Chapter 20: Welcome to Hollywood

Wednesday January 4
I got out of bed and went to the window to check whether the fire had progressed. I could see smoke over the ridge. Low-flying planes had woken me at daybreak, and I saw one now make a run over the hogback and then pop back up like a crop duster over a field. They appeared to be dropping water to try to contain the inferno. If the fire came our way, it could destroy some of the most expensive homes in the LA area.

A glint of light from a tree in the backyard caught my eye. There was a massive camera clutched in a guy’s hands. That was when I realized I was standing in the window in all my glory. He stood up so he could get a good picture of me when I heard the tree branch crack. The idiot was going to kill himself.

“Son of a...” I said under my breath.

“What’s wrong?” Brook asked.

“Hit the alarm on your phone. We have a paparazzo in a tree.”

I watched as he lifted the camera to his face to start to take pictures. I stepped back to the side, so he didn’t catch any of the good stuff, or so I hoped. Then I heard the branch give way, and the photographer cried out. Shit! Heart pounding, I looked over and saw Brook had triggered the alarm app. A moment later, her phone rang.

“David says there’s a guy in a tree taking pictures,” she said to my security people.

I can’t believe that he would risk life and limb—and possible jail time for criminal trespass—just to get a photograph of me through a window. He must be dead broke to go that far to sell that picture to one of the celebrity sites. I could see it now; they would have me plastered all over the net in no time. I peeked out, and he was rolling around on the ground, holding his ankle.

Brook took her ear from the phone.

“Where is he now?”

“Tell them the tree branch broke, and I think he hurt himself.”

Brook relayed the message.

“Good,” she said, and then looked at me. “Manaia is pulling into our driveway. Fritz says for you to stay inside and let him do his job.”

Our bedroom door burst open, and Cassidy was in full ninja mode.

“Get back from the window,” she ordered.

“The guy only has a camera,” I complained.

Cassidy must have realized I was naked because she suddenly blushed.

“Put some clothes on,” Brook ordered.

I kept my smart comments to myself and did as I was told. I grabbed a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and went back to the window where Cassidy and Brook were watching the action. Manaia was built like a linebacker, and I could see the cameraman cower with Manaia standing over him. Manaia pulled out zip ties and trussed him up. The paparazzo then got agitated when Manaia grabbed his camera and removed the memory card.

“He’s hot,” Cassidy said, referring to my security.

“If you like them all masculine and forceful,” Brook said with a smirk.

“I do like a guy who doesn’t hide behind a curtain for safety,” Cassidy said with a nod of agreement.

My ex seemed to agree with her as they both sighed like smitten teenyboppers. Sometimes it was better to just walk away. I went downstairs, and there was a knock at the door. I found two police officers waiting, so I took them through the house and pointed to where Manaia was. Everyone was suddenly downstairs. It might have been the sound of the siren as the police charged in for the rescue.

In less than five minutes, Manaia had turned the culprit over to the officers’ custody and given them a brief statement. Everyone seemed to want to watch our real-life episode of Cops and rushed out to watch the police drive off with the paparazzo in the back seat of their cruiser.

While we watched that, Manaia and Cassidy went two different directions around the house, presumably to check for other intruders. They came back, and Manaia smiled.

“Ready to go surfing?”

I like a man who has his priorities straight.

Everyone decided to go surfing today. Manaia, Lexi, Pam, and I helped the novices. The daily regulars gave us dirty looks and moved away from where we were surfing. It was probably for their own safety as my guys didn’t quite understand the unwritten rules about who got which wave. It wasn’t uncommon for two or three of them to try to take the same wave, and we had some near disasters.

It didn’t take long for the noobs to get tired. They left and gave the four more-experienced surfers a chance to demonstrate what we had. Pam and Lexi showed they’d been doing this all their lives, and like a fool, I tried to duplicate some of their moves.

It was foolish because one moment, I was trying this sick cutback, and the next thing I knew, my board was ten feet over my head, and I was crashing into the path of the wave. The crest of the wave landed on top of me and pushed me under. I found myself rolling under the water as the comber shoved me towards shore. There was nothing I could do but ride it out.

When I finally stopped tumbling, I was a little disoriented and not sure which direction was up. I took a moment to calm myself; the surest way to drown was to panic. I knew that my body would naturally rise upward. When it began to lift, I kicked towards the surface. My lungs began to starve for oxygen, and my natural reaction was to try to gasp for breath. It was all I could do to fight that instinct.

I broke the surface, sucked in a huge lungful of air, and saw another comber coming. I’d learned to dive towards the wave to shorten the time it had to do its worst. I popped up on the other side, and Pam was there. She was frantic because she hadn’t seen me surface the first time to catch my breath. She knew that someone under as long as she thought I’d been was probably in serious trouble.

