Free The Real Real by Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus

eye as she pulls open the front door into the dark night and waves to the street.
    “See?” she calls past the porch. “She’s right here! We’re coming right now.”
    “Hey, guys.” We both turn to see an impressively Blake Lively-ed Caitlyn descending with restrained casualness from the top stair. I beam with pride morphing back into panic as Kara gives a dismissive wave her way before planting one UGG on either side of the threshold to clap at me,
    “Let’s! Go! Let’s! Go!”
    Caitlyn’s made-up face freezes. “What’s up, Jess?”
    “Um, apparently I have to go shoot some scene somewhere—” The van starts to emit a series of long honks.
    “But Fletch is really psyched about you, and he’s going to meet with me tomorrow about it so—” Kara tugs me onto the porch and slams the door as I scream, “Watch the funny one! I’ll be home for the scary! I promise!”

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    REEL 6
    Two hours later, while someone wraps my hair around a huge curling iron one strand at a time, Kara’s words—
    psyched — new direction — A plot, B plot, C plot —circle through my head as I try to piece together evidence that I’m going to get the answer I want— we want. “Can I just ask?” I toss out into the chaotic mass of powdered pigments and aerosol thickening the air in the trailer. “Why I have so much makeup on just to go into a spa where they’re going to take it all off?”
    “Welcome to the business, sweetie,” Tandy, the makeup maven, mutters. “And you . . . are . . . done. Open.”
    I lift my heavy lids to see a magazine cover staring back in the yellow reflection. Wow. I bat my fake lashes a few 77

    times before raising my hand to touch my bronzed cheekbones. But before I can confirm that’s me in there, it’s swatted.
    “No touching. From now on there is no touching your face. Ever. Are we clear?”
    I open my glossed lips to answer and am met with a blast of hairspray directly to the back of the throat that proceeds to hiss around my head in slow motion like I’m the cornered cockroach in the kitchen who just . . .
    won’t . . . die . I hear the trailer door swing open, and a waft of crisp air reaches me through the sticky haze covering my nostrils.
    Kara jogs up the steps into view and starts clapping her hands again rapidly, like a cheerleader. “Oh my God! You guys look amazing ! This is perfect . Fletch is going to flip .”
    Nico, looking like the Harper’s Bazaar version of herself, tugs out her earphones and hops from her chair like she does this every day. Which she probably does. Which would explain why no amount of Prickly Pear–subsidized John Frieda Brilliant Brunette adds me up to that. Melanie looks to her beauty handlers for clearance before following suit in the knee-high suede boots Diane’s dressed her in. I stand, unsteady in the white wookie boots she’s insisted I wear, and tug self-consciously at the fitted cream cashmere turtleneck that hugs my skintight white cords.
    “Jesse,” Kara murmurs in disbelief.
    Even Nico raises an eyebrow. “You look good,” she bestows matter-of-factly.

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    “It’s those cheekbones, the profile,” the woman sliding the pointy end of a comb into my hair offers as she lifts my roots in painful little tugs.
    “All right, ladies!” Kara shoves her fist into the air and yelps. “We’re ready for the first shot of your new reality!”
    Our new reality? Nico and Melanie exchange a look of excited anticipation.
    After shrugging on our assigned coats and having our copiously lacquered waves lifted gingerly out and over, we fall into line behind Kara down the steps of the trailer and up the walk, through thirty or so added crew members, to Melanie’s mom’s spa. Well, Melanie’s mom’s spa’s “new reality,” which, apparently, is midday instead of—CR AP!
    “Kara!” I shuffle awkwardly through the shoveled snow as our threesome parts a clump of teamsters tending to the bulky black equipment. “Kara, I have to call Caitlyn