This Is What Happy Looks Like(8)

Later, all the magazines would describe his emergence as a star in ways that made him sound like a cartoon character, how he’d been “plucked from obscurity” or “skyrocketed to fame” or “catapulted into the limelight.” And that was sort of how it felt. He enjoyed the acting part of it more than he thought he would, and at first, he found the world of Hollywood intriguing, a welcome distraction from the smaller melodramas of high school.

But what nobody ever told him was that once something like this happens to you, there’s no going back. In hindsight, this seemed like it should have been obvious, something he might have realized before everything was already in motion, but there was a slow inertia to the whole process that made it feel less like a catapult and more like a tumble down a hill. And as with most cartoon characters, once the ground ran out beneath him, he continued to hang there in midair, legs churning, hoping that if he just kept moving, maybe he wouldn’t fall.

It was lonelier than he ever could have imagined. There were agents and managers and directors, costars and tutors and wardrobe specialists, publicists and hairstylists and image consultants. But none of them seemed quite real to him, and when the cameras stopped rolling, they faded away like opportunistic ghosts. He tried to keep up with his friends from high school, but something had shifted between them, and in this strange and uncharted territory, they didn’t know how to act around him anymore. He’d drifted too far beyond the world of curfews and homework and soccer practice, and once he stopped offering up his house for parties, there was little reason for them to see one another anymore.

It was the same with the new people he met at events and parties, and with the girls he met pretty much everywhere. Before, he’d been the guy everyone wanted to be around because he was funny, and because he knew how to have a good time, and because underneath it all, he was actually pretty decent. But now he was the guy everyone wanted to be around because he was good-looking and famous and had a nice house, or because they wanted those things too, and thought he might be the key.

So when he wasn’t working, he holed up and read the scripts his agent sent, trying to fill his days. He went to parties only occasionally, usually to meet some hot new director or a writer he’d been hearing good things about, and when the photographers inevitably showed up, he smiled grimly and left as soon as he could slip away. He read more books than he ever had in school. He ordered more pizza than he thought was possible. He played video games with depressing enthusiasm. He adopted a pig and the two of them spent most of their days out by the pool.

Then one of his e-mails found its way to her.

And just like that, he understood the power of the Internet. There was something intoxicating in the anonymity of it all. Suddenly, he had a clean slate. He was as much a mystery to her as she was to him, no longer Graham Larkin, but just GDL824. And GDL824 could be anyone, a hundred different brands of seventeen-year-old guy: the kind who lived for football or who won awards for playing chess, the type who smoked on the bike path behind school or who was one of those geniuses already in his second year of med school. He might be a guy who collected butterflies or baseball pennants or girlfriends. He could be a fan of rock stars or tennis stars or the countless stars in the sky. He could be a fan of Graham Larkin, for all it mattered.

The point was, he could be anyone.

For weeks, as he reported for preproduction on his newest movie—a love story, this time, to showcase his more sensitive side—he struggled to keep his attention on the studio in L.A. But his mind was all the way on the other side of the country. Ever since she first mentioned she was from Maine, Graham had found himself reading up on the state as if it were some sort of exotic land.

Did you know that the wild blueberry is the state berry of Maine? he wrote to her one night. And, more important, that the state treat is the whoopie pie?

I don’t even know what a whoopie pie is, she’d written back. And I work in a sweet shop. So I have a feeling you’re making that up.

I’m not, he responded. In fact, I imagine that all towns in Maine are paved with whoopie pies.

Not Henley, she’d said, and like a coal miner grasping about in the darkness, he was suddenly presented with the tiniest crack of light.

Just a few days earlier, the location scout for the film had been fired after it was discovered that the North Carolina town where they were meant to be shooting for the first month of the summer was under attack by a swarm of cicadas. The director was furious that she’d managed to overlook a bug infestation that showed up every thirteen years like clockwork, but Graham had been secretly pleased.

He’d suggested changing the location to Henley, pointing out that it had everything they were looking for: the quaint shops, the scenic harbor, the rough stretch of beach. He spoke of it as if he’d been there many times, and the truth was, he’d thought about the place so often recently that, in a way, it felt like he had.

Still, it took some convincing, and in the end, Graham had been forced to act the way everyone always seemed to expect him to act anyway: he was petulant and demanding and condescending. He made threats and waved his phone around menacingly. And to his surprise, it had worked. New scouts were sent ahead and reported back that it was indeed a perfect location. Permissions were obtained and papers were signed. The second unit went out early to start collecting B roll. And Graham and his costars were slated to spend four weeks at the Henley Inn, which was just three-tenths of a mile from the only sweet shop in town.