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  I failed to spot Paige until she said, “Y’all’re lucky I can predict your every move.”

  She was propping up a porch banister, half-hidden by overgrown shrubbery. Her Canon HD digital camera was in its carrying case, strapped across her chest.

  “You’re here!” I shouted. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Without her, I might’ve rushed down to the diner minus a camera, or a person to run it. Some brilliant short film that would’ve made.

  “I decided to take pity on you,” she said.

  “Good, because I’m this close to getting expelled because of you.”

  “Because of me?” she said, curling her lip. “I didn’t punch you.”

  “Might’ve been nice if you stuck around to explain what happened.”

  “Maybe,” she said, and shrugged it off. “Looks like you tried on every shade of eyeliner at once. And don’t you dare blame me for the black eye.”

  “That guy was a dick. Don’t let people talk to you like that,” I said. “It builds up and poisons you. Douchebags can’t be allowed to make you feel ashamed of who you are.”

  That pitying smirk of hers again. “Thank you, Mr. Public Service Announcement. But you really don’t get it at all.”

  “Get what?”

  Connie eased open the screen door, tested the porch with the toe of his sneaker, then pulled it back inside. He quietly counted off to ten, one of his stress management techniques.

  “Hate to rush order, Con,” I said, “but we’re already fifteen minutes late.”

  “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” he said.

  “Sorry to disappoint, but we’re doing this. You owe me.”

  Paige gave me the stink-eye for that remark, but it was true.

  Why? Let’s face it, Connie was my hundred-pound ball-and-chain. Half my day revolved around accommodating his issues. Take for instance the reason I couldn’t have Dad drive us to the diner: Connie was deathly afraid of moving vehicles. He hadn’t been inside one in more than a year.

  “Don’t blame me if my bad acting ruins the shoot,” Connie said. When he finally came out, he was still lugging his overstuffed backpack. I didn’t have time to argue about how much that extra weight would slow us down.

  “You’ll be spectacular,” I assured him.

  “I need to real quick make sure the fire alarm is working. If I don’t check it now—”

  “We gotta go,” I pleaded. “Savannah will split if something better comes along.”

  “Class act, she is,” Paige said.

  My groveling didn’t matter because Connie was gone from earshot already, deep inside his house.

  “Crap,” I said.

  “He clearly doesn’t want to do this,” Paige advised.

  “Yes he does.”

  “Um, no he doesn’t.”

  “I know him better than you. Better than he knows himself, probably.”

  “Hmmm…” she said.

  “What’s hmmm?”

  “Nothing. It’s just you said something a minute ago about not making people feel ashamed of who they are.”

  I let her win the debate because there was no time to lose. A mad dash downtown would’ve been nice, but I settled for a power-walk, the fastest Connie could go, and Paige would go. Ten minutes later we were sweaty and passing fast along the riverside shops toward the Silver Bullet, an aluminum-sided dining car rounded off for aerodynamics. Not that it needed speed. It hadn’t moved in decades.

  Parked at the curb outside the diner was a Phantom Gray Aston Martin Rapide. James Bond’s preferred ride, a price tag close to a quarter million dollars. Only a slick young television star would have the cash-’n-cojones to drive a car like that in a town like this. In fact, I knew from town gossip and Entertainment Tonight exactly whose it was.

  “That’s Bobby’s car,” I said.

  “Bobby who?” Paige asked.

  “Keene-Parker, from Cape Twilight Blues.” He was one of the show’s Big Six Heartthrobs and Hotties. Lately, he was scoring praise from the press because his character came out of the closet in a mid-season shocker. This, after having slept with all the female leads and many female guest stars, but shock value was apparently more important than character continuity on Cape Twilight.

  Paige shrugged, immune to celebrity. “Selling that car could feed an entire African country for generations,” she pointed out.

  My worry was more immediate. I rushed inside the diner, half-a-freaking-hour-late. The booths were mostly empty, but Savannah sat in the back, close to the neon bubbling jukebox. She had a windowed backdrop of the USS North Carolina docked on the far side of the river. Perfect framing.

