This Is What Happy Looks Like, Page 3

  But it didn’t matter now. As he walked to the shop, he felt more alert than he had in ages, wide awake and burning with conviction. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way. In the past two years, as his life had become increasingly unrecognizable, Graham had grown as malleable as a piece of clay. He was now accustomed to being told what to do, how to act, who to see, and what to say when he saw them. Casual-seeming conversations on the couches of talk shows were pre-scripted. Dates were set up for him by his people. His clothes were chosen by a stylist who was forever trying to wrangle him into V-neck shirts and skinny jeans, things he’d never have been caught dead in before.

  But before felt like a million years ago.

  And this is how things were in the after.

  If someone had told him two years ago that he’d be living on his own at seventeen—in a house three times the size of the one he’d grown up in, complete with a pool and a game room and the necessary precaution of a state-of-the-art security system—Graham would have laughed. But like everything else that came on the heels of his first movie role and the unexpected feeding frenzy that followed it, this just seemed like the next logical step. There had been a momentum to the whole chain of events that struck him as inevitable. First there was a new agent, then a new publicist; a new house and a new car; new ways of acting in public and new tutors to help him finish high school while filming; new rules for social engagements; and, of course, new and previously unimagined possibilities for getting into trouble.

  Even his parents were different. Now, whenever he stopped by, they were both oddly strained, choosing their words carefully, as if they were all on camera. Every once in a while, Graham would do something that used to drive them nuts—leave his dirty dishes on the counter or his shoes strewn in the middle of the hallway—but instead of barking at him like they used to, they’d only exchange an unreadable look and then pretend not to see it. The whole thing was so disconcerting that Graham had, for the most part, stopped going home at all.

  He thought this must be what whiplash felt like. It wasn’t long ago that he was just a high school sophomore acting the part of Nathan Detroit in the dim auditorium, after having tried out on a lark for the same reason he did most things: to impress a girl. A few days later, he’d been shocked to actually discover his name on the casting list.

  His school was located in a suburb so affluent that Graham often felt like a visitor to some strange and well-groomed planet, but its proximity to L.A. meant that most of his classmates, and certainly those in the drama club, dreamed of Hollywood. They’d spent their lives at dance lessons and voice lessons and acting lessons. They studied Variety to keep up a certain level of industry knowledge, and they viewed shopping as an important opportunity to cultivate their image.

  But then Graham, lanky and off-key and a little bit awkward, had sauntered onstage with a goofy grin directed at some girl he’d never even spoken to, and somehow, he’d managed to get the part. And yet, nobody else seemed to find this odd. That’s just the way things had always worked for him. He’d never had a problem making sports teams or the honor roll, collecting awards for everything from Most Valuable Player to Exemplary Citizen. For better or worse, he’d always been that guy.

  And so there he was on opening night, plowing his way through the lyrics in a costume that was perhaps a size too small, his eyes watering from the glare of the lights, feeling less certain about his plan to ask the girl playing Adelaide to the spring formal afterward. As it turned out, he didn’t have the chance. A classmate’s father was trying to cast an unknown to play a teenage magician in a movie—not the lead, but the one who makes the love interest doubt her feelings for the hero—and afterward, he cornered Graham to discuss the possibility of his coming in for some screen tests. His parents, as clueless as he was about just what it might mean if he got the part, agreed that it could be a good opportunity, a fun experience, maybe even something to put on his college applications—and if things worked out, to help foot the bill.

  Later, all the magazines would describe his emergence as a star in ways that made him sound like a cartoon character, how he’d been “plucked from obscurity” or “skyrocketed to fame” or “catapulted into the limelight.” And that was sort of how it felt. He enjoyed the acting part of it more than he thought he would, and at first, he found the world of Hollywood intriguing, a welcome distraction from the smaller melodramas of high school.

  But what nobody ever told him was that once something like this happens to you, there’s no going back. In hindsight, this seemed like it should have been obvious, something he might have realized before everything was already in motion, but there was a slow inertia to the whole process that made it feel less like a catapult and more like a tumble down a hill. And as with most cartoon characters, once the ground ran out beneath him, he continued to hang there in midair, legs churning, hoping that if he just kept moving, maybe he wouldn’t fall.

  It was lonelier than he ever could have imagined. There were agents and managers and directors, costars and tutors and wardrobe specialists, publicists and hairstylists and image consultants. But none of them seemed quite real to him, and when the cameras stopped rolling, they faded away like opportunistic ghosts. He tried to keep up with his friends from high school, but something had shifted between them, and in this strange and uncharted territory, they didn’t know how to act around him anymore. He’d drifted too far beyond the world of curfews and homework and soccer practice, and once he stopped offering up his house for parties, there was little reason for them to see one another anymore.

  It was the same with the new people he met at events and parties, and with the girls he met pretty much everywhere. Before, he’d been the guy everyone wanted to be around because he was funny, and because he knew how to have a good time, and because underneath it all, he was actually pretty decent. But now he was the guy everyone wanted to be around because he was good-looking and famous and had a nice house, or because they wanted those things too, and thought he might be the key.

