I'm Glad My Mom Died(31)

I jump into Mom’s arms. She squeezes me. I’m elated. Everything’s going to be different now. Everything’s going to be better. Mom will finally be happy. Her dream has come true.





29.


“OOH, A FRUIT BASKET!”

Mom unwinds the twist tie and starts peeling off the cellophane wrapping.

“Pineapple’s really high in sugar, but you can have some of this cantaloupe and honeydew.”

“Okay!”

Mom yanks two cantaloupe skewers out of the basket. Just as she’s about to pass mine to me, she has a second thought and places it back.

“We can split one,” she says.

We start chewing on our flower-shaped cantaloupe pieces as we look around at the other baskets on my dressing room table. There’s a basket of teas from Coast to Coast, an at-home spa basket from Susan, and a meat and cheese basket from Nickelodeon.

“We can take that one home for Grandpa and the boys,” Mom tells me.

This is the first difference I notice about being a series regular. You get a lot of baskets. I never got one basket in all my years as a guest star. (Although when I did my guest spot on Karen Sisco, Robert Forster did give me a silver pen with my name engraved on it, and he gave Mom a silver shoehorn. What a guy.)

Today is our first day back to work after being officially picked up for a first season order. After you shoot the pilot of a TV show, the network executives watch all the pilots and pick about a third of them to actually get made into a series. We were part of the lucky third, and, even cooler than that, we got the highest episode order of all the picked-up shows. Most of them got ten-or thirteen-episode pickups. We got twenty. Mom says this is probably because of my outstanding performance as Sam Puckett, a zinger-slinging, rough-around-the-edges tomboy with a heart of gold who, ironically compared to my experience with it, loves food.

“You ready to run lines, Angel?” Mom asks.

“Sure,” I say, even though I’m never ready. I still get nervous to practice lines with Mom. I thought my being cast as a series regular might help her lighten up a bit, but it hasn’t. She’s still so critical. It’s stressful.

I take a deep breath in to get ready for my first line when there’s a loud knock at my dressing room door.

“Answer it,” Mom tells me as she slaps her thigh, exasperated to be interrupted the second before we started.

I pull open the purple door and on the carpet in front of me is yet another basket. This one’s filled with movie theater snacks: Milk Duds and Twizzlers and a few packets of popcorn. In the middle of the basket is a hundred-dollar gift card to ArcLight, the fanciest movie theater I’ve ever seen, the one just up the street from Nickelodeon Studios, where we shoot the show. Mom and I almost saw a movie at ArcLight the week that we shot the pilot, but Mom said there was no chance in hell she was paying $13.75 for a movie ticket. “I don’t care how surrounded their sound is.”

This gift card is the highest-dollar-amount gift card I’ve ever seen. I almost can’t believe it.

“It’s from Miranda,” I tell Mom, shocked. “A hundred dollars to ArcLight.”

Miranda is my co-star on iCarly. She plays the titular role of Carly Shay—a sweet, feminine teenage girl who, with her best friends Sam and Freddie (played by my other co-star, Nathan), starts a web series. Mom says they didn’t flesh out Miranda’s character very well. “Poor thing gets all the exposition. She’s a pretty girl, but it’s a shame her character has no personality.”

I look back down at the basket. I’m really surprised that another child actor would be so nice to me. Usually there’s such a sense of competition. This gesture is the opposite of that. I’m touched. I reach into the basket.

“You’re not getting anywhere near those Milk Duds but that’s very nice of her. Now let’s practice your lines.”





30.


“WHAT ABOUT THIS?” MOM ASKS as she holds up a TY plush panda bear. We’re in Hallmark Greeting Cards at the Westminster Mall. Since Miranda got a gift for me to celebrate the start of the season, we’re picking one out for her, too. Mom wags the panda around.

“It’s a cute little panda, plus it rhymes with her name. Miranda. Panda. Cute, right?”

“Yeah, it’s really cute. Maybe we could just keep looking around to make sure that’s the absolute best gift.”

“Well, I think this with the fuzzy journal and we’re good, right?” Mom asks.

“Sure. Right.”

I swallow. We’re not good. Miranda got me a very expensive gift card to a very fancy movie theater. That is a cool gift. A TY stuffed animal and a fuzzy journal is not a cool gift.

I used to think these were cool gifts, up until a few months ago. Up until a few months ago, I thought my rainbow bell-bottoms from the Children’s Place and my quiz books from Limited Too were cool. But since meeting Miranda, my cool radar has shifted.

The first time I met her was at my screen test for iCarly. She was leaning against a wall, sipping Coke from a glass bottle and texting on her Sidekick. Whoa. Coke and a Sidekick. This girl knows what’s up.

We talked briefly at the screen test, but not much more than introductions because we were rushed into the room to do our scenes together for the long table of executives.