My cell buzzed with yet another message from my parents. I was ready to conk out, but I glanced at my phone remorsefully. There had been a slew of texts and voicemails from my family. Mostly, I had ignored them. But I needed to tell somebody about my casting. And, generally speaking, I just needed to talk to someone I had known for more than a week who wasn’t Kim, even if I couldn’t talk about the things I really needed to discuss.
But I also couldn’t tell Mom about Wonder Woman or it would be an hour before the whole world knew, and I couldn’t call Mom and not tell her. So I called Rachel instead. It was late, but it was also Friday.
“Well, if it isn’t my little sister,” she said when she picked up. “Mom says you’ve been in LA all week. Are you planning on coming home?”
I smiled. Rachel was three years older, but she grew up in my shadow. She had earned the right to needle me whenever she pleased.
“You lost whatever claim you had left to calling me ‘little sister’ when I finished college first,” I teased.
“Pff, fine. Come down to the bar with me and I’ll buy you a couple shots – oh wait, that’s right. You’re not old enough to drink.”
“Wouldn’t want to, anyway. My body is a temple.”
“A temple you pay tribute to with greasy cheeseburgers from McDonald’s!”
She had a point.
“Well, anyway, you have time to talk, or are you out with Daniel?”
She drawled, “Ohhh, as the elder sibling, I think I can make time to properly enlighten you with my advanced wisdom and experience.”
“We graduated high school together and I’ve been out working for six months while you just finished your degree. Yes, please tell me all about your wisdom and experience at doing things at a slower pace,” I said.
“I’m sorry we can’t all be super-geniuses that donate our academic scholarships to more deserving individuals,” she said. That was the closest I was going to get toward gratitude from her in this conversation.
“So yeah, uh, Los Angeles…”
“Mom told me you got flown down for an interview?” she said. “What’s that about? And why are you still there if it’s just an interview?”
I said, “Oh, the interview was just a formality. They were already going to hire me.”
“Of course they would,” she said, with obvious eye-rolling. “Who wouldn’t want to hire the great Abigail Phoenix? I used to hate you when everyone would go, ‘Aristoklis? Are you related to Abby?’ At this point, I wish you’d use the family name so I could at least cling to your coattails.”
I laughed politely. “Well, this is a little different. I passed the first round without trouble. My agent likes me just fine. It’s the contract he’s working out for me now that was a little trickier.”
“You have an agent?” she said.
“Don’t act surprised,” I said. “I’ve had an agent before. I had to hire somebody when I realized N-Hance wasn’t just going to have me work behind the scenes.”
“Yeah. Smooth move, by the way – killing your co-worker.”
“I was ready to move on,” I said sarcastically. “It was a great way to get out of my contract.”
“…that just makes me even more frightened of you. Are they still going to sell those videos?”
“I think so,” I said. “Once they realized that more of the public supported me for defending myself than hated me for killing their beloved MMA star, they realized they needed to put something out until they could find a new headliner.”
“Okay, so what do you need an agent for? You don’t play a team sport. Did another fitness company hire you?”
I chuckled. “Non-compete clause. Strike one.”
“Yeah, well, if you were in Vegas, I might think you were going to do prizefighting, since I could see you mauling other women in the ring.”
“I’m not really a kickboxer, and they don’t have women’s MMA yet. It’s coming, but who the hell would be in my weight class? I’d have to fight men, and nobody would allow that. Nope, strike two. Not sports or fighting.”
“Not fair, that wasn’t a guess!” Rachel hesitated. “But who else hires agents? Unlike me, you’re not going to be working on any literary contracts. And after hearing you sing, I’d believe you were going into music as much as I would that Food Network was hiring you. The only other…people who…wait, Los Angeles? Hollywood? Abby, are you going to try to make it as an actress?”
“I’m not going to try, Rachel. I’m going to be an actress. That ‘interview’ was actually an audition, and I got the part!”
Rachel gasped. “Oh, wow! Abby! I mean, you’re certainly pretty enough, but aren’t you kinda tall? You’re probably, like, eight inches taller than Tom Cruise. What are you going to play?”
