Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,1
that it was about me. And not just a character based on me with a carefully disguised name like Anna Andrews or Amelia Adams. No, the flawed character that filled the pages of The Girl in the Yellow Dress was named Adley Adair. You could pick it up in any book store in America and read about the most personal, life altering thing that had ever happened to me.
He cleared his throat, and I knew my silence made him uncomfortable. It offered him nothing to decipher or overanalyze. “You know I only agreed to a movie because they gave me full control over the screenplay and artistic vision of the film… All this makes me feel so weird. I don’t want to make things harder for you.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” I insisted, placating him as I wished truth into my statement.
“Adley,” he breathed. The doubtful tone he soothed me with took me back to rushed kisses in the back of his car and sweltering days of summer with only each other as company. I knew exactly what Cam looked like when he said my name like that.
“It doesn’t,” I insisted stubbornly. “I might not have read The Girl in the Yellow Dress, but I know where to find it in Barnes and Noble. It’s fiction, Cam.”
“They want to meet you,” he blurted out, his words as quick as lightning. In such a typical, Cam-way he was dragging us closer and closer to the real point of all this. “The actress that’s playing Adley brought it up, and some of the other production staff jumped on board… Before you say no, please think about it, Addy. It feels like I haven’t seen a friendly face since all this mess started, and I know things are different between us now, but there was a time when we were each other’s family. Would it be so horrible getting paid to spend your summer bumming around California?”
“Paid?” There was no greater testament to the distance that had grown between us the past three years than the fact that Cam hadn’t led with the incentive.
I couldn’t blame him. The girl he’d fallen in love with had never worried about money a day in her life. I’d grown up pampered by my parents’ wealth, never noticing the three hundred dollar haircuts I painlessly charged onto their accounts, along with every other purchase made at my heart’s desire.
“Of course.” He sounded appropriately offended, shocked I would think otherwise. “You’d be on the studio’s payroll as, like, a research assistant or something. We can work out the details later… Come on, Ads. It’d take a lot of pressure off me. I’d have more time to work on the new book if I didn’t have to spend all my time stressing about them destroying The Girl in the Yellow Dress.”
It was amazing all the things he could do with my name when he wanted something: Addy, Ads, A. As nice as it was to hear him – the world-renowned author C.A. Peterson – beg a lowly, college sophomore for something, it wasn’t necessary. The days of credit cards, trust funds, and a never-ending cash flow were over. My pride wouldn’t let me accept the portion of Cam’s royalties that he’d offered me, but it couldn’t argue when a legitimate job was offered.
“You know I’ve never actually read The Girl in the Yellow Dress, right?” I refused to let defeat sneak into my words, happy to let him worry over my decision a little longer.
He snorted. “I think your real life experience will suffice.”
“Email me all the information, and I’ll think about it when I get a chance,” I lied. I didn’t have the luxury of rejecting any opportunity, much less a paid one.
The truth was that, up until Cam’s phone call, my summer had been a gaping hole of uncertainty. Without a dorm or food plan, I was homeless, jobless, and – thanks to my late start in college – without the necessary credits to get a decent, paying internship.
He whooped loudly in my ear. Apparently, he still knew well me enough to detect my fibs.
“I’ll see you in Cali, Adley Adair!”
I hung up on him, stopping myself from tossing my phone recklessly onto the bedside table Hannah and I shared. I definitely couldn’t afford a new one.
With a sigh, I placed it carefully back on the charger and yanked the covers over my head. Maybe I could just hide forever.