For Real Page 4

  “Will Divine? That’s your actual name?” I realize how rude that sounds a second too late.

  In response, he digs a worn leather wallet out of his back pocket and presents me with a Pennsylvania driver’s license. It is indeed his real name. I glance at his birthday and see that he’s twenty-one. His hair is shorter in the picture, and I like it better how it is now.

  “I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s actually easier to get on a reality show if you have a weird name,” he says. “So I guess it’s good for something.”

  “But on your SATs and medical records and stuff, it says, ‘Divine, Will.’ ” In my nervous state, this strikes me as the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, and I start giggling like a maniac. Horrified, I clap my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. You must hear that all the time. I’m sure it’s really annoying.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says. I search his face for signs of irritation, but instead he smiles at me, revealing a dimple in his right cheek. I have an unaccountable urge to reach out and touch it. What is wrong with me?

  “This is Lou, by the way,” Will says, gesturing at his partner. Tall Guy looks up for half a second and gives me a flat-handed wave.

  “Hey,” I say, but he goes right back to his book.

  Will holds up the phone. “Shall we?”

  He wasn’t kidding—for someone who’s training for the Pop Culture Olympics, Will is shockingly bad at pop culture trivia. By the time Miranda returns from the bathroom, I’ve answered nine questions correctly, and he’s only gotten three. When the round ends, I look up to find my sister staring at us, shocked and confused to see me interacting with a cute stranger.

  “This is Will Divine,” I say, and by some stroke of luck, I manage not to laugh. “This is my sister, Miranda.”

  Will’s reaction to my sister is exactly the same as every guy’s: he takes a minute to appreciate her gorgeous face, and then his eyes dip down, just for a second, to check out her cleavage. “Pleasure to meet you, Miranda,” he finally says in exactly the same way he said it to me. Suddenly I don’t feel quite so special.

  Miranda catches the boob sneak peek, and her face hardens. She gives him a cursory “Hi,” then starts digging around in her bag. “Claire, I have an extra magazine in here. Do you want it?” she asks, like I’m not obviously doing something already.

  I know she’s just trying to be nice by offering me an escape, but I don’t need to be rescued right now. “No thanks, we’re in the middle of a game.”

  “Oh, okay,” she says, but she still looks unsure that I know what I’m doing. “It’s here if you change your mind.” She opens a battered novel and turns away.

  “What’re you reading?” Will asks.

  “A book.” Her eyes warn him not to press any further.

  “Ooookay then.” He holds his hands up in surrender and turns to me with a what’s her problem? look on his face. I shrug and roll my eyes, trying to show him that I have a better attitude than she does, even if I’m not as aesthetically pleasing.

  “So, you want to play another round?” he asks.

  I’ve had basically no practice with flirting, but I feel like I need to do something to prove I’m as girly as Miranda. So I channel every dating show I’ve ever seen and try to make my voice sound coy. “Sure, if you want to get your ass kicked again.” I’m surprised by how good it sounds, but I still feel my cheeks turning pink, which probably cancels out any mild sexiness I’ve managed. Miranda glances up sharply, but I avoid her eyes.

  Will grins at me. “I’m just getting warmed up. You haven’t seen what I can do yet.”

  I shrug in a way I hope looks nonchalant. “Fine. Show me.”

  I obliterate Will five more times before he finally surrenders and puts the phone away. By now, we’re almost at the front of the registration line. “Do you live in the city?” he asks. “You should join our Pop Culture Olympics team. You’d steamroll everyone.”

  You have to be twenty-one to do the Pop Culture Olympics, but I don’t want Will to know how much younger than him I am, so I say, “We’re from upstate, actually. We just came down to do some auditions.”

  He nods, and I flatter myself by thinking he might look a little disappointed. But then he turns his attention back to my sister. “Is this your first time at an open call?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she says without looking up from her book.

  “Have you been to one of these before?” I ask.

  “I’ve probably done twenty of them. They’re really good practice.”

