I’m willing to nod and claim my new name, but Monica corrects him. “Close, it’s CeCe.”
Richard nods, and then turns, his attention clearly needed elsewhere. “Where the hell is Victoria? We haven’t got all day, people!”
Monica drops her arm from my shoulder and takes my hand, leading me out of the room. “They’ll be a while, let’s go wait in my trailer.”
I follow Monica out the back door toward the trailers that are lined up on the side of Old 98. The trailers I used to walk by, hoping that someone from the cast would stop and notice me.
As we climb the stairs to the middle trailer, I notice her last name, and mine, written on a white sheet of paper taped to the door.
“Would you take a picture of me here, too?” I ask.
Monica looks up at our last name on the door and smiles. We trade places on the steps, and I pose, perfectly framing my name. Hopefully it looks like I’m just casually walking into my personal trailer. One day when I’m on the Tonight Show, maybe they’ll show this photo and I’ll tell them the story about the first day my stepmom took me with her to the set.
Inside, the trailer isn’t nearly as fancy as I thought it would be. There’s an old couch with a little table at one end, and a vanity set up with more hair and makeup products than I’ve ever seen outside of Sephora.
Monica notices me staring and nods permission for me to go look closer. I sit down on the chair in front of the vanity mirror and she reaches over me to flip a switch that makes all the lights around the mirror turn on. I smile at our side-by-side reflections, wishing I didn’t look so much like my mom.
All of Monica’s makeup is organized by type and by color. Her lipstick is lined up like crayons in a box, almost every shade from the palest pink to a red so deep it almost looks black.
“I think you’d look fab in this one,” Monica says, reaching for a soft, pastel pink. I’m about to take it from her hands when I realize she already has the lid off and is twisting it up. She reaches down to lift my chin and shows me how to pout my lips just so.
Not smiling in that moment is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but when she’s finished, we both turn to look in the mirror. I raise an eyebrow, not sure about the color. Luckily, Monica shares my opinion. She hands me a tissue to wipe it off and reaches for a rich red shade instead.
“This was always your dad’s favorite,” Monica says. She smiles a little and I wonder how many other things she knows about Dad that I don’t. That Mom doesn’t even know—she barely ever wears makeup.
I pout my lips and look back up at Monica as she concentrates, applying the lipstick to my bottom lip and then my top. I rub my lips together and watch as she does the same, applying the red shade on top of the lipstick she’s already wearing.
“It’s called Lady Bug,” Monica says. I try to memorize the name so I can buy it when I get home, but Monica hands it to me. “You can keep it, it looks good on you.”
I smile at my reflection in the mirror, wondering if I can get Monica to tell me more stories about when she and my dad were married. Before I can ask anything, the trailer door flies open and a woman with a walkie-talkie sticks her head inside.
“Richard’s looking for you,” the woman says.
“You don’t say, Kate,” Monica says, looking like she’s anything but concerned.
“It’s Laura.” The woman doesn’t look happy. “And he’s going to come and get you himself if you’re not there in sixty seconds.”
Monica sighs as if going on set to act is a chore instead of the coolest thing ever. I wonder if they have a place with chairs and monitors where I can watch like they do on my mom’s commercial sets. But when we get outside, Monica leans down and presses her cheek to mine, doing a fancy French air kiss like they do in the movies. It’s all so Hollywood.
“Until next time, my dear.”
I smile and watch her go. Sad, but excited there will be a next time.