Page 25 of I Did Something Bad
“Oh no!” May gasps. “Everyone, we’re looking for an earring! Be careful, we don’t want to accidentally step on it! Get on your knees!”
And then, to my absolute, utter, inconceivable horror,everybodydrops to their knees and starts crawling around. Including Yasmin and May. May Diamond, the first non-Angel to close the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, the newest face of Burberry, the fifth highest-paid actress in the world, is on her hands and knees, scouring the dirty floors of this massive set for an invisible heirloom earring that I inherited from my dead grandmother. I hear people whispering all around me. One person starts to yell “I fou—” only for someone elseto say, “That’s a piece of gum, stupid!” My head hangs lower, and I don’t know if it’s with shame or because Idefinitelycannot let anyone see my flaming cheeks right now.
“Tyler!” I hear May yell. “Why are you standing? Start looking!Whatis wrong with men?!”
“Maybe you dropped it in the car,” Tyler says. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize he’s talking to me.
I look up to find Tyler’s eyes staring so fixedly at me I’m surprised he didn’t burn holes into the back of my head. “Yes! Good idea!” I scramble to my feet.
“Good call,” May says. I catch Yasmin pause and open her mouth to say something but May announces, “We’ll keep looking here,” and crawls a few feet away. Yasmin smiles, sighs, and crawls in the opposite direction.
“What the hell was that?” I whisper-yell when we’ve marched far enough away from the set.
“That,” Tyler whisper-yells back, “was me saving our asses. Now we need to think of a story.”
“We? I feel likeyoushould be the one to think of a story since you’re so good at it, Mr. It Was a Family Heirloom.”
He presses the button on the keys that Yan had handed over on our way out. Once the car beeps twice, he opens one of the back doors while I angrily jerk the other open. We lean in from opposite sides, torsos hovering above the backseat.
“I didn’t thinkthe expensive earrings you treated yourself to at a small boutique in Florencewere going to warrant us pausing the entire shoot,” he says through gritted perfect teeth that I bet never needed braces. “Do youknowhow much a single delayed minute costs?”
“Doyou?”
“Of course I do! It’s myjob!”
“Since when?!” I’m trying my hardest not to yell, but the burn ofshame on my face is being replaced by one of growing annoyance. “All you have to do is show up and read the script and look pretty!”
Tyler’s creased forehead softens. That rogue smile tugs one corner of his lips upward. “You think I look pretty?” he asks, and bites the inside of his cheeks like he’s trying to hold back a cheeky comment.
“Uggggh!” I put a fist to my mouth. “Are you serious right now? May is right! Whatiswrong with men?! Focus! What’s our story?”
He holds up a hand. “You’re right, sorry.” A part of me feels bad when the creases on his forehead return. “Obviously Yasmin’s mentioned that you left early last night, so the police will probably focus on that.”
“What did you say? Food poisoning or period?”
“Period. We all ate at craft services, so it didn’t make sense that you were the only one who got food poisoning.”
I nod. “Smart. Okay, so my period got really bad. I took a walk to get some fresh air but when that didn’t work, I came and told you—”
“—because you needed my help covering for you if your editor asked how the shoot went—”
“—and I said I was feeling woozy, which is why you walked me to the car.”
“Did we see or hear anything?” Tyler asks.
I chew on my bottom lip as I consider it. “Would it be suspicious if we didn’t? But would we open ourselves up to questioning if we say we did?”
I don’t realize I’ve switched to thinking aloud until his cautious voice answers, “We thought we heard something as we were making our way to the car, but the set was so noisy anyway so we disregarded it. Maybe we saw the man, but people were also taking cigarette breaks, so even if we did, he didn’t catch our attention.”
A queasy sensation begins to sprawl across my gut. I know I should be thankful that he’s taking the lead, that while I’m losing my mind,Tyler is composed and has come up with what sounds like an actually plausible story. But it’s the way he came up with it—so easily, so quickly—that’s making me want to turn and run. I just watched him lie to his best friend and not even blink. All that his calm confidence is doing right now is giving me more proof that I shouldn’t trust him.
“You okay?” Tyler asks, head tipping to the side. “Does that… sound good to you?”
I nod because what else am I supposed to do? “Yes,” I say. “It does. It soundsgreat.”
Seven
“I’ll go second,” Tyler says as we stride back to the set, both earrings secured on my lobes. “To talk to the authorities. This scene is only going to need one more take,” he says with unwavering speed and composure. “I’m guessing they only have one interrogation room because it isveryhard to get any privacy on a movie set. They probably made them set up in prop storage. But that means we’re going to have to take turns, and when they ask, you volunteer to go first.”
