Chapter 85: Someday You’ll Be In Pictures

Sunday, January 29, 1984

Now that we’d finished our exam week, Study Group was back to mostly being relaxation. Five more exam weeks, and we’d be done with high school. Though, considering Angie and me, sometimes ‘done’ is a temporary condition.

I stepped out and gave Laura a brief call, updating her on everything that’d happened with Jess. If she was surprised, it was just about how much had happened over the last couple of weeks.

She was still waiting for her scholarship offers, hoping they’d turn up any day now.

We both agreed that she’d done a much better job of pretending to be mostly just a normal teenager than Angie and I had. Being by herself likely made that easier. Still, probably a few people had some questions about her, ones that might never be answered or even asked.

Monday, January 30, 1984

The Bellaire results got a mention on the morning announcements, right up there with the basketball teams (which won their games).

Jess and I talked only briefly, agreeing that we were good right now. There would be more talking, but not at the same pace. She needed time to digest things, and also to decide how she felt about the revelations about herself.

Tuesday, January 31, 1984

The big news today was that both Sheila and Gene had gotten into Boston College with full scholarships. That put Gene close to Sue if Wellesley worked out, and Sheila close to Amit if Harvard worked out. We were optimistic that they would.

Each couple was talking about where to live. In both cases, living in between might make sense, which would preclude the two couples living near each other. Of course, they could also all live near Boston College, but that would leave Sue and Amit doing all the commuting, which might get old fast.

Study group was again light. We’d pick up the pace next week. There was little reason to go full speed right now. Or, at least, I didn’t see one.

When we got home, there was a message on the machine from Maxine asking me to call. It didn’t seem urgent.

Wednesday, February 1, 1984

Jess caught us at the parking lot before school. I knew she’d been talking to the girls a bit, but we hadn’t discussed anything of the less ‘ordinary’ sort in a while.

“Want to go out to dinner tonight?” she said.

I looked at the girls. All of them nodded.

“Any suggestions on where?” Angie said.

“How about Fuddruckers? Some of the booths are fairly private and the food’s good,” Paige said.

“Works for me!” Jess said. “Except that you can’t go telling the grapevine I was chowing down on a cheeseburger!”

“That goes for all of us!” Angie said, giggling.

“All too true,” Paige said, sighing, then grinning.

“It’s a date!” Jess said.

We all hugged, then headed off to classes.

I gave Maxine a call during Debate. After a couple of minutes of catching up, she got to the heart of things.

“I spoke to the seller’s agent last week and floated a $70,000 offer. He laughed at it, of course, but he still had to report it. I got a counter back yesterday at $76,000. So, they’re certainly not sticking to the $80,000 listing price, and my guess is there’s a fair bit of softness at $76,000.”

“Try again at $74,000?” I said.

“I was going to go $73,000.”

“I’m fine with either. Use your best judgment on this. We’ll go to seventy-six, but my hope is seventy-five or less. You’re free to make a couple rounds of offers without checking in with me as long as we’re in that range between $73,000 and $80,000.”

“Thanks! Very seldom will a counter be their final offer unless they say it’s their final offer,” she said.

“That makes sense. Assuming you get a price negotiated, the home inspection would be next?”

“Yes. Normally there would be an appraisal, too, but that’s assuming a mortgage. You might want one, but it’s an optional expense.”

“In your opinion?” I said.

“I’d probably do it. The appraiser and home inspector are your friends here. Normally, you want the appraisal to come out high, but here you want it to come out fair. If the house is only worth sixty — which I doubt, I think it’s fairly priced — but if the appraiser says it’s only worth sixty, you’ve got to make a decision or push to renegotiate. If the home inspector says there are huge problems, you can definitely renegotiate.”

“That makes sense to me.”

“Any updates on your timetable?” she said. “You should be able to handle both the appraisal and home inspection over the phone, though if someone could come up and meet the inspector that might be slightly better. I can pay them — just send a check as soon as you can, once I get you a total.”

“I’ll send the check ASAP. We’ll be in a position to execute a contract February 14th or later. The 13th would be possible as a rush. We’ll be all out of town the weekend of the 18th, as well as the weekend of March 3rd. Anytime after March 3rd is good until late April. We can work around spring break, if it comes down to that. That’s the same weekend for us as it is for A&M.”