  Except, just as I feared, someone else was in her booth. Some dude with expertly sculpted hair and that stomachache posture that so many cinematic bad boys liked to affect. Bobby Keene-Parker.

  In a booth. At my diner. With Savannah. My Savannah.

  I took a long breath. It was vital to be chill about big-name actors if I wanted to make movies, right? These guys weren’t untouchable royalty. They were my tools, my raw materials. And, frankly, Bobby was a pretty dull tool. Everybody assumed he got his acting gigs passed to him on a platter because his father was Marv Parker, president of Silver Screen Studios and executive producer of Cape Twilight.

  When I got close enough to take their dessert orders, Savannah looked up and said “Heeeey…” all drawn out, like she hadn’t expected me, or couldn’t remember my name. If she noticed the black eye, she didn’t let on.

  Bobby was in the middle of talking about snorkeling in the Caribbean or something. He had the leftover crumbs of a burger and fries on his plate, while Savannah had an untouched house salad on hers.

  “Savannah, y’all didn’t tell me you invited Bob Parker to the shoot, ha-ha,” I quipped, shoving out my unsteady hand for a shake with stardom. “Horace Vale, director.”

  Bobby gave me his signature squint.

  “Savannah and I were just getting ready to shoot a scene,” I said.

  Behind me, Paige and Connie took a booth near the entrance, as far away from us as possible. I’d seen kids in my dentist’s waiting room who looked more optimistic than Connie did.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I went on. “Trouble at school. A fight. Could get suspended. So, uh, I guess you know each other from Savannah’s guest stint on the show?”

  Bobby’s squint got even tighter. The three strands of black hair dangling over his left eye did their trademarked twitch. He said, “No kidding? You were on Cape?”

  “Season two, episode three,” I answered for her. “Your birthday party?”

  “I was just an extra, really,” Savannah said. She took an adorable little puckered sip from her straw and rolled her eyes at herself.

  “I thought I recognized you,” Bobby said to her. “Something told me when y’all walked in here—you know that girl. Go sit with her. So I did.”

  Savannah melted two full inches in her seat.

  Bobby popped a cigarette between his lips, grinned, produced a flip-top lighter, and lit it. The lighter was embossed: The Kindling, in glowing fire-orange letters.

  “Swag from your dad’s old movie?” I pointed out, nodding at the tie-in product. The Kindling was Marv Parker’s first production in Cape Fear, the pyrokinetic picture that started it all. Bobby Parker wasn’t even born yet when it was made.

  Just then, Sally the afternoon waitresses came out of the kitchen.

  With a wink, she yelled to me, “Heya, sugar, y’all best get that movie goin’ before the dinnertime crowd rolls in. Do I look glamorous enough for my cameo?” She propped her hair with her palm and laughed at herself.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  Bobby raised his cigarette and said to Sally, “burger was great, as always.”

  “That’s lovely, darling,” Sally said. “Now put out that cancer stick.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said with only the slightest local drawl.

  “We doing this, or what?” Paig
e said. She was at my shoulder suddenly, again, jiggling the little camera clutched in her hand. Her complete disinterest in Bobby Parker was a marvelous thing to behold.

  Bobby slung his arm over the seat back and looked toward the exit behind him, gauging the efficiency of his escape route, no doubt. My window of opportunity was shutting fast.

  I said, “Bobby—I hope you don’t mind if I call you that—I wanted to say I’ve been watching Cape Twilight since day one, and I’m fascinated by how your acting took on a total ‘nother layer of depth this season. You’re a natural, obviously, but after last season’s finale, you really blossomed…”

  Bobby grabbed his The Kindling lighter and flicked it open and shut repeatedly, a scrape like sharpening a butcher knife. I could tell he was the type who loved soaking in compliments, but hated the time investment it took to listen to them.

  I went on… “The coming-out-of-the-closet plot—you’ve seen it done before—but never quite so poignantly, especially in a teen drama with, you know, a fairly light touch. It takes tremendous bravery.”

