About the Author
Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout are the coauthurs of seven books, including Totally Me: The Teenage Girl's Survival Guide, Introducing Vivien Leigh Reid: Daughter of the Diva, and Now Starring Vivien Leigh Reid: Diva in Training. Both authors live in Toronto.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
I scan the crowd around the arrivals gate for one of my mother's conspicuous disguises. With her vast collection of wigs, hats, scarves, and sunglasses, the possibilities are nearly endless but something always blows her cover.
Mom isn't an inept CIA operative; she's an actress, and the disguises are meant to keep her fans at bay. As far as I can tell, the Annika Anderson filmography takes care of that on its own. She has made over twenty films, most of which are simply forgettable, but a few--the ones my Dad likes to watch again and again--are downright awful. So bad, in fact, that Annika was stuck in the B-movie category for years. All that changed three months ago with the release of Danny Boy, an A-list movie that has garnered great reviews. Even so, the odds of her being mobbed are pretty remote, especially in Los Angeles, where everyone's a star.
A hand rises from a nearby knot of people and snaps fingers in my general direction. Unless Mom has shrunk, or less likely still, opted for flats, the hand can't be hers. "Annika?" I call uncertainly.
"Don't ever call me that," the owner of the hand says, folding every finger but one.
The knot of people parts to reveal Sasha Cohen, my former costar on a soap opera called Diamond Heights. As always, she is dressed in white from head to toe. Even the tiny dog under her arm is wearing a white scarf.
As the throng of admirers closes around her again, she says, "Get over here. I can't wait all day."
"Nice to see you too," I grumble, nudging her fans aside. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
She signs another autograph without looking up. "Daddy made me come."
My mother and Sasha's father have been dating for nearly four months, and that fact probably hasn't made Sasha any happier than it's made me. Jake seems like a nice enough guy, but with Sasha coming as part of the Cohen package, I'd rather reconstitute a family somewhere else.
A girl takes her autograph book from Sasha and offers it to me. "I think I've seen you before. You're somebody, right?"
Sasha reaches over and snaps the autograph book closed. "She's nobody. Don't waste your paper." Directing me with her pen, she adds, "I could get through this faster if you'd turn around and stoop."
I let her use my back to sign another dozen autographs. I even hold her purse and her dog without complaint because Dad's last words as he put me on the plane were, "Be nice." It's obviously going to be tougher than I had expected. While I knew I couldn't escape the Cohens entirely during Thanksgiving weekend, I didn't plan on spending a second alone with Sasha.
I assumed that Mom would make that easy by monopolizing my time. After all, I'm only here for four days and we hardly ever see each other. I live with my father in Seattle because Annika abandoned me for Hollywood when I was only three years old.
By "abandoned," I don't mean she left me in a Dumpster. Rather she divorced my father, gave him full custody, and more or less disappeared for twelve years. She claims that Dad didn't want her around me and he claims she didn't try very hard. The only thing they agree on is that she paid regular child support. For a long time, the nicest thing my father could say about Annika was, "At least she's not a deadbeat."
Our family of two (three, counting Grandma Reid) managed just fine until I hit puberty and my newfound preoccupation with boys and makeup caused Dad to arrange a reunion with my mother. Faster than I could say "no frigging way," I was on a plane to Ireland where Annika was shooting Danny Boy.
Mom and I didn't hit it off right away. In fact, we still spend nearly as much time fighting as we do getting along. I guess you can't build a bridge across a twelve-year rift overnight. Our relationship evolves at the pace of a Mardi Gras parade--two steps forward, one step back--but at least it's moving in the right direction.
It helps that we've discovered some common interests, the most important being acting. Mom was initially reluctant to let me take a small role in Danny Boy, but when that worked out okay, she became very supportive. At her suggestion, I spent the past summer in L.A. taking an acting course at an elite school. She also encouraged me to audition for Diamond Heights and I won the role of Willow Volume over ninety-three other hopefuls.
