Pretending to Be Us Page 4

  “Now you sound like a Hollywood mogul.”

  That pleased him. I exhaled in relief.

  5

  Lucy

  “Okay, do it again.” Daniel said. He had a clipboard. I had a book balanced on my head and a hangover. I rolled my eyes and complied.

  “The Swedish royal family, the Swedish Royal House of Bernadotte, has ruled Sweden since 1818,” I recited. “The royal family performs official engagements and ceremonial duties of state. The Bernadotte family are descended from a French general, actually, who was invited by the Rikstag to take over when Charles XIII died without an heir.”

  Daniel nodded, looking down at the clipboard to verify. “Good. Now the next part.”

  I swallowed. “The King is Carl XVI Gustaf. The Queen is Silvia. There are three crown princesses, Sophia, Victoria, and Madeline, two crown princes, Carl, Philip and Daniel, and one other princess, the King’s sister, Birgitta. There are also about a dozen other members of the royal court, including... me.”

  “And who are your parents?” Daniel asked.

  “Oh, I’m the great-granddaughter of the King’s fourth sister. That means I’m one of the King’s great-grandnieces. My parents are Prince Sigvard and Princess Solveig Bergen. I have an older brother named Charles.” I put on a smile. “We’ve very far down the line of succession. I don’t spend a lot of time in royal circles, to be honest. Mostly just weddings, christenings, and funerals. Our family is very relaxed about the whole thing and the culture has moved away from the monarchy as a whole.”

  “Where did you grow up?” Daniel asked. This had taken us a while to craft.

  “Stockholm when I was very small, then Toronto. When I was eight, we moved to Dallas for a year and then Washington D.C. until I graduated from high school. I attended the University of Cambridge but only for one year. I’ve been pursuing an acting career in Europe for the last five years.”

  “What is your favorite Swedish food?” he asked.

  “A curve ball, huh? Nice try. Prinsesstårta,” I answered confidently. “Hands down.”

  Daniel blinked. “And what’s that, exactly?”

  I grinned. Something I could finally answer honestly. “Princess cake, of course. It’s a traditional dessert—a delicate cake layered with jam and covered in marzipan. It’s usually eaten on birthdays.” I paused. “My Mormor makes the very best. Americans just can’t appreciate it. American princess cake is always way too sweet. It’s meant to be sweet, yes, but not American sweet. Swedish sweet is less intense and in your face. It’s more nuanced, subtle, and complicated. Like Swedish people."

  Daniel’s mouth dropped open and he closed it with a little smile. “That was so perfect. You’re totally going to pass the basic American smell test,” Daniel said approvingly. “Now we just have to hope nobody asks anything more detailed. Or you run into a real Swede.”

  “Considering I’ve just spent the last three hours memorizing all that, it had better work. I should be looking at the script.”

  “Okay, what’s next?” Daniel said to himself, looking down at his clipboard. We’d watched ‘The Princess Diaries’ to make our list of to-do items. It’s not like there was a better instruction manual out there. Plus, it was a fun movie. “Oh right. Princess sitting and princess walking.”

  We’d already done the makeover montage bit. I hadn’t needed a full deforestation like Anne Hathaway’s character, but we did use the seventy-five dollars that Darcy tossed at me to get me a blowout and some really good makeup to cover my tattoo. The bitch shorted me bad. I would have also probably gotten a wax and manicure, but I figured I could do those myself.

  All my outfits were picked out and organized for the first week of shooting. The good news was that I’d mostly be wearing costumes, but Daniel and I had still carefully gone through my closet and composed outfits that were simple, sleek, and most importantly, impossible to identify as being cheap. Pretty much all my clothes were from Target so that part was essential. We also studied the looks of ‘off duty’ royals online and made sure I didn’t break any major fashion rules. Despite the fact that I wouldn’t have a single designer label visible, but Daniel promised me that truly rich people didn’t wear labels, anyway, I’d never felt so polished.

