Page 3 of My Unscripted Life

“Are you sure?” The blinker clicks, quick, in time with my rapid heartbeat.

I’m sure. They’re the directions I gave Rob just a few days ago. We turn on Roff Avenue and bounce down the broken old road, past abandoned warehouses and overgrown factories. At the end of the road, an old office park emerges from the weeds. One of the buildings houses our local UPS depot, surrounded by brown trucks and eighteen-wheelers. Across the way is a drab warehouse with a red sign out front telling me it’s the home of Chiron, though I can’t even begin to guess what they do in there. The blue swishy logo gives no indication. There’s one more building on the lot, and though it has no sign, it must be my destination. I clutch the printout of the email from Rialto Productions. It has directions to production headquarters, along with a call time and some other information.

“I didn’t even know this was back here,” Dad says as he turns the car into the parking lot. I don’t say anything, because all my thoughts—this looks like the scene of a murder, this looks like where you stash a body, this looks like where you walk into a warehouse and get sucked into a third dimension—would not instill confidence. And I want him to actuallyleaveme here, preferably without coming in first. I know next to nothing about moviemaking, but I’m pretty sure arriving on set with your dad as a chaperone isnotdone.

We pull up to a temporary guardhouse at the entrance, clearly new as part of the production, and stop. A short, squat woman steps out, her hair in braids beneath a black ball cap. “Can I help you?”

My dad leans across my lap to duck through the passenger window, leaving me flattened against the back of the seat. “Yeah, hi, we’re here for the movie?” I roll my eyes, but my cheeks burn. Already we sound like celebrity-stalking fans, so I’m not surprised when she narrows her eyes and reaches for a clipboard.

“Name?”

I give Dad a firm but gentle shove and then take my place in the window. “Dee Wilkie,” I say.

Her finger scans over the list, pausing to tap on a name. She grabs a neon-green piece of paper off a stack and hands it to me. “Put this in your windshield and park where the yellow sign saysCREW.” She points down the way toward a sea of cars.

I start to hand the paper back to her. “Oh, he’s not—” I say, but Dad plucks the parking pass out of my hand.

“Thank you!” he calls through the open window. He quickly finds an empty space, a cherry-red Mini Cooper on one side and a rusted-out Toyota sedan on the other.

“Dad, you promised,” I say as I watch him unbuckle his seat belt. I swallow the whine that wants to creep into my voice. The only way to win this battle is to give the impression that I’m a mature young woman headed to her first day at work, as if I took the filing job at the college that he offered. And maybe if I can conjure up that tone of voice, I’ll actually feel like that’s what I’m doing. But I’m seriously faking it, because right now I’m so overcome with butterflies and lightning bolts and basically a whole summer-evening storm inside me that I can barely sit still. I settle for giving him a pleading look.

He sighs. I can tell he desperately wants to come in and look around, though not for the benefit of my safety.

“Please, Dad?”

He sighs again. “Don’t tell your mother,” he says. “And call me if anything gets…weird.”

“Ew, Dad.” I climb out of the car, then duck back down into the open window. “And thanks.”

The building in front of me, a one-story brown stucco structure with a concrete warehouse rising up behind it, looks about as far from Hollywood as I can imagine. There’s no signage indicating that anything exciting is happening inside other than these bright yellow plastic things about the size of a piece of printer paper. They were scattered along the road starting about a half mile back, with black arrows on them directing people to various parking lots and the front door of the building. They each bear one word, all caps, in black, blocky letters:COLOR. I have no idea what it means.

All of a sudden my stomach feels like it’s been pumped full of helium and is floating up into my throat. My hands shake a little as I lock my bike to a signpost, then hoist my bag farther up on my shoulder and go to drop my sunglasses inside, but I miss and they go clattering down onto the pavement.

“Chill out, Dee,” I whisper to myself as I retrieve my sunglasses. “You’resupposedto be here.”

At least, I hope I am. There’s only one door into the building, a plate-glass number with no signs. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was hoping for some kind of note saying,YOU! YES, YOU! THIS WAY TO CELEBRITY TIME!Or at least something markedRIALTO PRODUCTIONS.

I loop my bag over my shoulder and head for the door. As soon as I open it I’m met with a blast of arctic air-conditioning, a sure sign that whoever is here is not used to a south Georgia summer. There’s a receptionist’s desk just inside the small vestibule, but it’s empty. There’s only a hand-drawn paper sign with a shaky arrow on it pointing me through another door and down a hall. I check my phone. I’ve only got a few minutes before my call time, which, according to my Internet research, means the time I’m supposed to report to work, so I have no choice but to follow the mysterious signs.

Two steps down the hallway, I know I’ve arrived somewhere. I’m still not sure if it’s therightsomewhere, but it’s definitely somewhere. No longer am I in a post-apocalyptic, deserted office building. The hall opens up into a spacious room full of desks and computers. All around me are people barking into cell phones or listening in on headsets, adjusting walkie-talkies clipped to their belts. A stocky blond girl in jeans and a T-shirt runs past me with a stack of papers in her hand, and I have to take a small step to the left to avoid becoming beige-carpet roadkill.

In the back of the office, I spot a familiar face underneath a Yankees cap. Rob is pacing about four feet of carpet, stomping hard with each turn. “You’re kidding me! Again?” he barks into his phone. Then he slings the phone onto his desk, where it spins into the wall, and whips the ball cap off his head and flings it at the floor. “Dammit dammitdammit!”

I get the feeling that I’m not supposed to be watching whatever’s happening with him, especially since everyone else in the room is doing that thing where they’re very clearlynotpaying attention, so as he sinks into a rolling office chair and puts his head in his hands, I start looking elsewhere too. Finally, a woman who looks to be in her midtwenties sitting at the desk closest to me meets my eye. She’s got a phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, a stack of papers in one hand, the other adjusting the volume on a walkie-talkie clipped to her hip. A cord dangles from a headset that’s holding back her dark braids. She nods at me, so I just wait.

“Yup,” she says. “Uh-huh. Copy. We’ve got the bus for first team, and I can get a couple twelve-passenger vans for the extras….Yup. Day after tomorrow. Copy.”

She hangs up, placing the phone and the stack of papers down on the desk in front of her.

“Are you Deanna?” she asks, pronouncing the “ann” with a longa. She stands up, winds a stray braid around her thick bun, tucking in the end, and then reaches out to shake my hand.

“De-ahn-na,” I reply, the name sticking on my tongue like a wet cotton ball. My mother picked it, a shout-out to her Greek heritage, since she left her maiden name of Spyropolous behind. I’ve always hated it. Deanna.Dee-ahhhn-na.It’ssonot me. Deanna enters beauty pageants, gets regular mani/pedis, and knows all the lyrics to whatever cheesy pop song is hot that week. And while the pop songs are all me when I’m alone in my room, I’ve never worn heels and my nails are in shambles. “Call me Dee.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Carly.” She steps out from behind the desk and starts down the hall, pausing only to wave me on after her. I have to skip a few steps to catch up to her frantic pace. She hangs a hard left into another small office and points to an empty chair. I sit like an obedient puppy, and she hustles behind the desk and sits down at a computer.

“Smile,” she says, and before I can ask what for, there’s a click. I hear the sound of an artificial camera shutter. “Spell your name for me?”

She types as I spell, then clicks on something with the mouse. A printer behind her warms up with awhooshand spits out a white plastic card. Carly snatches it off the printer almost before it’s done, then reaches into a box and produces a yellow lanyard withRIALTO PRODUCTIONSprinted on it in black. She clips the card to the lanyard and hands it to me.

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