Summer 17

by B.D.__Wether Sun Feb 06, 2011 5:42 pm

Summer 17
By aj

Pre<>lude

Hi, I’m Keelie Marcais. You are my new summer diary. Well, if you are people, then you are not my diary, you are a trespasser… and you shouldn’t even be reading this! If you are, I suggest you stop before I come back, or I’ll kill you.
Anyway, (To the diary. I know, I know, writing to my diary is weird, but you shouldn’t even be reading this anyway) you are a lucky diary. Most of my summer journals I write in every other week and lose somewhere at the beach or at camp. But you, my friend, are luckier than that. I have this plan, one that not even the slippery paparazzi that stalk my famous director mother will even find out about. Not even my benefit best friend Amber knows.
See, my mom is engaged. To the leading man in her new sappy hopeless-romantic movie, April Showers. Normally I’d have resentment like all the other kids, but I don’t. My resentment is FAR worse. Mr. Michael Ampston, i.e. Tanner Felt (his role’s name), biggest middle aged actor in Hollywood, is in love with Mrs. Nicole Marcais. I don’t like it. But it’s not because he’s taking the place of my beloved father (DAVID, was his name, by the way, much nicer than Michael) or because I might be jealous for my mother’s undivided attention (honestly, that’s not even near reality. I dislike my mother so much I refer to her as “the Woman” and use only her first name). It’s not the fact that I’ll have to change my name, even though I’ve grown to like the last name I’ve had my entire life. Marcais is interesting. Unlike Ampston, which sounds like armpit. Not even the thought of a potential new younger sibling bothers me, even though I already have my younger excuse of and evil tyrant, Marilyn (yes, as in Monroe). The problem is him. Jake. Mr. Ampston’s seventeen year-old son… and my ex boyfriend. This is confusing, isn’t it? Let me explain the gory details.
Ten years ago, on my seventh birthday, August 15, for the record, my real dad surprised me by returning from his military base in Iraq. He was also granted permanent leave because he was injured from a bombing. He was given a high rank at the training base near where we lived in little Camden, Maine.
As a stupid little kid I always thought Maine was boring with its quaint little towns and shops, dark fudge and saltwater taffy. We had a small school with none of the dramas longed for in like, say, Laguna Beach. We would walk from the school to the shore or go to Boothbay Harbor for field trips. Things were a lot different back then. Life seemed so simple; and my best friend was none other than Lyn (Marilyn, evil sister). But we all fantasized of glittery skyscrapers and huge casinos we wouldn’t even have been able to access anyway. Why would we settle for some random artesian workshop when we could meet Tyra Banks and Eva Longoria in our spacey little minds?
I soon found the answers to my questions of misery when my mother’s video was picked number one by the L.A. Director\Writer’s Club. She was ecstatic. She’d entered the contest a month earlier when she saw the flyer in the window of an art gallery. Her video was simply the day of my birth. She had had the idea that Dad film her the entire day. It happened to be a very dramatic one, especially the scene where she screamed at Dad to turn it off during her labor. I thought it was pretty lame myself, but apparently the high noted scout agency did not. They invited us to live in California where they could jumpstart her career. Now Mom was always the sort of dramatic writer type. After church on Sunday she’d take us to the beach and take a deep breath saying, “No wonder God’s book was so popular; he’s such an amazing creator!” Even so, I’d never known she had a desire to write and direct movies, so it took most of us by surprise.
She begged with us, though, and Dad quickly agreed, despite his having to leave his hometown. Lyn seemed okay with the idea, especially the fame that could possibly be bestowed upon us. Even Andy, my semi-depressed older sister, seemed to brighten with the thought of a fresh start. I was different. It was the day I dreamed of; sucked out of my boring seven year old life on the east coast, get thrown into stardom at the hand of my movie making wonder Madre. Riches, fame, the sun, beach and Orlando Bloom all headed my way. And why was I not pleased? Why hadn’t I been the one screaming happily about the house shouting and praising the Lord? Such were the questions of my friends, whom were very much envious at my smug and not smug face. I asked my self the same; what was wrong with me anyway? Why didn’t I like this idea? Now living in this cramped up position on my soft plushy bed in the huge Bel Air home, I know now. Why did I leave my friends? And my home… Dad was buried there. Why am I here?
We were transplanted to several different apartments and three condos before we finally settled in a rental home outside L.A. There, Nicole’s career took off. She came out with the Sunflower series that rocked around the U.S. a bit before being cancelled two years later because of budget cuts. However, she was clever enough to find a way to end it correctly, and I am still tortured with reruns to this day. She won the ‘oh so wonderful’ Best New Director of the Year award when her first (of many) chick flick “Fling” came out. Make me sick. I’ve made a note to only watch horror films from now on.
Dad, Marilyn, Andy (my older sister) and I were flung to the background while she ran around gallantly to parties and outings to which she was suddenly invited every night.