  “For what?”

  “Trying out characters, seeing how believable I can make them. I’m an actor. I mean, I’m in school for it. At NYU.”

  “Of course you are,” Miranda mutters under her breath.

  “This is the only show I really want to be on, though,” Will continues. “I was so pissed we didn’t get to audition the first time around—they only interviewed the first two hundred teams, and we were number 204. We got there five hours early, but it turned out people had camped out in the parking lot overnight. The line’s a lot shorter this time, ’cause this audition is so last-minute.”

  “Wow. Well, I guess it all worked out, right?”

  “It certainly did.” Will looks back over at Miranda. “Hey, are you okay? You look nervous. You’re gonna be fine, I promise.”

  “I am fine,” she snaps. Her phone starts buzzing in her bag. “I have to take this,” she says. “Save my spot.”

  As soon as she’s out of earshot, Will leans toward me. “What’s her deal? Is she always like that?”

  I glance at Miranda to make sure she’s not paying attention to us. “Sorry,” I whisper back. “She’s usually really friendly, but she had an awful breakup a couple days ago—she caught the guy cheating the day before they were supposed to move in together. So I guess she’s just bitter toward all guys right now. Her ex was also an actor, so I’m sure that’s not helping, either. Don’t take it personally.”

  “Wow,” he says. “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. That’s why we’re here, actually—her ex is on the show, and we want to take him down.”

  Will’s eyes widen. “Seriously? He’s on this show?”

  “Yup.”

  He gives a low whistle. “Oh man. You guys have got this audition in the bag.”

  “Not necessarily. I’m sure there are tons of really interesting people here.”

  “No, I mean … trust me. You’re going to do really well today.”

  “Thanks.” I know it makes no sense, since I don’t even know him, but Will’s confidence in us makes me less nervous. We do have an interesting story to tell.

  I don’t know where the time has gone, but somehow we’re at the front of the line. Miranda rejoins us as an extremely bored-looking man in a lavender shirt pushes a clipboard toward us across the registration table. “Print and sign your names here,” he says, reciting the words as if he’s said them so many times that they no longer have any meaning.

  When we’ve signed in, he hands us applications, both of which say “NYC: Applicant 87” in the corner. “Please proceed to the Great Room, fill these out, sign the waiver in the back, and listen for your number to be called. If you fail to present yourselves, the production assistants will move on to the next number and you will move to the back of the line. You will have approximately three minutes with the casting team. Be prepared to wait between two and three hours.” As soon as he’s done with these instructions, his eyes slide off us. We’re dismissed.

  Miranda takes her application and heads toward the holding room, but I hang back. It only takes a minute to sign in, and maybe if I wait for Will, he’ll come sit with us inside. If I play this right, I could have hours more with him.

  “Come on, Claire,” my sister calls.

  I motion that she should give me a minute. “See you inside?” I ask Will.

  He looks up and smiles, then drops his voice so I have to step closer to hear him. “I’m pretty sure your
sister wants to kick me in the teeth, so it’s probably better if I stay out of your way. Break a leg in there, though.”

  “You too,” I say, trying not to show how disappointed I am.

  “Hey, listen. If you change your mind about the Pop Culture Olympics, give me a call. I’d love to have you on our team.” Instead of jotting down his number on a scrap of paper or something, Will grabs my hand and starts writing on the inside of my wrist with the pen from the sign-in table. It’s a weirdly intimate place to be touched by someone you just met, and it sends a little shiver through me. His gray hat is inches from my face as he bends over my arm, and I smell hair products and heat.

  “Okay,” I breathe.

  “Hey,” lavender-shirt guy barks. “Are you registering or not?”

  Will shoots me one more gorgeous smile before he turns away. “See you,” he says.

  I certainly hope so.

