Chapter 2
Autumn
“Hey Autumn nation! It’s Friday and…fuck I can’t—I can’t fucking do this right now.” My chipper, upbeat attitude diffused like sugar grains in coffee as I spoke into the camera. My brain was a muddy, turbulent mess of conflicting emotions. Shame and embarrassment pooled behind my cheeks and eyes, turning my skin into a tingling lead that slowly dragged my head down to my keyboard. The computer’s incessant whining at not knowing what to do with ten mashed keys all at once was the only reason I sat back up.
“Coffee,” I rubbed the numbness of yesterday’s lingering failure out of my face. “That’s what I need.”
This sucked!
It’d been a few days since what happened on set. I was glad I wasn’t shaking anymore, but I still hadn’t slept much. It blew my mind that I wasn’t fired. The director took time to personally come down and ream me half a dozen new assholes. I tried to explain what happened with the air ram, but the director gave zero shits about hearing anything I had to say. The gaunt man’s face turned a shade of purple from screaming that would’ve made an eggplant blush.
The worst part was that Dante just let it happen. After he waved off medical attention, he disappeared, leaving me to fend for myself! He knew that equipment malfunctioned. He saw it happen!
Why didn’t he say anything?
Downstairs in our tiny south shore apartment I groaned out loud to drown out the torrent of questions swirling around my brain. I fiddled with the K-cup coffee machine until it cooperated.
What was I expecting? The man might’ve saved my life, what else could he possibly owe me?
I felt guilty just thinking about it- and I still knew next to nothing about him.
Of course I Googled Dante like crazy after the incident on set. The only thing I found was a stunt demo reel on YouTube—put together by a fan—and his absurd IMDB page listing all his film credits. Aside from that, there were no pictures of him, he had no social media presence and nothing about him was in the news.
Hell, in half of the articles about how he saved me he was only credited as “a stunt man”. I got that most people knew the actors and not the stuntmen, but this was a bit extreme. It seemed crazy to me that Hollywood’s best kept secret would be a stuntguy.
The guy was a ghost.
As far as the internet was concerned Dante Marks didn’t exist. How could a man like him fly so far under the radar? Unless… I was beginning to wonder if “Dante Marks” was just a stage name.
Was I Googling the wrong person?
With all the work I had to do on my channel today I decided my super-sleuthing would have to be done some other day. Reaching around blindly in the cabinet that was always too high for me I pulled out this gaudy ceramic mug I made for my mom during middle school art class. A cups a cup. I shrugged. I just need coffee. The Keurig machine gurgled then unceremoniously peed out a breakfast blend.
“I heard the peeing!” Mom shouted from somewhere deep in her bedroom’s closet. “Make me one too!”
“No! You need sleep not coffee!” Most of our conversations were yelled back and forth, not because we were angry, but mostly because we were too lazy to actually walk over to each other. We either needed a bigger apartment or a smaller one; at the very least one with thicker walls. I could only imagine what the neighbors thought. They probably knew everything about us down to our favorite deodorant.
“Sleep is for the weak! I took a short afternoon shift at the restaurant, but I’ll be back before the party tonight.”
“But you just got home!” I protested. Why was she working so much lately? I barely saw her anymore. She missed the last two weeks of Supernatural, and Orange Is the New Black had just dropped on Netflix, but we hadn’t watched it yet either. Whatever was going on I didn’t like it. “Mom…”
“Yes, love-of-my-life? Dearest, sweetest, coffee-est making-est child of mine?”
“Stop working so much! I don’t like it!” I pouted like the spoiled child I was. The bank cut her down to part time a few weeks ago and ever since then she seemed to be picking up hours wherever she could. She had three jobs now and was working even more than before! Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t healthy.
“Hawaii isn’t going to pay for itself!”
“I don’t want to go to Hawaii!” I argued. “I don’t even like pineapple. I want to watch TV on the couch with you!”
“Oh. Sweetie…. You think you’re invited?” She laughed.
“Funny.” Brat.
