cameraman. “When you swing the head right, brace the legs and shake the back like you’ve just seen him. Close cover, watch the angle of the head here for pickups!”
Close cover was Magpie.)
I looked at the real bear, which was so close I could see that its eyes weren’t black at all, but brown and flecked with gold.
“You’re beautiful,” I said.
It grinned; two fingers dropped out of its mouth.
When I appeared in the back hall to the teachers’ offices and yanked Bree into the mostly empty pantry, she didn’t even seem suprised.
“They cut off Magpie’s fingers,” I said.
Bree blinked. “What?”
“Magpie,” I said. “The puppet handler for the bear. Someone tried to poach her, and her agency found out and cut two of her fingers off.”
“Oh, Poppy,” she said, “you’re so easy to shock, it’s like you’ve never heard of good business practice.”
It was a decent act, but her hands had gone white under the nails because of how hard she was gripping her book bag, so I knew better.
I said, “She didn’t do anything.”
“Lucky for her,” Bree said. “She’s better off than some.”
The hair rose on my neck.
After a beat, Bree looked me right in the eye. “Do you still want to do this part?”
I held her gaze. “Give me a reason not to.”
One of the kitchen kids opened the door.
“Frankly, I’m tired of all this insecurity,” Bree said, her neck getting longer by an inch. “Either you can do the part or you can’t. I suggest you just quit.”
She shouldered past me harder than necessary.
The kitchen kid gave me the once-over. He was even thinner than I was; they kept us hungry because it made our eyes shine.
“Break a leg,” he said.
All through dinner, I thought about what Bree said. If you couldn’t do the job, the agency expelled you. And now I knew that before they expelled you, they probably made you useless for other places, too.
If you weren’t in an agency, you were on the streets. On the streets the ratcatchers were waiting, and if they couldn’t sell you, they just disappeared you and brought in your skullcap for government cash.
(Once, the pediatric acting coach had told me that the rat-catcher had brought me to the agency because I looked so clever. She said it to make me feel better when I was failing some exercise, like the school had taken me for some reason besides my being young enough to be trained. She hadn’t lasted long.)
You’d have to be a bigger bitch than Bree to wish the streets on anybody.
And no way would she tell someone to skip out on a contract. Bree was a teacher. Bree made her money when the kids made money. She had the best interests of the agency at stake.
What was so awful about this part that it would be worth telling a student to take a risk like that?
I dreamed about crumbling in front of the camera, about scalding dust coating my lungs as I struggled to speak. I dreamed about my fingers being trapped inside the bear head, about Mason sighing and pulling a hunting knife out of his pocket to do what had to be done.
“I like the dark circles,” Mason said, the next time he saw me. “Very soldier. Good work.”
Mason didn’t come with me to the shoot.
“Today you belong to the director,” he said, opening the door to the van. “Do well for the agency, all right?”
I nodded, uneasy, and ducked into the seat.
As the engine roared to life, Bree appeared in the open doorway, her book bag over one shoulder.
“I’d like to go,” she said to Mason. “She’s been dropping the intensity in the second half, and when I’m there it helps her focus.”
“You slapped me,” I said.
She shot me a glare Mason couldn’t see, and said too calmly, “And it was the only time you’ve done it right.”
Mason looked at her for a second. Then he shrugged.
“I guess if anyone understands a performance like this, it’s you,” he said. “Be careful not to get in anyone’s way on the set.”
“Of course,” she said, and then she was sliding onto the bench seat beside me, and the van was pulling away, and suddenly she had horned in on my big moment.
I folded my arms. “What the hell is going on? What are you even planning to do when we get there?”
“Wait till we get there, and see,” she said.
The guy playing the newsman was from one of the adult agencies, but he was still young, and handsome enough that my palms went sweaty when we shook hands.
Then he looked up, placed Bree, and went wide-eyed. “And you’re the weeping bride,” he said, grinning as he held out his hand. “This is a pleasure. I’m such a fan of the work you did on that segment.”
“Good luck today,” said Bree.
When she was gone, he looked me over again. “Well, if she’s your teacher,” he said, “then I’m really looking forward to today.”
I tried not to blush like an idiot.
We did a run-through with the director, standing in the shade of the trailer, as the cameramen worked on angles and lights for the rocky outcrop where we’d be sitting.
I knew this place; I’d spent four days in these woods filming for the bear. The hazy skyline of New St. Vincent was ahead of us, out of sight; and near the rocks there was enough wilderness to fool the camera into thinking we were in scrub country.
Below us, farther down the rocks where the ground leveled off near the flooded riverbank, was the swampland that seeped into your costume and reeked, and made your legs weigh a hundred pounds more than they told you it would, and looked like a charming springtime meadow when you viewed it through the lens.
“Good,” the director said, after the first rehearsal. “Poppy, you’re so natural with the gun, that’s great, but maybe you could work on the sadness a little? We want the Uppers to really ache for the cause. And Prentis, I like your interest in her—let’s play that up on this round, increase the focus.”
“Sure thing,” said Prentis, and winked at me.
Bree cut in. “I’d like to see you to work on those last few lines, Poppy. Full costume, please.”
I slid off the stool, mortified, and sulked over to the edge of the set, where Bree was waiting.
“You have to go,” she said, under her breath.
I could have hit her myself. I’d never been so furious. “Are you trying to get me fired? Do you know what’s going to happen to me if they drop me from this piece? I don’t need help from you if this—”
“They’re going to kill you,” she said.
I stopped talking, with my mouth still open. My stomach dropped to my boots.
I wanted to scream that she was lying—she had to be lying—but a lot of little things were beginning to make sense in a hurry, as if I had just looked at my stinging arm and seen the ants devouring it.
(Think about this, Mason had said.)
“How do you know?” I asked.
“The grips have been laying wire along the rocks while you were busy. Don’t look,” she snapped, like I would have.
