By the next day, I had calmed down. I woke up thinking about Zach, knowing I should have explained things better and made sure he was okay. I rolled out of bed, went for my purse comma and dumped it out. My phone lightly tumbled onto the beige carpet beside my feet.
No messages. No texts, no calls, no nothing.
I let out a sigh. I held tight to the phone, then decided I should try to call Zach. He didn't pick up. So I hung up on his outgoing voice message, and didn't leave a message. I stared at the screen of my phone, I quietly walked to my bedroom door and looked down the hall in the direction of Zach's room, it was too quiet for him to possibly be here, and I knew mom was at Gallagher and dad was in New York. I let out another long sigh, then crawled back under the warm sheets in bed. I didn't hear Zach come in last night, at all, in fact I don't think he's at home here at all. I hugged a pillow close to my chest, I started thinking over everything I'd said, everything we had said, with each replay I thought of how to explain things better and what I should have said. Surely Zach had found out the truth, right? When he did find out, he would call me right? I set the phone on my nightstand next to my bed, trying to compose the perfect message in my mind before calling him again or even trying to text him.
A picture of my parents rested on the bedside table, three of us look so young in the picture, my parents almost look scared but yet happy in that picture. I reached for my phone again but instead I grabbed the silver picture frame. The love on my mom's face was painful, she knew bring a spy and marrying a spy that life was gonna be hard and challenging but yet they were both so happy together. Of course in the picture that's what life was like, happy but kind of scary, before dad got kidnapped and we were convinced that he was killed.
On set, the process was interesting and exciting but I really didn't get it; I had no desire to share my private thoughts with everyone, film people made exciting friends but you didn't date them. Kind of like spy people, they make exciting great and trustful friends, but it's dangerous to date them. It's even more dangerous to date someone in the Hollywood world who is also a spy, I guess I've learned my lesson…that was just messy.
I should have never tried with Zach, I knew better, Zach didn't trust me and had created this whole fight out of nothing. This was his life, he was an actor. Yes he was a spy too, but acting is his whole life, being a spy is something you can't talk about, it's something you try to cover up keep it hidden.
What was I thinking? I found myself sitting up as I sort of had an epiphany, what was I thinking? Being with Zach would never work. I put the picture frame down and got out of bed, my heart was racing and my mind was now clear. If he really trusts everyone else's Hollywood mouth over my word, than his freaking loss. He didn't need another explanation. I need to finish my post-production work and get this job on my "real world" resume and get on with my life.
Twenty people sat in the conference room, the only people I recognized were the actors and personal assistants. The rest of the postproduction team were new to me. Ashley and I sat in chairs against the wall and the key players were at the conference table in the middle of the room. The assistant director went over the scheduling of postproduction plans. Zach would even look at me, let alone meet my gaze. Ashley threw speculative looks between Zach and I but I wasn't going to volunteer any information. The director gave his welcome and then turned the meeting back over to the assistant director. When the slipped from the room in the middle of the assistant director's speech, Zach followed him. On his way past my chair, he pointed for me to follow.
Great, so this was how its going to be? Zach didn't even call me PA or personal assistant, he was just going to point from now on?
When I reached the corridor, Zach was speaking in a low, intense voice to the director. His arms were crossed over his chest, his feet braced apart, and the director had his hands out, palms up.
I reached them in time to hear the last bit of Zach's sentence. "It's either her or me."
I felt my face flood with heat and my stomach started to churn. Really? Now I'm beyond pissed.
"Zach, she's one of the interns go goes to college in a few weeks, we'll just assign her to a new department."
"Uh I work in all departments, but I won't if she's there."
I took a step back, my mouth felt so dry as I stood there and listened, I could honestly go full boxing mode and just go off on Zach right now. I'm sure it would feel so good to kick him in his gut.
The director sighed and looked at me, "Cammie, you have done such a great job, honestly, but we can't replace Zach. We'll put you on another production for the rest of your time."
I took another step back, I felt myself swallow hard, and took a breath to steady my voice so I didn't snap. "No need, I'm going home." My eyes started to burn as I turned away from them, I held my head high and proud but truthfully, I was trying to hold it together, so I didn't cry. I cannot believe Zach just got me fired. I'd have to explain this whole mess to my parents and then say that Zach got me fired, when I didn't even do anything wrong. I should have listened to dad, he said spy or not Hollywood can be messy, that's why he never lived in LA, he was here with mom in Roseville, Virginia. Far from the movie drama.
I ended up walking to the furthest bathroom, one rarely even touched, I ran my hands under the cool water in the faucet, in an attempt to cool down. My eyes just stared back at me in the mirror, red, and my cheeks were red. The cool water didn't help. I just gave up and drove home.
Once I got home, one good thing was there to greet me, a letter from Georgetown, confirming my invitation to move in early and to an extra mission training on campus and take two classes, full credit for the second half of the summer. I wasn't going to accept this opportunity, but no reason not to now. I straightened my shoulders and headed up to my room to pack. I was going to college early.