  I follow my sister into the enormous holding room. The walls are lined with gold pillars, and the ceiling is covered in rows of plaster flowers, each of which cradles a lightbulb in its center. At the far end of the room is a door marked PRIVATE, which must be where the auditions are being held. People are sprawled all over the carpet in groups, chatting and laughing and snacking. It seems like everyone’s dressed to stand out—there’s a guy in a purple suit and a fedora, a girl in a tutu, and another girl in a floor-length velvet cape with a dragon on the back. In the middle of a removable dance floor left over from an event, a guy in a yellow Spandex bodysuit is doing a slow, robotic dance while another guy beat-boxes to accompany him. I would hardly go so far as to say that these are “my people,” but it is kind of refreshing to be in a place where originality counts for more than shampoo-commercial beauty.

  Miranda picks her way through the tangle of auditioners and finds an empty spot along the wall, and I sit down next to her. When I point out the girl in the cape, I expect her to laugh, but she just gives me a tiny smile and starts filling out her application. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you mad at me?”

  She looks back up. “No, of course not. Why would I be mad at you?”

  “You’re acting kind of weird. Are you nervous? It’s going to be—”

  She cuts me off. “I’m fine, seriously. It’s just … this week has been so ridiculously crappy, and all I want to do right now is hang out in my pajamas and eat chocolate and read, and instead I’m at an audition, where I have to act all happy and shiny and put-together. And it’s not like I want to leave, ’cause I really don’t want that ass-hat to win a million dollars. But I wish all of this could’ve happened in a couple weeks, when I felt more like a human and less like a ball of angst, you know? And that guy in line wasn’t helping. I didn’t like how he was looking at us.”

  Not every guy who looks at you wants to screw you over, I want to tell her. Not every guy is like Samir. But I can’t help being a little bit pleased that Miranda thinks Will was looking at me the same way he was looking at her.

  “I thought he was really nice,” I say.

  “His name is Will Divine. It’s ridiculous.”

  “His name isn’t his fault. He didn’t make it up. I saw his driver’s license.”

  Miranda sighs. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. He’s just some random stranger.”

  “Don’t think about anyone else here,” I say. “Focus on us. Yeah, you’ve had the worst week ever, but we have an awesome story to tell the casting people, and we’re going to rock this audition. And you don’t look like a ball of angst. So don’t worry, okay?”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “Think of what Samir’s face is going to look like when he gets eliminated because of us,” I say, and she finally smiles.

  We settle in to wait. I try to look engrossed in filling out my application, but really I’m scanning the crowd for Will. I finally spot him with a group of girls across the ballroom, his hand resting casually on one of their arms as he talks. I tell myself she could be a friend, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. If Miranda hadn’t acted so standoffish, that could have been me. That could have been my arm.

  As if he can feel me looking, Will turns in my direction, raises an eyebrow, and shoots me a smile. I feel a tingle in my wrist, where his number is inscribed on my skin.

  I smile back and make myself a promise: no matter what my sister thinks, I am not finished with Will Divine.

  SAMPLE QUESTIONS FROM OUR

  AROUND THE WORLD

  APPLICATIONS

  What is your greatest fear?

  MIRANDA: Never becoming a successful writer

  ME: Cockroaches

  Name three (3) things you love.

  MIRANDA: Books, traveling, and my friends/family

  ME: Trivia, television, and my sister

  Name three (3) things you hate.

  MIRANDA: Cheating, my ex-boyfriend, and the other woman

  ME: Genocide, dancing in public, and cockroaches

  What are you best at?

  MIRANDA: Writing

  ME: Pop culture trivia

  What are you worst at?

  MIRANDA: Pop culture trivia

  ME: Schmoozing with strangers

  Name three (3) adjectives that best describe you.

  MIRANDA: Creative, adventurous, outgoing

  ME: Intelligent, logical, motivated

  Name three (3) adjectives that best describe your partner.

  MIRANDA: Shy, smart, loyal

  ME: Charismatic, strong, talented

  Describe your relationship with your partner.

  MIRANDA: Excellent

  ME: Excellent

  Name something that drives you crazy about your partner.

