“Okay, makeup,” Zach says. “Kev, Mom wants you outside for that.”
“The cat stepped in the paint tray thatonetime!” Kevin protests.
“I know, Kev,” Zach says patiently. “But it got all over the house.”
Kevin turns to me. “Follow me then, babe.”
“Kev.”
I let Kevin go a little ahead of me, hoping it’ll read like a rejection of his romantic overtures. As I’m climbing up the stairs, I hear voices in the basement. Zach and Raj are talking, whispering.
I can’t make out what they’re saying, and I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I freeze for a second. Kevin has already disappeared through the basement door and is, I assume, outside already.
Figuring Kevin and I are gone by now, Zach and Raj raise their voices a bit.
“Like it wasn’t obvious,” Raj is saying.
I feel guilty for listening, and Raj is probably about to come up the stairs to get made up, too, so I start to take the steps two at a time till I reach the kitchen and the side door leading outside.
But not before I hear Zach say, “That violin is one lucky son of a bitch.”
Me.They’re talking about me.
It barely registers that Zach calls it a violin instead of a viola.
Raj is laughing so hard now that the sound follows me out the door to where Kevin has set up camp.
I’d give almost anything to know what else they’re saying, what Zach thinks about me.
It’s unbearably hot out, but I hardly notice because I’m already burning all over.
BEFORE
Mid-July
The first two days of filming proceed without incident, unless you count running out of ketchup in the middle of a scene involving an ax lodged in someone’s stomach.
It’s the afternoon of our third day of filming. Raj is at the store, stocking up on ramen noodles and plastic machetes for tomorrow. “I’d have a better chance of finding this stuff if we were, say, in October,” I can hear him yelling through Zach’s phone when he calls.
Kevin is already at work, and I’m in the backyard, hosing down all of today’s stuff before Zach’s parents get home.
“Hey!” Zach says, coming outside. We haven’t really been alone since our maybe-date last Thursday, but little eruptions keep happening in my chest whenever he so much as glances at me. I’ve been trying very hard not to let them show.
“Done inside?”
He nods, pulls a cigarette out of his pocket, and lights it.
See, not everything about him is perfect,I tell myself, looking away.His lungs are probably covered in tar.
I start to hose off my legs, since having ketchup trickling down them on the way home is something I can live without.
“I think I’m done with hot dogs. Forever,” I say, and Zach laughs, breathing out a cloud of smoke.
“Sorry,” he says. “I guarantee a couple of weeks after we’re done, you’ll start to miss all the ketchup.”
“Maybe,” I say skeptically. I’ve been wearing my oldest, rattiest clothes the past couple of days. Today I’m wearing a pair of denim cutoffs and an old tank top, with my bikini top underneath. My tank top got soaked through, thanks to my being misinformed about the proper workings of the hose by Kevin just before he left for work. I can’t swallow my shock when I see Zach’s eyes widen the slightest bit when he notices, and blood rushes to every bit of my skin.
“You know,” I say when the silence grows too loud, “I feel like, of the four of us, you have the best end of this deal.”
