Page 28 of My Unscripted Life

Maybe it’s the intensity of her expression, or the rabbit hole I feel I’ve fallen down, or residual shock over seeing Lydia Kaneherewithout her shirt on…but I silently take the garment bag.

“Go!” she snaps. “If you’re not wearing those clothes when I get back you can march your behind back to your car and go home. And you won’t get paid for this fitting, either.” Then she turns on her heel and disappears down a row of overstuffed racks.

My mouth gapes open and closed like a fish out of water. I want to call out to her, but I don’t know her name, andHey, wardrobe ladysounds like something that’ll get me slapped.

“Did you need something else?” The girl on the floor with the shoes, who I presume is Eloise, looks up at me, her voice low and her eyes watching the space the woman just vacated.

“Yeah, actually,” I say, finally regaining the power of speech. I drop my hand to my side, and the gauzy white tank flutters near the floor like a white flag of surrender. My laminated crew badge catches the light, and Eloise chuckles.

“So you’renotan extra,” she says. She stands and takes the garment bag from me, carefully hanging it in its rightful place back on the rack. She turns to me, a rueful grin on her face. “What did you need?”

I take a deep breath, and start with the tank. “Lydia Kane asked for wardrobe. She was wearing this when, um, she had an unfortunate lunch incident. I’m not sure what you do for—”

Eloise rolls her eyes again, which seems to be her default response to pretty much any situation, then quickly whips around to Lydia’s rack. “Was she wearing jeans?” she asks as she leafs through the hangers.

“Yep.”

“Black shoes or brown?”

“I didn’t see,” I reply, thinking I was too busy trying to avert my gaze from her nearly bare chest.

Eloise whips back around, a hanger in hand with a similar gauzy white top on it, this one with delicate straps that tie at the shoulders and a white-to-gray-to-black-ombré dye job at the bottom. “Take this. Should work. And I’ll take that.” She gestures to the stained shirt. “Because unlike Gloria, Iama laundress.”

I trade her the dirty top for the clean one and give her my most grateful smile. “Thank you so much,” I say. “I’m Dee, by the way.”

“Eloise,” she says, offering her hand. Her forearm is stacked high with silver bangles that clang when she moves. “Wardrobe assistant. Or more accurately, an assistant to an assistant to an assistant. Or something. I’m like, the lowest on the totem pole around here.”

“I know the feeling,” I reply. Eloise is the first person to bond with me over my lack of clout, and I appreciate it.

“Sorry about Gloria. She gets grumpy when she has to dress extras, but it’s her own fault. She didn’t realize when she sent everyone else off to scour the Goodwill that she’d be the one left to do this.”

Carly pokes her head into the room.

“Lydia wants to know where her shirt is, as does the rest of the cast,” she says. A wad of paper towels crinkles in her hand as she reaches up to adjust her earpiece. “I’ve got the paper towels, and you’ll tell me what the hell happened in there later. Do you want me to take that?”

I pause at the offer. Under any circumstances pre–fifteen minutes ago, I would have saidHell no.Any chance to be in a room with Milo is one I’m taking. But now that I know I’ll be walking back in to hand a shirt to a topless Lydia Kane while Milo is thinking who knows what in the corner? While I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt advertising my fifth-grade participation in the Cherry Blossom Festival children’s choir and looking like some common…teenager? Yeah, no thanks.

I hold up the hanger Eloise gave me and offer it to Carly. “Please.”

Carly nods, crosses the floor, and takes the hanger, but not before offering me what looks to be a bit of pity. It turns my stomach, because I know I’m oh-so-deserving of it. How have my circumstances catapulted so drastically in such a short period of time? “I’ll have that lecture on standby,” she says before she leaves.

I turn to Eloise. “Thank you for this. And you’ll explain to Gloria?” Which is me asking if I can still get the hell out of here before she gets back, because frankly that lady scares me. And the last thing I need right now is to be chastised on top of pitied.

“Don’t worry, she’s probably already forgotten,” Eloise says. “So long as you’re gone before she gets back.”

I mouth a silent thank-you and hustle out the door.

—

I walk through the next hour as if in a dream. I’m so dazed I actually bump into a rack full of glassware, and it wobbles and clinks ominously. Ruth huffs, and I can tell she’s about had it with me for today. She thrusts two large ceramic vases into my hands, one tall and skinny, the other short and squat, both a deep-blue color.

“Yup, copy,” she says into her headset, then looks at me. “Can you take these to set? And by that I mean,canyou do it without breaking them?”

I nod, feeling worse by the minute. I’ve got to pull myself together.

“Good. Rob needs to pick one. You can hang around to bring the other back.”

As I make my way down the hall, dodging crew and office PAs running back and forth to set, I give myself a mental pep talk.

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