’s been told not to call me this by the network’s political correctness maven, but he does it anyway.

I smile as mechanically as I can. Bright fake grin that’s a clue he chooses to ignore.

For this scene, we’re in the living room set. There’s a couch, chairs, and a flat-screen TV that’s really just a prop. When you see something on it in the background during the show, that’s the special effects department. The whole set is like that. Even the chairs are so light you could throw them. The window is a breakaway (it’s made out of melted sugar). We used it two episodes ago. In the scene, Mr. Forbes shattered it when his upper bridge flew out of his mouth and hit it. (Our writers apparently think that escaping dental prosthetics are funny.)

“Places, please. Is everyone aware of our changes?”

Nobody says anything. We’re all afraid of Ted. He doesn’t exactly carry a horsewhip like directors supposedly did in the past. Instead, he whips with sarcasm.

Ted gives me a long look. I feel like a butterfly about to be pinned. “She’s SHINY!”

That brings a distant crash, and a couple of seconds later, a huge figure looms past the window and comes around the edge of the set. This is Martin, and he powders my immense forehead yet again. Shine is a no-no, but I’m not sure exactly why. I mean, I’m sixteen years old and therefore an oil factory, right?

So we take our positions, and Ted says “action,” and all of a sudden I’m not Melody or even Melanie anymore. I’m Babsie, and I’m full of flutters because Seth—that’s Alex—wants to kiss me and we’re at my house and my dad is suspicious of him. Last week, when I brought Seth home for the first time, Dad asked to see his driver’s license. Dad is out back cooking steaks, though, and Mom is in the kitchen, so this is Seth’s chance.

Ted moves his hands, encouraging me. I’m supposed to flutter at Seth, which I do.

Seth paces in front of the fireplace. He looks at me. His eyes look kind of odd, actually.

The way the scene works, Seth kisses me, Dad comes in with the steaks, and Seth panics and jumps out the window.

I sit and turn into Babsie. I look down, sort of smiling. Babsie wants this—she wants Seth to just hurry up and do it.

So Seth takes a step closer. And another. I say my line: “I think you’ve got something on your cheek.” I smile and pat the place beside me. “Come on, let me look.”

Seth trips over the coffee table, which collapses. (It’s balsa.) Frantically, he tries to put it together again. I say, “Dad’s not gonna like that.”

He stares at me like I’m totally insane, and there it is again, that weird look in his eyes—vacant. He’s not Seth at all, he’s Alex all the way, and he makes my blood run cold.

Now the kiss. I say, “Oh, Seth.”

He grabs me and embraces me, and here it comes—but his mouth is
not
closed like it’s supposed to be. He is into this; he’s kissing me for real.

I’m furious. Ted needs to control Alex. Now he’s pushing against me and jamming his face into mine, then we go off the couch and I hear Ted somewhere in some other universe yelling, while Alex keeps at me, and I can’t get out from under him; he’s like some kind of machine made of iron.

I have so many dreams of guys, but not
this
one—this is the nightmare that no girl ever wants to think about, and it’s happening to me right in the middle of a television studio filled with people.

Stop him, somebody!

And then there are voices, shouting, Ted’s voice above them all as he shouts himself crazy. The weight is gone, Alex is off, and Ted and our assistant director, Sam Dine, are holding him. But he’s like some kind of animal, and they almost can’t keep him under control. His eyes are really scary.

I get up, and Mom is there. She puts a towel around me, and I realize my blouse is all torn up, but at least it’s just my costume.

Ted is in Alex’s face. They stare each other down. Then Ted turns away, disgusted. “He’s high,” he says to Sam Dine. Then, louder, “We’ll move into the kitchen. Thirty minutes—get it lit!” The kitchen scene is me and Mom and Dad, no Seth. More quietly, he tells Sam, “Whatever it takes, bring him down. And find whatever it is he’s using and get it the hell off the lot.”

I am sick to my stomach, trying to hold it in, and all I can think of is my trailer. I knew this would happen, I just knew it. He’s always icked me out, and now I know why. I’m not a smoker or a drinker. A lot of kids at Calabasas High smoked, and there was every kind of drug you might want there, mostly prescripts, though. Not whatever
this
is, which is probably something harder.

On the way to the trailer, a papi I know named Brandon Carcelli comes out of nowhere from between my trailer and the wall of the soundstage, and his camera starts clicking away.

Fury like actual fire just explodes in my head, and I break away from Mom and go after him. He runs, I run, I am screaming at him, he turns and shoots, runs more, turns and shoots, and I know I’m getting into trouble, but I can’t help myself. I am just so mad.

Then security is there, and he’s soon surrounded and hustled off the lot.

Mom runs up. “Come on, honey, you’re falling out.”

Well, not quite, but my blouse is ripped and there’s bra showing.

“How did he get in here, Mom?”

She shakes her head. “Look in the wallets at the gate. Carcelli probably paid his way in.”

My trailer is quiet and cool, and I go in the bathroom and gargle Listerine until I feel sort of clean. Sort of.

“I want Alex fired,” I say to Mom. “I never want him near me again!” I’m shocked to hear the rage in my voice. I think of myself as mild and nice, and I know that I’ve gone deeper into celebrity. I will wreck Alex’s career because he went too far with me. But he deserves it—he’s totally out of control.

I want to cry. I’ve never been kissed much before, and in the celebrity bubble where I live now, finding a normal boy probably will never happen for me.

Ted and Mark and Sam come in, and suddenly the trailer feels like a funeral. And maybe that’s just what it is.

Mom talks for me. I have nothing to say about anything, it seems. Even though it was me this happened to.

“Mel, we need to be very careful,” Ted says to me. His voice is different from the usual.

Mom says, “We understand that, Ted.”

Their eyes meet, and do I see daggers? What’s happening that I’m not being filled in on?

“Legal will have to get involved,” Ted says.

There is silence.

Then I hear Alex. He’s yelling like crazy, and he’s right outside.

“What’s going on?”

“They found meth in Alex’s trailer,” Ted says. “He’s being escorted off the lot.”

Mom explodes. “But we have a whole bunch of scenes to shoot. We’ll get behind!”

“He’s in violation,” Sam explains. “You know the contract.”

Mom has been real clear that if I get in trouble with drugs or alcohol, I’m fired. And it’s the same for Alex.

“So . . . what do we do?” I ask.

“I’m writing Seth out. You’re gonna have a new boyfriend.”

What can I say, that I’m unhappy? Alex was poison, pure and simple.

Mom is like a statue. She must be thinking how easy it would be to write me out. It’s scary. Of course, I’m the star, so they aren’t going to do that. Only, that’s not how she thinks. No matter how good things may be, Mom is always going to be clinging by her fingernails.

“I’ll work over the weekend. We’ll start shooting again on Monday,” Ted says.

I doubt we’re going to be shooting again any time soon. He can’t possibly write Seth out that fast.

The funeral procession finally gets up and leaves us alone in the trailer. I can hear Alex’s screams over the air-conditioning hum. On the other side of a scream like that is the black hole of being forgotten.

Mom says, “I need a drink.” Then she laughs to herself. She sighs and says, “Small blessing. We can take off early. Let’s get out of here, girl.”

When we go out onto the lot, the California sun is painfully bright. A bright, hot desert where the sun burns away the lies.