“Ummm….Wonder Woman?” I said innocently.
Rachel said, “Hah, yeah. That’d be appropriate, wouldn’t it? But what are you really playing?”
“No, really, I’m playing Wonder Woman. They’re going to announce it on Monday.”
“You…how…no…I don’t…you’re really…AHHHHH!!”
My ears rang for a second or two. “That was a good scream, right? A happy scream — not a ‘I hate your guts for life’ scream?”
Rachel laughed. “Yes, you dork. Of course it’s a happy scream. Abby, wow…I didn’t even think you could act.”
“Neither did I.”
“Err, can you?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said, “but I started taking lessons this week. They wanted me that badly.”
Rachel and I said nothing for a moment. I needed that time to pause and let it sink in just as much as she did, really. There‘d been no time for acceptance earlier today, other than my own happy scream back at Rosie’s.
“Mom is gonna freak,” Rachel said.
“No! You can’t tell her, Rach.”
“But Abby! She’s gonna kill you if she finds out after the fact.”
“Fine, tell her for me Monday morning. That way she knows before the rest of the world, but she doesn’t have time to tell the rest of the world.”
“You’re no fun,” Rachel pouted. “But fine. If it has to be a secret.”
“I almost didn’t call you, either,” I said, “but I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
“Why didn’t you tell that imaginary friend of your’s?”
I had slipped a few times in my childhood and mentioned Kim. Rachel never let me live down the fact that I still had an imaginary friend when I was in fifth grade. I didn’t think it was that weird for a nine-year-old.
“Well, I did, Rachel,” I said, “but you see, as hard as this is to believe, telling someone who doesn’t have a face you can watch, and a separate voice they can answer with, is really no different than talking in the mirror. It helps a little, but it’s just not the same.”
Rachel said flatly, “Do you really still have an imaginary friend, Abby?”
“Why, of course I do! Where would she go?”
“You are such a dork,” Rachel said. “Why are you the one that gets everything?”
“Because my imaginary friend got me the hook-up,” I said. “On that note, can I tell you about what I got to do today?”
“What did you do today?” she said woodenly, humoring me.
“You know how hard it is for me to shop for clothes.”
“Right. When all our aunts stop giving you clothes for your birthday because they can’t find anything that fits, you know it’s bad.”
“Except the ones that can knit,” I said. “Well, the agent has somebody he uses to basically do a style makeover. We spent the entire day shopping out on Hollywood Boulevard and Rodeo Drive.”
“Ha, and they actually had clothes you could wear?”
I spent the next far-too-long telling her about my time shopping, sent a picture of my partially-stocked closet, and went on to describe the audition, the hotel room they had me in, the guy that was chauffeuring me around the city, the acting lessons. Basically everything that didn’t involve Rosie and her friends.
“So not fair,” she said. “I can’t borrow shoes that are a size 14!”
“You were never really the shoe type, Rach,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t wear a pair of Louboutinis if I had them. Hey, did you hear about that foster home where all those kids died?”
I groaned. “Yeah, it’s terrible. The worst part is that their suspect looks just like me.”
“It isn’t you, is it?” Her tone suggested this has been why she brought the topic up.
“Rachel, why in the world would I be at a foster home in…whatever part of town that was? Compton?”
“Why would you get into a fight to the death with one of the world top MMA fighters?” she countered.
“He was a co-worker, we were on a date, and it happened at my apartment. What connection would I have to an orphanage?”
“The United States doesn’t have orphanages, dork,” she said. “And I noticed you still haven’t said no.”
My sister would know if I was lying to her, acting lessons or not.
“…Abby?”
“No,” Kim said for me. “No, Rachel. I had no business anywhere near Julie-whatever’s home for kids.”
“If you say so,” she answered, but she didn’t sound convinced.
Thank you, I said to Kim.
“So anyway, I was calling to blow some steam before bed,” Kim said, “but I have another acting lesson early in the morning, and now I have to downplay my appearance since the entire city is going to be looking for a woman who matches my description.”
“Good luck, Abby,” she said sadly. “Try not to get arrested.”
Certainly not my intention.