  “Do we really have to do the walking and sitting part?” I asked, gesturing to the book still balanced on my head. “I mean, I walk how I walk. I sit how I sit. I’m not going to be able to change that in one day. It took me twenty-two years to get this uncoordinated. That doesn’t go away overnight.”

  “I guess your posture isn’t that bad,” Daniel conceded. “Just try not to slouch too much, I guess.” He put his clipboard down triumphantly. “Okay. We did it. We made you a princess. You now have a Facebook, Instagram, an IMDB page, a Wikipedia page, and a new Twitter handle. You look great on paper and in person. Now all you have to do is sell it every day for eight weeks while also shooting a movie.”

  “And dodge Darcy,” I added. “Oh, and try not to make everyone hate me when it all does come crashing down because I have no talent and the audition was a fluke.”

  “Don’t worry about any of that,” Daniel told me. “You got the part because you’re talented and were right for the role. I know you can do the acting part. I mean, you did the audition on hard mode. You were literally playing a character playing a character. That takes talent.”

  I rolled my eyes. It only worked because I was entranced by Peter Prince. If Daniel could have seen him, he’d understand. “They probably only cast me because they think I’m a princess,” I ended up saying. “Everyone will see through me.”

  “People see what they want to see. You know that. Just keep up your act as best you can, be consistent, and try your best. Meanwhile, I’ll distract Darcy when she shows up on set and run interference for you. We can do this. We’ll dazzle them with how great you are.”

  I nodded, but internally I was shaking. I was well and truly out of money, and time, and options. I needed this to work. And I wanted it to. I wanted to be an actress. I’d always wanted that, ever since I was a little girl.

  A year ago, I’d quit my stable, boring job at St. Vincent’s Hospital to pursue my dreams. I thought it was a smart move at the time. In hindsight it was probably a mistake, as was spending all my savings on acting lessons. I had no connections in the industry and the job I did have only lasted six months. The lessons ended up being a waste of money. I’d been winging it ever since. Except for yesterday I’d had zero auditions, unless you counted the porno casting I’d had to walk out of. If there’s one thing that show business had taught me it was that if something seemed too good to be true, it was.

  But maybe, finally, this would be different. This was my shot. And on top of everything, I was going to be spending every day with Peter Prince—a man who was born into great wealth, enormous talent, and ridiculous good looks. Worst case scenario, perhaps some of whatever magic he had would rub off on me. I knew it was crazy to think there could actually ever be anything between me and Peter, I mean, I needed to keep him at arm’s length for all this craziness to even work, but still. He was really something. And I’d be seeing him Monday.

  6

  Peter

  “Footwork!” Mark yelled, spinning around me and tapping the back of my head with his boxing glove. “Didn’t you do that dance scene in your last movie? Use those skills.”

  “Dude, you did the dance scenes, remember?” I shook my head at him. Mark had been my stunt double in a number of films. Usually that meant jumping off of buildings and in front of trains. Sometimes it meant ballroom dancing. No matter what it meant, Mark excelled at it.

  “I did that?” Mark joked. “I thought they looked too incredible to be you. I make us look damn good.”

  “Is that why they never show your face?” I teased.

  “If I wanted to punch an ugly bag, I’d pick one that wasn’t so sarcastic,” Mark chirped at me. He was turning our weekly workout session into an even more humiliating display than
usual. Ordinarily I at least managed to hold my own. Today I was just all over the place. He flopped back against the ropes. “What’s up with you?”

  The buzzer rang then, announcing the end of our final round. I grabbed my water before answering. “It’s this latest production, man. I... I just don’t know.”

  Mark looked sympathetic. “This is the one with all the production delays, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Where we couldn’t find a lead actress for four months.”

  “Couldn’t? Past tense?” he questioned. “So did Brie Larson change her mind?”

  I shook my head at him, flinging sweat in every direction. My body was now extremely tired. Unfortunately, my brain was still working overtime thinking about Lucy. “We found somebody else.”

  Mark perked up. “That’s great. Who?”

