“So you’re in high school?” Tyson asked, trying to make small talk.
“Yes, we’re juniors,” I said.
“And how do you know each other? Friends?”
Terrence tapped me on the shoulder. “We’re brother and sister,” he said, conveniently leaving out the “step.”
Tyson looked at me and then turned to look Terrence. “Don’t you see the family resemblance?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
The look on his face confirmed that he thought we were serious until he shook his head, gave a short laugh, and said, “Funny.”
“We think so,” Terrence said.
Tyson looked back at him and swerved. I screamed, and he course-corrected.
“Oops,” Tyson said.
“Your last word on this earth was going to be ‘oops,’” I said.
He smiled, pushing up his sunglasses with his middle finger. Then he took a deep breath and continued driving down the bumpy road, stopping in front of a trailer. “This is your stop,” he said. He kicked his feet up over the steering wheel.
“Not going inside?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll wait out here.”
We walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. It flew open. “Nuke me!” a man greeted us. He smiled widely. He was balding and pale, with a pencil-thin black mustache. He wore a purple-and-green scarf around his neck and a pincushion on his wrist. “Welcome. I’ll be with you shortly.”
His name was Raymond—pronounced “Ray-MOND”—Sinclair. He encouraged us to repeat his name back to him with “a tinge of hoity-toity.” He said he had worked on Dynasty.[48] I loved that show. The shoulder pads were bigger than the egos. Alexis was my favorite.
Terrence and I sat on a couch near the huge window. I caught a glimpse of Astrid, who was getting sized for the “Civic Pride Scene.” I tried not to make eye contact with her, but failed.
“L name, right?” she said, glancing up while picking at her cuticles.
“It’s Laura,” I said.
“Got it—L name. Terrence, right?”
“T name,” he said without smiling.
“He-e-ey,” she said, suddenly sounding very creepy. “Funny man.” She probably meant for it to be very sexy. But everyone with a British accent sounded sexy.
I tried not to think about Astrid, but to concentrate on my role. I could see my pale pink dress with capped sleeves hanging on a rack full of clothes. It was so pretty. I couldn’t wait to try it on. Terrence’s black pants, white button-down shirt, and black leather jacket were hanging right beside it.
Astrid stepped off the stool and walked toward me. “Amateurs are fun, but let’s try not to mess up, ’kay?” she said, unzipping her dress to show her bare back.
Was she trying to be intimidating? Terrence stared, though. Astrid was pretty, I’d give her that, but she most definitely forgot to turn off the bitch switch before coming to our town.
“Laura, we’re ready for you,” said Raymond, placing the tape measure around his neck.
I got on the stool where Astrid once stood, and tried to hold still with my arms stretched out like I was getting ready to take off. They were going to have to take in the boob area on the dress. Apparently Peony Roth was much more blessed in that department than I was. I was taking Peony’s part today, though technically not Peony’s role. Still an extra, but I was going to be on camera.
Astrid laughed. I wanted to cry as each pin pierced my skin.
“Pain is beauty,” Raymond said. “But try not to bleed on the dress.”
I hobbled off the stool and waddled my way behind a partition and somehow got out of the dress without doing any harm to it.
I sat in the beauty parlor chair. It was Kitty’s turn to turn me into a swan.
Kitty Van Pelt, the hair and makeup extraordinaire, wore her hair crimped with pink stripes. Actually, she wore a lot of pink. Tights, skirt, long-sleeve shirt, vest—all pink. Including her makeup. Pink was her signature color. (She was a character. But really sweet.) She spoke at a high pitch, and squealed and smiled as she did her job.
Astrid sat in the beauty parlor chair beside me, filing her nails with an emery board that she had pulled out of her Nuke Me tote bag. I saw that she had two books in there, Eve of Destruction and 1984.
“Oh, I’m reading that for class at my school,” I said. I pointed at the special-edition 1984 anniversary cover. “How do you like it?”
“Oh,” she said, tracing my eye line to her tote bag. She shook her head. “My tutor gave me the CliffsNotes. I haven’t read it yet.”
I continued to stare at her as she went back to focusing on her hangnail. I wondered if she’d even read Eve. Probably not.
Astrid sighed and pushed herself up from her chair. “I’ll be back. You Americans bore me,” she said, leaving the trailer with the door slamming shut behind her.
“Brilliant,” Kitty said, mocking Astrid’s posh accent. “Now, Laura, we’re going for a natural look. You did win the pageant, after all.”
“What pageant?” Terrence asked.
“What pageant?” Kitty asked, dropping her eyelash curler and placing her hands on her hips.
“I honestly can’t believe you asked that,” Raymond chimed in.
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked,” Terrence said.
“Have you read the book?” she asked.
Terrence shook his head.
“Read the book.” She picked up the eyelash curler and went for my right eye.
“We’re going to go for a special-occasion look. Something strong to hold up the mushroom-shaped crown,” Kitty said.
“The what now?” Terrence asked.
“Read the book.” Kitty brushed my hair and smiled at herself in the mirror. “Well, our little Miss Laura was crowned Ms. Atomic Bomb.”
“Miss What?” Terrence asked.
Raymond rolled his eyes, marched over to Astrid’s tote, and picked out the paperback copy of Eve of Destruction. “Read the book!” he cried, literally throwing it at Terrence’s head.
I tried not to laugh. Terrence gave me a look that said, “Everyone involved in this movie is totally insane.”
“Now, what are we going to do for the radiation scars?” Kitty said, talking to herself as she mixed a couple of eye shadows together.
Poor Terrence. He wouldn’t have felt so lost if he’d only read the book.
Chapter Nineteen
Now, to be completely honest, I didn’t have high hopes for this film. Yes, the fairgrounds felt extra creepy. But this was the director of Kinship. Ergo: he’d cast an Asian actress, Kai Yu, in the starring role, and she’d died while filming, so instead of suspending the project, he hired a white actress to take her place, Maxie Frey. Maxie the actress always reminded me of Maxie the Pads, which in turn reminded me of horrendous, debilitating cramps. Maybe that’s why I hated her.
Mr. Edman stood in the middle of the barren set—talking animatedly to a man in a backward baseball cap, who was smoking a cigarette and looked like he hadn’t showered in days. Both had wires and Walkman headphones dangling from their necks.
I strained my ears to listen.
“I heard what Bruce and Anthony did,” Director Edman whispered loudly. “A bunch of cheapskates.”
Tyson cleared his throat. That got their attention.
“This is Laura,” he announced. “And this is Terrence,” he added, trying to defuse the tension. “She won the radio contest, and he’s her guest, as guaranteed by the rules of the prize giveaway.”
48
ABC soap opera set in Denver, Colorado. It premiered in 1981. It’s produced by Aaron Spelling and stars John Forsythe as oil magnate Blake Carrington; Linda Evans as his secretary/wife, Krystle; and Joan Collins as Blake’s ex-wife, Alexis.