I pulled back the metal handle of the Keurig and trashed the spent plastic cup that popped forward, replacing it with another fresh breakfast blend from the coffee carousel. Grabbing a plain black mug, I set it under the nozzle and waited for it to percolate. In the idle minute that followed I closed my eyes and rubbed the nagging pressure out of my temples, letting my guard down, my mind drifted…
If I wasn’t constantly distracted, moments from set would replay in my head. My brain was weird and I was pretty sure it hated me. I agonized over all the mistakes that led me to the terrifying, fiery, near-death stuff, but over all that loomed the shadow of the man who saved me.
I remembered every detail from the coarseness of Dante’s hands, to the musk of his deodorant, to the way his forehead lightly kissed mine. I couldn’t get him out of my damn head.
The Keurig’s wheezy, sputtering sound snapped me out of it—of him. I swallowed the bitter cocktail of emotions that were constantly being mixed, sighed and reached for my coffee. Pausing, I ran a thumb down the asymmetrical, multicolor rings that made up the ceramic mug. It really was the ugliest cup in the world. I had no artistic talent to speak of. But Mom loved it for some silly reason.
I took the black cup instead and headed back upstairs.
“Coffee’s ready!” Hopefully that would remind her there are more important things than working all the time for a stupid vacation.
I returned to my desk and sat cross-legged in my computer chair, blankly staring at my glowing screens. Both my monitors were full of news and gossip sites that I was going to talk about today. The small red light on my webcam beamed, letting me know that it was recording.
The first story I saw was a little too heavy for my audience—and for me as well. It turned my stomach. It was about an armed robbery in a San Francisco where the criminals all wore masks. The weird thing was that they didn’t rob a bank. It was a home invasion where they forced a CEO to log on to their company’s servers and wirelessly transfer millions in payroll funds into offshore accounts. Millions of dollars vanished, but only for a little while. The FBI was able to get most of that money back. A shiver jolted down my spine at the censored picture that was leaked. It was the CEO’s kids who found what was left of him the following day.
I closed that tab with a heavy heart. It was not what I needed to see right now. After a little light searching I found a juicy celebrity scandal instead. Ok, I thought, clearing my head, this I can work with.
I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
I took a sip of the hot black brew and tried again. Still nothing. I leaned back and tried to focus. My old, office chair creaked like a burnt-out runner’s knee joints when I leaned back, mirroring how I felt at the moment about celebrities, gossip, rumors…
It was all so frivolous after what I’d just gone through.
It was days like this that I hated having a daily YouTube show. Monday through Friday was news and gossip and Sunday was movie parody, a silly skit or just some nerdy thoughts I had on a nerdy topic. Most of the time I loved what I did! But not today, or the last three days either.
Being fun and funny today felt about as sincere as posting a smiley selfie in a dentist chair before a root canal #excited #lovethatdrill. #flossingforfunsies
“This is your job, Autumn. You can’t miss another day…” I reminded myself, especially now that my budding acting career was so thoroughly squashed. The director publically promised as much in his heated tirade.
Doing a quick check of my email before buckling down to get some actual work done, I found had an unread message from Lionhouse Studios. The subject line read upcoming audition. I thought it was a mistake, maybe an old email from my last movie that got lost and resent by accident. But I was wrong. It was for an upcoming project. They wanted me to audition for the lead.
“Ha! You’ve got to be kidding me…” My skepticism flared, before I forced myself to read on. It was legit. There was a time and date and everything. Casting would be at a baseball stadium. All I had to do was reply for confirmation and show up on time. “They actually want me to audition after what happened?”
I’d had about enough of nearly getting killed and making a fool out of myself for one lifetime, thank you very much. Besides I could only imagine how many other women—real professional actors—were going to be there. This wasn’t some glorified extra role; they were looking for a co-lead on a big budget movie.
Of course I liked dreaming of the crazy amount of money that came with that kind of role; it’s just that I knew all that was way out of my league. Not only that, but after getting a taste of the real film life I realized I didn’t want anything to do with it. It was fast, loud, unforgiving and cold. And none of that even touched on the fact that landing a speaking part in a film was a miracle in itself.
