Page 34 of My Unscripted Life

“Who the hell is that?” Benny asks, appearing at my side.

“I don’t know,” I reply. And then I get a flash of recognition. I saw her getting off the school bus this morning. She’s the girl who asked if the extras would be getting hair and makeup, and I’m pretty sure she’s asked me to get on set six or seven times. “Holy crap, she’s anextra.”

Benny laughs. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says. “Adrian is going to flip her shit when she sees that.”

I’m not normally a very confrontational person, and a few hours ago I probably would have jumped at the chance to let Adrian be the bad guy. I might have even enjoyed watching the show. But right now? When I’m taking virtual hits from every Milo Ritter fan in the Western Hemisphere while Lydia Kane’s warning haunts my brain? Yeah, I’ll take this one.

I snatch the clipboard out of Benny’s hand, because I figure I need something to lend me an air of authority, and then march across the lawn. “Hey, you!” I shout. The extra whips around, and her photo-ready smile vanishes. “What in the hell are you doing?”

“I, uh, I w-was just—” she stammers.

“Get the hell back to the extras tent before I send you home,” I snap, gesturing toward her path. “Extrasdo notleave the tent. Can you not follow even the simplest of instructions?”

“You mean you’re not an actress?” a middle-aged woman in an electric-blue visor drawls as she drops her camera back into her fanny pack.

“Iaman actress,” the girl replies, “just not—”

“Go!” I cut her off, and then, like my mom used to do when I was little, I start counting. I have no idea how high I’m willing to go, or what the consequences will be when I get there, but it doesn’t matter because she scurries back up the path toward the tent before I hit three.

I let out a huffy breath and tuck the clipboard under my arm before stomping up behind her. When I get back, Benny is giving me a slow clap while a smile spreads across his face. “Nice one,” he says. “Color me impressed.”

“Yeah, I had a little frustration to get out,” I reply.

“Well, I’d better get back. I’m on camera patrol,” he says, rolling his neck and bouncing on his heels a bit. While I’ve had my chair out here, Benny’s been on his feet in the house all day. He’s got to be feeling it.

“Camera patrol?” I ask.

“Making sure none of the extras are staring at the camera,” he says. “By the way, tomorrow is red. Don’t let me down, Wilkie.”

I give him a two-fingered salute, then watch as he bounds off toward the house.

I spend the rest of the day on my perch outside the tent. My job is 90 percent pointing out where the bathrooms are, but each time they set up for a new shot inside the mansion, I get to pull a selection of extras to send up to set. I actually find myself having fun pulling out a good mix of people and complementary dress colors from the group, trying to imagine what the camera will see when it pans over the crowd. Adrian even comes down to tell me that Rob is really happy with the way the scene is looking today. “It’s crazy unusual for the director to compliment the background,” she says, and gives me a good hard slap on the back that nearly knocks the wind out of me.

Soon the sun is starting to set, and on the radio I hear that there’s only one more shot before we wrap for the day. Adrian takes up a post at a table inside the tent to start wrapping the extras, meaning signing their pay vouchers and sending them home. We need to retain only a small group to finish up inside, so I stand at the entrance to the tent and make sure everyone’s voucher is signed before they leave.

“Voucher?” I ask as they file by, barely registering their faces. They nod or wave their signed slips, but most ignore me. I don’t care. Between the early wake-up, hanging around in the sun all day, and fretting about the photo, I’m exhausted. “Voucher? Voucher?”

“Yeah, where do I get that signed again?”

“Ugh, at the table in the tent,” I groan, and notice how much I sound like Carly. When I glance up, Milo is standing in front of me in his tuxedo, looking just as sexy as I imagined he would. “Oh, hey,” I say, trying to sound cool and breezy and relaxed. Unfortunately, I think I come off sounding strangled.

Milo clears his throat and adopts some sort of weird, professional tone of voice. “Uh, can I talk to you? About tomorrow’s scene?” He nods toward the back of the property, away from the prying eyes and iPhones of the tentful of extras.

“Yeah, of course,” I reply, trying to match his all-business tone. I follow him across the lawn and around the side of the house, where we’re alone and out of sight.

“How’s it going?” he asks, but there’s a hesitancy in his eyes that tells me he probably already knows.

I take a breath to ensure I won’t burst out into sobs. “Well, I’m wrangling a hundred and fifty extras who all think their Oscar-winning close-up is coming any second, I have a blister on my left pinkie toe, and oh, what was that? Yeah, strangers are discussing my love life on the Internet.”

He grimaces like he’s just witnessed a horrific car crash. And I feel like I’ve just been through one. “So you saw it, huh?”

“The wholeworldsaw it, Milo. I think I was the last one, in fact.”

He throws an arm around me and pulls me close. I take a deep breath, but he smells more like the costume closet and the makeup chair than Milo, so it doesn’t have the calming effect I was hoping for. “Are you doing okay?”

“Um, I don’t know. I mean, you’d think you’d get used to reading grammatically incorrect and questionably capitalized diatribes about your maximum sluttitude, but you’d be wrong.”

“I’m really sorry, Dee. I promise, this will blow over. Someone else will crash his car or go to rehab or kiss someone or grocery shop and we’ll be yesterday’s news.”

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