  Savannah was struggling to keep her chipper facade. She was digging through her purse, possibly for pepper spray in case I was fixing to say something really stupid and needed to be stopped. I was big-time flubbing this monologue. The camera was not going to roll this afternoon, and Sally the waitress and I were the only ones who’d be disappointed.

  “I ain’t gay, you know,” Bobby said.

  “I wasn’t—” I said. “I’m talking about your acting. The way you became the character at a level I’ve never…” Then I remembered why I brought up the show in the first place. “Hold on,” I said.

  Connie had something I needed. When I lunged for him, he flinched backward and planted his butt on one of the stools at the lunch counter. I grabbed him by both shoulders and forced him to look at me. “Connie, please tell me you brought a copy of that Cape Twilight spec script I gave you.”

  His eyes shuddered in their sockets. “I- I think so. Are we still shooting? Maybe you should ask that Bobby guy to play my part,” he suggested.

  A brilliant idea, if we were living in a fantasy where all my whims were instantly indulged. But in this reality, Bobby was slapping down some bills, sliding out of the booth. He’d be gone in another minute by the looks of it.

  “Never mind my short film for a second,” I said to Connie, through gritted teeth. “I’m talking about the Cape Twilight script. Do you have it?”

  Connie slid his backpack onto the counter, unzipped it. He pushed both hands in the bag and rooted around with the slow precision of a surgeon in an open chest cavity.

  Bobby was already swaggering toward us on his way to the exit. But then he paused, turned to Savannah, and asked, “So how bout that tour?”

  Without hesitation, my leading lady poured herself out of the booth. She was going to leave with him. When she saw my anguish, she found it in her heart to explain. “We’re just going to look around the sets at Silver Screens, me and Bobby. All my shoots were on location so I’ve never actually been on the lot before. Isn’t this exciting?”

  Bobby said to me, “Good to meet you, Mike. Good luck with it all.”

  I would’ve choked if Connie hadn’t saved me. He found the prized script—a wrinkled mess of papers stained with soda can rings. I caught it in both hands.

  “Something I… wanted… to show you,” I explained, and offered the script over to Bobby. He didn’t reach for it. He looked at the pages, then at me. Suddenly, my so-called genius move stank of desperate stalkerdom.

  “What’s that?” Bobby asked. “Another spec script?”

  “I—uh—”

  “Know how many of these I see in a week, Mike?”

  “It’s Russ.”

  “Whatever. I don’t actually read these things, but the producers do. Every single one of them’s got a sweet-ass storyline about my character earning acceptance for who he is. I’m sick of it. Want to guess why that gay plot twist crap ever got written into the show in the first place?”

  “Social consciousness?” I ventured.

  Bobby snorted. “Because,” he said, “my fat fascist father thought it would be hilarious to humiliate me. Show the world I’d do anything for a buck.”

  “Being a huge TV star must be incredibly humbling,” Paige said, mostly to herself.

  Bobby’s squint was so tight now I couldn’t tell if his eyes were even open. Clink clink went the lighter in his hand. He yanked the script out of my grasp and took a passing glance at the cover page.

  “TV can go to hell,” he said. “You gotta spend half your time figuring out how to say this crap so you don’t sound special-needs. Show me some razor-sharp dialog in an actual film, and I’ll show y’all an Oscar nomination.”

  Then he discarded my script on the counter. He popped another cigarette into his mouth. One scrape of the lighter’s starter wheel and an inch-long flame shot upward. I could hear the butane burning.

  Of the many forces my best friend Connie feared in his life, close-range fire, especially the sizzling kind, was way up at the top of the list. I’d already pushed him to the point of hyperventilation. He was a slow gas leak, and here was the ignition. At the sight of Bobby’s lighter flame, Connie squawked and keeled over fast.

  Paige and I sprang for him, but he sagged down past our reach. He dropped to the floor, wedged between two stools, with his arms viced on either side of his head. When Paige knelt beside him, he hunched against her, one hundred and seventy pounds of dead weight.

  “Lord almighty!” Sally called from across the counter. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “Well, it’s been real,” Bobby announced.

