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“I was just filling in until you got here. This sucker’s all yours.” She smirked, handing over the stopwatch. “Hit start, then tell the reporter each time a minute passes. Every interview is precisely five minutes.” She gave extra emphasis to the “precisely” and paused to wait for my nod. “Are you sure you can handle this?” she asked with a doubtful expression. I nodded mutely. Was I going to be treated like an idiot all summer? Because if so, I’d like off this ride, please.
    Once the queen of punctual left, action in the room resumed and no one glanced in my direction again. My surroundings were a surreal mix of Movieland and posh hotel. Graham was seated facing another man who I figured for the reporter, based on the inches of pancake makeup plastering his face and his “this face can deliver breaking news and you won’t even be scared” features. The black felt backdrop hung from the ceiling in a semicircle, enclosing Graham and the reporter on three sides and obscuring the silk wallpaper and the view of office buildings beyond. I knew just enough to recognize that this was so the viewers at home would see Graham in his chair with nothing distracting behind him, aside from the foam-mounted movie poster advertising Triton propped up on an easel. Wynn kept Access Hollywood on in the background while we did homework, so I’d seen this celebrity-floating-in-black-space setup countless times.
    I’d also seen Graham countless times, but in person there was almost this energy shimmering around him or maybe even radiatingfrom him. Obviously, I still thought he was a total asshat for the way he’d treated me the day before, but I suddenly understood what people meant when they referred to “star power.” Good thing I had enough common sense not to get sucked into his force field. No matter how well his shoulders filled out a waffle-weave henley.
    I couldn’t interpret the look Graham sent my way (Annoyed? Chagrined?), but it lasted only a second and then he adjusted himself in his chair and flashed the reporter a smile that clearly conveyed, “Sure, I could be your best friend.” If the reporter weren’t wearing so much pancake on his face, I’m fairly sure his blush would have shown through. Graham, on the other hand, seemed to need no makeup whatsoever. He leaned back in his seat and threw an arm across the back of it like he owned the place.
    And then everyone was once AGAIN focused on me. I stared back at them for a second before realizing they were waiting on my go signal. “Oops, sorry. Go ahead.” I clicked the stopwatch. Nothing like being dropped into a foreign situation to make me feel totally incompetent. Ugh! Where on earth is Mom anyway , I thought as the dial swept its circle.
    â€œUm, first minute,” I whispered sixty seconds later, waving a little to get the reporter’s attention.
    The camera operator threw up his hands and Graham giggled.
    Giggled.
    Then he said, “You can’t actually talk, or your voice will be on the tape. You have to use hand signals. Hold up a finger for each minute. Okay?” he said, demonstrating as if I might not know how to count tofive on my fingers. Surprisingly, there was a note of something odd in his voice. Sympathy? From the obnoxious Graham Cabot?
    Then, even more amazingly, he added, “Hey, don’t worry about it. You should have seen me on my first ever day of shooting. They had to shut down the production because I kept forgetting to use my ‘inside voice’ and then, right in the middle of a scene, my mom’s cell went off.”
    The word cell was still hanging in the air when my own phone exploded in a cacophony of alarm bells. I jumped up like fire ants were attacking the seat of my pants. My snooze button was set to thirty minutes and I must have hit it instead of turning the stupid thing off before leaving my room. I was ready to