Paparazzi Read online

  “And I’m Cassidy!”

  “Cut!”

  We ran through the same awful introduction about a dozen times. CJ kept yelling at me, even though I swear I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I wanted to cry, but it wouldn’t have done any good. She’d probably just yell some more.

  I missed the way we did things with When in Rome. Our cameramen never yelled at anyone because they weren’t delivering their lines the way he wanted them to. And they also didn’t want anyone acting like an animated Barbie, either.

  Nikos commiserated with me between takes. “Maybe we should act like we’re talking to three-year-olds,” he said. “Make it more bouncy and bubbly.”

  “Are you kidding? If I was any more bubbly, I’d float away.”

  But he was right. I put a whole lot more bounce into my lines, and she stopped yelling quite so much.

  The only way I made it through that morning was by hamming it up with Nikos. We made a game out of seeing who could be the cheesiest—which wasn’t hard with the kinds of lines we’d been given.

  The funny thing was, the cheesier we got, the more CJ liked what we were doing. By the end of shooting, we could have created an entire moon of cheese.

  “I can’t take ten whole days of this,” I told him when we were done. “It’s making my teeth ache.”

  “It could be worse,” he said.

  “How?”

  “You could have been stuck with a cohost who was not as devastatingly good looking as me.” He struck a he-man pose.

  “You gotta stop reading about yourself on the fan sites,” I said. “You’ll get a big head. Oh, wait. Too late for that.”

  “I’ll start worrying when there isn’t anything about me in the fan sites to read.” He laughed, but I had a feeling he was at least partially serious.

  I was about to make a smart remark about that when Victoria walked up to us with her notebook in hand. “We should get started,” she said. “We have to head back to Mykonos at one.”

  “What are we doing?” Nikos asked.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I told him, “but I have to put in my three hours of schooltime. We’re going to take a tour of the ruins as part of my homework.”

  “Sounds like fun,” he said. “Can I come?”

  “Really? Did you hear the part about it being homework?”

  He clutched one hand over his chest. “It is my history,” he said dramatically. “Of course I am serious.”

  I giggled. “Well, if you’re going to put it that way … okay.”

  Can I just tell you right now that there is no way to see everything on Delos in just an hour and a half? We’d shot in only two sites—the Hermes shrine at the Agora of the Competialists, which was, like, this huge, open marketplace close to the harbor, and then in front of the pillars of the Temple of Apollo (of course)—so we had a whole island left to see when we were done with the segment.

  The crew had gone around to take B-roll footage before we got there (ironically, although we were talking about the magic light of Greece, they wanted to get their shots done before it became too bright). So they packed up and started ferrying back to the yacht while we took in as much as we could.

  “Hurry,” Victoria urged as we hiked over the stones. “There is so much I want to show you.”

  The whole island was like a museum. Everywhere we looked, broken pieces of buildings and pillars lay on the rocky ground like bleached bones of long-dead animals. Wind whistled past the columns that still stood. Scattered remnants of statues rested in the dusty weeds.

  We practically had to run to keep up with Victoria, she was so anxious to show us everything she could.

  “We’ll start on the north side of the island with the Terrace of the Lions,” she said, “then work our way back to the harbor.”

  There wasn’t much terrace left in the Terrace of the Lions, just what looked like an overgrown field surrounded by a crumbling stone wall and a line of huge, eroding marble lions atop rough stone pedestals. The whole area was roped off so we couldn’t get very close, but it was probably the kind of place best admired from afar so you could see the whole thing anyway.

  “How big do you think those lions are?” I asked Nikos.

  “Big enough to eat you.”

  “Ha-ha. Very clever.”

  “Look at how the weather has worn down the marble,” I said.

  “Not really,” Nikos said. “These are fake. They put the real statues into the museum to preserve them.”

  I nudged Nikos. “Well, look at you, brainiac.”

  He gave me a strange look. “Brainiac?”

