Catch a Falling Star (11 page)

the size of small houses, each with the bright green words
Star

Shacks
scripted across their sides.

Parker gave a general wave toward the trailers. “Base camp.

Cast trailers. The director, producers’ trailers —”

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Adam interrupted him. “Stop showing off your big Hollywood

terms, Park. She doesn’t care that it’s called base camp.”

Parker’s shoulders tensed.

Mik stopped the Range Rover next to the largest of the trail-

ers. I nodded at it. “This is where you’re living?”

Adam shook his head. “This is just where we hang out during

shooting.” He quickly pushed his door open. “Come on. I’ll show

you. It’s got a gym and a milkshake maker.”

Every kid loves a good fort. I begged my parents for years and,

when I was nine, finally got a pretty respectable tree house in the

low limbs of the old maple in our backyard. It had smooth plywood

walls and floor, a real ceiling, a rope ladder, even some curtains

Mom made from a green tablecloth hanging on the one wide

window. I had a rug in there, bookshelves full of found treasures

like river rocks and smooth acorns with their little hats, and a

white plastic table where I could set a vase with a rosebud or maybe

a slim branch of dogwood blooming. I didn’t use it as much as I had

when I was younger, but I still liked to sit up there sometimes,

especially at night, and watch the stars emerge through the large

window.

Adam’s trailer was nothing like my tree house.

His fort was on steroids. In fact, I knew quite a few families in

Little who could move in and live out the rest of their years in a

place like this. Hardwood flooring gleamed, a sprawling dark blue

suede couch faced a flat-screen TV, and off to one side was a mini-

gym, complete with treadmill and weights. The kitchen had a

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microwave, cherry cabinets, a fridge, and, as promised, a stainless

contraption that clearly made milkshakes.

“You want one?” Adam motioned toward it. “I can send out for

fresh strawberries.”

I shook my head, wondering who would get that job —

strawberry fetcher. “I’m okay, thanks.” The whole place smelled

too good, something muted and spicy. Boys rooms weren’t sup-

posed to smell this good. Alien Drake’s room always smelled like

Doritos and stale pizza. Which was better than how my brother’s

room used to smell — old sponges and, inexplicably, rotting limes.

Parker plopped down on the couch with his phone, kicking his

feet onto the coffee table. After scrolling his thumb along the

screen, he told Adam, “You don’t shoot until noon, but you wanted

to run one of the hospital scenes.”

“Oh, right.” Adam opened the fridge and pulled out a blue

glass bottle of water. He kicked his flip-flops in the direction of

what appeared to be a bedroom. They thudded against the cherry-

wood door frame, leaving scuffs, and landing splayed out in the

hallway. “Carter can read Cheryl.”

“Who’s Cheryl?” I sat on the edge of the couch, and Parker

handed me a script much thicker than the one detailing my fake

relationship with Adam.

Adam leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping from the

blue bottle. “She’s sort of the Tiny Tim figure in the movie.” He

went on to explain that the movie was a retelling of
A Christmas

Carol
. He played Scott, the Scrooge character, who was the teen-

age son of the largest donor of a small-town hospital. Cheryl was a

teen girl with cancer. Her father, the Bob Cratchit figure, worked

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for Scott’s father. When he talked about the film, Adam’s face lost

its usual sullen haze; it brightened the room. “I need to run the

scene where I come to her hospital room. The one before she gets

to go home.”

“Page 102,” Parker added.

I flipped to it. “Wow, you guys are already near the end?”

“We’re at the hospital tomorrow so we shoot all the scenes

there,” Parker told me.

“Out of order?” I scanned Cheryl’s lines. Mostly, she said

things like, “You can be my first Christmas present,” which made

me cringe but probably sounded better in context and would

make me sob like a baby when I saw it in the final version of the

movie, with all the music and lighting.

“You shoot based on location,” Parker told me, pushing him-

self off the couch and helping himself to some blue bottled water

from the fridge. “We have the hospital for only two days.”

Adam cleared his throat. “Let’s run it.” He motioned to the

script.

I frowned. “I’m not an actor.” My mouth felt dry, like I was

about to give a speech at school. “Maybe Parker could do it.”

“I’d rather run it with a girl.” Adam plopped down next to me

on the couch. “Don’t think too much about it. Just read it.” He

cleared his throat again.
“I brought the music box, Cheryl.”

“Don’t you need a script?”

He shook his head. “No, I know it. Go ahead. Say the line.” He

leaned forward, saying his line again.

I swallowed, wishing I’d asked for one of those bottles of

water. The script said (whispering), so I tried to whisper
“Scott? Is

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that you?”
but I sounded creepy, like an old woman in a horror

movie. Adam and Parker exchanged a look.

“You’re thinking about it too much,” Adam said, giving me a

flicker of a smile. “Just read it.” Morning light filtered through the

trailer window, tiny dust motes catching in the air around us.

Outside, I could hear other people coming and going, trailer doors

opening, closing. A dog barked.

Licking my lips, I tried the line again.

Adam nodded, his eyes locked to my face.
“It’s me. I’m sorry,

Cheryl. I’m sorry for all of it.”

I forgot to look at my script. “All of what?”

He frowned. “That’s not the line.”

“Sorry.” Scanning the page, I read, still whispering, trying for

my best sick voice.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I’ve changed.”

I had a question. “How can you be Scrooge if it’s not your

money? It’s your dad’s money.”

He shook his head, letting his earnest face drop away, replaced

with a wash of annoyance. “It’s a
retelling
. We’re turning the story

on its ear. It’s a teen version. I’m the
son
of the wealthiest man in

town, and I’m the one who has let money dictate my life. My dad’s

not the jerk in the story.
I’m
the jerk in the story. I don’t care about

the right things. I’ve lost sight of what matters. Partying all the

time. Sleeping around . . .”