Zach spent the next month and a half in postproduction meetings, cleaning up technical issues from filming and generally jumping down the throat of anyone who mentioned anything to do with his "playboy life style", Garrett or me. Today he was meeting the sound team to rerecord some of the dialogue, most of the other actors would be there too.
Tina leaned against the wall near Zach, she was wearing too much of her god awful perfume. She used Zach as a captive audience, to chat. For ten minutes, she talked about herself, her wardrobe, her idea for a line of fragrances to match jewelry. Zach's eyelids lowered and jerked back awake when Ashley jumped in with one of her exclamations of agreement. All Ashley ever did was agree with everything Tina said by repeating most of Tina's phrases. Standing with the two of them was like being stuck in the most boring eco chamber.
Zach just pinched his fingers between his eyes; he needed more sleep. They were shooting an action film in the lot near his trailer and the sound effects went straight through his thin walls. He didn't go back to live with the Morgan's, he assumed he wouldn't be welcomed there, and he hadn't yet replaced the realtor he had fired.
Powder turned the corner and joined them, makeup people rarely visited sound booths. Frankly he welcomed the break form Tina and Ashley. "Hiya." Zach had said.
Powder ignored his greeting. "Have you seen Cammie's notebook?"
"No." Zach had clapped off the word, he didn't want to have this discussion.
"She called and said she left it behind, you know, when she was fired, but I can't find it."
Zach, Ashley and Tina answered Powder with silence.
Ashley said, "She must've sold the notes when she sold her story."
"Sold her notebook?" Powder snorted and turned to Ashley.
"Yeah." Ashley spoke fast, "She used to right stuff down we said, I thought she was writing a diary, all those words. Now I understand, she probably sold her memoir to the highest bidder at the tabloids."
Zach rubbed his temple; a headache was starting to pound as Ashley continued to break out accusations. He breathed in, trying one of those count to five and then let out the breath. It didn't really help.
Powder just rolled her eyes, "You guys are so clueless, she didn't care what you said, that notebook was for other stuff." And with that he made a disgusted noise and left.
Honestly the month and a half of my summer flew by, two girls who went to Gallagher with me, Kim Lee and Anna Fetterman were to come to Georgetown with me in the fall, but I saw Anna around campus some during the summer. It was nice to see a familiar face around, but I've had so much fun just calling Macey, Liz and Bex and keeping up with them while I made new friends. There were seven people in this summer program including myself, it was nice to see who the up and coming spies were in my generation, I didn't get much exposure to other spy training schools in the country, since there isn't many of them and usually they all have a façade to them. Gallagher was seen as a preppy all girls school for the wealthy. Well it was a beautiful façade, but there was always more than what fits the picture of course. I had made great friends with my room mate. Well, we had a mini apartment and we each had out own bed room, but she is technically my roommate. She is so sweet and so fun, we have the same sense of humor and we are on the same mental clock, stay up super late even though gym time started at 4 am. We had pulled too many all nighters. The warm mornings were so refreshing, the brick buildings on campus being lit up with the sunrise was always a sight to see. Everything looked the same everyday, but it was beautiful and a refreshing change from the Hollywood bull shit.
Some of the "normal" kids were staring their move in prep, normal kids like not spies, start moving in early this month, since it was August now. First it is the resident hall assistants that monitored the people in the dorm, then the sports people moved in, then the people that help freshman during the welcome week, thennn move in crew move in - they help the incoming freshman move in.
With more people coming onto campus the college excitement is starting to kick in. At the beginning of my early summer experience I was more nervous than anything, plus I was still blowing off steam about Zach getting be fired. Now I'm excited because I'm in college now, even though I'm on the special classes with spy stuff, I can still do some of the typical college stuff, I can go Greek if I want and I can have normal friends, even party if I wanted it. I just can't tell any normal person about my spy life and when I go to parties, I signed my life away on a contract that I cannot have more than three drinks so I do not run the risk of being drunk and telling spy secrets then not remembering it.
Although, I cannot believe even in college, I still have to take foreign language classes, while I know I need to keep my proficiency up, I hate studying for their tests because I always end up mixing some of the Slavic languages up when I'm under pressure.
I did have French today, I walked with my roommate, Megan, to class. And I don't know where it hit me, but as we prepared for finals next week, the idea of French made me think of Zach. Missing him, sharing laughs with him, freezing in the icy rain with him, and being angry with him. Being angry had taken up too much of my time, mostly I'm over it, but I'm not going to lie, the other night Megan and I popped off campus to go to the grocery store and I caught myself looking at the tabloids while we past the isle with the magazines. I couldn't stop my thoughts sometimes. Like tabloids? That's how far I had fallen and how desperate to hear news about him? I knew the stories and headlines weren't true by any means, I still hated seeing his picture on the cover with girls around him. And there was lots to hate because there were lots of pictures, fans, models, and actresses.
As shitty as it sounded, I really didn't tell Megan much about that first half of the summer, and I only ended up breaking the news to my parents as the drove me to Georgetown to move in. Of course my parents were pissed, by dad had such a pull in the spy world and the Hollywood world that he threatened to make Zach regret that decision of believing some bimbo over me, but I just asked my parents to let it be and just act like it didn't really happen if they saw him.