  So when he wasn’t working, he holed up and read the scripts his agent sent, trying to fill his days. He went to parties only occasionally, usually to meet some hot new director or a writer he’d been hearing good things about, and when the photographers inevitably showed up, he smiled grimly and left as soon as he could slip away. He read more books than he ever had in school. He ordered more pizza than he thought was possible. He played video games with depressing enthusiasm. He adopted a pig and the two of them spent most of their days out by the pool.

  Then one of his e-mails found its way to her.

  And just like that, he understood the power of the Internet. There was something intoxicating in the anonymity of it all. Suddenly, he had a clean slate. He was as much a mystery to her as she was to him, no longer Graham Larkin, but just GDL824. And GDL824 could be anyone, a hundred different brands of seventeen-year-old guy: the kind who lived for football or who won awards for playing chess, the type who smoked on the bike path behind school or who was one of those geniuses already in his second year of med school. He might be a guy who collected butterflies or baseball pennants or girlfriends. He could be a fan of rock stars or tennis stars or the countless stars in the sky. He could be a fan of Graham Larkin, for all it mattered.

  The point was, he could be anyone.

  For weeks, as he reported for preproduction on his newest movie—a love story, this time, to showcase his more sensitive side—he struggled to keep his attention on the studio in L.A. But his mind was all the way on the other side of the country. Ever since she first mentioned she was from Maine, Graham had found himself reading up on the state as if it were some sort of exotic land.

  Did you know that the wild blueberry is the state berry of Maine? he wrote to her one night. And, more important, that the state treat is the whoopie pie?

  I don’t even know what a whoopie pie is, she’d written back. And I work in a sweet shop. So I have a feeling you’re making that up.

/>   I’m not, he responded. In fact, I imagine that all towns in Maine are paved with whoopie pies.

  Not Henley, she’d said, and like a coal miner grasping about in the darkness, he was suddenly presented with the tiniest crack of light.

  Just a few days earlier, the location scout for the film had been fired after it was discovered that the North Carolina town where they were meant to be shooting for the first month of the summer was under attack by a swarm of cicadas. The director was furious that she’d managed to overlook a bug infestation that showed up every thirteen years like clockwork, but Graham had been secretly pleased.

  He’d suggested changing the location to Henley, pointing out that it had everything they were looking for: the quaint shops, the scenic harbor, the rough stretch of beach. He spoke of it as if he’d been there many times, and the truth was, he’d thought about the place so often recently that, in a way, it felt like he had.

  Still, it took some convincing, and in the end, Graham had been forced to act the way everyone always seemed to expect him to act anyway: he was petulant and demanding and condescending. He made threats and waved his phone around menacingly. And to his surprise, it had worked. New scouts were sent ahead and reported back that it was indeed a perfect location. Permissions were obtained and papers were signed. The second unit went out early to start collecting B roll. And Graham and his costars were slated to spend four weeks at the Henley Inn, which was just three-tenths of a mile from the only sweet shop in town.

  Even if his love life weren’t a newsworthy topic, and even if he weren’t constantly wary of the potential for gossip and rumors, Graham still wouldn’t have told anybody the real reason he was so desperate to go to Henley. At best, it made him sound a little crazy. At worst, it made him seem like a stalker.

  But the truth was, he was pretty sure he was falling for a girl he’d never met before, a girl whose name he didn’t even know.

  He realized that it was ridiculous. If someone had handed him a script with this exact story line, he’d have told them it was completely unrealistic.

  But that didn’t change what he felt.

  He supposed it might have been easier if he’d just asked to meet her. But what if she wasn’t feeling the same way about him? What if she was only looking for a pen pal? This way, at least he had an excuse for being there.

  After all, they had to film the movie somewhere.

  Graham wasn’t scheduled to begin shooting his scenes until the next day, and when he’d told Harry Fenton, his rapidly balding manager, that he wanted to get there early, the older man had looked confused.

  “You’re never early,” he said, but Graham only shrugged.

  “I’m supposed to have lived there all my life, so I think it’s important to fully immerse myself,” he told him, parroting back something he’d once heard his pompous costar on the Top Hat trilogy say. He realized he was getting as good at playing Graham Larkin as he was at playing all these other roles.

  He slowed a bit as he drew near to the ice-cream shop. He could sense the photographers lurking somewhere behind him, stealthy as a school of sharks. The sun was hot on his shoulders, his shirt already sticking to his back. He passed a willowy girl with long red hair, and when he glanced up at her, there was a look of silent rebuke in her green eyes. Graham had been so fixated on getting to the town of Henley that it had never occurred to him that the town of Henley might not be as thrilled about having him. He looked over again, and this time, she smiled, but he felt it as a kind of appraisal, a summing up of something about himself he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  But it was too late to worry about that now. He paused in front of the shop and squinted at the glass storefront, but the light was thrown back at him. He was desperate to see what she looked like, though he knew it shouldn’t matter. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way about anyone. Being famous was like carrying around some kind of magic key; you could say something stupid or boring or you could say nothing at all, and the girls still liked you anyway. But rather than making him more confident, this just seemed to shake his resolve, since it meant there was never a way to gauge how anyone really felt about him.

