The woman with the blush moves to inspecting my brows. “And I’m Ash. I’m technically not supposed to touch your brows, but you’ve got just…” She attacks with a pair of tweezers. “Just one hair out of place.”
I let out a low hiss. “Thanks, I think.”
The three quickly lead me into the main house, where they have a makeshift station set up for all their prepping and primping.
While Ash applies my foundation, a very fashionable woman around Erica’s age steps up to us and says, “Cindy? Hi, my name is Tammy, and I’ll be playing your stepmom today. Maybe we could run lines when you’re done?”
“Um, what?” I look to Ash for an answer, but she’s busy at work on my face. The woman is ushered away before I can ask for more details. “Beck?”
“Coming!” her voice calls from across the room. “Cindy!” she says as she approaches me from the side. “You look radiant! Isn’t Ash the best?”
“The best,” I say quickly, even though I’m not yet qualified on the topic. “But could you please explain to me why some random woman named Tammy just came up and told me that she would be playing the role of my stepmother? And apparently I have lines? I thought reality TV was supposed to be real…ish.”
“It is. Totally. But sometimes, we have to fill in the blanks a little. And Erica can’t play your stepmom for obvious reasons. Do you know how many questions that would raise? It’d be a PR nightmare. Everyone would think you only got on the show because of nepotism and connections.”
“Well,” I say, “that is how I got on the show.”
“The American people don’t need to know that. Sometimes we have to go above and beyond to keep the magic alive. This isn’t really a lie. It’s just an alternate truth.”
“Um, that sounds like a lie.”
“Lips relaxed and parted,” Ash demands.
I let out a groan through my relaxed and parted lips as she applies a sticky gloss.
“And you don’t have lines,” Beck assures me. “We just had to give Tammy some parameters to work in so she’ll have some ground rules and then improvise a little. It’ll be so natural, I promise. You won’t even know the cameras are here.”
I look around at the crew running cords and staging lights all over Erica’s living room. “Not likely,” I say through my still relaxed and parted lips.
“Oh, by the way,” says Beck, “change of plans. Anna and Drew aren’t your sisters anymore. At least not on the show. So make sure the other contestants don’t find out you’re related, okay? That would just get…messy.”
“Wait. What? I thought the whole thing was that we were three sisters vying for the suitor.”
Beck shrugs. “We’re taking a different angle with you and—”
“Beck!” someone calls for her.
“Gotta go!” she says as she disappears into the tangle of crew members.
“Angle? I have an angle? What’s my angle?”
But no one answers. My stomach flips at the thought of going at this alone. Anna and Drew will still be there, but any shot I had at hiding behind them is gone.
When I’m done with hair and makeup, I’m guided to the couch, where some random person shoves a pillow behind my back so I’m forced to perch on my ass.
Beck sits down on an ottoman across from me and behind the camera. “Okay, we’re just going to have a conversation. I’ll ask questions and you answer. If something else comes up, just keep talking. We might have to pause every once in a while, for noise. When that happens, Ash, Ginger, or Irina might swoop in and fix your hair or whatever. Cool?”
“Uh, sure. There are…a lot of people here.” I force myself to breathe evenly before I hyperventilate.
Beck comes to sit down next to me on the couch. “Listen, if we were doing your pre-interview weeks ago like we did for the other girls, we’d be able to ease you into this a little bit more. But as it stands, we’re running against the clock with little time to be precious. I want you to be comfortable, so I can send everyone who doesn’t need to be in here right now outside, and we can do this with a skeleton crew. You also need to know, though, that when you get to the house, it’s going to be this but on steroids. I’m talking vein-busting, ball-shrinking steroids.”
I nod. I hear what she’s saying. There’s no time to ease me into this, and maybe that’s what I need—to just be immersed in something so fully that I can’t even think too hard about it. “They can stay. But, um, could I have a glass of water or something?”
Beck nods and snaps her fingers. “K! Water.”
Within seconds, a gangly-looking white boy is holding a bottle of water with a straw in front of my face. “Sip,” he says.
“I don’t need a straw,” I tell him.
“Yes, she does,” Ash, Irina, and Ginger say in unison.
“It’s paper,” he tells me, obviously bored. “Save the turtles.”
I oblige and take my sip while he holds the bottle for me, and the moment I’m done, I say, “Well, that was awkward.”
Beck waves me off. “That kid just got paid to serve you water. He’s fine. You’re hydrated. We’re all good.” She stands and heads back to her ottoman. “How’s our light? How do we look?”
Irina rushes in. “Lose the necklace.”
I hold my hand over it and instinctively say, “No.”
“It ruins the shot,” Irina says with defiance.
We both look to Beck for a tiebreaker, and I think if Irina takes this necklace off me, I might cry, which is ludicrous, but I’m about as high-strung as an extreme couponer waiting for her grand total right now. “Necklace stays. It’s…approachable-looking.”
Irina mutters under her breath, and I think she and I might go toe-to-toe before all this is said and done.
“Quiet on set!” a South Asian girl with two long braids and a clipboard covered in band stickers calls out.
“Thank you, Mallory,” Beck says.
The whole room goes completely silent. So silent, in fact, that I’m scared I might be breathing too heavily, and what if they can hear it on the mic dangling above my head just out of frame?
Beck nods to the guy behind the camera.
“Rolling!” the girl with the clipboard shouts.
On and off for the next hour, Beck pretty much does a post-mortem of my life leading up to this moment. The only exclusion is any specific details about Erica. Other than that, she asks about everything. My dad’s death. The triplets. Fashion school. Moving back home to California. Eventually Erica enters, stepping in and out periodically, giving her nod of approval, and I try not to let my eyes stray. We pause a few times for planes overhead or car alarms, and sometimes I say something that I’m asked to repeat, but with more “emphasis”—whatever that means.
When we’re done, the whole room collectively sighs, and within seconds, the volume of the crew has exploded again.
Beck pats my knee. “You did great.”
“You didn’t tell me you were basically going to neatly display my guts for the whole world to see.”
She laughs. “It feels like a lot, but we need options. Different angles. And don’t worry about all these people. A lot of them just check out while the cameras are rolling until it’s time to do their job again. And anyway, all this is going to get cut down to, like, two minutes of actual footage.” She holds a finger up and listens to something in her headset before running off.