  “Smarty-pants,” I clarified.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Know-it-all.”

  “Oh.” He grinned. “Yes, I am all knowing.”

  “Then you know Victoria is leaving us.” I pointed to where Victoria was walking down the path. We had to run to catch up with her.

  “Look at the architecture of these houses,” she said.

  I didn’t know how she could tell they had been houses. Broken pillars and fallen walls were all that was left of them.

  “Look,” Nikos said dramatically. “The architecture of a commode.” He pointed out what looked like a stubby column that swelled to a circle on the top. The circle had a hole in the middle.

  I laughed. “You would notice that!”

  “It is a valid observation, Cassidy,” Victoria said. She went on and on about the water-and-waste-management system the island had in place—fascinating for the time period, she said. Maybe. But seriously? The island’s sewage was the last thing I wanted to spend my morning talking about.

  “Good going,” I told Nikos under my breath.

  He shrugged. “I do what I can.”

  At one point, Victoria informed us we were looking at the House of the Tritons. I imagined a bunch of trident-wielding mermen hanging out in there—you know, like King Triton from The Little Mermaid? But I was wrong.

  “Look at this floor!” I called. “Is that a woman Triton?” I had only ever seen a guy Triton before. I didn’t know it was an equal-opportunity position. But there she was, with a long, curling tail, and a winged, naked baby flying above her head.

  I pulled out my phone to take a picture of her while Nikos and Victoria climbed over the fallen stones and pillars to where I stood.

  “Oh, yes,” Victoria said. “She is called a Tritoness.”

  “What’s with the cupid?” In my mind, Tritons and cupids didn’t quite go together.

  Nikos laughed. “That is Eros,” he said. “Cupid is Roman.”

  “Whatever. He looks out of place with her.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe the Tritoness needed a little help with her love life.”

  “Actually,” Victoria said, “Eros had a strong connection with the sea. His mother was Aphrodite, who rose from the sea.”

  “It’s amazing that the floor is in such good shape,” I said. “How could those thousands of tiny pieces of tile survive for all these years when the big marble building around it didn’t?”

  “Well,” Victoria said, “size is not always the determining factor for strength. You can’t judge the worth of a thing—or a person—based on how it looks. Things are often not as they appear.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Nikos. “She can’t help herself. She has to turn everything into a teaching moment. It’s a disease, really.”

  Victoria chuckled. “You know you love it.”

  As we hiked down the hill, our feet hit the gravel in a kind of crunching rhythm. Victoria’s words echoed in my head. You can never tell the worth of a thing by how it looks … how it looks … how it looks. Fortunes can change … can change … can change. It’s what a man does that matters … matters … matters.

  Was it possible, I wondered, to make your own fortune?

  We hadn’t even seen a quarter of the

  island before we realized it was time to head back to the harbor. Strike that. It was past time to
head back to the harbor. We speed-walked back, kicking up the dust behind us.

  “Quickly,” Victoria said, her breath coming in short puffs. “Magus will be waiting.”

  I had to double-time it to keep up with Nikos’s long strides. Until then, the sun hadn’t seemed hot, only pleasant and warm. But now it was beginning to feel like a blowtorch on my skin. The fabric under my arms and along my waistband had become uncomfortably damp. I wanted to ask if we could slow down for a little bit, but I didn’t want Nikos to think I couldn’t keep up.

  By the time we reached the harbor, I was out of breath and glistening. (Daniel once told me that girls don’t sweat; they glisten.) And Magus wasn’t there.

  “Maybe …” I said, panting, “we’re late.”

  “Maybe he’s late,” Nikos said. (Not even breathing hard. How is that possible?)

  “Hold on.” Victoria pulled out her phone. “We’ll soon find out.” She spoke to someone on the other end for a minute and then tucked her phone back into her bag. “As I thought,” she said. “He had to run some of the crew back to the yacht, and he’s coming back to get us.”

  “Then we can see more of the island?” Nikos asked.