When I was nine, Lyn was four and Andy was proudly starting her stuck up teenage years at thirteen, Dad surprised us by taking us to Maine. Mom wanted to go home because she had a HUGE premier coming up that she was nervous over, and Andy, who had slipped from rebellious to almost-completely-but-not-really-there-yet goth with her decked out black jeans and colored hair, grumbled and mumbled the entire time about the smell of the sea and whatnot. To their joy the trip was cut short when Nicole’s agent, Frida (Lays! HAHA!!)called with exciting and urgent news that she wouldn’t relay for some reason unless we were right in front of her. Like she was afraid there were strange alien imposters tapping the phone line. She was sort of like that, though.
On our arrival she blasted the “good” news; some big shot highly acclaimed writer was asking Nicole to make a movie out of her new bestseller. We all rejoiced (some of us) and she agreed to the contract. Suddenly, Dad was out with Mom every night, partying with new friends I doubted really thought of them more than more people to be impressed by their huge SUV’s and shiny clothes. Lyn was pretty popular with her teachers and I was smothered by love notes and friendship necklaces (those things are pretty corny…). Even Andy, queen of darkness, had a boyfriend. He wasn’t pleasant. Well, on the attractive scale, sure he was about a 10 and a burning chili pepper. But otherwise he was as much as a mess as her. He was tallish, dark hair and had seemingly no tolerance for humanoid or seemingly humanoid life forms. Lyn and I would pretend he was an alien from Planet X come to destroy us, maybe even a killer vampire. So much for Frida (Lays!!) being the only paranoid psychopath around here.
Coincidentally, the movie came out on my fourteenth birthday. People went so insane over it there were counterfeited tickets everywhere. I even had some offered to me for a low price of six hundred bucks. Of course I rejected them, I had a front row seat to the premiere. My new friends babbled in my ear about the wonderful acting and all the crap, but I rolled my eyes and pretended to be content with my Zac Efron posters. I didn’t really like him; honest I didn’t! But my true love Johnny Depp scared the poor life out of newly nine Lyn. So I had Zac Efron; half of them were hers anyway. We kids started to fade, especially Andy, who began getting pulled into Ayden’s apocalypse stories (or whatever he told her). Nicole made a name for herself pushing through the gold digger crowd to rise above their pathetic whims and get to real celebrity. She was out with Dad every night with fellow actors and directors and whatever people were in Hollywood.
As I rolled my eyes at my socially higher-on-the-scale parents, I found myself tangled in a web too. Kids were throwing their annoying selves at me, like I had discovered social democracy, which unfortunately, I had. I had never had a date in my life, but suddenly the line was endless. It was pretty awesome, if you think about it, but not in my position. I started to think I didn’t need Dad back, but my childish thought was soon exposed not plausible but false and stupid.
They had been out all night. It was the New Year. Since they had been out, Andy and Ayden were somewhere doing something, Lyn and I made popcorn and helplessly watched the ball drop. As it fell and rolled, all the way over in Times Square, I wished it would stop. I didn’t want it to be a new year. I didn’t want to see it change. But I was too late; it dropped. And the world rejoiced around me, as it always did. That night I had many dreams of being the ball itself, rolling down down into a black hole. I woke the next morning to another dark place. Lyn hadn’t gone to bed. She was curled on the couch the TV blaring with the most parental blocked of all the channels. Andy was sitting at the table, staring at the phone with the same face when Grandma got her a hot pink fuzzy purse. Words were babbling on the other end, speaking into thin air. I knew it was Nicole’s voice, and I knew it was sobbing. As I examined Andy’s stuttering lip piercing, I knew what was wrong.
That was when he died, that night. They were both on their way home when a drunk driver slammed the side of the car. The driver’s side; Dad’s side. I was destroyed. Andy seemed distant, but Lyn would come in my room every night and sleep in my bed, afraid something would happen to her next. Soon, things began to change, and Mom went silently away every morning to work. But I curled up like a wooly caterpillar and hid there for a while. Until the end of sophomore year, I dressed all in black and talked to no one. My friends in Maine stopped calling, or really, I stopped calling them. Only my “tightest” friends at school, Amber, Tara and Lycee stuck around to console me. The love letters stopped coming. I was alone. Lyn and I, somehow, grew apart. We fought, we yelled and screamed and cried at each other in ways we wouldn’t have thought we would. Andy and Ayden went crazy; they were hottest emo couple around. Nicole didn’t know how to handle us; wouldn’t. She hired three maids before they all ran screaming in terror. One woman, who had a strange accent and a huge mole on her nose, said we were sent by the Devil to torture man kind. That makes three psychopaths. But as things went slowly for everyone else, it went too quickly for me. I rebounded, slightly.
It was a little two years ago, Valentine’s Day; I found a little red paper heart on my locker. It was folded in half, the message on the inside. My friends wanted me to open it.
“After all, you haven’t gotten a letter in a while now.”
And I did. It just so happened to be a corny, but well written poem from Jake Ampston (NOW do you see where this is going?!), at the time a scrawny little freshman who happened to play soccer for the school. Who happened to be the best in the league. It happened that that was my favorite guy sport. His father was an aspiring actor from Arizona. And for some reason, I said yes. I made it as romantic as I could; I found him at the dance. I told him to meet me under the clock two hours into it (so I could spend time with my friends). And he did. He always would meet me halfway, and then go another mile or two, probably even if a limb were hanging off or something.