No thanks, I scoffed, deleting the email. I’d stick with real life.
Wasting a little more time before finding a plastic smile and helium attitude to plaster on my face, I clicked over to the backend of my channel. You’d think with nearly two-hundred-thousand subscribers I’d been rolling in that sweet, sweet internet money, but that really wasn’t the case.
YouTube was a fickle beast, like one of those old gods you had to sacrifice virgins to in order to win their favor. Half the time my videos were demonetized or removed for copyright infringement or adult content or just if someone complained really loudly. I made enough to pay off my hilariously high student loans, give Mom some rent and buy fancy coffee a few times a week. That was all I cared about.
I was only about fifty subscribers shy of my goal of—
I didn’t exactly spit out my coffee. I kinda choked on it a little and I think some of it dribbled out of my nose.
“Four-hundred-thousand subscribers!” I gasped. What the ever-loving hell! How did I double my goal overnight?! This had to be a mistake. I frantically clicked through all the built-in management tools, scrutinizing over the video view counts, thumbs ups, and subscribe/unsubscribe numbers. Their backend graph showing an unbelievable spike in the past twelve hours dropped my jaw and made my tongue dry out. “This can’t be real…”
“What about baby zebras?” Mom called out from her room down the hall. “I love baby zebras!”
I ignored her and headed to the home page to see if any other channels I followed were talking about a weird sub spike. I tried not to get my hopes up. Every once in a while the dark magic that was YouTube algorithms would do some wacky stuff. I clicked on trending and that’s when I saw it.
Me.
Someone leaked a video of Dante rescuing me!
I was everywhere.
I had enough social media followers that I wasn’t uncomfortable with attention, but seeing so much of me all over the place was surreal…and a little embarrassing if I was honest. Although I was known in some circles I’d never felt like an actual celebrity. I was just a quirky girl that made goofy skits and talked about real famous people.
“Oh my God.” I scrolled through dozens of thumbnails of me on set with titles reading, Newest Ronald Emerin Movie Finishes with a Dangerous Bang!; Real Life Superhero Saves Actress on Set; Lights, Camera, DISASTER! Internet Star Forgets How Legs Work and Nearly Wins Darwin Awards. “That last one’s not fair at all!” I scowled, muttering, “I know how my legs work.”
Mustering up my courage I watched the video labeled simply, run bitch!
“Run, Bitch!” The woman recording yelled as the cars started going up one after the other. She was on the general public side of the police barricade. The footage was shaky and all over the place, but you could clearly see me screaming my head off getting dragged across the road by the jerk vest I was wearing.
Not my finest moment.
Then Dante, in his Kermit the frog outfit, scooped me up right before the car I was leaning against exploded! My stomach twisted. Dante shielded a lot more of the blast than I realized…
“That was some crazy shit! You seen that shit? Pfft. Bitch shoulda ran.”
“Aannnd that’s enough of that,” I muttered to myself, muting the video.
A shiver ran up my spine at Dante running toward me, knowing what was about to happen to that car. A sliver of shame pushed into my gut. Would I have been brave enough to do the same?
Halfway through the second replay of my worst fears Mom burst into my room yet again this time wearing a white button up blouse over her underwear. She brought two skirts with her. She’d spent most of the morning in various stages of undress trying out clothes for the party tonight. In the last hour alone she modeled her entire summer rotation for me.
“What do you think? The Dolce and Gabbana…” Mom was all smiles as she pinned a hanger to her waist. It was a pleated, rose print skirt. “Or!” She tossed the skirt on my bed, brushed a lock of long brown hair from her face and held an off-the-shoulder, airy sundress up to her chest. She shook her hips, modeling it for me and my full length mirror and sang the words in what she claimed was her sultry voice, “The Autumnentino.”
“Mom…” I finally turned my full attention to her and realized that both outfits looked a little loose on her. “You lost some weight.”
She always blamed her not-at-all noticeable pudginess on having me, which was total BS! I got almost all my looks—and some of that softness—from her. We were both short and had an athletic build, which was a super polite way of saying no curves whatsoever.