“It probably won’t run into April, and there’s a decent chance we can manage late February. They’re used to week-long or longer delays for appraisals and adjustments to mortgages. If all goes well, Saturday, February 25th looks like a solid possibility.”

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed!” I said.

“More news as soon as I have it!” she said.

“Thanks, Maxine.”

We hung up, and I headed back to let the girls know that there was progress on getting the house. I kept my comments vague, though. No one in Debate needed to know that we were buying a house.

Cammie was obviously listening in, but didn’t actually ask me anything, so I didn’t say anything to her about it.

We headed off to Fuddruckers after school. That gave us a while to talk. Everyone pretty much waited for Jess to lead off.

After a brief silence, Jess said, “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you all here...”

That drew the intended laugh.

After we’d quieted down, Jess said, “No surprise, probably, that I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. I mean, all of it, but particularly about me, since I’m trying to plot out my future.”

I said, “Of course. If someone had given me that sort of information, I’d have needed to figure out what to do with it.”

“Ditto,” Jas said, “and — for many reasons — I’m glad they didn’t have it to give to me.”

Paige nodded. “The same here.”

Jess hesitated, then blushed a tiny bit. “Oh! Because it would mean...”

“Yeah,” Jas said. “Knowing nothing is better, in our cases.”

“Whereas I approached Steve, and there’s no way that he could’ve set that up,” Jess said. “Of course, not only that, but had he set it up, I’d have wanted it, given how things turned out.”

“Everyone wins,” Jas said.

“Hopefully!” Jess said. “Mostly what I’ve been thinking is that I don’t know if I’d have set out to try to make it in Hollywood based on hearing what Laura said. After all, none of you are trying to follow any other examples for your own lives.”

Angie blinked. “Good point! Also, hell no!”

I chuckled. “Ditto!”

Jess nodded. “Since I’d gotten there on my own, though, well before I heard any of this, that’s different. I’m not going to change any big plans, really. My top choices were in LA, anyway. I’m hoping for USC, but will happily take UCLA, Pepperdine, or even Cal Tech as long as the financial aid works out. For any of them, financial aid would have to work out. If I can’t get scholarships in LA, I’ll go somewhere in Texas — I’ve got backup applications at UT and UH. Anyway, I’ll go there and start work on a degree — in something other than acting — but also start with the foot in the door that I have and where that goes. If I can get some auditions, I’ll do that. I’ll probably do some student theater.”

“Makes perfect sense to me,” Jas said.

“Me, too,” Angie said.

I nodded right along with them.

“I know — or at least I think I know — that it’s possible. That’ll keep me at it for a while, but I won’t drop down to adult movies or anything just to stay out there. If I’m not in something — something with a budget, something that plays nationally — within six years, I’ll go do something else.”

“That sounds like a good plan to me,” Paige said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I think the question that I have is: if I’m offered a role that you think should have gone to someone else, would you tell me?” Jess said.

Angie said, “Um ... I ... it depends?”

“What she said,” I said.

“I think I can guess, but — depends on what?” Jess asked.

“It depends on what you mean,” Angie said. “Obviously, in our universes, if the movie exists at all, someone else had the role. Laura will have to be the authority on hers. If the movie wasn’t ‘big,’ or the role wasn’t all that well done, I don’t know that we’d be in a position to say you shouldn’t go for it.”

“Though, if the movie sucked, we’d probably have to tell you,” I said. “But that might mean that the cast sucked, and you change that by being in it, which could mean the movie wouldn’t suck this time.”

“Yeah, that, too,” Angie said. “The flip side is, if the movie was someone’s big breakout role and you take it, then ... see ... that’s where we tell Paige or Jas and get a ruling, maybe.”

“Since we’re ‘from here,’” Jas said.

“Yeah,” Paige said.

“Maybe we say tell, maybe we don’t,” Jas said. “It depends on what we know, I guess.”

“Yeah, but what we don’t know also matters. For all we know, displacing someone will actually help her career. Who knows?” Angie said.

“We want to help,” I said. “The universe doesn’t owe acting jobs to anyone. I think it’d be wrong to criticize your performance based on how someone else did it...”

“Or offer tips based on their performances,” Angie said.

“And I think it’d be wrong to tell you to take some movie because it would displace someone,” I said.

“But it’s not like our writing a song or a book or whatever. Those are owed to the author. You won’t displace an actor who’s the author of their movie. Outside of that, someone might create one interpretation of the character, but yours will be yours, and it might be better,” Angie said.