This Is What Happy Looks Like(6)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Hey,” Quinn called, just as Ellie was about to walk out the door, her shoulders now bare except for the thin straps of her tank top. “Sunscreen?”

“I’m fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. It was just the second week of summer vacation and already Quinn had a deep tan. Ellie, on the other hand, was only ever one of two shades: very white or very pink. When they were little, she’d landed in the hospital with a bad case of sun poisoning after a trip to the beach, and ever since then, Quinn had taken it upon herself to enforce the liberal use of sunblock. It was a habit that Ellie found simultaneously endearing and annoying—after all, she already had a mother—but nevertheless, Quinn was unrelenting in her duties.

Outside, Ellie paused to study the movie set being assembled down the street. There was less of a crowd now; people must have grown tired of watching the teams of men in black shirts rushing around with heavy trunks of equipment. But just as she was about to head up toward the gift shop, she noticed a guy in a Dodgers cap approaching the ice-cream parlor.

His head was low and his hands were in his pockets, but everything about his casual posture suggested a kind of effort; he was trying so hard to blend in that he ended up sticking out all the more. Part of her was thinking that he could be anyone—he was, after all, just a guy; just a boy, really—but she knew immediately that he wasn’t. She knew exactly who he was. There was something too sharply defined about him, like he was walking across a billboard or a stage rather than a small street in Maine. The whole thing was oddly surreal, and for a moment, Ellie could almost see the magic in it; she could almost understand why someone might fall under his spell.

When he was just a few feet away from her, he glanced up, and she was startled by his eyes, a blue so deep she’d always half assumed they were touched up in the magazines. But even from beneath the brim of his cap, they were penetrating, and she pulled in a sharp breath as they landed on her briefly before sliding over to the awning of the shop.

The thought occurred to her with surprising force: He’s sad. She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she was suddenly certain that it was true. Underneath all the rest of it—an unexpected nervousness, a hint of caution, a bit of wariness—there was also a sadness so deep it startled her. It was there in his eyes, which were so much older than the rest of him, and in the practiced blankness of his gaze.

She’d read about him, of course, and seemed to recall that he wasn’t one of those celebrities always in and out of rehab. As far as she knew, he didn’t have financial troubles or nightmare parents. He hadn’t been brought up as one of those poor child stars either; his big break had happened only a couple of years ago. She’d heard he celebrated his sixteenth birthday by flying the entire cast of his last movie to Switzerland to go skiing in the Alps. And he’d been linked to several of the most sought-after young actresses in Hollywood.

There was no reason Graham Larkin should be sad.

But he is, Ellie thought.

He’d come to a stop outside the ice-cream parlor and seemed to be weighing something as he stood there. To her surprise, his eyes drifted over to her one more time, and she smiled reflexively. But he only gazed at her for a long moment, his face unchanged beneath the low brim of his cap, and the smile slid from her face again.

As she watched, he squared his shoulders and stepped up to the door of the shop, and Ellie’s eyes caught Quinn’s through the window. She mouthed something that Ellie couldn’t make out, her face a picture of disbelief, and then turned her attention back to the entrance as the bell rang out and Graham Larkin made his way inside.

It was only then that the photographers appeared, seemingly from nowhere, six of them, with enormous black cameras and bags strung over their shoulders, each of them rushing to press against the window, where they began to snap photos with frantic intensity. From inside the store, Graham Larkin didn’t even turn around.

Ellie stood there for another moment, her eyes flicking between the window, where Quinn was smiling behind the counter as he approached, and the photographers, who were jostling one another for better angles. Those milling around in the streets nearby started to drift closer, drawn to the scene by some sort of magnetic pull, an irresistible mixture of celebrity and spectacle. But as the crowd grew, Ellie took a few steps backward, making her escape around the side of the building before anyone could notice she was gone.

From: [email protected]

Sent: Sunday, June 9, 2013 10:24 AM

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: what happy looks like

Visiting new places.

Chapter 2

Graham had been visualizing this moment for weeks now. And so the way it was all unfolding—the town looking just as he’d imagined it, the rows of shops and the salty breeze at his back—almost made it feel like he was in a dream.

The sun was gauzy behind a thin film of clouds, and his head was pounding. He’d taken the red-eye to Portland and, as usual, hadn’t slept at all. Graham had never flown when he was growing up, and even with things like first-class seating and private jets, he was still restless and anxious in the air, unaccustomed to the rhythms of this type of travel, no matter how much of his life seemed to be spent on a plane.

But it didn’t matter now. As he walked to the shop, he felt more alert than he had in ages, wide awake and burning with conviction. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way. In the past two years, as his life had become increasingly unrecognizable, Graham had grown as malleable as a piece of clay. He was now accustomed to being told what to do, how to act, who to see, and what to say when he saw them. Casual-seeming conversations on the couches of talk shows were pre-scripted. Dates were set up for him by his people. His clothes were chosen by a stylist who was forever trying to wrangle him into V-neck shirts and skinny jeans, things he’d never have been caught dead in before.

But before felt like a million years ago.

And this is how things were in the after.

If someone had told him two years ago that he’d be living on his own at seventeen—in a house three times the size of the one he’d grown up in, complete with a pool and a game room and the necessary precaution of a state-of-the-art security system—Graham would have laughed. But like everything else that came on the heels of his first movie role and the unexpected feeding frenzy that followed it, this just seemed like the next logical step. There had been a momentum to the whole chain of events that struck him as inevitable. First there was a new agent, then a new publicist; a new house and a new car; new ways of acting in public and new tutors to help him finish high school while filming; new rules for social engagements; and, of course, new and previously unimagined possibilities for getting into trouble.