“Are you exercising without me, Miss three-jobs?” I scowled at her. These days I worked out about as often as I remembered to floss, which was once, maybe twice a week, but before she started working like a crazy woman we used to go for light afternoon runs before dinner.
We called them our jog n’ bitch sessions.
“Oh?” She glanced down at herself as if dropping ten pounds had somehow snuck up on her. She shrugged and offered a less than convincing smile. “Must be all that green tea and power walking lately.”
I squinted at her. Gone all the time, losing weight, and saving up money… What are you hiding, Mom? Do you have a boyfriend? I remembered how weird she got when she was trying to date the guy who worked at the deli who was probably a little too young for her.
That was totally it! A knowing smirk creased the corner of my lip melting my skepticism into bemusement. I decided to let the issue drop until she was ready to tell me about it.
“Are you still filming your show?” She asked, moving to get a better look. When she caught herself in the monitor frame that showed me what I was recording, she smiled and grabbed the skirt off my bed. “Oh! Let them see my outfits, maybe they can help me chose. D and G? Autumnentino?” Alternating, Mom held them against her body as is if she were wearing them and tried seducing the camera. “Which one do they like better?”
I could already imagine all the “hot mom” comments if this video ever got posted…
“Mom, that’s not how— This isn’t a live stream. It doesn’t work like that!” I was about to explain how many hours of editing and graphics went into each video, but immediately decided against it. Candy Crush and Fruit Ninja on her iPhone was about as technically savvy as she was willing to get. “Will you just get over here and look at this?”
“Is this a trailer for the film?” Mom extended her arm in an arch overhead, stretching her fingers out in the process. Her hand became a shooting star gesture. In her most dramatic voice she said, “You’re a real actress now!”
“What? No. They’re not even done shooting it and it’s actor, you dork.” I laughed, correcting her. “Gender neutral term.”
My acting career… I scoffed.
“This is a video of what happened.”
“Oh my God!” Mom gasped when the car near me exploded. She dropped both hangers and covered her mouth. It was one thing to explain it over the phone, but to actually see it made it so much more real. When the video was over she hugged me with the same crushing terror she felt when she put me on the bus for the first time at the start of elementary school. She grabbed my shoulders and studied to “The EMTs said you’re completely ok, right? You didn’t break anything, did you?”
“Only my pride.”
“Good.” She leaned in to get a better look at the paused video. Dante towered over me, helping me to my feet. Wisps of smoke streamed from his shredded, skin-tight mocap suit. “So… Who’s the sexy meat blanket?”
“Really? I was nearly killed and you’re making jokes!”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. That was in poor taste.” Her eyebrows pitched forward and up as she placed an apologetic hand on my shoulder. Her eyes seemed to glint as her expression changed. “You get his number?”
“Mom!” My smirk, cracked into a stifled laugh.
“What? I just want to properly thank him for saving my baby girl. I’m being a good mother, damn it!”
My mom was the funniest person I’d ever met. She always cheered me up, especially when I didn’t want to be. She was so plucky and upbeat all the time that it was impossible not to be in a good mood around her, even when she was being annoying.
“Are you OK?” She asked.
I sighed, rubbing the stud in my ear. The first few days I was a wreck, but I’d been feeling better lately. “Yeah. I’m alright.”
Mom nodded. It was the unspoken offer of being there for me if I wanted to talk. Then her concerned expression lifted. The weary lines around her eyes and mouth disappeared, making her look lighter and younger. “Good. The wrap party is in a few hours. You need to start getting ready!”
I’d heard the term before, but I never really knew what a wrap party was until I got the email invite. Apparently at the end of principle shooting the production company throws a big party with all the actors and crew that worked on the movie.
It was a way of saying, congratulations everyone, somehow you pulled it off!
“You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ve got it all figured out,” Mom continued, excitedly. “Aunt Paula gets off work at four. She's going to take us to the pier, then on our way back we can just—”
“I’m not going.” I pulled my mouth to the side of my face and glanced away from her. The production company rented out the Spirited Massachusetts cruise ship for the wrap party. The thought of being trapped on a boat with a bunch of people who saw me make a complete fool out of myself made me a little queasy.
