first few years of my life, but I don’t remember any more than what I’ve seen in pictures. From what I can tell, though, we were a happy family.
Then, when I was about six months old, my mother was discovered while shopping in Santa Monica. She has told the story again and again in countless interviews, relishing in the day she was pushing her daughter in her stroller when a casting director approached her. The way she tells it, he offered her a small role in a movie on the spot. She took the job, and from there things snowballed. I was two when she landed her first lead ing role, and she’s been landing them ever since. To the outside world, Alana Davis, is one of the top actresses in Hollywood , but to me, she’s the mother who ch ose her career over her family .
Luckily for me, I have my dad, who never stopped loving me and putting me first. I honestly think he would have stayed with my mother, he loved her that much, but she wasn’t faithful to him. Only a handful of people know that in order to score that first lead role, she slept with both the director and the casting director . Then she actually had the nerve to tell my dad that it was a necessary part of being an actress , and he needed to be okay with it. When he wasn’t okay with it, she begged him for forgiveness and promised never to do it again. That lasted exactly a year, and then she slept with her co-star. My dad divorced her soon after he found out and moved us to Florida, where his parents w ere then living .
I returned to L.A. each summer to stay with my mom. My dad would fly with me, then turn around and fly right back, and three months later, he’d fly out to get me, and we’d return home together. We did this until I was old enough to fly on my own. It was almost as if my mother expected that of him and never once volunteered to hop on an airplane either way.
My mother was never the most attentive or involved of parents, and I spent most of each summer with the nannies that she’d hire to take care of me so she didn’t have to do it . At least they were fun. We’d go on adventures and hang ou t at the beach and go to Disneyl and.
Then, the summer I was seven, Ethan Lewis moved in next door with his perfect family , who was more than content to adopt me as their own. Ethan was a shy boy when he was seven years old . And b eing the independe nt little girl I was , I marched right up to him as he hit a volleyball against his garage door over and over again the day after they’d moved in. I told him my name was Logan Kessler and that he was going to be my friend. He’d let the ball roll into the street as he looked up at me – I was taller than him back then – and nodded his head, his eyes wide.
I’m pretty sure that I scared the shit out of him, but it didn’t matter. From that point on, he was my best friend. His mother was a super-mom. She made homemade snacks, set up craft projects for her kids and attended each one of their sporting events. She was also the one who convinced my mother to put me in surf lessons .
At their house, t here was a hot meal on the table each night, an d the whole family ate together and talked about their day . Even Ethan’s father alwa ys made it home for dinner, if only to retire to his home office after dinner to continue working.
The first time I ate dinner at Ethan’s house, I was in awe of how perfect his family was. All five of them had blond hair, deep tans and a vivaciousness that only rivaled that of my dad. I was instantly sold that they were destined to be my California family .
Ethan’s sister Kelly was sixteen when I met her, and she soon became my idol , as I listened to her tell stories about high school, her volleyball team , and the many boyfriends she seemed to have. Garrett , who was eleven when we met, was always putting on a show. He aspired to be in show business, and was always practicing for some play that he was in, entertaining us with his guitar , or telling jokes.