Page 1 of Not that Impressed
CHAPTER 1
ELLIE
I take a deep breath, like I always do when I enter my parents’ house, and push open the door. I peer into the entryway and exhale with relief when there’re no cameras or crew in sight.
Another few minutes of peace.
I step inside and shut the door quietly. Voices come from the living room, which is down a short hall from the entryway—my parents. I pause to listen for my younger sister, Libby, or my older sister, Janelle.
A low birdcall, like the sound of the doves that often hang out in the trees around the house, pulls my gaze to the small office just off the entryway. Janelle and I use that call all the time because it never attracts the attention of the crew. The dark wood barn door that shuts the room off is open a couple feet, and Janelle sits on one of the overstuffed couches, her phone in hand.
When my parents signed the contract for our family’s reality TV show,Being the Bennets, when I was thirteen, Mom made this room—originally an office—off limits to filming. Ironclad. I can’t avoid filming for long, and Janelle leaving the door open means she’s expecting someone from the crew to come at any moment and enforce the fact that Janelle and I are contractually supposed to be filming for four hours this morning.
Even though neither one of us still live at home, we’d both signed contracts to continue the show after we turned eighteen. Some days I want out. Some days I didn’t know what life would be like without the cameras around. I’ve grown up like this. Sometimes it’s weird that random people know my name or that there’s a YouTube video of my first date when I was fifteen. But it’s also my normal.
“Hey.” I slip inside the office and drop onto the couch next to my sister. “What’s up?”
“Charlie Baldwin moved into the neighborhood yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah.” Charlie plays linebacker for the Houston Pumas, the football team my dad owns. Dad mentioned a couple weeks ago that Charlie had bought a house down the street, one of the smaller homes in my parents’ upscale, gated neighborhood, River Oaks.
Janelle nods and her cheeks turn pink. I eye her, confused at her reaction, but she shakes her head. Yes, this room is off limits. They won’t film us here, and the crew has never tried to pick up on conversations we have here. Julie Bennet would skin them alive if they tried. We still don’t talk about anything in this house unless we’re okay with it being filmed. Better safe than sorry, as we’ve learned.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice a little high. “He bought the Morris’s house.”
I study her, and her blush deepens. Does this have something to do with Charlie Baldwin or something else? “This block is going to turn into Pumas central soon,” I say. Law Card, another Pumas player, lives down the street.
I’m not getting answers anytime soon about her weird reaction to telling me about a new neighbor. Now Janelle has a little smile on her face that I want to ask about. Waiting until we’re back at our apartment is going to be torture.
“Just go over and take him a gift, Rob,” Mom’s voice rings out from the living room. The living room and kitchen are open—makes it easier for cameras. And for overhearing what they’re talking about from our hiding spot. “I made bread.”
Janelle and I snort with laughter at the idea of Mom making bread for a new neighbor, which means the showrunner is going to find us soon and make us come participate in the conversation. I hope no one on the crew picks up on Janelle’s blushing and tries to pull on that thread.
Libby’s laughter from the living room, higher than our obnoxious snorts, might cover the fact that we’re here. My seventeen-year-old-sister, ten years younger than me and the pleasant surprise my parents got when they thought they were done having kids, is the one who brings the drama to the show most of the time. Janelle and I spent our formative teen years on camera, but Libby has literally grown up in front of it. She was a toddler when the network reached out to my parents about the show. Getting attention as the baby of the family was easy in front of such a big audience, and when she was old enough to notice the kind of recognition it got her, she figured out quickly how to get more camera time.
So when the director or showrunner wants a scene to pop or for a mundane thing in our lives, like a dentist appointment, to be a spectacle, they coax me into picking a fight with her. From the very beginning, the show used my confidence and attitude, unusual for a teen my age, to cast me as the villain everyone loves to hate.
It’s fine.
I made my peace with it long ago. I know who I am and sometimes having that alter-ego gives me a sense that the real me has a private life that not everyone in the world knows about.
“I am not going to take bread over to Charlie, Jules,” Dad says, his voice dry. “This isn’t Little House on the Prairie.”
Mom huffs. “Fine. The girls and I will. Where are Ellie and Janelle?” There’s a pause, maybe her checking her watch orlooking at whatever crewmember is there directing the action today.
“They’re in the office,” Libby says. “I heard them laughing about something a few minutes ago.”
“Little traitor,” I whisper, but I bite back a smile. Sure, maybe Libby plays too much for the cameras, but I recognize the ways she’s figuring out her power in a situation where it’s not just her parents trying to control her, but a whole network as well.
“That’s our cue.” Janelle pushes up off the couch with a sigh, and I follow her into the living room. “Hey, Mom,” she says when we waltz in.
Three camera operators are already here, each positioned strategically around the room. The show’s director, Victoria, sits at the large island in the kitchen. She looks over at us and raises her eyebrows. She’s as chill with us as she can be, but she has to sell a show, even if she’s known us long enough to be more like a cool older cousin than the person directing our lives. Literally.
Neither of us need to answer to let Victoria know where we were. The last few years she’s had to send someone to herd us out of there a couple of times a week. We should just renegotiate our contracts. Mom and Dad would support me wanting less camera time even if the show’s producers would fight it, but would my career survive stepping off camera? I want to say yes, but I don’t know, and I can’t walk away until I’m sure. Janelle stays for the same reasons, using the fame to increase awareness for her charitable foundation.
“We’re not going with you to deliver bread,” I say. Janelle hates contradicting Mom on anything, and Libby probably wants to go meet Charlie Baldwin. If she wasn’t underage, she’d happily date every player on the Pumas.
“Ellie!” Mom whines and then sighs dramatically. This is Mom’s “on” personality, which honestly, isn’t much different from real life, just a little more extra. She was playing to a crowd long beforeBeing the Bennetscame along—as the wife of a sports team owner, she had a job to schmooze and charm the minuteshe married my dad. The Pumas have been in the Bennet family for three generations now.