  “A princess. An actual, real life princess. From Sweden.” I shook my head. “She’s never been in a film before.”

  Mark winced. “Oh no. She can’t act, can she?”

  I frowned. “She seems pretty good, actually. She got the role fair and square.”

  Now Mark just looked confused. “Then what’s the problem? Is she mean or something?”

  “She’s perfectly nice. A bit stuck up, maybe, but hey, she’s a princess.”

  “Is she ugly?”

  “No.” I blinked, remembering her shiny hair, soft skin, and perfect figure. “Definitely not.”

  “Stinky? Bad breath?”

  “No.” She’d smelled like coconuts. I liked coconuts.

  “Does she have a weird entourage?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. Although we’ve only met once.” Did princesses travel with entourages? I made a mental note to try and figure that out.

  “Is she bankrupting the production?”

  “Not yet.” Although, given her contract, which I’d seen because my dad was the distributor and financier, she didn’t care much about money. She could have probably negotiated a much higher salary. She was basically working for peanuts. She needed to fire her agent.

  “Can’t memorize her lines?”

  “Hasn’t been a problem so far.” It wasn’t all that often that actresses show up to auditions with all their lines already memorized. We’d run three scenes at the audition, only one of which we told her to prepare for. She must have a photographic memory or something.

  “Then what’s the issue?” Mark finally asked. He must have been all out of guesses and he seemed genuinely perplexed. “You don’t like princesses?”

  I took a deep breath. I thought about making something up but decided not to. Mark was a decent guy. He’d understand. “My dad wants me to marry her.”

  I was wrong. Mark laughed at me. A deep, genuine, totally uninhibited belly laugh. “Oh, woe is me,” he said, putting the back of his hand to his forehead dramatically. When he spoke, his voice was high pitched. “My dad wants me, a billionaire and A-list actor, to marry a beautiful princess. My name is Peter Prince and my life is so hard.”

  “My voice doesn’t sound like that.”

  “I appreciate that is the only part of my impression you find inaccurate. Reflect on that for a moment.”

  It was too bad our boxing was over. Because I kinda’ wanted to punch Mark. Not that I was frequently able to punch him even when we were boxing. The guy was like the wind. The obnoxious, mocking wind.

  “Well, excuse me for not wanting an arranged marriage,” I argued, although I knew I sounded ridiculous. This all sounded much better in my head than it did out loud. I just came off sounding like an entitled prick.

  Mark rolled his eyes at me. “It’s not like your dad can make you marry a princess,” he told me in the slow, clear exposition you’d use on a child. “You’re a grown man in a free country. Nobody can tell you who to marry. If anything, she’s probably more at risk of an arranged marriage than you.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” I told him. I felt like it ought to be obvious.

  Mark and I stared at one another for a moment. Then, I all but saw a light bulb go off in his head. He smiled.

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  I grimaced. “No.”

  “Yeah okay,” Mark said. “For an actor, you’re really a terrible liar. You know that, right?”

  I sighed. “It doesn’t matter whether I like her or not. She’s not a good decision for me to make. The last thing I need is to get all tangled up with a princess that my dad wants me to marry.”

  “Haha,” Mark said. “Tangled. Get it? Like the Disney movie?”

  “I didn’t see that one.”

  I was lying. I did see it. It was great. I liked the frying pan.

  Mark shook his head at me. “You’re no fun.” He stared at me like I was a pod person who had come in and replaced his friend with an evil, alien clone that had no sense. “Since when do you hate beautiful women?”

  I winced. “I don’t, but considering how my last relationship ended, I feel like I’d be halfway entitled if I did. I’m taking a break from relationships right now.”

  “A three-year long break? Was the last one the model who cheated on you with her tennis instructor or the one who took off to Vegas with your credit card and bought a Ferrari before losing everything at the craps table?”

  I could feel myself frowning so deeply I’d probably look like Clint Eastwood got crossed with a shar-pei if I kept it up too long. “Thanks for reminding me. But you’ve got it wrong. Both of those were the same woman.”

