Page 54 of The Summer of Christmas

“The girl from the newspaper? She was interviewing me!”

“That’s all it was?” If this were a prize fight, her strange flurry of affronts landed. Drew paused. Ivy saw the opening.

“Well, no. She asked me if I liked the town.”

“And what else?”

“She asked about a rumor she heard on set.”

“What rumor?”

“She promised she would keep it off the record.”

Now Ivy was intrigued. She had started this line of defense so as not to admit she was thinking about Nick again, never imagining Drew was also hiding something. “Keep what off the record? Is this about Griffin?” She knew as she said it that it was a mistake.

“What’s going on with Griffin?”

“Nothing. Don’t deflect, Drew. What is the rumor you denied?”

“She asked if you and I were in a relationship.”

That stopped Ivy. She knew she wasn’t acting like herself. But here was a moment that might reset things. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her no. I said that we were just good friends. That we had a good working relationship,” Drew stated. She reacted and stormed out of the bathroom. Going right to the front door, slamming it as she heard him calling: “You said you wanted to keep it professional!”

Professional? What did that even mean? Amari wasn’t very professional. Well, she could be. When she was shooting a scene, she was amazing. But off-screen, she didn’t know the meaning of the word. Ivy walked home and walked in on her parents…rehearsing…with blue script pages in their hands.

“Great. You’re home. We have a question for you.” They quickly approached Ivy, showing her a line on the script pages. Why were her parents acting out scenes from the movie? “Can we change this line?” her dad said. “I think it’s better if the neighbor says, ‘Congrats on making the dean’s list!’ instead of ‘How’s college going?’ It’s more specific.”

“Also, I read that Tom Hanks says it’s better to end a line of dialogue with a period and not a question mark. He said that whenever he gets a script, he goes through all his lines and changes the question marks to periods,” Linda added, proud that she knew this.

Ivy was baffled. “What, Mom? And why are you rehearsing the neighbor scene?”

“We’re the neighbors. We auditioned and got the parts! We’re going to be in your movie!” Mitch said.

“The director had us audition with Amari. She’s really talented.”

Linda held up a pretty bad selfie. The framing was way off but the mise-en-scène was in that shot. Her mom and dad with Amari in the middle. Smiling with arms around each other. Nice family. The tea kettle that was her mind started to whistle. Ivy was that close to boiling. Her phone rang; it was Charlotte. Ivy told her parents she had to take this call upstairs. But before she left, at her dad’s insistence, she approved the dialogue change.

“What’s going on with you?” Charlotte asked. Ivy noted she didn’t sound like an agent. She sounded like someone who really cared about her.

“I’m fine, Charlotte,” Ivy said.

“Then why did your producer call me and suggest that I check in on you?”

“Drew called you? When?”

“About thirty minutes ago. He said you’re acting a little weird on the set. Vera hinted at the same thing when I spoke with her. What’s going on out there?”

Ivy was done lying. She trusted Charlotte so she said, “Amari who is Ilsa who is really me is trying to sleep with Nick.”

“Are you talking about Rick?”

“No, Rick is Griffin. He’s based on Nick.”

“So Amari’s sleeping with Griffin? That’s normal. The costars often hook up.”

“No,” Ivy explained, “Griffin is playing Rick. Amari is hitting on Nick. Rick is based on Nick, and that’s who Griffin is.”