On the show, Sasha and I both played rich, nasty divas. For her, it was typecasting, although with Jake as producer she didn't have to audition. For me, sadly, it became a matter of life imitating art. Within a matter of weeks, I got so caught up in my role that I started to behave like a diva both on and off the set. By the time the producers created a spin-off show for Willow, my head had become too big for the studio and the role went to Sasha's character instead. Worse, they killed off Willow and I got fired. As in sacked. Terminated. Dismissed. Booted.
It was the most humiliating experience of my entire life and I'm still not over it. There's no mystery about where my diva gene came from, but you'd think that with Dad's sensible accountant genes to offset it, I'd have more self-control.
I've been punished for my behavior by seeing Sasha prosper in the role created for me. She's not the best actress in town--even her father admits that--but she must be doing something right because Between a Rock and a Hard Place is doing well. If my inner diva weren't in recovery, I'd give the credit to her surgically enhanced bustline, but the new and improved Leigh Reid is a good sport.
Sasha isn't burdened by the same need to be a gracious. "Stand still," she says, jabbing me in the shoulder with her pen. "And stop squishing Olivier."
I reposition my right hand on my knee and hoist the dog a little higher with my left, silently repeating a yoga mantra: From the unreal lead me to the real. From darkness lead me to the light.
After the Diamond Heights debacle, I realized I needed something to keep me sane and grounded, and yoga fit the bill. To my surprise, I actually enjoy it. I don't know if yoga is making me a better person, but it's definitely making me a calmer one. If I decide to pursue acting again some day, I'll have the tools to keep my perspective.
Signing her last autograph with a flourish, Sasha starts off down the corridor, leaving me to follow with dog, purse, and my suitcase. When I catch up, she flicks her dark mane over her shoulders and eyes my jeans, pink zip-up yoga jacket, and sneakers. "I see you still haven't found your style. No one's going to give you a part if you look like that."
"I'm not trying to get parts," I say. "I'm just here for a quiet weekend with my mother."
Ignoring this, she heads out to her white Mini Cooper, which is illegally parked in the passenger pick-up area. The airport security guard hovering beside it accepts the fifty-dollar bill she offers him and rushes to open the driver's door. Sasha takes the dog and slides behind the wheel, chitchatting to the guard while I flip down one of the back seats and squeeze my suitcase into the Mini. When I'm done, I open the front door to find the dog carrier strapped to the passenger seat.
"Olivier gets car sick if he isn't up front," Sasha explains. She gets out and holds the seat forward so that I can climb in behind her. "Don't sit on my cover."
There's a copy of Soap Opera Digest on the back seat featuring her sultry image.
Before she can grab it, I quickly lower my butt onto her photogenic face.
I hear the muffled sounds of Pink's Trouble and retrieve my cell phone from my knapsack. "Mom, where are you?"
"Didn't Sasha tell you? Jake needed my help with the turkey."
"You don't cook," I point out.
"True enough," she agrees. "But I'm a great cheerleader, right, sweetie?" The sweetie in question appears to be Jake because the kissing sounds emanating from my phone are loud enough to make Sasha shudder in the front seat.
"You said we were going out."
"Change of plans, darling. We're having our Thanksgiving tonight because Ursela isn't free on Monday."
Ursela is Sasha's older sister. She doesn't live with Jake, so I don't see why our plans have to revolve around hers. "Can't we just have a quiet night at your place?"
My question comes too late. She is already distracted by clanging pots and pans. "See you soon, darling," she says, and hangs up.
Sasha watches me through the rearview mirror. "When's the last time you spoke to your mother?" she asks.
"A few days ago. Why?"
Her eyes crinkle. "Just curious."
Determined not to play into her mind games, I fish my makeup bag out of my purse. Sasha waits until I'm applying mascara before hitting the brakes to avoid an invisible hazard, thereby causing me to jam the wand into my temple.
"Quiet," she says, over my squeal of pain. "You're scaring Olivier."
I reach for the uneaten tuna sandwich Dad packed for me this morning and consider hiding it under Sasha's seat to rot in the California heat. The words of my yoga instructor fill my head: Anger is one of the six poisons that surround the spiritual heart. Sighing, I p...