Our relationship only went up from there. We spent all summer together and the school year inseparable. What made it better, he got taller (six-foot one!), muscled up (but stayed thin), and adapted the same bright blue eyes and adorable hair as his father, who’d gotten his big break in my mother’s show. How perfect was that? Lyn, now at the ‘I’m so cool’ state of twelve, rolled her eyes and said I was ignoring her (well honestly, who wouldn’t want to?). Andy… well we never saw Andy. She was always dancing with the spirits or something to that affect. Amber started with this guy from the football team. Tara began a fashion internship and Lycee was picked up by some music talent agency and moved out to Houston, although I never heard of her or saw her again. Soon, Maine was all behind me, childhood was for children. I was warming up and coming out without Dad, becoming me. I had my first kiss, and three run-ins with the law (OK OK I was just speeding.) I even met Jesse McCartney at a lounge. Not to say I care, because I still love Johnny Depp. But it was good memories.
Until I saw the article in the tabloids at the drug store. I hate tabloids, I really really do. If I have to blind myself with a flashlight before entering a store just to get away from the idiotic magazines I will. A bit extremist, I know. But that day, I just so happened to be bored waiting in line on a 100 degree day for the new cashier to ring up my band aids and Sour Patch Kids (God, do I love Sour Patch Kids).
The second I got home, I marched up to my betraying mother, magazine I bought in hand (sour patches the other!) and flung it in her face.
“What. The. Hell. Is this?” I spat venomously. I like to imagine fire coming out my ears and a hissing sound when I spoke. I prayed it was fake; I wanted it to be fake. I wanted her to echo me, “I don’t know! What the hell IS that?!” but she didn’t. She goddamn blushed instead.
“You mean, I didn’t tell you?”
“Nicole Marcais and Michael Ampston; are these lovebirds just for the set?” read the cover in big funny shaped yellow letters, an inset picture to the side of those two grossly smooching outside some hotspot coffee shop. The article was worse, going on to elaborate about their secretive dates and official “hints” to paparazzi. I still have it. I’m putting it in the back pocket of this diary right now so I can read it whenever I need to. No matter how many times I read it, it’s like I missed several parts. It always is strange and different. How could this be my mother? How could she date my boyfriend’s father? Why?
When my sisters found out, they turned odd. Andy packed her bags and headed to Maine without a word one night. My only proof is a written note I found under my notebooks. Lyn locked herself in her room for a week. When she emerged, she was happy and cheerfully indifferent.
After that, I couldn’t even talk to Jake, more or less look in his general direction. How could I kiss him when our single parents were doing the same? We tried to make it work for the longest time (a week, actually), but then I let it slip. I let him beg and cry, and wait for me for hours at the restaurants before calling with a stomach ache, even though I was only sitting on the couch watching some Disney Channel movie about an ice skater girl with mother problems. Hmph. I broke it off within record breaking time. He wanted to work it out. He wanted to help me so I could help him through. But I didn’t want to, so I told him to go. He did, but very bitterly, with good reason.
So now, six months ago, actually, Mr. Ampston proposed to my mother. She said yes, naturally. She won’t understand why I won’t be happy for her. I thought that if I broke up with poor Jake than when our parent’s relationship fizzled out then we could get back together. Funny how karma works. Now they’re getting married and the guy I first ever lip locked will be my brother. Nice.
Well you’re probably wondering (you shouldn’t, actually) why I said you are lucky. It’s because this year, I’ve fooled my mother. How could she just forget about Dad? Let Andy wilt and run away to Maine, Lyn turn into a glamour queen, flushing herself and her worries away in material things. Jake’s become a mood-less player and can’t hold a girlfriend for a few days before breaking up with the unfortunately dumb girl. I’m going to put them all behind, and prove my mother wrong. There is a place for me in Maine; I’m going to find it.
When my mom sends me to Adventure Camp in Pennsylvania, as she does every year, I’m taking a plane to my home state instead. While she’s in Northern China filming ‘White Tiger; Lily of the Storm’, some piece of crap kung fu movie or whatever, I’ll be enjoying my self-tour in Camden. Sure, I’ll go to camp for an hour or so and settle with my long-time roommate Diana all the details. Then I’ll take the ticket I stuffed in the back secret pocket in this diary and head to Maine. Somehow, I plan to find Andy, from whom I haven’t heard since she ran off with Ayden, and have a real summer. Maybe I’ll visit Dad’s grave. No, duh, of course I will!
But tonight I have one bullet to dodge; Jake. Nicole and I are going to dinner with Michael and Jake. Sort of as a farewell before mom sets out to film with the leading man and fiancé, Jake starts his job at the local soccer camp and I am supposed to go to ACP. Mom and Michael might be too involved to notice me, but he always seems to know when I’m about to pull something devious. As I speak, Nicole’s running round the house with Lyn mulling over three different dresses. I don’t exist, merely because I’ve locked myself in my closet with a flashlight and a bag of Sour Patch Kids; getting a sugar high and butterflies from the mere idea of hopping a plane. Urg.
Ok, maybe it’s the Sour Patch Kids.