  Until now. Because whoever this girl was, Graham was pretty sure that she liked him. Not the movie-star version of him, but the real him.

  And he liked her too.

  When he pushed open the door, he was rattled by the sound of the tiny bell, and he ducked his head so his face was hidden by the brim of his cap. There were no other customers in the shop, and he kept his eyes trained on the black-and-white tiles of the floor until he was nearly to the counter. It had been a long time since he’d been afraid to look at a girl, but he was inexplicably nervous now, and it took him a moment to force his eyes in her direction.

  When he finally did, he was relieved to see that she was quite obviously beautiful, with almond-shaped eyes and long dark hair. But he barely took the time to register that. He was too busy looking at the word sewn onto the pocket of her shirt.

  Ellie, he thought, finally pairing a name with the initial. Ellie O’Neill.

  She was watching him anxiously, her expression halfway between shock and delight. He nodded at her, then slid over to the display of ice-cream flavors and pretended to be deciding. But what he was really doing was thinking back to a conversation they’d had a few weeks ago, when he’d jokingly sent her one of those e-mails that asks you to answer questions about your favorite things.

  There’s no way I’m filling this thing out, she’d replied. You can’t be that desperate to know my favorite ice-cream flavor.

  Are you kidding? Graham had said. You’d be surprised how much it says about you.

  Let me guess, she’d written. If I say rocky road, it means I’m going through a hard time. If I say vanilla, it means I’m boring…

  Something like that, he’d responded. I’m a sherbet guy myself. What does that say about me?

  That you’ve got great taste, she’d written back. That’s my favorite too.

  He watched now as she moved down along the opposite side of the counter to lean over the glass at him. “Can I help you with anything?” she asked, and he was startled to hear a familiar note in her voice, the same sugary tone used by so many publicists and managers in L.A. He gave her a half smile, but said nothing, and she giggled. Graham’s stomach twisted.

  He pointed at the glass. “I’ll have the rainbow sherbet,” he said, venturing a look in her direction, waiting to see if she’d put things together. But she simply nodded and turned to grab a cup, and he realized that it wasn’t enough; of course it wasn’t enough. He tried to think of other ways into the conversation—casually mentioning something else they’d already discussed over e-mail, some other inside joke—but over his shoulder, there was a sharp bang as a photographer got too close to the window with his camera, and Graham realized that maybe this wasn’t the right moment after all.

  “You’re going to like it here,” she was saying as she handed over his ice cream. “It’s a great place to spend the summer.”

  Her tone was light as air and quite obviously flirty, and Graham had to remind himself that it was unfair to assume she’d be so different from all the other girls. Once she realized who he was—who he really was—then everything would click into place, but until then, it was pointless to be surprised by the way she tossed her hair as she spooned out the ice cream.

  “Oh yeah?” he said, placing a ten on the counter and then waving away the change. “Where’s a good place to grab dinner?”

  “The Lobster Pot,” she told him, smiling a bit coyly. “It’s my favorite.”

  Graham nodded. “Well, in that case,” he said, “would you like to go with me tonight?”

  “Me?” she asked, looking at him with genuine surprise. “Really?”

  “Really,” he said, smiling his million-dollar smile, the one that in his previous life had never seemed to hold any extraordinary charm, but that now had the curious ability to make hordes of tee
nage girls go wobbly at the sight of it.

  “I’d love to,” she said, her voice an octave too high.

  He nodded, and an awkward pause followed. It took him a moment to realize he was supposed to suggest a time. “Should we meet there at nine?”

  She looked embarrassed. “I think it might close at nine.”

  “Ah,” Graham said. “Seven thirty, then?”

  She nodded, then handed over a spoon. It took him a moment to reach for it; the sleepless plane ride must have been catching up to him, because he felt suddenly weary. A spreading disappointment filled his chest, though he wasn’t sure why. This was exactly what he’d wanted. This town, this girl. She was not only cute, but perfectly nice, and apparently eager to go out with him. What more had he hoped for?

  He jabbed the spoon into the ice cream, which was already melting, and then lifted his cup in a little salute as she waved good-bye. When he turned around, he was greeted by the dizzying flash of the cameras at the window, and for a brief moment, he closed his eyes. But the lights refused to go away, and all he could see were stars.

  From: [email protected]

  Sent: Sunday, June 9 2013 11:11 AM

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: what happy looks like

  The change of seasons.

  It seemed to Ellie that walking into the Happy Thoughts Gift Shop was a little bit like stepping inside her mother’s brain. There was no sense of organization whatsoever, nor was there an obvious theme to the store’s contents. Eight years ago, when Mom first bought the shop, it had been known for selling mostly furniture and home decor, and was filled with elegant displays of candles and napkin rings and vases of all kinds. The previous owner was now happily retired in Florida, having long since given up on the Maine winters, but Ellie was pretty sure that if she were ever to see what had become of the place, she’d be horrified.