  MIRANDA: She acts like I’m an idiot for not knowing anything about pop culture.

  ME: She knows nothing about pop culture. It’s embarrassing.

  Is there anything you will not do under any circumstances? Please explain.

  MIRANDA: Eat bugs. Get pregnant. Undergo plastic surgery. None of that requires an explanation, I hope.

  ME: Anything that involves cockroaches. Because they are disgusting.

  Why do you want to be on this show (besides the million-dollar prize)?

  MIRANDA: I spent the last year dating a self-involved, cheating asshole who wants to be famous. He’s on your show. I’m here to keep him from succeeding.

  ME: I’m here to support my sister. Letting her loose in the world of reality TV on her own would be like tossing a baby into a swimming pool without water wings.

  Three hours later, someone finally calls our number, and Miranda and I struggle to our feet. The production assistant who takes our applications has so much product in his hair that his head is probably a fire hazard, and I have a strong urge to poke at the sculpted curl on his forehead to see if it snaps off. On one side of the private room are a couple of empty folding chairs, and facing them is a small camera flanked by two casting directors. The woman is wearing a leopard-print blouse and shoes, and her arm is tattooed with a formation of flying birds. The guy has one of those incredibly annoying pencil-thin beards. Seriously, just have a beard or don’t.

  “Hi,” says the woman. “I’m Charlotte, and this is Jim. We’re in charge of Around the World casting for the Northeast region.” They each extend a hand, and I wonder if this is some kind of test—which hand am I supposed to shake first? My Internet research on auditions said to go straight for the highest-ranked person, but I can’t tell which one that is. While I’m debating what to do, Miranda gives the woman’s hand a firm shake, then approaches the man. I follow her lead, and then I’m immediately furious with myself. I’m supposed to be the one leading today.

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” Miranda says, her voice totally calm and confident, like she’s done this a hundred times. “I’m Miranda Henderson.”

  “And I’m Claire,” I say. “Henderson. I mean, obviously. ’Cause we’re sisters.” I sound so stupid that I want to slap myself in the face.

  Charlotte lo
oks less than thrilled by us. “Great. Why don’t you have a seat, and we’ll get started.”

  We sit, and I stare into the steady red light of the camera. Oh God, it’s been on this entire time, which means my awkward introduction has been immortalized for posterity. I smile into the lens, as if that’ll somehow undo the damage.

  Charlotte flips through our applications. “Miranda and Claire,” she says. “Why don’t you tell us a little bit about why you want to be on our show.”

  For a second, Miranda doesn’t say anything, and before I know it, I’m babbling. “Well, Miranda just graduated from Middlebury, up in Vermont, and the other night we were at this graduation party, and her boyfriend—who was a total fame whore, by the way—well, Miranda couldn’t find him, and …”

  It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience—half of me is spewing verbal garbage, and the other half is hovering six feet in the air, dying of embarrassment. Last night, I’d made a huge deal to Miranda about keeping our answers succinct in order to make the most of our time with the casting directors. And here I am, not even a minute into our audition, making their eyes glaze over.

  Fortunately, Miranda cuts me off. “We’re here for revenge,” she says. Short and sweet; a perfect little sound bite. Maybe she was listening to my instructions after all.

  The producers perk right back up. “Revenge?” Charlotte says, making a note on her legal pad. “Revenge on whom, exactly?”

  “My cheating ex-boyfriend. Three days ago, I found him in bed with another girl right before we were supposed to move in together.”

  “Ouch,” Jim says appreciatively.

  Charlotte looks confused. “Sorry, I’m not sure I understand. How will being on Around the World allow you to get revenge on your ex-boyfriend?”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” I say. I’m starting to calm down a little, and I want to give this talking thing another shot. “We’re pretty sure you know Miranda’s ex-boyfriend.”

  “His name is Samir Singh,” she cuts in before I can screw up the punch line. “He’s a contestant on your show.”