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“You don’t know me at all,” Ivy said, and she wondered what Carol had told her. She grabbed a coffee and headed out. Outside, Ivy took a deep meditative breath. She drank her coffee. Noticed that the cup was autographed by Amari. All around her excited people were taking pics of their Amari-autographed cups.
Call time was three in the afternoon. The first shot of the day was going to be in the backyard of Ivy’s house. At magic hour. Magic hour was when the sun was setting and the natural light took on a heavenly luminescence. It was also going to be a love scene. The last kiss before Ivy/Ilsa goes off to college. The beginning of their last night together. Ivy was on her best behavior on the set. She ignored Drew and she ignored Amari. They kind of stayed away from her too. She hung out with Griffin. Nick showed up, and Ivy was surprised because she thought it was a closed set. Amari greeted him with a kiss on the lips and a wink toward Ivy.She didn’t just do that to me!Ivy raged inside. Nick came and sat down next to her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Amari asked me to come down and help her.”
“Help her do what?”
Amari called out, “Nick! Honey-bun, come over here.”Honey-bun—Nick hates nicknames.But Amari’s little puppy bounced over.
Bruce cleared the set. Vera wanted an intimate mood. She wanted to capture the kiss when the lighting was perfect. The fewer people on the set the better. A small crew, which included Ivy, was allowed to stay. Vera asked Amari if she was ready.
“Just give me a moment to get into character.” Amari launched into a full throttle make-out session with Nick—Ivy’s Nick—right in front of Ivy and the crew. It kept going. It was on the monitors. Their hands were all over each other. Ivy couldn’t take it anymore. She walked out of her own backyard, her own set. None of the neighbors watching outside even noticed her.
Ivy went to her house of worship: the Geneva Theater. A sign stated that it was on a classic film countdown. The old lavish theater was thirty days away from closing down for good. Each night they would screen a classic movie. Ivy got popcorn, a diet soda, and sat down about thirty minutes into Alfred Hitchcock’sVertigo. A movie about identity, about a descent into madness, about obsession. It wasn’t a feel-good Christmas movie—but this wasn’t a real Christmas, was it?
She walked back home around midnight. The crew was still filming various scenes. Ivy watched her mom and dad play the neighbors and greet Amari, playing Ilsa. Amari posed for pictures with them. The hashtag from the Insta Amari posted was the last straw.#MYNEWFAMILY.
“Buy you a drink?” a voice interjected. It was her sister.
They sat in her car across the street, drinking wine, watching the filming.
“Where did you go?”
“The movies,” Ivy said. Her eyes were glued on Nick and Amari laughing during a break.
“Who goes to a movie when they can watch their own movie getting filmed?”
“It wasVertigo. Jimmy Stewart becomes obsessed with Kim Novak. He has her dress up like the woman he loved who died. Makes her change her hair. Makes her wear the same outfits. Makes her into the same woman he was obsessed with,” Ivy said, watching Amari intently. “But it turns out Kim Novak is both the dead woman and the one who is tricking Jimmy Stewart.”
“I think you should have seen a comedy instead. What is going on with you, Ivy?”
She watched Amari kiss Nick, and the locals all cheered. She opened up a second bottle of wine.
“Amari is stealing my life. I’m going to get it back,” Ivy stated.