  “It sounds like you don’t hate beautiful women. You hate liars and thieves.”

  “Unfortunately, the two are correlated.”

  “Lying and thieving?”

  “Beauty and lies.”

  “Correlation is not causation. Besides we’re in the entertainment industry. Everyone is liar. Everyone is beautiful. It’s just a matter of degrees.” Given that Mark’s last job was special forces, he was pretty much unphased by anything Hollywood could throw at him. He genuinely thought all the entertainment industry intrigue was just hilarious because at the end of the day everyone went home safe and sound. When simply surviving to tomorrow becomes normal to you, I guess everything else seems easy. Having Mark as a friend was always good when I needed some perspective on things. Even if he was a smart ass.

  “Are you telling me to give her a chance and not assume she’s a liar?”

  “I’m not telling you anything. I’m merely pointing out a flaw in your logic. Being beautiful doesn’t make someone a liar. Case in point,” he said, nodding his head toward his roommate Lara who just walked in. “She’s brutally honest. She’ll cut you with honesty. She’ll murder you with honesty.”

  “I’m what?” Lara asked, ducking under the ropes to join our conversation. “What’s going on?”

  “Peter doesn’t want to get married off to a pretty princess because he hates attractive women and is afraid of getting his heart crushed,” Mark pronounced.

  “That was definitely not what I said,” I told Lara. “It’s not even close to what I said.”

  Lara merely raised her eyebrows. She knew enough about Mark to read his humor but started to back away. The fact that these two were head over heels in love with each other and didn’t seem to know it was a source of constant amusement for me. I didn’t like being their source of amusement instead.

  “I’m not going to touch this conversation with a ten-foot pole,” she said. “It’s too stupid. You’re both stupid. You boys have fun.”

  Lara was an honest woman.

  7

  Peter

  “Good morning, Princess. You’re early,” I said to Lucy when I arrived at Monday’s table read. We were at Vanessa’s house in the Texas hill country and arranged in a rough circle in her living room. We’d be shooting quite a bit of the movie out here at Vanessa’s sprawling ranch.

  Lucy shrugged and smiled shyly up at me. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought she was embarrassed. “Good morning. Should I be late? Wouldn’t that be
rude?”

  “Do princesses care if they’re rude to the common folk?” I teased.

  Her eyes went big and round. “I try not to be intentionally rude to anyone.”

  I sat down next to her, wondering if I wasn’t supposed to tease her but knowing she was much too cute to resist. “Starlets are always late.”

  Most famous actresses are chronically, performatively late. I’d worked with all the big-name female stars in my time, and none of them had ever been early. Ever. It wasn’t done. They were generally only a few minutes late, but never early.

  Early implies eagerness, hungriness, and a desperate desire to please. Starlets want to project the opposite of that. They want to show that they’ve arrived. That they are important enough to be late.

  “I’m not a starlet,” Lucy replied. “I’m just a struggling actress trying to make her big break.” She frowned. “I didn’t want to keep everyone waiting.”

  I doubted the struggling part, but Lucy wasn’t a Hollywood starlet, at least not yet. She certainly looked like one though. I had no trouble spotting the princess in the room from the moment I walked in—she’d stand out in any crowd. She arrived at the table read in all black with her long blonde hair pulled into a fashionably messy braid and the kind of flawless, perfectly applied minimal makeup that Instagram likes to call “no makeup.” She looked glamorous, but not in the oversexed, Hollywood Botox way. She effortlessly commanded every eye, and I was just as under her spell as I’d been on Friday.

  “What did you do this weekend?” I asked Lucy.

  Despite my better judgment and my personal rule to never fraternize too much with a female costar, I found myself overwhelmed with questions I wanted to ask Lucy.

  She looked down at her script. “I got ready for today.” I blinked. Was she... shy? I don’t know why, but I really hadn’t expected that. Not many actresses are shy, and I guess I expected royalty to be naturally outgoing. Then, just as I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to get two words out of her, Lucy locked eyes with me. “What did you do this weekend, Peter?”