  She shook her head. “He’s already on his way. We should stay nearby.”

  I was glistening in full force by then. “I’m going to test out that water while we wait,” I said. The pier we were standing on was just yards away from the rocky beach, and all that lovely, cool (I hoped) water was calling my name.

  “I’ll come with you,” Nikos offered.

  “You two go ahead,” Victoria said. “I’ll let you know when I see Magus coming.”

  At the edge of the water, I kicked off my sandals and stepped gingerly on the gravelly shore. Bits of rock and shell poked at the bottoms of my feet, but not enough to stop me from wading in. I sighed with relief as the cool water closed over my feet and lapped at my legs.

  “I can’t believe how clear the water is!” I said.

  “Of course. What do you think water is supposed to be like?” Nikos asked.

  “If you go to some oceans,” I said, wading in farther, “you can’t see anything beneath the surface. Not clearly anyway. We went to the Pacific Ocean in California once, and it was, like, grayish green. Not clear blue like this.”

  “The water isn’t blue,” Nikos said, wading in next to me. “It’s clear, as you said. The color is a reflection of the sky.”

  I squinted up at him. “Wait. Is that true?”

  “Partly,” he said. “At least that’s what my tutor said.”

  Ha! So he did have a tutor. “You said ‘partly.’ What about the other part?”

  “You want the scientific answer?”

  I shrugged. “If that’s the one you’ve got.”

  He cleared his throat and stood straighter. “White sunlight,” he said authoritatively, “contains all the colors of the spectrum. Water molecules absorb the light, but they absorb the red light more than the blue light, so that blue light is what you see. And since it takes a lot of water to get the effect, different depths show up as different shades of blue.”

  “For real?” I asked.

  “It’s science.”

  “See? I told you you were a brainiac.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “If you’re so smart,” I said, “you’ll figure it out.”

  “Whatever you say.” He turned away slowly. Then, before I could react, he bent down and splashed a handful of red-absorbing water at me.

  I squealed and splashed a handful back at him. Before long, we had a full-on water fight going. I was thoroughly soaked (and loving it) by the time I heard Victoria’s voice above the sound of the splashing.

  “Wait.” I held down his arm so he couldn’t splash anymore. “Did you hear that? What did she say?” I shaded my eyes and looked to the pier, where Victoria was waving us over.

  “Time to go,” Nikos said. “Magus must be here.”

  We sloshed back to the shore. I had to step slowly and carefully over the sharp bits.

  “Can you move any faster?” Nikos asked.

  “It’s these rocks,” I said. “My feet are sensitive from being in the water for so long.”

  “Put on your sandals,” he said with a “duh!” tone to his voice.

  “My sandals are leather. I don’t want them to get wet.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I nodded.

  “Who wears sandals they don’t want to get wet to a beach?”

  “I didn’t know we were going to be going to a beach.”

  Victoria yelled for us again, and Nikos grumbled. He turned his back to me, kind of stooping over like he was suddenly an old man.

  “Get on,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Get on my back,” he said slowly, like he was talking to a child. “I’ll carry you.”

  “Oh. No. You don’t have to—”

  “They’re waiting.”

  I looked back to the pier, where Victoria stood with her hands on her hips. “What if I’m too heavy for you?”

  He just laughed. “Grab your sandals,” he said.

  It’s been years since I’d had a piggyback ride. In fact, the last time I could remember was when I was about five and my grampa used to carry me around their farm. It might be little-kid-ish to say, but having Nikos carrying me was kind of fun. I would have preferred it to be Logan, but I could always pretend.

  He set me down on the pier and, since my feet were dry by then, I slipped my sandals back on. Nikos climbed into the boat first, and then turned to help Victoria and me.

  I took his hand and climbed down as gracefully as I could, considering that the waves lapping at the sides made the boat bob up and down. I wobbled over to one of the cushioned seats and sat down while Nikos helped Victoria onto the boat.

