Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,11
didn’t startle me like it had the first twenty-seven times the forceful director had done it. Somewhere around the fifteenth exclamation, I’d grown accustomed to her gravelly voice shouting the command. Madeline’s lackluster performance required a lot of frustrated ‘Cut!’s. She was awkward and dry, killing the momentum and quality of each shot, no matter how stunning the other actors’ performances were. I knew little to nothing about the filmmaking process, but the resentful vibe permeating around the set clued me in that it wasn’t the norm.
Georgia was a rounded little lady, with of a mass of curly hair that was dark brown where it hadn’t managed to be overtaken by grey. She couldn’t have been much older than fifty, and other than her hair, it was hard to tell she had any age to her at all. Her face was smooth and almost completely free of wrinkles. Plus, she had the spirit of a twenty-five year old, keeping pace with all the young actors, as she rode them as relentlessly as a drill master.
From her director’s chair, she dropped the foot me to the ground, and waltzed to stand inside the set with a hard-faced Madeline.
The set was styled into a quaint bathroom. Every bit of available space in the small three-sided room was taken up by bathroom essentials, like a shower, toilet, and a sink topped by a rectangular mirror.
After almost half a day of watching Madeline struggle through the simple monologue, I’d used context clues to discern that the bathroom was modeled after the dingy dorm Cam and my brother, Thomas, had shared at Duke.
At seventeen, I’d stood in that bathroom, and made the single most life-changing decision of my young existence. The real-life experience that the scene was based on should have made it hard for me to watch. All I felt was detachment. Madeline might have said the words the script asked for, and twisted her pretty face to mimic the emotions I’d felt firsthand, but there was no real connection.
She was older than I had been then, but it still came across like she was a little girl playing pretend.
“It’s a little…cold,” Georgia spoke softly, but the natural strength of her voice carried across the soundstage easily. “Are you still working with your acting coach?”
The whole cast and crew on set was doing the same thing I was – listening intently, while trying to look like we were doing anything else. I was just happy that Madeline’s attention was somewhere else for once. It was one of the rare moments when I got to really look at her, as opposed to the rest of the time, where I did everything in my power to avoid being in the same room with her.
“Yes,” Madeline responded with hollow sureness. Her green eyes turned their ferocity inward, hardening to an impenetrable shade of emerald. “She says I’m making progress.”
It was the first time I’d ever looked at the beautiful starlet and thought of something other than a predator. She looked like a teenager, someone who was trying her best and still failing. It softened her, and I couldn’t help but to relate to her in some small, insubstantial way.
“I don’t know what else to do, Madeline,” the director told her with fatigue, exhaling deeply. “We’ve got to get something usable today. The studio’s on my ass about the schedule… And you don’t seem to be connecting with Adley anymore than you were three weeks ago.”
No matter how many times my name was used around set, it still caused a jolt in my stomach. Each time, it sent me into fight or flight mode, and I was well aware which response I tended to lean towards. Instinctively I took a step backwards, and bumped right into a hard body that had snuck up behind me while I’d been eavesdropping.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Firm hands grasped my arms, holding my body in place so I was forced to remain facing Madeline and Georgia. His voice was riddled with the sweet twang he used off camera, and it brushed against my ear as he spoke with barely contained irritation.
His animosity didn’t surprise me. When it came to me, Declan Davies didn’t seem to understand emotions that didn’t involve scowling. He loved to frown. He did it all the time, like when he found me ducking into random hiding spots at Madeline’s approach; or when I caught him watching me and Cam cut up around the set, on the rare