“Give me your hand,” she barked.

I labored to catch my breath when I saw another big wave start to break. We were in the worst spot. We either had to get out into deeper water or head to shore, or we would get pummeled. I kicked so I could get my arm around Pam just before we were rolled. This time the surfboard lifted us to the surface, so not too much damage was inflicted.

I got on behind her, and we paddled to shore.

“Thanks,” I said once we reached the beach. “Did you see where my board went?”

She pointed, and I saw Manaia had saved it. At least this time, I hadn’t broken it.

At breakfast, I learned that Miss Future Reporter, Tracy, had videoed my spectacular crash and Pam saving me. How did I learn this? My mom called me.

“David Allen Dawson!”

Since the excited teen never worked, I opted for the cool factor.

“Did you see the sick move Pam and Lexi taught me?” I asked.

“What? Trying to kill yourself?” she huffed.

“It was no big deal. That’s why you surf with a buddy.”

I figured out that Tracy had posted the video, so she received the stink eye as I was lectured on exactly why it was a ‘big deal.’ I had to remind myself that the only reason she was so upset was that she loved me. Otherwise, I might have been offended by some of the stuff she said.

Today we planned to do a studio tour for everyone while I met with Lexi’s dad, Paul Andon. He wanted to give me an overview of where they were with the preproduction of the Star Academy movies. Ari insisted that he come with, and I invited Tim and Wolf because they wanted to see about working on the films. Of course, Lexi joined us as my PA.

Tracy and Pam were off to USC with Cassidy. The rest we dropped off at the visitors’ center for the tour.

Ari met us in the lobby of the studio executive offices.

“We need to renegotiate your deal,” Ari said.

“Tim, Wolf, this is my agent, Ari Gould,” I said, and then turned to Ari. “We already have a deal in place, and they paid me a lot of money up front. Why would we want to go to them asking for more money?”

“Your deal was put in place before Craig Wild died. They’ve had to rewrite the story and made it focused on your character. You should be getting leading-man money, not sidekick money,” he explained.

I shook my head at him to try to wrap my head around what he was saying. Star Academy was more of an ensemble type of movie than one that had a lead.

“Ari, if you remember, I got a better deal than Craig,” I reminded him.

“That was because you held out.”

“Which you were against,” I said, starting to get irritated.

“I like the offices,” Tim said to try to change the topic.

“They’re nice,” Lexi replied.

“Nice? Nice is nothing. Nice is bland. Nice is the morning after when you can’t remember her name,” Ari said, showing us his class.

I didn’t know whether to take Ari out back and teach him his manners or laugh.

“Tone it down some. This isn’t the guys’ locker room at your golf club,” I said.

“Lexi can take it,” Ari replied.

“I don’t care if she can or can’t. You represent me, and I have an image to uphold,” I explained.

Ari didn’t seem fazed.

“When we get in there, let me do the talking,” Ari said.

This was a mistake. I was about to send Ari home when the receptionist told us that Mr. Andon was ready to see us and ushered us into his office. It was befitting a studio exec, with a large modern desk and a comfortable seating area for less-formal discussions.

“There’s my girl,” he said, coming out from around his desk with the intent to give his daughter a hug.

Lexi stuck her hand out to shake his.

“Mr. Andon,” she said formally.

He looked at me.

“Seems I’ve let my professional side down. You’ve done well to get her to act so formally,” Mr. Andon said.

“Lexi has been hands down the best PA I’ve ever had. This is all her doing,” I confessed.

“Paul...” Ari began.

“Shut up, Ari. I’m not renegotiating David’s contract today. We haven’t figured out exactly what his role will be in the upcoming films yet. Once we do, we may make some changes,” Mr. Andon said to shut down my agent.

“I’m not opposed to you paying me more, if you were wondering,” I said with a smile to play it all off.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you,” Mr. Andon said.

We sat down and discussed what they were considering. They had three options. The first was to move Ben Cowley’s character, Roman, over to be the team lead for our group. Ben played the son of the headmistress of the school and was currently on our nemesis team at the academy. The second was to find another actor to replace Craig. The last was to bring in a new character and move my character, Stryker, into the lead.

“Personally, I think that moving Ben over has some problems because of how we clashed in the last movie,” I said.

Stryker and Roman had a climactic sword fight in the last film. I couldn’t really see us as teammates without there being a lot of friction. Of course, that could offer its own possibilities for storylines.

“As I said, we haven’t figured it all out yet,” Mr. Andon said.

“I had something else to ask. Lexi pointed out that I could hire people for the movie. It’s why she’s my PA,” I said.

“I do remember something like that in your contract. Did you want to add to your staff?” he asked.

“Not exactly. I was wondering if you might be able to find something for my friends to do,” I said.

