Everything Leads to You(76)

“If you’d ever been to where I grew up, you wouldn’t call it ‘here.’”

“What’s it like?”

“Pawn shops. Check-cashing stores. Liquor stores.”

“Sure,” I say, because these places are everywhere.

He holds up his hand as if to say, Let me finish, so I shut up and look out at the dark sky and listen.

“Empty buildings,” he says. “Guys on the street all day. Fields covered in trash. Street signs full of bullet holes. Boarded-up windows. People who look decades older than they are. Grandmas who just take every tragedy like it’s expected, just take another kid into their houses and act like it’s not crowded already, like it isn’t a burden to feed another one.”

“All right,” I say. A concession. He’s speaking like he’s in a trance, like he could go on for ages, but also like it hurts him.

“Guns,” he says. “Guns everywhere. I got my first gun when I was twelve. A gift from my cousin. We went out onto the street and I shot it into the sky. Everything went silent.”

“So what happened?” I ask. “Why did you leave?”

“My grandma died. I was in the foster system once, before she got custody, and I sure as hell wasn’t going back again. There were plenty of ways for me to make a living in the neighborhood, but I didn’t want her looking down from above, shaking her head in disgust.”

“What about the rest of your family? Do they know where you are?”

“Pops is locked up. My mom’s dead.”

“So is mine,” Ava says.

I don’t know when she woke up, but she’s sitting now, pulling a hoodie over her legs, and Charlotte’s walking back toward us, sitting down next to her.

Jamal turns to Ava, eyebrows raised in skepticism, but she doesn’t elaborate.

“All right,” Jamal finally says. “It can be that way. But it’s the other way, too.”

“What do you mean?” Ava asks.

“I mean Caroline is dead, but Tracey is alive. That’s rough, but you still have one mother.”

“But she doesn’t want me.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says. “We’ll give it some time. Check back soon, you know?”

“When you really want to find someone, it isn’t that hard. I should have known all along that she wasn’t looking. I feel so stupid.”

“There’s nothing stupid about wanting to be loved,” he says. “Believe me.”

We sit together for a little longer, and then Charlotte and I get up to go home.

“You’ll help me decorate, right?” Ava asks me. “Figure out what to buy? After the filming is over, I mean. I went to this place to try to buy a mattress today but I didn’t know what I wanted, and it would have taken a few days to get delivered anyway, so after a while it just seemed pointless. I left without choosing anything.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’d love to do that.”

“We have the read-through tomorrow,” Charlotte reminds me.

“Right,” I say. “Ava, are you ready for that?”

She nods.

“We’ll see you then,” I say.

Before Charlotte and I step into the elevator, I turn around to get a last glimpse of them for the night: two formerly homeless kids, sitting in front of a bare rooftop penthouse with an empty bottle of champagne.





Chapter Eighteen



I wake up nervous.

Today is the day all the actors assemble in Theo and Rebecca’s apartment and read through the script from the first scene through the last. This usually happens earlier in the preproduction schedule, but because Ava signed on so late, it’s happening now, just two weeks before the shooting begins.

I should have told Ava what to expect from the day. Should have told her how important it is. I start to worry that I’ve gone overboard with all the Clyde stuff. What if she takes her rags-to-riches glory too far? What she wore yesterday was the perfect costume to score a penthouse, but today shouldn’t be an act. As an unknown in a lead role, she has a lot to prove.

“She’s going to be fine,” Charlotte says as we climb into her car.

“But what if she shows up like all hung over or something?”

“She wasn’t even drunk last night. How would that be possible?”