The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

“Why do you do that?” I blink away tears. “It burns.”

She shrugs. “Beauty must suffer—haven’t you heard?” She applies it to her own lips and smacks them without flinching.

“You look beautiful,” I say. “Are you dancing tonight?”

She shakes her head, curls bouncing.

She’s a dancer, but I’ve never gotten to see her dance because you have to be a grown-up to go to the place where she dances. But we like to dance together when we’re watching American Idol or America’s Got Talent, and I can tell how good she is.

“So, do you have a date?”

She spritzes herself with perfume that smells like jasmine. “You know it, girl.”

The bathroom’s so small that now I smell like jasmine too, which makes me feel like she’s hugging me. “Who’s the lucky gentleman?” She likes it when I call her dates gentlemen. It makes her laugh.

“I don’t even know if I should tell you.” Her sky-blue eyes twinkle. “It’s a secret.”

“Why’s it a secret? Is he a politician?” She’s told me how much politicians love to keep secrets. Especially the ones who talk about Jesus a lot.

“Even better.” She breezes into our bedroom and rifles through the overstuffed closet, pulling out a sparkly silver dress.

“Now you have to tell me,” I beg. “I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

She shimmies into the minidress and offers me her back. “He’s a movie star,” she says as I zip her up.

My eyes go wide. “Which one?”

“Only your favorite.” She grins.

“Cole Power?” I gasp. I don’t even like boys yet, and I like him. I would have a poster of him above my bed if I didn’t share a bed with my mom. “You have a date with the Cole Power?”

She nods. I spring onto the bed and start jumping and squealing. I can’t control myself. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! Holy shit, Mom!”

“Iris!” she corrects me.

“Sorry. I’m just so excited!” I bounce onto my butt next to her on the tired pink comforter.

“How’d you meet him?”

She removes a shoe box from a shopping bag and takes out a pair of sky-high silver heels to match the dress. “He came into the club last night and liked me so much he spent the entire evening with me.”

“So that’s how you got those new shoes.” I laugh.

She slips them on and stands. “What do you think?”

“You look like a supermodel,” I say. It’s true, she’s the most gorgeous mom anybody ever had. I’m sure of it. “Maybe he’ll want to marry you.” My eyes travel to the black-and-white poster of the Eiffel Tower hanging above our bed. “We could finally go to Paris!” But a cloud darkens my happiness as I remember the cover of one of the magazines sitting on our coffee table. “He’s married already though. He got married to Stella Rivers, like, last month.”

“That’s why it’s a secret,” she says, stuffing things into her purse. “But don’t worry. Celebrities have affairs all the time. It’s no big deal. And anyway, marriage is overrated. Better to be the one he’s cheating with than the one he’s cheating on!”

She pulls me in for a jasmine hug and kisses me on the mouth, leaving my lips burning. But I don’t mind. My mom is going on a date with Cole Power.

September 8, 2018The Biz ReportTaylor Wasserman and Rory Wexler Dumped

from Woodland Studios(Developing)

New details are emerging about Taylor Wasserman and Rory Wexler’s abrupt firing from Woodland Studios yesterday. Former colleagues say each was escorted from the lot separately around 4:00 p.m., but no details were released until a company-wide memo went out this morning. According to the memo, Wasserman and Wexler were let go due to “misappropriation of funds” over a period of months. Sources say the creative accounting was to cover up an affair between the two that had been going on for over a year. Items under investigation include expensive dinners in London, New York, and Los Angeles, thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes and jewelry, and personal use of the company jet. Wasserman is the daughter of Woodland Studios SVP, David Wasserman, who could not be reached for comment.

Taylor

The thatched straw umbrella did little to cut the heat of the day, which had blossomed from warm to flat-out torrid as the breeze off the bay faltered. I’d been tracking the weather obsessively to ensure that production was prepared for whatever Mother Nature had in store, but clearly my weather app had misjudged the situation. High today of eighty with showers in the afternoon, my ass. It had to be at least ninety-five and not a cloud in the cobalt sky. I fanned myself with my hat as I tried in vain to concentrate on matching the list of script changes Cole requested with the script changes Stella requested before the shit hit the fan tomorrow with the first day of filming, but it was next to impossible with Stella perched on the edge of my lounger gossiping with Cole about famous people they knew and reminiscing about old times with strangely combative undertones.

It wasn’t fair; I was here first. Sure, it would’ve been much easier to do my work in the privacy of my bungalow, but I’d hoped Stella would scoot so that I could ask Cole the dreaded question away from prying ears. That, however, was apparently not in the cards, and moving wasn’t an option, as all the other sunshades were now occupied by cast and crew.

The camera and set design departments were recognizable by their tans, having been on the island with Jackson for preproduction nearly a month already, but everyone else had arrived today, and were making the most of the picturesque beach before being swept into six weeks of minimum twelve-hour days. Out in the bright bay, four guys attempted to race paddleboards, while the soccer game I’d been part of earlier had morphed into a boisterous game of football; the next umbrella over, someone was singing “No Woman, No Cry,” strumming a guitar.