“Oh, thank God. Danny, I thought something had happened to Terrence,” he said.
I hesitated upstairs, standing outside my bedroom, listening.
“I’ll get her,” Dennis said, He jumped, seeing me hurrying down the stairs. “It’s your dad.” As we passed each other, he put his index finger over his mouth and went back to bed.
Thank goodness it wasn’t Mom who answered the phone. The yelling would have woken up the entire neighborhood.
Dennis told me right after the wedding ceremony, during the reception in fact, that stepdads were better than real dads because they stepped up when real dads stepped down. I smiled and didn’t believe him. But lately—
“Ladybug,” Dad said. The worst nickname ever. “I’m sorry”—the two words he always started off with in a conversation with me—“I know I was supposed to call”—but—“but things have been”—chaotic… insane… busy… choose your own word in place—“it’s been—”
Dad was slipping in his excuses. I could have sworn I heard someone yell his name. Maybe his train of thought was off, or maybe the explanations were running thin, but it was like his mind was elsewhere.
“Dad, is everything okay?” I asked.
“Of course, Ladybug,” he said, though his voice was shaky.
“You can tell me anything.”
“Ladybug, you’re better off not knowing some things.”
“Sergeant!” I could hear the man clearly that time.
Dad sighed. “Ladybug, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go—”
“Dad, you seem worried.”
“I am.”
The dial tone clicked, and I stood there in the kitchen, staring at my mom, who was staring at me with her arms crossed and her foot tapping.
“Your dad,” she said, but it was more of a statement than a question.
“Yes.”
“I should have known. He has no concept of time.”
Chapter Thirteen
The lingering smell of the rotting pumpkins set the mood—at least for me. The Harvest Party/Welcome Party had waited until after Thanksgiving to address the task of Halloween cleanup. Typical. Every other local was gushing over the invited guests. The ones who’d shown, anyway. Director Norman Edman looked intimidating, though his wire-rim glasses were smudged and his scraggly beard—I think you’d call that a beard—matched his hair, which looked like he hadn’t combed it in a week and was incredibly shaggy and wouldn’t fit in his baseball cap with the word Eve embroidered on. Granny would have made him get a haircut. His voice was groggy like he had been nonstop yelling. I was still intimidated by his presence. He had just sent the screenwriter—Eddie Payne, a “wildly charismatic genius”—back to the typewriter for a “rewrite” to fix the “issues” that he deemed “issues.”
Meaning: the girl who’d won the radio contest had picked a black kid as her plus-one.
That’s what I guessed, anyway. I was eavesdropping on Mr. Edman’s hushed conversation with a man in a suit, a man whose suit was pricey, a man who seemed more important than anyone else present. If I’d learned anything by living in Griffin Flat, it was the art of gossiping. You took snippets of what you overheard and spun them into outrageous truth.
In my defense, Mom said that if I happened to come across any Hollywood type, she wanted me to introduce myself. Apparently so they’d remember me. Or maybe just to be polite? Sadly for her, I was too chicken to get too close. On the plus side, they weren’t talking about Terrence anymore—or the problem of actually having (God forbid) two black teenagers in the same movie who weren’t criminals.
“I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy with clearance that can get us through the gate,” Mr. Edman was whispering. “I mean, I know you have to worry about liability. You’re the exec producer. But it’s safe. As long as we don’t touch anything, we’ll be fine. Trust me.”
The man nodded. “Fine. We’ll amend the contract so that you’re liable.”
“No… I mean, yes, but the point is—” Mr. Edman broke off and glared at me. “Are you lost, young lady?”
I shook my head and darted away, searching for Max. Lucky for me, Mayor Hershott chose that moment to take the stage and address the crowd. He tapped the mic at the front of the stage, and the screech of feedback prompted everyone to turn.
“Welcome to Griffin Flat,” Mayor Hershott proclaimed. He paused dramatically, telegraphing a joke. “It’s an honor that our little town will be off the map real soon.”
The crowd cheered.
The Griffin Flat High School Band was setting up behind him. In their red-and-gold uniforms and their instruments polished to shine, they played the school song, which really was “The Victors”—the University of Michigan fight song, with different lyrics, of course.
The crowd cheered, and the band jumped around as if the football team had scored the winning touchdown in state (which would never happen). Astrid Ogilvie walked past. I tried to say hi but I chickened out. She’d been kind of rude the other night, and I didn’t really want to feel small again.
“Hey. Laura, right?” Freddy said, poking me on the arm.
“Yeah, it’s Laura, hey,” I said, trying not to get overexcited.
I smiled. He smiled. Then he asked where Terrence was, and I pointed him out in the crowd. He was with Rodney next to the dessert table.
“And our stars—Astrid Ogilvie, Freddy White, and Owen Douglas,” Mayor Hershott said as the crowd erupted in cheers and the band blew its horns and pounded its drums.
The stars waved to the crowd.
It was surreal. We hadn’t had movie stars in our small town. This was new, and though it was exciting it was kind of nerve-racking. We were afraid to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing; we were on edge. No one wanted the people from California to think we were dumb southern rednecks.
“Thanks for the hospitality,” Owen said.
“Yes, thank y’all so much,” Astrid said, taking the microphone from Owen. “It’s an honor to be here, y’all.” The fake southern accent that she was using was downright demeaning. The way she said y’all made my skin crawl.
“I love you, Astrid,” said a boy in the crowd. I knew that boy—Max.
“I love you too,” she said, blowing a kiss.
I was going to have to schedule a doctor’s appointment because I sprained my eyeballs from rolling them too hard.
Max pointed at me and laughed. He was bent over, grabbing his stomach, and people were staring, but he thought he pulled a fast one. His comedy was questionable.
Freddy said that he was happy to be here and thanked everyone for being so welcoming to a boy from California. Freddy was the only one who mingled with the crowd, unlike Owen, who stayed off to the side of the stage, and Astrid, who spoke in a condescending manner. But most of the townspeople were oblivious; they saw how pretty she was and how big her boobs were. Peony Roth wasn’t here. And according to the gossip on the street, she liked the stuff that started with a lowercase C. People were fed up with her shenanigans. People at Economy Pictures were fed up with her shenanigans. Her contract was null and void. She was sent off to do some “charity work,” according to the press. In reality, she was at her fifth stint at the Betty. Who was going to take over the part of Helen Allen?
Bruce Coleman, producing partner with Anthony Dillard (BC-AD Productions), came to the microphone and hit it a couple of times before speaking. “Thank you,” he said slowly. “Thank you for having this party to welcome us to Griffin Flat, or should I say, Pikesville?” He laughed at his own joke, which wasn’t even funny. “Ha. Well, I am glad that your town won. It is a nice town. I’ve met so many friendly people. I hope that we make you proud. We’re going to make history here. Just you wait. Just you wait.”