“This is a family movie?”

“They don’t show any of that, really,” Parker interjected from

his perch by the fridge. “It’s backstory.”

Adam explained, “It’s Christmas Eve, and Scott’s just screwing

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around, making things hard for the working people at the hospital,

forgetting about what really matters in life. . . .”

“Which is what?” What could a guy hanging out in a decked-

out trailer with its own milk-shake machine and private gym know

about real “working people”? I thought of Mom, off somewhere

fighting for farm aid, while I declined a freshly made strawberry

milk shake in a tricked-out fort. Not a proud moment for the Moon

family.

Adam seemed caught off guard by my interruption. “Um,

well, like family and stuff, I guess. And love.”

“And he loves Cheryl?” I studied the pages as if they’d answer

for me.

“He doesn’t realize it until this scene.” I listened as he described

his part, the way he saw Scott as this lost soul, how this Christmas

Eve everything would change for him, and it struck me that he

really seemed invested in Scott’s story. Maybe it wasn’t just some

stupid blockbuster to him. Then it hit me. It wasn’t just having me

as a girlfriend that would try to change his public image. He

wanted to be seen as Scott. The guy who got emotionally body-

checked by three visiting ghosts and realized he’d been screwing

up his life.

Kind of like Adam.

It wasn’t subtle. Did they think the public was that gullible?

“And so he’s visited by three ghosts who teach him these

things.” I was ready to go back to the script, but I’d unleashed

something in Adam.

Adam stood, pacing the small room. “Sort of ghosts, but not

like in the original story. We’re not taking a paranormal angle

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with it. It’s different. Contemporary. I run into a kid from my

elementary school days, and he acts as sort of a reminder of

Christmases past.” It takes me a minute to register that when he

keeps saying “I,” he means his character, Scott.

“Then, I see my history teacher from school, who acts as a sort

of Ghost of Christmas Present, and finally, you see my future. Me

as an old guy — like thirty-five — who has lost the love of my life

because I was greedy and shallow. I get to wear old-guy makeup.”

I frown. “Won’t that be paranormal? You seeing a future ver-

sion of you?”

He shrugged, finishing the last of the water, tossing the bottle

into a blue trash bin. Everything in the trailer was polished wood.

Or blue. Like it had all been designed to match his eyes. Which

it probably had been. “I don’t know. They have people to figure

that out.”

I struggled to remember the story. “So the movie won’t show

your own death?”

He clutched his hand to his chest. “Just the death of my heart.

It’s ultimately a love story. It’s going to kill at the box office.”

“A love story?”

“A
Christmas
love story. With Cheryl. We’re going to crush.”

Parker stood up, brushing out some wrinkles in his linen

jacket. “He’s brilliant in it.”

“I’m sure.” Truth was, I’d watch pretty much anything if you

sprinkled some snow on it and lit up some twinkle lights — I

loved Christmas movies, loved the way they glowed — but I still

wondered how some rich movie star who’d spent his whole life in

L.A. could really understand a small town enough to convince us

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he’d gone through some big life awakening. What I’d seen of Adam

so far didn’t convince me he could look much beyond his own

nose. Still, they called it
acting
for a reason.

I’d read somewhere that actors often did research, studied a

character to get to know them, walked around in their shoes and

all that. And we happened to have a Scott right here in Little.

“Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“You want to see the guy you’re playing in the movie?”

From the open window of the Range Rover, Parker told us we had

about forty-five minutes and then we needed to get back to town.

“We have to make sure we get in a few more sightings of you two

today before Adam starts shooting.” He peered up at the hillside.

“This looks too private. No one will see you.” This was not in the

script, and I could tell it made Parker itch a little. Mik handed us

the picnic basket that had magically appeared in the back of the

Range Rover. “No more than forty-five minutes,” Parker reminded

us before he had Mik park the car in the shade of some trees.

“Is he your manager or your babysitter?” I smiled so Adam

would know I was kidding.

“What’s the difference?” Adam shrugged, looking suddenly

young, like a kid who’d been told, No, we won’t be stopping at the

pet store today.

He followed me up the narrow footpath that snaked its way

along the green hillside at a mellow angle. It was warm, and the

ankle-length grasses around us had browned on their tips. When

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we reached the top, Little High stretched out below us. Here, we

looked directly down on the new football stadium, its rubberized

track a black eye surrounding the expanse of green field. Stadium

bleachers rose in a metallic blossom all around it. Directly across

from us, a crisp white-and-blue sign read: BryCe FieLd.

“Zack Bryce,” I told Adam, “is who you are playing in this

movie of yours. Well, except so far he hasn’t had any ghosts smack

around his conscience.”

His hands in the pockets of his jeans, Adam stared at the sign.

“Zack Bryce, huh? That’s cool. I want my character to be relevant.”

His gaze drifted in the direction of the library, the clump of class-

room buildings near the cafeteria, and the theater, a sad, plain

building in need of a paint job.

I explained to him that Zack Bryce was the oldest son of Travis

Bryce, who was the son of Don Bryce — a chain of cash, at least

by Little’s standards. Adam could probably buy them all before

lunch and then fly a private jet back to L.A. “The Bryce family

owns a good chunk of this town. Travis Bryce donated the stadium

to the school. You know” — I shrugged — “so his kid didn’t have

to play on a crappy field.”

Adam nodded. “That was awesome of him.”

I frowned. Maybe he really wasn’t going to see the connection.