Mr. Andon at first thought I just wanted to give my buddies busy work and use that as cover for adding to my entourage. Wolf quickly dissuaded him from that notion and went on to explain about Tim’s and his internship with Jack Mass doing construction last summer. Tim also shared that he was mechanically inclined, had helped his dad work on cars, and did all the maintenance for Wolf’s lawn care business.

He sent them both to go talk to a couple of his managers who handled different aspects of making movies. If they did well in those interviews, he would hire them. I could tell that Wolf was much happier that he would possibly get a ‘real’ job instead of a make-work type of situation where I basically paid him to hang out with me.

Mr. Andon then kicked out both Lexi and Ari to talk to me alone.

“Mr. Andon, thank you for helping my friends,” I said.

“Call me Paul. It’s the least I could do since you hired my daughter. My wife and I had started to worry about her ever getting serious after she graduated high school. We’d assumed she would be off to college, but she shocked us when she said she needed some time to figure things out,” he shared.

“Honestly, I was against hiring her at first. I’d met her at a party, and she came across as a ‘mean girl.’ I couldn’t really see her fitting in with the people I try to surround myself with.”

“What changed your mind?” he asked.

“She did, when I had my accident. Since then, we’ve only had one disagreement, but we worked it out. The people at my management company have nothing but good things to say about her. They would like to see her get her degree. Maybe you could sit down with her and find out what she wants to do long term. From what I’ve seen, she could run this town someday,” I said.

I could see Paul liked the idea of his daughter following in his footsteps.

“I’ll let my wife know. We’ll sit her down once you go back home and she moves back in with us. My wife says she talks nonstop about how much she enjoys both working and living with you and your family and friends. It’s been good for her to have some independence.”

“I’m sure you didn’t want to get me alone just to talk about Lexi,” I said, getting back to business.

“You’re right. I need you to hold off Ari for me. I know that your situation has changed since we signed the contract. Your most recent movie was some of your best work, and I heard the James Bond movie is moving forward. That’s why we’re probably going to shift you to the lead of the next two Star Academy movies.

“The problem I have is we have already set the budget for them. If I make any changes right now, it might delay filming,” Paul shared.

“I only have a small window to get this done as it is. I couldn’t do it if filming goes past the first of the year,” I explained.

“Trust me to take care of you. I have a feeling you’ll be around for a long time, and we want you to make movies with us. If I know Ari, he’ll advise getting paid now, but I hope you’ll work with me.”

I hadn’t come here today to try to squeeze more money out of him. To be honest, I thought they had paid me too much when I signed.

“I’ll tell Ari, but don’t be surprised if he calls again. The man is a bulldog.”

“As long as I know that we’re in agreement, I can handle Ari,” Paul said.

He shared with me some of the new CGI stuff they’d recently gotten. If the demo looked as good on film as it did on his PC, they had something I knew would blow audiences away.

We ended up talking for nearly an hour until Wolf and Tim came back with smiles on their faces. It looked like we were all going to New Zealand in the fall. On the way out, I explained to Ari what Paul had shared about the budget. He didn’t buy it, but I never expected he would. Maybe I was too trusting.

Snap

The tip of my pencil pressed into my drawing pad so hard while I was shading the pony’s mane that the lead broke again. I’d received a picture of Kyle and Mac riding and thought it would look nice as a drawing. While reaching for the pencil sharpener on the coffee table, I scraped away the jagged pieces left behind.

I’d opted for some alone time while everyone else either went off to do their own thing or was out by the pool. Cassidy came in and sat down next to me with a tablet.

“Brook put me in charge of ordering more food from the grocery store. I thought I’d better ask before I finish the order,” she said.

I distinctly remembered telling Brook not to share the login for that. Then again, maybe she hadn’t. I checked what Cassidy had in the checkout basket.

“You plan on cooking?” I asked.

“Brook said you would.”

I bet she did. I showed Cassidy the deli and bakery sections of the website and strongly suggested premade food. She gave me a smile and scampered off. Should I worry?

I began to draw again, and Sarah came in. It looked like my ‘alone’ time was going to be anything but.

“You got a minute?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, putting down my pencil.

“That’s not bad,” she said, pointing at my drawing.

“It’s something I should probably do more often.”

“Adrienne called me last week and wants me to go full time modeling,” she said.

“Will the opportunities still be there in May?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sarah admitted.

“I considered doing it ... but then I decided against growing up completely. You only get one senior year in high school.”

“I hadn’t really thought about that. I’ve just been looking at the dollar signs, not what leaving early would mean.”

“My uncle warned me about growing up too fast. You have the rest of your life to be an adult and pay bills.”

“So, you wouldn’t do it?” she asked.

“Me? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Have you talked to your parents?”