With rehearsals, set up and extras being herded, that big explosion scene was the only shot of that whole day. And I ruined it.
After the medics looked me over and the director was done thinking up new ways to insult me I basically ran home with my tail between my legs. Why would I want to relive that?
Of course production had me back to dub some of my lines later in the week, but that was at a sound stage so I didn’t have to face any of the cast or crew again.
Then there was Dante…
The single most attractive man I’d ever laid eyes on. What if he showed up and I was stuck on the boat with him? I was so embarrassed at the thought of seeing him again that my shoulder blades started to itch.
Fuck, even my skin didn’t want to go.
“I get why you might not want to go.” Mom saw through me like I was an empty martini glass. And like the super protective single mother she was, she started to get worked up in my defense. “None of that was your fault! You can even see on the video that whatever you were standing on broke.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to give that Emerin douche bag a piece of my mind over the way he talked to you. I don’t give a damn who he is. No one talks to you like that.”
“Please don’t.” I turned back to her, pleading. Ever since Dad abandoned us when I was a kid, Mom had a way of…overdoing things when she thought I needed help. I loved her to pieces, but she almost always made the situation worse when she got going. I called her after the medics let me go. Neither the security guards nor even the police could stop her from storming onto the set and yelling at everyone she thought was at fault for what happened.
“Who cares anyways?” I shrugged, finally remembering to turn off the camera above my computer. “It’s just a party.”
“Sweetie, I work in a bank.” Mom said flatly. “Y’know what the highlight of my day is? Finding out what kind of kooky sandwich Joan packed her husband for lunch. I need to go have free drinks with celebrities. That’s a thing I need to do. At least once in my life.”
The pleading look on her face filled my limbs with sand. I suddenly felt ten times heavier. A few weeks ago when I got the email I told Mom she could be my plus one. The only time I ever saw her more excited was when I told her that I was cast for the role in the first place. She was really looking forward to going; she’s been practically floating from room to room all week.
Damnit, I was being a selfish bitch.
“Pleeeeaaaase?” Mom plopped down on the edge of my bed and whined at me.
“God, you’re so annoying!” I couldn’t keep the smile completely from my lips. This would really make her happy. I didn’t have it in me to take that away from her. “Fine. We’ll go.”
This was a once in a lifetime opportunity…probably for both of us, now that I screwed everything up so damn badly.
“Yay!” She flopped back on my bed and kicked her feet like a teenager who just got asked out by her crush.
“I swear sometimes I feel like I’m the adult in this relationship.”
“Ha! Now that you’re twenty-three I’m done being an adult.” Mom sat up and put a hand on my shoulder. “Listen.” Her expression took a grave turn. “You’re my only daughter. I only have a few good years left before I need you to change my diapers.”
“Oh my God.” I groaned loudly. “Mom, you’re forty-five! I’m not changing your diapers.”
“Has the Lion King taught you nothing? Circle of life, baby.” Mom laughed a little too loudly, a little too energetically. It made me a bit uncomfortable. She wiped her eyes at the laughing fit, picked up her outfits and lingered in my doorway. “No denying it.”
“Say’s you!” I shouted after her, swallowing the weird feelings that bubbled in me. I chocked it up to what happened on set. We both had weird ways of dealing with heavy emotional stuff, but jokes were always our armor. “You’re getting shipped off to a nursing home the second you let your guard down!”
“How do you do that in sweat pants?” Mom pointed toward my computer, before stepping out of my room.
I shrugged, looking down at what I was wearing. “They don’t see my lower half, it doesn’t matter.” My hair, nails and makeup were all done up, and I had on one of my favorite blouses. But downstairs? I wore my faded, super-comfy Powerpuff Girls pjs.
When I turned back to my computer the red light on my webcam was still on.
Crap! Was I recording this whole time?
I was so bad at leaving the camera on when I was screwing around! One of these days it was going to get me in trouble. I glanced at the time, saved the movie length video and closed out of the recording software. I had no willpower to edit right now.
Not when I had a party to get ready for.