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“How many is a lot?” I asked. “Three? Four?”
She laughed, then frowned at me. “Wait. You’re serious? Is this your first commercial?”
“Actually, yeah. It is.”
“Well, I’ve been doing this for three years,” the girl told me. “The directors who do these commercials? They take it way too seriously. We might be here a while.”
I groaned.
We did another take. Once again, I nailed it. And once again, the director got all fussy afterward. He critiqued our hair, so the makeup artist came out and made adjustments. After the next take, he told us to wear sunglasses. An hour into shooting—I had lost count of takes by then—he complained that we didn’t look young enough.
If you wanted high schoolers, maybe you should have cast real high schoolers, idiot.
I should have been ecstatic to be doinganythingrelated to acting, but I couldn’t bring myself to muster any excitement. This commercial wasn’t going to slingshot my acting career. Rogan’s industry connections would.
“Let’s take it from the beginning,” the director said. The other actors and I rolled our eyes.
This time the director nit-picked how enthusiastic we were. On the take after that, he said we weren’t enthusiasticenough.
After four hours, the director called a break. “I think we’ve got enough for today.”
We all sighed with relief.
“We’ll continue filming tomorrow at noon,” he added, “so be here at eleven for wardrobe.”
I gave a start. “What?”
The director was already walking away. His assistant, a chipper young man in a cardigan, came over to us and marked his clipboard with a pencil. “Can you confirm your availability for filming tomorrow?”
The other two actors nodded. “I guess, but I wasn’t expecting it to last two days…”
“Perfect. We’ll see you at eleven sharp.”
Maurice was hopping up and down with excitement. “You got to do so many takes! I’m jealous!”
“You’re jealous I had to do the same three lines a billion times?”
“It’s practice,” Maurice insisted. “Realpractice, unlike what we do at Mr. Howard’s class.”
“Yeah, practice,” I muttered as we left.
35
Heather
I walked into the residence with an apology already on my lips. “Sorry for being late. I didn’t expect filming to lastall day.”
The kids ran over to the door to tackle me with hugs. “Miss Heather! We missed you!” Dustin said.
“I didn’t miss her,” Micah muttered. “I like Aunt Patty the most.”
Patty was standing over in the kitchen, resting her arms on the countertop. “Love you too, kiddo.”
The kids returned to watching TV, and I joined Patty in the kitchen. “Everything alright?” I asked.
“You were right,” Patty said. She looked, and sounded, exhausted. “They’ve regressed. They might be worse thanbeforeyou arrived.”
I glanced at the reward sheet on the fridge. “One star for Micah, none for Dustin?”