“They want me to stay in school.”

I could tell that didn’t hold as much sway as it would have if mine had given me the same advice. Sarah didn’t have the same sort of relationship with her parents as I did with mine, so I tried another tactic.

“Have a heart-to-heart with Adrienne and see if what she’s wanting can wait or not. You can’t really decide until you do,” I advised.

I trusted Adrienne to give her good advice if Sarah asked. While Adrienne was a good businesswoman, she would do what was best for Sarah. I was sure she had been presented with an opportunity to book Sarah and offered it to her. She would leave it up to Sarah to figure out what was best for Sarah.

We spent the remainder of my free time talking about my friends at Wesleyan. She encouraged me to come and visit. I would just add that to my to-do list. Maybe I would have some free time when I got home. Then again...

Everyone came home for dinner. Cassidy had figured it out and ordered a half-baked lasagna with side dishes: roasted vegetables; an apple, carrot, and beet salad; and breadsticks. She ordered a giant cheesecake for dessert. I was impressed when everyone pitched in to both prepare the meal and clean up.

After dinner, Wolf and Tim shared their contracts with the studio. They were being hired as general laborers who would assist at various tasks for the set designers, grips, and gaffers. They would also help as stand-ins, which meant that when the scene was being set, they would ‘stand’ where the actors would eventually be.

Their contract ran from June to the last week of December. I glanced down at the bottom and saw they were making serious money; way more than they would have made doing construction. It looked like making a movie was a great job.

“I take it you decided to accept,” I said.

“Yes,” Tim said. “I can’t see us passing this up.”

“Are we still planning to go to college together, too?” I asked.

They both looked at each other and nodded.

“That is unless you decide to go to Alabama or Ohio State,” Wolf said. “Tami said you might want to go your own way, and we want you to know we’re fine if you do.”

“We need to pick somewhere soon,” I said, ignoring his unasked question. “Are you guys still fine with USC, Oklahoma, and Michigan as our final three?”

They both nodded.

“Any preference?” I asked.

They looked at each other, and I think they played a mental game of ‘not it.’ Finally, Wolf seemed to either lose or decided to just say it.

“Michigan.”

“But we would be fine with any of them. I’m starting to see the allure of Southern California,” Tim said.

“I want to talk to my family before we decide. Why don’t we wait until I get back to make it official? While I’m leaning the same way, I don’t want to make a quick decision on this,” I said.

Hell, I’d played ‘kick the can down the road’ for nearly a year now. What would a couple of weeks really change?

“We have until mid-February,” Wolf reminded me.

That was his not-so-subtle way of telling me to hurry up and make up my mind.

“Actually, longer,” I said, and they both gave me confused looks because that was when the signing period opened. “If we were enrolling in August, then we would sign National Letters of Intent in February. Since we plan to gray-shirt and skip the fall, we’ll sign financial aid forms once we get on campus. We’ll also fall into next year’s recruiting class,” I clarified.

“So, there’s no real hurry?” Tim asked.

“Not really, but they all want us to declare so they can plan their classes. USC only plans to take one quarterback per class, and if I don’t go, they have their backup guy ready to sign. It wouldn’t be fair to leave them hanging—or any of the other schools,” I reminded them.

“Michigan told me that it’ll help them attract some other recruits if they know we’re coming,” Wolf said.

Talking about football made me want to go out and play a game.

Thursday January 5
My phone rang, waking me up. I checked the caller ID, and it was my brother. Someone had forgotten the time difference.

“Do you know what time it is here?” I asked to give him shit.

“You always get up early to run. I figured I’d catch you before you go out.”

“No problem. What’s up?” I asked.

“Angie and I may be on the outs.”

I took a moment to take that in.

“You still there?” Greg asked.

“Yeah. If it were me in the relationship, I would ask what I’d done. Since this involves Angie, I’ll guess it’s her,” I said.

“Her taking money from the charity has been a real problem for me. It’s not like we can’t pay our bills. I also can’t get past feeling like she stole from you. Even though I asked, I feel guilty that you gave her a job after all that.”

“I was looking at the big picture which includes my niece and nephews,” I clarified.

“So, you were pissed Angie stole the money,” he said.

“Yes, I was pissed. I have some serious trust issues with her.”

“Mom said you gave her the cash to pay it back.”

“She had to be the one to pay it back. I knew you didn’t have it lying around,” I said.

It was Greg’s turn to go quiet.

“I should have talked to you about it, but it needed to be taken care of. My lawyers were very specific about how it all had to work out.”

“No, I get it. Thank you,” he said, and then he picked up on what I’d said earlier. “What else has Angie done to make you not trust her?”

Me and my big mouth. I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. If there was a chance they could work this out, I would never forgive myself if I was the one to put the final nail in their marriage.