  He came over to sit by me, resting his arm along back of the cushions behind me. I sat uncomfortably straight-backed so his arm wouldn’t accidentally “slip” and end up around my shoulders. I hoped he hadn’t gotten the wrong idea when we were splashing in the water. Or when I let him carry me back to the pier. Or help me into the boat.

  I know, it’s crazy. Nikos was the cutest guy I’d ever met, besides Logan, of course. And maybe Mateo in Spain. He was definitely crush-worthy, but I was hopelessly stuck on Logan. Besides, Zoe liked Nikos. So as cute and fun as I thought he was, I just didn’t like Nikos that way.

  I scooted to the edge of the cushion just enough that I could turn and talk to him without being obvious. He didn’t seem to even notice, much less care.

  “Someday,” I said, “I need to come here again and see everything we missed.”

  He shrugged and tried to act bored. “I have been there many times. After a while, all the ruins look alike.”

  “Are you kidding?” I laughed. “Hello. I was there with you. I saw how you reacted. You thought it was amazing, too. Admit it.”

  “It was interesting.”

  “It was more than interesting. That place was ancient. Don’t you know how cool that is? Your history goes back forever. My country’s history goes back only about two hundred years.”

  “The history of America as a nation may be two and a quarter centuries old,” Victoria corrected, “but the history of the land and its peoples dates back much further than that.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t have any ruins like these,” I said.

  “What about the Anasazi cliff dwellings? Or the Serpent Mound in your own Ohio?” Victoria tsked. “I can see we need to add some American history lessons to your studies.”

  “See what I mean?” I said to Nikos. “Everything is about studying!”

  I think Victoria was about to say something else, but just then the motor roared to life and the boat slid away from the pier. We flew toward the yacht, bumping over the waves. I was happy to ignore Victoria and her teaching moments for a while. All I wanted was to feel of the wind rushing through my hair and the sea spray on my face.
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  Nikos leaned closer and yelled, “Look!” He pointed to a boat maybe a football field’s distance away from us, racing through the water parallel to ours.

  “Who is it?” I yelled back.

  “Paparazzi. They found us!” My breath caught for a second, but Nikos seemed delighted to see them. Almost like he had been expecting them. “Wave!”

  I shaded my eyes to get a better look. The boat was a smaller version of the one we were in. One man stood at the wheel, steering, while another balanced on the seats, snapping pictures with a bulky-looking camera.

  “Telephoto lens,” Nikos shouted. “Better check your teeth before you give him a smile.”

  I quickly ran my tongue over my teeth. It was a habit, ever since I got my stupid palate expander … which I wasn’t wearing because I had forgotten to put it back in. Good for the camera, not so good for me. I’d pay for it later.

  Nikos laughed at me. “You are perfect. Now, smile!”

  He was really hamming it up, gazing off into the distance, flexing his muscles. He looked back at me and winked, grinning. Like I said before, his grin was contagious. It wasn’t long before I was playing to the camera alongside him, pulling out my best movie-star poses and making pouty faces and generally having a good time. Until Magus decided to outrun them and the boat jumped forward. I tumbled back onto the seat, practically landing on Victoria’s lap.

  “Strange that they should show up now,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked. “They know we’re docked in Mykonos. They’re probably just following us around.”

  She glanced back to where the paparazzi boat was growing smaller and smaller behind us. “I wonder,” she said.

  Travel tip: It is considered very

  bad manners in Greece to make noise during the afternoon nap time.

  By the time we got back to the yacht, CJ and the camera crew had already slipped off to go over the day’s footage. The yacht crew was scurrying around, preparing to cast off. From the savory smell that hung in the air, Theia Alexa was busy making lunch. With all the bustle on board, and after the early makeup call, our walk around Delos, and the post-adrenaline crash from our paparazzi chase across the water, I was beginning to feel deliciously drowsy.

  Victoria must have been feeling it, too, because she yawned and announced that she was going to go lie down for a bit and rest before lunch.