  Who could blame him? Our meeting had escalated into an incident, something the gossip media could spin against him: Bobby Keene-Parker threatens neurotic Cape Fear boy with lighter. His best bet was to slip away and deny any knowledge. Even I knew that.

  Bobby stepped over the odd pile of people on the floor. Savannah followed him, no big shocker. Her apologetic shrug wrung out my dishrag heart.

  I watched the two of them get into the Aston Martin Rapide and speed off with a gut-punching engine roar. Her silken hair fluttered out the open passenger window like exit music before the fade to black.

  YOU KNOW that trick where a master magician yanks away the red tablecloth from under a fancy five-course meal, disturbing nothing? Well, I was an amateur. I had my Big Day on a silver platter, and I brought the whole damn thing crashing down.

  The paramedics strapped Conrad to a gurney and carted him away.

  All I wanted was to crack him out of his shell, give him something to boost his self-esteem, an acting gig that would dig down into his psyche. But I shoveled too deep. Worst of all, his nurse mother was on shift at New Hanover Hospital so she’d get the scoop the minute he rolled up. Given my contributions to Connie’s nervous breakdown, this was possibly bad enough for a permanent friendship boycott on the likes of Horace Vale.

  Paige stormed off with hardly a word and zero footage on her camera. Slouching home by myself, I wished so bad that she would’ve torn me a new one. Because a lecture on what I did to Connie would mean I was forgivable. Instead, I got Paige’s silence. She was giving up on me—and this girl had a life mission to never give up on anyone, not even the tragic cases down at the women’s shelter where she worked. People who’d trashed their lives, or had their lives trashed for them. Let’s face it—everybody Paige met was a fresh chance for her to save her brother, in a sense.

  Everybody now except me.

  In all the chaos, Connie’s backpack got left behind at the diner. I took it home for safe keeping, weighted with books and binders and lost friendships and ruined chances and humiliation by a TV star and a throbbing pain in half my face. Not to mention my flame for Savannah Lark, engulfed in the inferno of Bobby Parker’s industrial strength lighter.

  In my kitchen, on my mother’s white board calendar, a thick red line ran straight through the middle two weeks o
f April. It was under my name, headed by the big block-letter word: SUSPENDED. The verdict was in. Suspended, splendid. All my efforts to recast Horace Vale as a hero were lost—same little shit I’d always been, as far as friends and family were concerned.

  Upstairs in my room, I made a valiant effort not to look inside Connie’s backpack. But then I did. Clusters of Dr. Who action figures, some Playstation games, folders full of homework and two massive novels by Neal Stephenson.

  Then, I found my script. “Take The Leap,” the movie I meant to shoot at the Silver Bullet. Connie had gone through it and written in the margins the carefully-considered motivation behind each of his character’s lines. Notes about how to say a phrase, accent marks where he meant to emphasize words.

  On one page he wrote: like the last time I said goodbye to Dad at the airport, trying to memorize his face. I couldn’t take it. He’d been willing to use his personal pain for the sake of our dumb movie. His father, who did not die in a motorcycle stunt but even more nobly in a wartime helicopter crash. All of Connie’s fears and anxieties rising up from that wreckage.

  My own parents were alive and well somewhere in the house. Dad sat wasting away in the attic. He could fill me with facts but teach me nothing about life. He’d never ignored a no trespassing sign, never climbed past the safety rails. Mom was the one who tossed me out of the nest—literally, one summer, on a zip-line thirty feet over the canopy of a Costa Rican cloud forest. That green and hazy rush of fear stuck with me ever since, drove me to stupid acts that ruined my mother’s trust. If she’d been warming back up to me during the last few months, the cold front had struck again.

  So here I was: Dad unable and Mom unwilling.

  There was nothing for me now. I wanted to go back to before, to kid memories that seemed just out of reach, like those weekends at the Pastime Playhouse theater with Dad. That early enchantment with the magic flicker on the screen.

  So I left the house again without telling anyone. Walked down to Front Street, through the old cotton mill section along the river, restaurants and tourist shops now, a gentrified locale specially designed for Cape Twilight Blues and other shows to shoot their scenes.